The Fourth Betrayal

by Bruce Burrows

  “Ollie, Ollie, I’m so sorry. Baby, I’m so sorry.” She hugged me tighter and sort of rocked me from side to side. After a few moments I raised my head and snuffled a bit and wiped my eyes with the back of my hand. Oshie pulled her sleeve over her hand and used that to help me dry my eyes. “What happened, sweetie?”

  I took several deep breaths. “We just couldn’t find him. He’d gone on this stupid canoe trip. We found his Jeep and then his canoe, but we couldn’t find Dougie.”

  She didn’t say anything for a while, just hugging me and using one hand to gently massage the back of my neck. “Come to bed, sweetie. You need some rest. It’ll be better in the morning.” But first I visited my kids’ rooms and gave each of them a kiss as they slept.

  In the morning we decided I would have to drive up to Sointula to deliver the sad news. Aunt Helga would be devastated. So would my parents, who considered Dougie almost a second son. I couldn’t find the courage to phone first. I hoped I could muster some courage on the drive up.

  At seven o’clock that evening I walked into my parents’ house. My dad was home from his logging camp, sitting in his recliner, watching a hockey game. When he saw me, he gave me his big wide grin and stood up. “Hey, Ollie. Good to see you, son. What are you doing in this neck of the woods?”

  My mother appeared out of the kitchen and gave me a sharp look. Somehow words formed themselves and came out of my mouth. “You guys know Helga was worried about Dougie. It looks like he’s gone. Canoe accident.”

  “Shit! Fucking shit! That’s a fucking shame. He was too good a kid for this fucking shit to happen.” Big Ollie was a logger. He was used to losing friends. Hell, Sointula was a fishing-slash-logging village. Everyone had lost friends or relatives or both. That didn’t make people less sympathetic to the loss, just less sympathetic to the circumstances.

  My mother came and touched my arm. “You want me to come with you to Helga’s?”

  “Thanks, Mom.”

  As soon as Helga saw me, she knew it was bad. I told her quickly, and she looked down at her knitting and said nothing. Finally she looked up, sweet woman, and said, “Ollie, I’m so sorry for you. I know what Dougie meant to you, and you to him.”

  “We’ll all miss him, Helga,” I said. Declining Helga’s offer of coffee, I handed her Dougie’s photo album, then left her and my mom and went for a walk out on Kaleva Road.

  When I got to Kemp’s Beach, I went down to the water and stood there, looking across Broughton Strait to Vancouver Island. Tattered white clouds shrouded the mourning hills and the falling rain camouflaged my tears. After a while I became aware that I was shivering, so I began the walk back into town. The southeast wind pushed me gently from behind and the cold rain numbed my face but not the pain deep inside me. The evening sky imagined our fate.

  Three

  1989

  IT WAS THE YEAR AFTER our triumphant grad party, and the party was most definitely over. We were back on the same beach, watching the same familiar sunset, the post storm number thirty-two, streaked with purple and gray and featuring increasing tones of threatening red fading to passive orange. We were almost as drunk as on grad night. But the metamorphosis from the cocoon had taken an unexpected turn. We weren’t butterflies. We had become nineteen-year-old cripples, and we were feeling betrayed.

  I had been working on a seine boat when my foot was crushed between the spoolers and the side of the stern ramp. It hurt, but being told it would never be normal hurt worse. Dougie had torn his back muscles carrying a tail block up a rock bluff. His steel-caulked boots had slipped on the rock, and the eighty-pound block on his shoulder overloaded his back muscles as the 9-1-1 center in his brain shrilled out its frantic “Don’t fall, don’t fall!” message.

  Now we were using beer to wash down the painkillers and contemplating a bleak future. Dougie cursed as he tried to find a comfortable position leaning against a stump. He couldn’t sit and I couldn’t stand, but we were still chips off the same block. I used my crutch to drag the case of beer closer, took out two cans and tossed him one. “You on compo?”

  “No. Soft tissue. If they can’t see the injury on an X-ray, it doesn’t exist. You?”

  “Forty-seven dollars a day.”

