“Go down to the boat and listen to them. Then you’ll know what to do. But take a taxi. As a wise and sensible man, you’ll realize you’ve had a bit too much wine to drive.”
Five
1989
ON THE MONDAY MORNING AFTER our trip to Zeballos, I showed up for work and Sylvia beamed a congratulatory smile. She gave me a brief introductory lecture and told me the names of my four “clients.” When I absorbed that basic information without asking her to repeat anything, she almost wriggled in ecstasy. Expectations were obviously low. A decade later I might have suspected gender prejudice, but it didn’t occur to me then. She was just a nice lady who was giving me “positive reinforcement.” We jumped in her car, though jumped is a bad word choice: I’d lost my jumping ability and I’m not sure if Sylvia ever had any. We got into her car and set off for Old Man Ahola’s place.
He lived in a weathered two-story house in the middle of a field off Kaleva Road. It was the most perfectly proportioned wooden structure I’d ever seen. If I could paint, I’d paint it. It needed paint, but that’s not what I mean.
Inside, the old man sat at his kitchen table and gazed out at his back field. “Jesus, Penti. If the kitchen was facing the other way you’d have a beautiful view of the Strait. See the boats going by, gorgeous sunsets, whales, everything.”
“There’s lots of water around here but not much grass. And you don’t have to worry about grass getting nasty and sinking the house. That’s why I like looking at grass. What are you doing here?”
“I’m your new homemaker.”
“Not as cute as the last one.”
“That’s your opinion.”
“Most people’s, I imagine.”
Sylvia intervened. “Ollie can give you a hand with more of the heavy stuff, getting wood, moving furniture, and that sort of thing.”
“I don’t move furniture. Everything’s in its proper place.”
“Well, at least I can give you crib lessons.”
He snorted. “Come by tomorrow and you can give me a lesson. Nickel a point and the loser calls the winner Your Majesty for a week.”
Sylvia and I made a strategic withdrawal. As she backed out of the driveway, I reassured the two of us. “I thought that went well.”
Our next stop was the Widow Hardy’s place. She lived next to the breakwater in an old float house that had seen most of the central coast before being retired in Sointula. It sat on a concrete foundation now and seemed glad of the stability. As did the widow herself, who weighed over two hundred pounds and couldn’t move far from the oxygen tank that assisted her breathing. But she was inexplicably cheerful and greeted us warmly. “Ollie, your mummu said you’d be coming around. How are you? You’re still limping a bit.”
“I’m fine, Grace. The foot’s getting better all the time.”
“And Dougie? I worry about him. He’s too much like his dad.”
“You mean his ears stick out?”
“Don’t sass me, Ollie. I mean, he takes things too seriously, like his dad. I remember when his dad resigned from the credit union board because they gave a loan to Risto Saranen after he fished during the 1928 strike.”
“That’s not serious. Somebody else sliced Risto’s purse line.”
“You know what I mean. Dougie needs you to make him laugh.”
“It’s nice to have a purpose in life. And what can I do to keep you out of trouble? What’s her curfew, Sylvia?”
“It’s 9:00 PM. And you’ll have to watch her. She’s been sneaking out lately.”
The Widow Hardy chuckled and the conversation turned to the seniors’ bake sale the next day. We left soon after and walked three houses over to Sam Sjoberg’s house. He was a typical old Finn: joyfully pessimistic and militantly independent. We convinced him to tolerate my visits twice a week and then set off for my mummu’s neat little cottage.
Sitting at her kitchen table, her face illuminated by late-morning light through the window, Mummu could have been my mother’s older sister instead of her mother. Only the stiffness of her movements betrayed her body’s betrayal. She beamed us a smile that outshone the Pulteney Point lighthouse and waved her hand over an array of calories that could have powered an icebreaker. “Ollie, I know you young singles never eat properly. Help yourself.”
