Beach Reading

by Lorne Elliott

  “Of course not.”

  “I ask because some said he went to Bermuda. I thought you might have met him there.”

  “And others said he went to Monte Carlo. Or Tangiers, Bangkok, or Las Vegas…”

  “There’s a worse rumour than that,” said Wallace.

  “Really?”

  “Yes. I heard he went to Ottawa.”

  Which not only got a laugh, but some applause. Wallace was back on top.

  “But let me make my point…” said Head.

  “Go right ahead.”

  “Well, he is your uncle…”

  “You heard me.”

  “Well..?” Head left the question hang until Wallace seemed to grasp what he was asking.

  “Oh. I see what you’re driving at. That because I am related to him he somehow transmitted to me his…what? Aberrant political behaviour gene?”

  “You said it, not me.”

  “Well, I don’t want to be guilty of misrepresenting your position.”

  “Fine then. For the sake of argument, let’s consider that possibility.”

  “Fine then, for the sake of argument, we should also consider the possibility that if behaviour of any kind is an inherited trait, then I would have to also allow that I was genetically instilled with the let’s call it “behavioural DNA” of the courageous Wilf MacAkern (there’s a picture of him over there on the wall), killed at Mons, July 15th 1916 with the Abegweit Light Infantry. Or Luke Taillefer, over there on the wall, sniper, DSO…. Should I go on?”

  “I don’t think it’s necessary to…”

  “Well, I’d like to, if you don’t mind, since you brought it up, you understand…”

  “That’s all right….” said Head.

  “Audience?” asked Wallace.

  “I want to hear,” said someone in the front.

  “You go ahead, Wallace,” said El’ner Beardsley, offended that Head was trying to rob her of some important information that Wallace might have. And it seemed to be an opinion supported throughout the crowd by widespread grunts of agreement and affirmative nodding of heads. So Wallace launched into an expanded version of one of the points we had argued thoroughly in our practice debates.

  “Because,” continued Wallace, “the pernicious suggestion that genes determine character would mean that you would be somehow tainted with your own father’s blood, Lionel Head (a much closer relative than Smooth Lennie was ever to me I might add), who was trumped out of the New Brunswick Legislature in 1956 for what was it? Suspicious activity surrounding a certain Saint John wharf scandal if I’m not mistaken? Or was it the Richibucto lobster license scandal or the crab fisheries scandal (one of those scandals, they’re almost too many to list with Lionel). Or The Shediac Bridge kickbacks or the Miramachi Salmon Lodge weekend giveways? But I would certainly never claim that that was the case, (not that those scandals didn’t take place. Oh no! There was hell to pay). What I mean to say is that I would never claim that the deep personal connection to your own father has any genetic influence on your behaviour at all (although being raised in a household where that was the culture is another question). No. I believe that our fate dear Brutus is not in our genes but in ourselves, to coin a phrase. And if you believe that genes do determine ethical behaviour, then it seems you are in agreement with Herr Adolph Hitler, who my other much closer relative Eugene MacAkern died fighting against during the Battle of Falaise in 1942. If you’d like to confirm, check that plaque out on the wall there, right next to the Queen.”

  He waited for Head’s response.

  Head coughed once. “Precisely my sentiments on the question of inherited traits…” said Head, beating a hasty and ugly retreat. “And…I…my father…well…our family never…It doesn’t matter…though I, for one, think our armed forces are doing a great job…don’t you, audience..?” This appeal didn’t raise a single clap of the hands. The audience waited.

  Leo Murdoch looked concerned. You couldn’t see his eyes, but he was as motionless as that rabbit I had seen in the dunes that day, just before I’d met Rattray.

  “No,” continued Wallace. “We choose our own fate as we choose who we associate with and the people we work with. Assuming we have a job (which is unlikely ever to be the case if you get re-elected). You didn’t choose your father, “Tricky” Lionel Head (to recall only the most polite of his nick-names), and I didn’t choose Smooth Lennie (who was after all my mother’s sister’s husband, and no blood relative anyway).