  “What? You’re supposed to get seventy-five percent of your lost wages. What’s the crew share since you got hurt?”

  “About twenty-eight grand. But compo has a way of screwing you. They average your fishing income out over three hundred and sixty-five days and then pay you seventy-five percent of that.”

  “Assholes.”

  “The best.”

  “What’re you gonna do now?”

  “Know any openings for a one-legged beachman?”

  “No. How about a chokerman who can’t bend over or lift more than his lunch kit?”

  “Prospects are not good.”

  “Any ideas?”

  “Legal or illegal?”

  Dougie looked at me sharply. The guy he’d grown up with wouldn’t have even asked that question. But I wasn’t that guy anymore. “Drugs? You have to buy from one set of untrustworthy scumbags and sell to another bunch of untrustworthy scumbags. And the pension plan is weak.”

  “How’s your current pension plan?”

  “Don’t throw away those beer cans.”

  “Actually, I’ve been thinking about something. There’re risks, but you’re not dealing with as many people as in the drug trade. Things would be way more in our control.”

  “I’m all ears.”

  I grinned at him. “Ever been to Esperanza in February?”

  There was a pause while he made the necessary connections. “Knock over the cash buyers? Come to think of it, I’m surprised no one’s done it before now.”

  The roe herring fishery had exploded in the seventies and early eighties. All the buyers were Japanese, because Canadian consumers had not yet warmed to, indeed, were distinctly cool to, the idea of eating raw herring eggs. At that time there were still lots of buyers, and there was intense competition among them. When the fleet was on the fishing grounds, packer boats representing the various buyers would try to entice the fishermen to sell their catch to them by offering the highest price. And they paid cash. The previous spring I’d been fishing in Esperanza, on the West Coast, and there had been twenty-three packers anchored up. Each one carried at least a hundred thousand dollars, some a lot more.

  I crushed my beer can and opened another while Dougie pondered. When he spoke, he said what I knew he would. “I don’t want to get caught and I don’t want anyone to get hurt. But in principle? I’m with you.”

  A week later, the first southeast blow signaled the end of grace. The warm embrace of summer was withdrawn for the ministrations of a colder mistress. Dougie and I rented Pakolin’s old farmhouse on Kaleva Road. It was a bit ramshackle, but cheap, and it was right across the road from the beach, which was handy for getting in the winter’s wood.

  Making wood, as they call it in Sointula, was slow going with two cripples. I could hobble around with a saw, but Dougie was limited to maneuvering his truck to pull the logs up the beach. Our buddy John, whose sister I had dated for a year and whose dad ran the fish plant where my mom worked part time, took pity on us and did the splitting and chucking into the truck. All we had to do was supply the beer and some good BS, start the occasional outrageous rumor and not remind John about the time he dropped an easy fly ball that allowed Port McNeill to win the Salmon Days tournament.

  I shut off the saw and wiped wood chips off my face. Dougie was maneuvering his truck into position to pull up a big fir log. He got out of the cab slowly, with just the slightest grimace, and started pulling a rope out of the box. I limped over to the log. John put down his splitting maul and joined us as we strategized about the best methodology for the pull. Dougie pointed to one end of the log. “We’ll grab ’er there. Put a double roll on it and it should swing and miss that rock.”

  John demurred. “I don’t think it’ll move without blo
cking it. Use the rock for a tail hold and grab the log right here.”

  Important decisions are best made by alcohol-soothed brains. Dougie passed out beers from the back of the truck. “Hey, did you guys hear that Tarmo is turning his net shed into a McDonald’s?”

  This was news to me, as was much of the output of Dougie’s fertile brain. But the least I could do was reinforce it. “It’s supposed to be finished by May 24, and Ronald McDonald is going to lead the May Day parade.”

  Back to Dougie. “Yeah, that’s sure going to piss off the rec committee. Having a symbol of capitalist exploitation lead the celebration of our glorious Finnish socialist past.”

  John wasn’t interested in the political implications, although others would be. “I know why the bastard did it. He had a bunch of yellow paint left over from painting his house. It’ll be perfect for the golden arches.”