I resisted saying that I was supposed to be the helper, not the pampered guest, and constructed a snack of pickled dog salmon on cream-cheese-smothered pulla bread. Sylvia opted for the blackberry pie, and while we masticated, Mummu meandered through a long story about curing my grandfather of pneumonia with regular infusions of salt fish and potatoes. When I’d balanced my diet with a large slab of lemon meringue pie, I asked Mummu about her schedule for the afternoon. “I’ve got bingo at three, but before that I need to go to the Co-op and post office. Would you mind driving me?”
I again resisted explaining reality, which was that I was getting paid to do those sorts of things. Somehow I knew that my reality would need to conform to that of my clientele if I was going to keep them happy. And their reality was probably that they were helping me. I was, after all, physically unfit for a real job. I said I’d come back at two, and Sylvia and I took our leave.
“You can begin to see what the job’s all about now, helping them around the house, driving them around, and mostly being good company.”
“While appearing grateful that they’re putting up with me.”
“Ollie, I knew you’d get it. You were always such a wise child.”
“How come I’m such a stunned adult?”
Sylvia declined to answer, for which I was ambivalently grateful. Two hours later, I picked up Mummu and drove her downtown, where we flew the coop. Not flew, exactly, because shopping took second place to socializing. We cruised the aisles in the company of others equally concerned about the spotted bananas and poor condition of the apples. There were, however, UNVs—unidentified new vegetables—in the produce department. Tarmo informed us it was all the doing of the new manager. “She’s from down island. Uses an umbrella. Lots of fancy ideas.”
We ran into my cousin, Danny Swanson. He was two years younger than me, in his last year at high school, and one of the few sure bets to graduate. He was a bright kid, successfully camouflaged as a typical local haywire. “No school today?”
“Pro-D day.”
“So lemme guess. You’re shopping for legal stimulants so you can go home and study for eighteen hours straight.”
“You’re a mind reader, Ollie.” He grinned at me like we were both at a great party and we needed to acknowledge the absolute fucking purrrfection of the zeitgeist. I didn’t want him to know I was leaving the party and soon the beer would run out and the girls would go home.
“Drop by some night. I want to hear what your plans are.”
“Sure thing, Ollie. See you, Mummu.” He gave her a kiss on the cheek and drifted off in the direction of a shapely female vision who looked like someone I’d dated, only better.
At the checkout counter I was in mid-flirt with the cashier when a headline in the North Island Gazette caught my eye. Regional district bumps head. Evidently, the manager had been fired. There was no mention of anyone losing consciousness. I bought the paper to give Dougie a laugh. The seventy-three cents I spent had an unexpectedly salutary effect, as the Help Wanted ads revealed that the Gazette was looking for a reporter. Not, unfortunately, a headline writer, but reporting was right up Dougie’s alley. And a Dougie engaged in gainful employment was a Dougie easier to get along with. I made a mental note to apply for my cherub wings.
When I showed Dougie the ad, he feigned indifference but said he’d go up to Port Hardy and talk to them. He gave away his excitement, though, by cracking a bottle of Koskenkorva. As the level of spirits fell in the vodka bottle, they rose in our hearts. We were soon engaged in full-on planning of The Project.
“Assuming the Gazette hires me, we’ll have two incomes, although I know they don’t pay much. But we can think about buying equipment
. We need a Zodiac, and maybe a ninety-horse. I’ve got my uncle’s old shotgun, completely unregistered. We’ve got vehicles. What else?”
“We can’t use our own trucks in case they’re spotted. I thought we could get an old beater, make sure it’s reliable, stash it in the Nimpkish dump and go from there.”
“That’ll work. There’s something else we’ve got to talk about: level of violence. We’re obviously not going to kill anybody, but how far are we prepared to go? Say some company guy refuses to open the safe or tell us where the cash is hidden. What are we gonna do? Can we, say, shoot him in the foot?”
I reacted with a grimace. “Jesus! Feet are sort of close to my heart. Not because I’ve got short legs, but because I’ve got a long memory. Even if it was a less personal appendage, I couldn’t pull the trigger. Could you?”
“No. So I guess it’s all threats and tough talk. Sort of like American diplomacy.”
“Well, they occasionally back up the tough talk with B-52 bomber ordnance.”