  “Well, of course I agree…”

  Then Wallace pulled the pin on his grenade. “You did, though,” he said.

  “What…do you mean?” said Head.

  “Your campaign manager. You chose him to work for you.”

  “Yes, but…who? Leo Murdoch?”

  “Yes. Leo Murdoch. Also known as Ward Morris.”

  “Yes. But if you’re saying that comic satire of his in any way is…”

  “I’m not saying anything about that book at all.”

  “Well then?”

  “What I’m saying is that Leo Murdoch AKA Ward Morris…” Wallace paused.

  “Yes?”

  “Also goes (does he not?) by the name of… Smooth Lennie MacAkern.”

  The name dropped into the room like a bomb. Everybody looked over with intensely focused interest at the man who claimed to be called Leo Murdoch. His eyebrows above his dark glasses rose and a blush of fear flushed through his phoney tan. He rose part way from his seat.

  “How’s it going, Uncle Lennie?” said Wallace. “What you been up to?”

  Then all hell broke loose. A chair squealed. Somebody shrieked.

  “He owes me money,” yelled Dunbar, standing up in the back and pointing. In an amazed pause like the eye of a hurricane passing over, where everything goes silent before hitting with just as much force from the opposite direction, Smooth Lennie stood up and quickly walked out the side door of the building.

  The crowd rose, looked around and started to swarm out the front, and we dodged out the side door and up toward the parking lot. By the time we got there a reporter from the CBC truck was following Smooth Lennie just as he was stepping into the limo, urgently telling the driver, “Get out of here! Get out of here now…” The door closed and the motor started up as the crowd reached the car and as it spun out of the driveway someone pounded on the trunk with his fist. The car rolled onto the pavement and everybody stood around watching it disappear down the coast road.

  When it was out of sight, everybody looked at each other, then turned toward the front door of the Legion where Robert Logan Head was emerging, talking rapidly and making placating movements with his hands. We all moved back toward him. Ben Malone moved up close from behind with his microphone, like a crucifix to a vampire.

  “…Assuming he is, we don’t know for sure. Look. I’m just as much in the dark here as you,” I heard as the crowd settled down and listened.

  “I’m not in the dark,” said Wallace who had joined the crowd. “And I’m here to tell you, that’s Lennie all right. He hid his eyes under those glasses, but I caught a glimpse of them backstage and I’d know them anywhere. Everything else…well, he’s changed all that, hasn’t he?”

  “Let us not prejudge the situation until more information comes our way,” said Head.

  “If he wasn’t Lennie, then why’d he leave so fast?”

  “All I can say is that we’ll get to the bottom of it as soon as possible, and you can’t be absolutely sure that he was who you claim.”

  “Well, as you were so eager to point out,” said Wallace, “he was my uncle.”

  “Yeah, that’s him all right,” said Dunbar.

  “One of my aides has ordered a cab,” explained Head to the crowd, “and as soon as it comes, the first place I will go is the riding office where I will immediately put a call through to the Conser
vative Party headquarters in Ottawa…”

  “Think they’ll want to talk to you now?” said somebody in the crowd, raising widespread rueful laughter.

  “…and get to the bottom of this, rest assured. And if this bizarre story turns out to be true, somebody’s head will roll.”

  “Yeah! Yours!” said the heckler.

  “Hope it ain’t somebody innocent like what’s-his-name.”

  “Rattray,” supplied someone else.

  I saw Head lean over to his other aide and hiss under his breath something that could have been, “Where’s that fucking cab?”

  And, as though he had summoned it, the cab arrived, although it turned out to be hardly the rescue vehicle that Head had hoped for. It roared into the driveway as Head stepped down the stairs of the Legion, the crowd parting and letting him move toward it, and as it came to a skidding halt, immediately both back doors opened and a man and a woman, who I recognized from their campaign posters as being the other two candidates, got out. They strode directly to Ben Malone, who, seeing the look of anger on their faces, revolved away from Head and held the microphone to them.

