“Yeah, I have some for you too, but you go first.”
“Okay, Crazy Man Willy will meet you. That’s the good news. The bad news is that he wants to meet you just after dawn tomorrow morning, right off the west end of the wildlife preserve island in the middle of the freakin’ lake. Does that make any sense?
“On a day like this, oddly, it does. I’ll be there. I’ll be really happy if he comes alone.”
“He will – and he asked the same: ‘Tell that Anderson guy to come alone’ is what he told me. So what’s your news?”
“You obviously haven’t had your TV on for the evening news. This news is all bad: Hassan was shot and killed in hospital. The shooter was killed by a cop, who in turn is hanging on by a thin thread in hospital. Several others were hurt, but Sergeant John was not hurt... it was he who called me.”
“Shit. This is crazy. Too crazy. Here, tell Arnold, who’s staring at me like I gave birth to a spotted calf.”
“Hey Frank, Arnold here. Whazzup?”
Anderson repeated what he told Marion, but added that he was now sitting in the middle of the lake to free up a couple of cops. “At least I’ll have a head start on meeting Crazy Man Willy at dawn!”
“Are you armed?”
“Yeah, shotgun of course and I even brought along my old bolt-action .308. But I have a feeling I could have ten of those and still be out-gunned. We’re dealing with some serious dudes here. No point going into a shoot-out with an empty net.”
“Some day I’ll explain how hockey works, my friend. Got beer?”
“Yup.”
“Cool. Take care out there. I’ll make some phone calls...”
“Hold it – got stuff to tell you from Marjorie about that provincial park.” He filled Arnold in on what they had learned.
“Marion’s right. This is all crazy. But y’know, what the girls just found out starts to make sense. Like I said, I will make some phone calls and call you back later.”
They both clicked off, and Anderson called the sergeant to tell him what he had learned and where he was going. It took two tries to get past the voicemail and talk to the sergeant directly... he was a busy man this evening and the conversation was short: the key points were Big Island, Willy, and dawn.
Anderson had put the launch on autohelm, but he checked the radar and looked around the slowly-darkening horizon with his binoculars before going into the forward cabin to make some coffee. The genset bucked slightly when he turned on the coffee-maker and he smiled to himself: I have a hammer-drill that draws less poser than that damn coffee maker!
He decided to plug in his cellphone too, then stepped out on deck and gazed around the lake again. The sun was a ball above the western shore, creating a brilliant red and gold stripe above the far-off trees. By now the launch was just south of Ship Island where the Webster sisters had their cottage, and for a brief moment looking at it shot a pang of loneliness through his chest. He retreated to the wheelhouse, where he set a waypoint at the west end of the big wildlife refuge island on the GPS. He then set the autohelm to make for the waypoint and watched the south shore as the launch adjusted course slightly to the west and held.
By then the coffee was ready, so he poured a cup, took a cigarette out of the pack on the wheelhouse table, and went on deck to watch the sun go down. The lake was dead calm and looked like molten metal under the sun’s slowly-fading light. The diesels purred beneath his feet, and he could hear the bow wave lap the side of the boat under her new name: The Beaver. He smiled.
After awhile, he went back to the instruments by the wheel, decreasing the radar range to three miles and setting an audible alarm to alert him of any vessel within that radius. He also set the sonar alarm to ten metres, and his cellphone timer to two hours. Finally he grabbed a sleeping bag, pillow and mattress from the forward cabin and put them on the wheelhouse floor, took one last look around the horizon, stretched out under the open sleeping bag, and went to sleep.
His sleep was far from restful. Normally a sound sleeper who seldom dreamed, tonight Anderson’s mind was very busy. There were glimpses of Hassan, and Anita, and Marjorie. He saw flashes of light and heard gunfire and men cursing. He awoke twice before the timer went off, and jumped up each time to scan the empty horizon and check his position. When the timer went off, he re-set it for two more hours.