Dougie responded, “Twelve-gauge shotgun ordnance works better as a threat. You can’t shove a B-52 bomber up someone’s left nostril. The more visceral the threat, the less chance you’ll have to follow through on it.”
“Visceral? Is that, like, really, really vicious?” Dougie deadpanned me with a quick glance, which I ignored. “You realize that some of our potential victims will be well known to us and vice versa. We’ll have to be well disguised, including voices.”
“Come on,” he said. “Our real victims will be drinking sake in Tokyo nightclubs. The people we’ll be dealing with are mere surrogates. If we see anyone familiar, just talk slowly and loudly, like you’re trying to explain something to a foreigner.”
Dougie got the job at the Gazette and the quality of the reporting went up immediately. Political machinations at the regional district meetings became understandable, almost interesting. Sports stories carried more quotes from the players; the business stories, less. Cultural events were never referred to as such and consequently were enjoyed more, although the court reports were still the highlight of the paper. Headline writing remained problematic. Eyebrows were raised when RCMP Corporal Michelle Roberts reveals bust was followed by Disappointment for Alert Bay seniors.
The job was great for Dougie, though. He was busy, running all over the North Island to the various communities and their various events. And he was telling stories. As he constructed stories about loggers losing their jobs due to US trade sanctions, and fishermen losing their jobs due to US violations of the Pacific Salmon Treaty, balanced with stories of fall fairs and victorious hockey tournaments, we were both working on our own not-for-publication story.
Our physical conditions were improving along with our financial conditions. I could walk with no limp, although I wouldn’t beat anyone in a forty-yard dash. Dougie was down to eight or ten Advil per day and could do light lifting if he was careful.
Our hard-earned dollars were soon sufficient to allow for a trip to Vancouver and the purchase of a twelve-foot Zodiac with a ninety-horse Merc outboard. We also lashed out three hundred dollars on a 1979 Ford F-150. The mechanic we persuaded to do a complete engine overhaul wondered why we wanted to spend an additional two hundred and fifty dollars on such an old truck. We didn’t enlighten him.
We got a one-day insurance permit and headed home. I drove what we optimistically referred to as the getaway vehicle (GV), with Dougie following in his slightly less battered pickup.
We stopped in Nimpkish to stash the GV at the renowned dump. Nimpkish is a logging camp just north of the Zeballos turnoff on the Island Highway. In the golden era of logging, its dump was famous as a cornucopia of still-usable appliances and vehicles. Loggers didn’t throw away slightly damaged trucks anymore, but our old GV was still the most battered vehicle there. The scattered metal carcasses brought to mind the sarcastic Ford backronym, “found on road dead” and the corresponding expansion of GMC, “generally made crappy.” There were no other makes in the graveyard, an exhibition of vehicular apartheid that no tribunal would ever address. We blocked the truck and removed the two rear wheels as well as the battery, to ensure the truck’s stationary status, and headed north again.
Our stash for the Zodiac was truly ingenious. I’m not saying that just because it was my idea. We took it to Coastwise Marine in Port McNeill and told the owner we wanted to sell it. As expected, he declined to buy it outright but offered to sell it on commission. He told us our asking price was way too high, but we informed him the market would rise to it. He shrugged, and as we drove away, he was moving the Zodiac to a remote location on his back lot.
It was with a sense of great accomplishment, coupled with the usual homecoming mood boost, that we drove onto the ferry to Sointula. We were home in our proudly dilapidated house by four thirty. It was almost dark. A southeast gale was rising and the air was heavy with the coming rain. The evening sky imagined our fate.
I built a fire while Dougie did something with potatoes, cheese, and mushrooms. By the time they had congealed into an amazingly palatable concoction, the fire had grown enough to cozy the room. I opened a bottle of a local vintage, the 1989 Crazy Ray’s Tractor Gas, and we sat down to pommes de terre avec stuff from the bottom cupboard.