  I had a thought. “You know why they painted the arches yellow in the first place? So when people piss on them, it won’t show up.” Heads nodded as they internalized the answer to one of life’s great mysteries.

  The day passed slowly but pleasantly. We’d started with two dozen beer in the back of the truck and were pretty well honor bound not to quit until they were gone. Consequently, by four o’clock we had accumulated a fair pile of wood behind the house. By the time we dropped into the pub after supper, the McDonald’s rumor had been Sointulaized. McDonald’s was now going to buy the whole of Malcolm Island and turn it into a potato farm.

  We were sitting at a table with Old Man Makela, and he was shaking his head as he considered the implications. “Golly, how did they find out we grow big bodaidoes here? A turist musta told ’em. Never shoulda let those turists off the ferry. Never shoulda had the ferry in the first place. Ruined the place. Never woulda happened in the old days.”

  Wilma Jarvenen came over to our table; she had that six-rum-and-coke look in her eye. “We just had an emergency joint meeting of the rec committee and the preschool mothers. We passed a resolution against clowns in the May Day parade.”

  “But Wilma, does that mean the regional directors won’t be in the parade?” She glared at me and huffed away to a less flippant table. Nevertheless, I was impressed. The two dominant political forces in Sointula had united to repel the foreign foe. United we stood; divided we’d never get a decent ferry schedule.

  The talk soon turned to more pleasant matters. The upcoming herring season, though still months away, was a popular topic, and the signifiers were all good. The quota had just been announced and it was fairly high, and the yen was strong. Or weak. Whichever translated into a good price. Soon we had produced a collective vision of punt loads of herring being exchanged for huge wads of cash, and floatplanes flying in with suitcases full of fresh money. It was agreed that a guy would have to have lots of plastic baggies to keep the cash uncontaminated by herring slime. Dougie and I exchanged brief glances.

  After a couple more pints, it was time for the meat draw. Anticipation grew into excitement until the crowd buzzed with an Oscars-night-like frenzy. We all squinted at our ticket numbers as Walter, our MC for the occasion, afflicted us with the compulsory corny jokes before announcing the lucky ticket numbers. By the time we left an hour later, Dougie and I were packing four pounds of bacon, a bag of lamb chops, and a huge pork roast. What a night!

  The next day I dropped into my folks’ place for coffee. My dad, Big Ollie, was away in camp, tenderly ministering to ten-ton machines that ate forests. Occasionally an inkling of concern about that would flit across my consciousness. But what the hell, I wouldn’t be looking for a logging job now.

  The kitchen smelled like chocolate-chip cookies, and I realized why I had picked today for a visit. Thursday was cookie day. My mom glanced at me while she poured me a cup of coffee, added honey and set it in front of me. “How’re things going? How’s your foot?”

  I took a cookie. “It’s getting better, but I’ll never play midfield for Canada.”

  “What a disappointment. Especially after getting cut from your high school team.”

  “I might have been a late developer.”

  “You are. But not at soccer.”

  I took another cookie. “Anything happening at the fish plant? I need gainful employment.”

  “They’re laying off the salmon crew. But I’ve got a better idea. Your mummu has had this nice young girl helping her around the house, what they call assisted care, but the girl is getting married and moving to Port Alberni. The pay’s not great, but you’d enjoy it.”

  “Are you suggesting I look after old folks for a living? I’m not a nurse.”

  “Ollie, you’ve always enjoyed hanging around the old-timers. And a lot of this job is just keeping company with them. Besides, your mummu needs someone.”

  I took another cookie. “I’m not trained. What if someone has a heart attack?”

  “You don’t have to be a doctor. I think you need a first-aid course, but you’ve already done that. Most of the work is just cleaning and helping out around the house. You’d be helping your own mummu. Ollie, it’s useful, valuable work.”

  I took my last cookie. “Who do I talk to?”

  “Sylvia Tanner at the health center.”

  “I’ll go see her.” I took two more cookies and left.

  Sylvia was a briskly capable woman who was related to me by marriage. Many people were—related to me, that is, not, unfortunately, briskly capable. “Your mom said you’d be coming by.”

  “I’m not sure I can do this.”