  “First of all, I would like to extend my deepest heartfelt apologies to the people of Barrisway riding, who I see have turned up in such numbers for this debate,” said the woman. “Let me explain that I was looking forward to this gathering with great anticipation and that it was certainly our intention to be here, mine anyway, I’ll let Dwayne speak for himself. But when both me and he left our offices, both in different parts of the riding, in something which cannot reasonably be considered a coincidence, we found that our tires had been punctured.”

  There was a melodramatic “Ooo!” from the crowd and some voice said, “Smooth Lennie rides again.”

  “Oh yeah,” said another. “That’s our Lennie, all right…”

  12

  As the evening sky darkened into night and the long day of the northern summer came to an end, the buzz and babble in the parking lot moved back first to the Legion hall, and then, when that closed up, the crowd finally dispersed and we went back to MacAkerns’. Before I left the Legion I checked the pictures on the wall, and for the life of me I couldn’t find Wallace’s Uncle Eugene, or Wilf MacAkern. But it didn’t matter. Wallace had the momentum. Word was spreading and, against all odds, it was looking like he might actually win, or at least beat Robert Logan Head.

  “Well done,” said Bailey.

  “Got lucky, is all,” said Wallace.

  “Or unlucky.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The fun part’s over.”

  “That was fun, wasn’t it?”

  “Yeah. Now, work.”

  “How?”

  “Win the election.”

  “Then what?”

  “Assume power.”

  Wallace cocked his head to one side. “Yeah, but then what?” he said. Suddenly it all seemed real and possible.

  “Then you serve your constituents.”

  “How?”

  “By working with the opposition.”

  “But…and then what?”

  “Christ, I don’t know. Up the ladder. Into the system.”

  Wallace considered. “It seems the obvious choice.”

  “That it does. But don’t be fooled. It comes with a price.”

  “I suppose so. What, exactly?”

  “Exactly? I dunno. But don’t kid yourself that you’ll be in power. Nobody ever is. You’re going to be in a balance of power. Constantly trying to outwit and set up your opponent, constantly being outwitted and set up by him, in a world where you’re forced to befriend people who stabbed you in the back yesterday, and who are trying to stop from being stabbed by threatening to be the stabber and not the stabbee. Until you’re double-crossing the person nearest to you.”

  “Aiden.”

  “Can’t blame him really. They had something on him.”

  “What?”

  “Same thing they had on me. Pot. I think that’s why it’s illegal. To give the people who make the laws something on people they want power over.”

  “That’s ugly.”

  “That’s power.”

  “Hmm.”

  “I always thought there was something suspicious about him,” said Melissa. “Sucking up to you like he did.”

  “Forgive and forget,” said Bailey. “And anyhow, how’s what he did any different than what we’ve been doing? They found his weak point, and exploited it to find my weak point. Luckily Wallace found theirs and exploited that. Politics. And does it really help anything?”

  “Keeps things moving.”

  “Yeah. Revolution. Good name for it. Around and around… Anyhow, Wallace, what’s it gonna be? Cut your losses or move to the next level?”

  Wallace didn’t say anything, but next day, he went and visited Robert Logan Head.

  ***

  Wallace is the hero of this story not because he slew the mighty dragon. I am of the belief now that the mighty dragon is never slain, not completely. Wallace is a hero because, lest he become the dragon itself, he used the high point he was then occupying to help the people around him. When he guessed at the things that could be given to him, when he felt the temptation of an audience who liked him, he saw at the end of those tunnels something worthless, another trap. So he traded off on what he had.

  Discussions were held behind closed doors. Political aides were flown in from Ottawa, an angry group of people, publicly smiling and privately swearing, held together, it seemed to me, by the mutual fear that if they were to expose anyone in their immediate circle, secrets that were held on them would be exposed. And for all their bluster, they were helpless, having lived in that world too long to escape, locked in the same death-grip that Rattray and I had almost assumed, and would have assumed permanently if I hadn’t publicly confessed.