And so it continued for six hours, when he got up to see a faint glint of light on the eastern horizon. He poured a cup of lukewarm coffee, put it in the microwave and bundled his bedding back into the forward cabin before checking the GPS for his position. He reckoned he had five miles to go to the waypoint where he expected to make contact with Crazy Man Willy, so he eased the throttle up until the launch was making five knots. The lake was still calm and the launch had held her course well, so he left her on autohelm without adjustment and re-set the radar to five miles. As he expected, the low profile of Big Island showed up at the edge of screen. He took his warmed-over coffee and a cigarette out on deck and watched the eastern sky. With the increased speed, the gentle lap of the bow-wave had become a sizzle of bubbles along the boat’s sides, reflecting green in the starboard navigation light. Today would dawn bright, he thought, and he expected the wind to rise slightly with the sun. He considered it wouldn’t hurt to turn on the weather channel on the marine radio, which shortly confirmed his estimate. It would be a beautiful warm late-July day with few clouds and little wind. Perfect for wakeboarding behind Crazy Man Willy’s guide skiff, he chuckled to himself.
By the time he was less than a mile from his waypoint, the sun was just on the horizon and Big Island was showing at about mid-screen on the radar. He set the range back to one mile, wondering if he might pick out the skiff although he doubted it: the skiff was a wooden boat with no superstructure, and it rose metre or less above the waterline... not a good radar target. Looking out the wheelhouse window, Big Island was soon clearly visible directly to port, so he reduced speed back to steerage-way only, took his binoculars, and went out on deck and up the ladder to the wheelhouse roof, where he steadied himself against the navigation mast and scanned the waters between the launch and the island.
He didn’t have long to wait. After fewer than ten minutes, he was able to pick out a small boat coming off the shore and headed toward him. He came down from his perch on the roof, went to the wheel, switched off the autohelm, turned the launch toward the shore and added a couple of knots to her speed. When he was a couple of hundred yards from the skiff, he pulled the diesel back to idle, put the transmission into neutral and went out on deck. The lone figure on the skiff gave a short wave, and Anderson waved back. He could hear the heartbeat throb of the single cylinder engine as the skiff approached and slowed down. The operator shut the engine off and made a quick turn to port... and the skiff slithered gracefully alongside. “Anderson?” a rough old voice asked.
“Yes Willy,” Anderson answered, and leaned over the gunwale to pick up the bow mooring line, which he made fast to a bollard amidships. “Welcome,” he said, and stretched out a hand to help his visitor out of the skiff and up onto the deck.
The man was probably quite elderly, but he was strong and able. His silver hair was pulled back from a sun-etched face and tied in a ponytail. He is a strikingly handsome old man... I’ll bet he had to beat the ladies off with a stick not so many years ago, Anderson thought to himself.
“Coffee? I’ll make a fresh batch.”
“Coffee would be good,” and he followed Anderson to the wheelhouse door.
“You spend a lot of time on that boat with sandpaper and varnish. She looks lovely”
“Have to do something in April. Re-built the whole boat once, and the engine twice. I bring the boat into my house every spring... I see you have a house like that.”
“Sort of. Haven’t had my boat inside though. You’ve been to my house?”
“Before you came. I bought wood and parts from old man Daoust. Sometimes I would work for him and learn things.”
“I wish I had known him. He was a very fine craftsman... too few of them left.”
“Every age has its good men. I hear that Jamieson and Anderson are good men too.”
“Arnold? Certainly one of the best. You know him?”
“Of course. He married my son’s wife’s sister. Where I live, we call that a cousin. Keeps it simple.”
“Well, Willy, Arnold is the finest friend you can imagine and he feels like a brother to me, but I am flattered you say my name in the same sentence as his.”
“If I didn’t know that to be true, I would not be here today. We have things to talk about more than old boats. Let me bum a smoke from you, and we will sit and drink coffee and talk.”
“That would be good. Sit here at the table... the cigarettes are there and the coffee is almost done. I will drop my anchor here (there is thirty-five feet of water underneath us) so I can shut off the engines. It’s too peaceful out here to be so noisy.”