The wine had an interesting sort of what-the-fuck note to it. Dougie sloshed a bit on his potatoes in lieu of vinegar. We were, of course, due to our socialist upbringing, firm believers in second chances, so I opened another bottle. The fire was roaring now, doing battle with the roaring of the wind outside. So far the forces of good, or at least of comfort, were prevailing over the chaotic void.
“Have we missed anything?” I looked at Dougie inquiringly.
“Dunno. I think we’ve covered most of the bases. But it’s just like fishing. We know things are going to go wrong, so we have to be smart enough to deal with them.”
“You’re right. But with fishing we’ve got generations of experience to fall back on. We’re stepping outside our boundaries here.”
“More like we were forced out. But the truth is, I’ve wanted to go outside for a long time. I’m glad you thought of this, Ollie. This is better than when you used to row us out in the fog. Ten years old and completely lost, but we always found our way back. We’ve got a compass inside us, Ollie. If we trust it, we’ll be all right.”
I wanted to pray that he was right but couldn’t summon up an appropriate god. There was no doubt, though, that there’s nothing worse than overplanning. So we didn’t.
Six
THE LATE-AFTERNOON SUN BURNISHED THE river with a golden sheen as I walked down the dock. I stood for a moment beside the Ryu II and lifted my face to the sun’s warmth. With my eyes closed, I listened to the gentle lapping of small waves and the drone of a passing tug. I could hear voices from the other side of the breakwater. They were unintelligible but comforting. A shadow passed over my closed eyelids and there was a momentary coolness. I opened my eyes to find the world still there, which shouldn’t have surprised me and didn’t.
I climbed over the rail of the Ryu II and entered the familiar galley. I put an Etta James CD in the player, got a beer from the fridge and sat down to examine the box of tapes. There were eleven of them and I figured they were each about an hour long. I felt a surge of anxiety as I realized I wouldn’t be able to listen to them all before Phil Davis arrived.
Each tape was numbered, but some had written titles as well: “The Setup,” “Personnel,” “Betrayal One,” “Finances,” “Betrayal Two,” “Betrayal Three,” and “Future Policy.” I slotted “The Setup” into the player and sat back to listen.
As I sipped my beer, the voice I recognized as belonging to Cliff pontificated over the unmistakable clink of ice cubes in a glass. “I left Hill and Knowlton in ’68. They were goddamned good at the game and I learned a lot. But I had some ideas of my own and I wanted to express myself, know what I mean? Wanted to keep more of what I earned too. Those bastards made millions, I mean literally millions
, and they paid me like some chickenshit copywriter.
“Anyway, I took a few guys with me, recruited a few others and set up shop. We got a bit of the election work that year. The big guys got most of it and fucked it up. Imagine letting Robert Stanfield lose to a long-haired French Canadian hippie. And Medicare! If we’d had a shot, we could have smothered that baby. Oh well, no one gets to play on the first line right away.”
All this was sort of interesting but somewhat repetitive. I fast-forwarded, only to hear more of the same corporate history, although Cliff’s words grew a little more slurred as the tape went on. Dougie would interject with the odd question, always in the same adulatory tone, which would have disturbed me had I not been swaddled in the comforting womb of my boat with sufficient beer near at hand. The tape ended with roughly five minutes of silence, which obviously meant the meeting was over and Dougie was devoting one tape to each meeting.
I skipped to “Finances.” Cliff again: “There was way more propaganda money available in the States, but by the mid-’70s, Canadian business was getting worried. That goddamn Trudeau was talking about democracy in Ottawa and Dave Barrett was actually trying to implement it in BC.” And so on and so forth.
“Betrayal One” was a self-congratulatory explanation of how Cliff and company had orchestrated one of the greatest swindles in Canadian history, the splitting off of Landcor Developments from Continental Railways. Not long after Confederation, the Canadian government had granted the railway millions of acres of timberland, including the mineral rights, in return for which Continental agreed to keep the railway running efficiently in perpetuity. Continental’s people backed this up by solemnly crossing their hearts and hoping to die. Bravely tempting fate, they later sold both the land and the mineral rights in a sweetheart deal that benefited all parties except the Canadian public.
The Fourth Betrayal Page 4