  Some new deal was worked out between Wallace and Head. First of all, Head agreed to sign an affidavit wherein it was stated that he knew but had not informed the police about Bailey’s marijuana use. This ensured that if Head were ever to exploit this information again, Bailey could thereby incriminate his accuser, and so a measure of protection was afforded to Bailey, and a balance of power was achieved.

  Also, when all Wallace’s other “rejectables and deal-breakers” were eliminated, it was agreed that he and his family could stay on in the MacAkern home and Wallace would be hired by the park as a historical interpreter. The house would be repaired and the front parlour turned into an interpretation centre, which pleased Robbie no end, and meant she’d get her roof fixed. They could live in their house until the death of the last of them, whether it was Wallace, Robbie, or Brucie. They would each in turn receive a salary from Parks Canada as “Interpretive Officers,” though nowhere near the hundred thousand a year which had been one of Wallace’s original demands. If all this could be put into place before the election, Wallace would drop out of the race.

  A phone call to the Minister of the Environment fast-tracked the agreement, buttons were pushed, strings were pulled, and it was done. But, as it turned out, all the wheeling and dealing was a waste of time for the Conservatives. The Liberals won the riding.

  It was not long after that I saw Wallace’s first historical presentation. It was questionable in its historical accuracy, but full of drama and action. His Taillefer family saga, easily as lively as his epic “Exile from Castle MacAkern,” was lifted in large part from Dumas, but he also fabricated a royal connection, the Sieur de Montlouis Taillefer, who saved the Queen but was exiled as a threat to the power of Cardinal Richelieu. The story included Acadians hiding out in the swamps up west and a family deported to Louisiana. We were all there for the performance, myself and Robbie, Melissa, Brucie, Dunbar and Fergie. Bailey, his work on the election over, was back in Rastafarian mode, his tam on his head, his smile on his face and
his posture once again supple. There was a party afterwards where I drank, but only in moderation, and I didn’t smoke any pot.

  Afterwards, on the porch, I talked to Wallace, who adopted a tone I had never heard him use before: all seriousness. “I just want to do what I want,” he said. “And not because it’s me who wants it, either. It’s just, people should.”

  “And what do you want, exactly?” I said.

  “Fucked if I know. And if I did, I sure don’t know what I might want a year from now. Or a week from now, for that matter. But I know that having this house gives me more choices to do whatever that is. That’s what they’re trying to take away from us, always. Freedom. What does it say about that in that Bill of Rights of yours, Christian?”

  I couldn’t help but notice that he used my real name.

  Brucie came out from the kitchen. “I wrote a p-p-poem.”

  “Let’s hear it,” said Wallace.

  Brucie straightened up and declaimed:

  “Don’t wanna go to England

  Don’t wanna go to France

  Don’t wanna go to Scotland

  Where the people wear no pants.

  Don’t want to go to Charlottetown

  To Rome or to Tangier

  Don’t wanna go

  Nowhere, so

  Guess I’ll stay right here.”

  “Not bad,” said Wallace. “What’s this about no pants in Scotland, though?”

  “K-k-kilts.”

  “Ah.”

  ***

  I worked at the park for the rest of the summer, and continued to add to my beach report. I stayed out of Rattray’s way, and he out of mine. My supervisor, Andrew Solomon, never showed up, though I found out that he was the one who had been responsible for the well-executed drawings in that pamphlet, which meant Claire had drawn the awful ones. I don’t know why, but when I heard this, something readjusted inside me and I realized that I no longer pained for her. The knowledge diminished her, though not in any destructive way. It made her more human, and the woman I had fallen for was a fantasy. I had been like that Welsh wizard who created a wife out of flowers. At any rate, when I thought of her again, I realized I was no longer in love, or in thrall, or whatever it was that I had been in. As intense as my feelings had been for her, they had obviously been stitched together with nothing stronger than gossamer. My heart had not been broken, just bruised, like my face, and like my face, my heart healed. My hair grew back too, keeping pace with Bailey’s, who stayed until Labour Day and then went back home.