  “Ollie, I’ve known you all your life. You can do this. You’ll be working with four seniors, all of whom you know and one of whom is your own mummu. You’ll be helping them out with chores they have difficulty with, just like you’ve always done.”

  “Do I need training?”

  “You’ve already got your first-aid. I’ll work with you for the first two weeks just to get your feet wet.”

  “When do I start?”

  “Be here Monday at nine. And Ollie, you’re going to enjoy this.”

  I headed back to the farmhouse to give Dougie the news. As I drove along Kaleva, I watched a line of angry gray waves punishing the rocky beach. An anxious flock of driftwood made its way toward the high-tide line, shepherded by eagles who dipped and soared with commendable purpose. I felt better than I had in a long time. The evening sky imagined our fate.

  When I walked into the kitchen of the farmhouse, I discovered that Dougie did not share my mood. He was standing by the window with a glass in his hand. There was an open bottle of vodka on the table.

  “Dougie boy. What’s up?”

  He continued staring out the window. “I spent all morning stacking wood.”

  I looked out the window at the woodpile. There was a row of maybe eight chunks of wood, with four or five more forming the second row and three on top of that. “You know what? We should convert the spare room to a sitting room. That way we could sit and look out at the water instead of a bunch of trees. Bloody Finns built all their houses backwards.”

  “Hey, Little Miss Sunshine! I’m not interested in your fucking redecorating schemes. My back hurts and I’m broke and useless and I want . . . you know what I want? Revenge. Somebody stole something from me. I’ll never get it back, but I want to hurt the fucker who took it.”

  I poured a glass half full of vodka and looked in the fridge for mixer. There wasn’t any. “Let’s talk about the Esperanza thing.”

  “That’s a pipe dream.”

  “No, it’s not. We haven’t had much of a chance to talk about it because we’ve been moving and shit. But we’ve got about five months to put together a plan, buy supplies, maybe rehearse.”

  “We’re broke. How are we gonna buy what we need?”

  “I start work on Monday. And you know what? Tomorrow we’re gonna take a little road trip. Zeballos. Scout things out a little bit.” I walked up to him and raised my glass. He tried to stay angry, but I knew I’d won him over. I’d played my ro
le, suggesting a simple plan, and now his mind was racing, filling in details, constructing an edifice of plot and narrative, telling a story.

  He clinked his glass against mine. “Here’s to happy endings.”

  The next morning we caught the eleven o’clock ferry to Port McNeill. In those days you could drive up at five minutes before eleven and still get on. It was blowing thirty and raining, so we sat companionably in the cab of Dougie’s truck and watched the windows steam up. I handed Dougie a tape and he slotted it into his deck. Soon Doug and the Slugs were animating the truck’s cab with the cheerful boppiness of “Makin’ It Work.” The freedom of the highway loomed pleasantly. That, and the tunes, and our insulation from the cold and wet outside the cab of the truck, buoyed my spirits.

  “Hey, Dougie, I’ve been thinking about you being so pissed off the other night. Your back is going to get better, partly at least, and you’re less of a cripple than I am. But regardless, they haven’t damaged your mind. You can still think and talk and argue and go to university and learn things, maybe write stories. So you can’t run around and be a bush monkey anymore; the choker-setting profession can get along without you. And guess what? You can get along without it.”

  “Yeah, you’re right. But it still pisses me off. When I got hurt I lost some freedom. I’ve got less options than before. Same as you. And here’s the deal: we were supposed to get compensated for that. That’s why they call it Workers’ Compensation. But we didn’t get compensated, we got fucked. Somebody has to pay for that.”

  “Well, look on the bright side. We’re on our way to Zeballos. Woo-hoo!” The ferry pulled into Port McNeill, and we drove off and up the hill to the Island Highway. The rain was still falling, but the trees on both sides of the highway sheltered us a bit from the wind. We headed south toward the Zeballos turnoff.

  Zeballos, population 189, maintained a precarious beachhead at the end of Zeballos Inlet, one of the branching arms of Esperanza Inlet. It was a potential base from which to launch our operation, a sea-to-land transition point that was as close as you could get by road to the herring grounds.