Willy settled at the navigation table and gazed around the wheelhouse. He heard the splash and rattle of chain as Anderson let go the anchor and chain from the foredeck, then quietly watched Anderson as he returned to the wheelhouse, put the transmission in reverse and gently pulled back on the chain until he could feel the anchor catch on the bottom. He turned off a number of switches, including the big diesel and the genset, poured their coffees and sat down opposite Willy. The sensation of peace was palpable.
“I have only two grandchildren,” Willy began. “I think you know Anita. Her grandmother’s spirit keeps her safe. There is also my grandson Juan, and his spirit cannot reach him. Nobody you know around here knows Juan. Even in the daytime, his spirit is in darkness.”
“I know Anita, And the more I have learned about her, the more I know she is a special person. And what you have just said tells me that she is like your wife, who I have heard was also a very special person. Did they know each other?”
“My wife Juanita died two years after Anita was born, but I believe she breathed all of her spirit into Anita when she passed.
“And what about Juan?”
“Juanita and I had one son together – you know him as Anita’s father Fred. Juanita had her first son – Miguel – four years before we met. He was not a happy boy, and he did not like our home. He left when he was sixteen and went back to California to his father’s family. He never settled down there, but he did get a girl pregnant. She and Miguel were killed in a car accident almost thirty years ago and the baby – Juan – grew up with Miguel’s father’s family. Three years ago, Juan showed up here. He said he was ‘finding his roots’ but really, he was finding routes – spelled r-o-u-t-e-s. He was only interested in finding pathways to move drugs from California – and Mexico – to markets on the streets in Canada. Since he has been here, he has made bad people worse and good people die.”
“Do you see him?”
“Not often – he stays away. If he were not Juanita’s blood, I would simply kill him and that would be the end. But Juanita – while never a church person – held dear in her heart this idea that no one is beyond redemption. That is not my way, but the memory in my heart and soul of the spirit of the finest person I have ever known prevents me from doing what I know is the right thing.”
“Where did you get the “Crazy Man” title?” Anderson got up and checked out the windows (and on the GPS) to make sure they had not been drifting while they were talking, then topped up their coffees and lit another smoke.
Willy was smiling, a little wistfully. “Well, it sure wasn’t because I played a tough game of hockey,” he laughed. “I met Juanita at an outdoor folk-music concert in Toronto – I think it was maybe Ian and Sylvia, or even Pete Seeger. We fell in love the first night, and I brought her home to the Rez, away south of here by the provincial park. I was just an Indian kid with grade eight from a residential school, and it wasn’t until we got up here that I realized that this beautiful white chick with the gentle soul, who shared my love of music, also had a degree in biology from California and was trying to finish a masters in sociology in Toronto. My mother thought she was okay, but just a passing affair until I settled down with one of the ladies on the reserve. Juanita intimidated my father with her notions about gender equality, and my older brother and his friends tried to hit on her the second night we were there. And worst of all were the Elders (and their women) who felt threatened by her education. So we moved away – a long way away – within a month. We squatted on the land where I live up the river and built a home and a way of life. She was eventually able to buy the land from the government, under a special grant program for American immigrants.”
“Cool,” chuckled Anderson, “now, back to the Crazy Man thing?” ?
Willy laughed: “That’s what my family and friends called me when we moved away.”
“You don’t speak like a man who has a bad grade eight education and lived in the bush all his life.”
“Juanita spent a lot of time teaching me everything she knew from university. Not just telling me about it – teaching me. Then we went on reading and talking and debating and arguing and making love. I may be Crazy Man Antoine, but I am the luckiest man in the world to have had all that.”
Anderson got up from the table, put his hand on the old man’s shoulder and gave it a slight squeeze. The sun seemed suddenly very bright in his eyes, so he turned away to start the genset. “It’s nine o’clock. Time for some bacon and eggs, my friend. After that will be time enough to talk more about Juan.”
***
Willy went out onto the afterdeck to check his skiff and to have a pee. The wind, while still light, had freshened enough that he decided to untie his mooring line from the side of the launch and re-attached it to a towing bollard on the afterdeck, so the skiff streamed out straight behind the launch. When he rejoined Anderson in the cabin, the smell of frying bacon filled the air with promise.
“Willy, you mentioned earlier that Juan maybe made bad people worse and good people dead. Can I ask you about some of the bad people around here? I know there are some... we got shot at last week, and the same people (I think) tried to run down a couple of summer students out doing field work in a canoe. We had been thinking about something to do with Robertson Mines, but now we’re not at all sure. And there’s more to tell since then, but let’s start there.”
“Maybe blame the sixties. I may be the only Canadian Indian hippie to have gone off-grid in the forests of Awan Lake with a beautiful American chick, but there were dozens of American whites who came here and settled back then. They came here as idealists, singing Pete Seeger songs, smoking a little weed and cutting their shins with their axes while their women made the world’s worst all-grain bread. God, you could have built three-storey buildings with that stuff, and rain-proof too! But for most of them, soon their allowance money runs out and the winters get cold and they head back to the cities – in Canada if they were draft dodgers, or back to their homes in the great old USA.”
“Not all of them, though...”
“No. some did okay and were good neighbours, raised their families, and so on. Others, though, saw opportunities to make money with raising or importing drugs, or getting into dealing in stolen property, or whatever. The leftie idealism went out the window, and it was like the wild west – every man for himself. That’s kinda what goes on around here, anyway, and that is exactly the bunch that Juan has tied up with. He’s big and strong and charming when he wants to be and is seen as a big-time drug lord from the California and Mexico. And our locals may be rough and nasty, but Juan is brutal. He scares the shit out of everyone, but he makes them a little money, you know, and keeps them drooling for more. Last I’d heard, he’s put together a small army – well, maybe more accurately a “security force” for his operations.”
“How do you think he stays under the radar?”
“Friends in medium-high places. Folks who don’t mind turning a blind eye if they can pick up some extra coin. I don’t think Juan has a huge operation,
so likely he stays away from the really heavy hitters. For now.”
“What’s the operation? He’s not simply flogging cocaine to the cottage-owners on Awan Lake...”
“Near as I have it figured out, packages are dropped from airplanes, mostly at night. They are recovered by two-or-three-person teams and stored out of sight (and away from people and roads) for a few weeks to ensure there are no authorities in the loop. Then they are repackaged and moved to the market, using cars, trucks, pleasure boats, snowmobiles. Nothing very complicated for equipment, but the planning is pretty sophisticated. And the enforcement of secrecy is, as I said, brutal.”
The bacon and eggs were ready, as was a fresh pot of coffee, so the two men settled back down at the table. “I’m gonna ask you a tough question, Willy, but I don’t want to wreck your breakfast.”
“Nothing ever stands in the way of enjoying bacon and eggs. But I know what you are going to ask, and the answer is why I am here eating your food and drinking your coffee in the middle of an empty lake. Yes, Anita got tied up very briefly with Juan, and yes, she is safely under my care and no, nobody knows about it except a Syrian student named Hassan. Even her girlfriends or her mother or my son – her father – don’t know. She’s my sweetheart grandkid, but I literally had to break her two cellphones on a rock with a hammer.”
“Thank you. So she met a charming handsome man a little older than she is, with a similar ethnic background, and started to have a fling before the warning bells went off in her head, and she broke it off. And things started to get rough... is she – or he – aware of their shared background?”
“No, but I imagine he doesn’t like being shut down by women, probably thinks she knows too much, and thinks her other friends may have connections in his neighbourhood. That is why Hassan became an issue.”
“Well, I guess I have news you don’t want to hear: Hassan is dead. He was killed yesterday afternoon by an assassin’s bullet while he lay under guard in a hospital bed in Maple Falls.”
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