Snow Job

by William Deverell

  Zack had declined to talk on the phone from jail, thus this outpouring, and it didn’t cease as the clerk called the court to order. He clutched Arthur’s sleeve, whispered: “Give my love to Savannah if I don’t get out. Give it if I do, because I’m going to need a couple of days to warn friends about the heat. Can’t do it by telephone, obviously. And you got to believe they’re reading all our emails.”

  Paranoia. Another growing aspect of the Canadian condition. “Keep out of trouble,” Arthur said. Zack had earned a fearsome reputation as a hothead.

  “Mr. Beauchamp, are we ready?”

  Arthur looked up: Mr. Justice Gundar Singelar, whom Arthur remembered as a young, aggressive prosecutor. Suddenly he was a judge. Arthur had worked against him a few times. These ex-Crowns often tended to nurse long-term wounds from their losses.

  “Ready, milord.” Arthur retreated to counsel table, Zack to the prisoners’ box. Arthur prayed the young man would not again show the bad taste of urging a judge to go to hell. Mind you, Arthur had been known to say similar himself, in more eloquent ways.

  “I’ve read your brief, Mr. Beauchamp, and that of the justice minister.” Represented here by a Ms. Kwon, a new face, pink-cheeked with inexperience. “Excellent both. I have a busy list here today, so I wonder if either of you wish to emphasize any points.”

  Shorthand for: keep it brief, I’m on overload. Arthur spoke for only five minutes, ex tempore, a rumbling salvo about the freedoms of speech and assembly, about how the right to make vigorous, peaceful protest was the hallmark of democracy and the bane of totalitarian regimes.

  Singelar frowned at the rippling of applause from the gallery, pursed his lips with the air of someone in doubt. Arthur decided that was play-acting because the judge immediately lit into Kwon. “Mr. Flett was arrested at a demonstration that you concede was lawful.”

  “That’s right, milord. But my position is that the parole board, not the court, has the duty of determining whether the petitioner broke a condition —”

  “But Mr. Beauchamp is saying that condition is unconstitutional, it flies in the face of the Charter. If so, what’s left for the parole board to determine?”

  “Well, ah, they have an overriding discretion in parole matters, and given that Mr. Flett has shown no indication of repentance —”

  “Just a minute — they have an overriding discretion? You mean they override me?”

  It went on like that for a few minutes. Singelar had obviously made up his mind early, but he had a good house to play to, and as a former prosecutor he probably saw a chance to establish credentials for being even handed. Arthur tended to get such breaks these days, after kicking around the courts for several decades. Respect came more with age than talent.

  An ancient and lovely remedy, the habeas corpus, and it freed the corpus of Zachary Flett, who walked proudly from the room and gave Arthur a hug. “If I’m away three or four days, Savannah will understand. We have much work to do.”

  Arthur took that as the royal we. He watched as Zack was hoisted briefly by his disciples and borne to the escalator. He disappeared amid the throng waiting for him at the courthouse door.

  The ferry to Garibaldi would not leave for several hours, so Arthur enjoyed a stroll to the old Gastown area, nexus between tidy, shiny uptown and the tourist no-go zone, the pocket of skid road known as the Downtown Eastside. In the eighties, he’d defected from his firm for several dismal years to run a practice for the poor here, defending losers and lushes while a loser and a lush himself. A time remembered patchily, scenes dimly returning of rowdy commotions in bars and restaurants, even courtrooms, the rest hidden behind an impenetrable fog of gin fumes and day-long hangovers.

  Ah, but soon to be celebrated, those years of despair and cuckoldom, in A Thirst for Justice. He recoiled from thoughts of being stripped bare by his biographer with his probing, unanswerable questions. “But I want to hear about you, your feelings.” Unlovely images of his nakedness had been erupting in his dreams.

  Gastown had been pimped up for the tourists several decades ago and hurriedly gentrified for the Winter Olympics, but retained a flavour of the past: cobbled streets and lanes, Blood Alley, Gaolers Mews, and that favourite of the pigeons, Gassy Jack’s statue, honouring the patron saint of West Coast drunks. Overlooking that statue was Arthur’s destination: a nineteenth-century brick building whose ground floor had till recently housed the Leap of Faith Prayer Centre, closed since its charismatic evangelist was arrested for bilking parishioners.

  “Opening Soon,” said a sign posted on the door: “The War Room.” A martial arts training centre, a list of options ranging from karate and kick-boxing to “Commando Techniques” and “Disabling your Opponent.” Several husky men and women were inside studying floor plans. Mats piled against walls, materials for a ring, ropes, corner posts.

  An anti-Bhashyistan poster was stuck to the window: “Bring ’Em On!” Arthur couldn’t tell if it was serious or a lampoon. Probably serious.

  Entrance to the foyer and elevator was by a separate door bearing a shiny bronze plaque: “Macarthur, Brovak, Sage and Chance.” The feisty little criminal law firm had apparently disappeared its ex-senior partner, Brian Pomeroy, and added the biographer Wentworth Chance. Arthur was anxious to locate the former and avoid the latter.

  In this preserved low-density neighbourhood, the firm’s third-floor offices claimed views of Maple Tree Square and Vancouver’s hustling deep-water port on Burrard Inlet. Beyond, the North Shore Mountains were already coned with snow.

  The receptionist gave him a cheery welcome — Arthur was known here, had privileges; its lawyers had all worked with him. Max Macarthur III was in court, John Brovak with clients, Chance in the library, but Augustina Sage was in the coffee lounge staring morosely out the window. Still attractive in her forties, a cloudburst of curly black hair.

  “Why so blue?”

  She looked up, smiled. “You don’t have time to hear it, Arthur.”

  Another love affair must have bottomed out. She went through men like a mower through weeds, a failed lifetime search for the sensitive male.

  She bussed him. “All men are assholes. All but you.”

  “You might benefit from a few rounds in the War Room, my dear.”

  “That joint gives me goosebumps. A gym where psychopaths learn ways to kill. Just what we need in the neighbourhood.”

  Some requisite chit-chat followed about the Bhashyistan crisis, the conspiracy theories, the government’s stunned, slow reaction.

  “And that,” Arthur said, “brings me to Brian Pomeroy, hero of the Bhashyistani Democratic Revolutionary Front. Has he been ousted from the firm?”

  “He ousted himself. That’s another depressing subject. Just up and quit the practice. He went bonkers last year, you know. Became a cocainiac when his marriage went kaput.”

  Arthur knew all about it. Knew too much. He’d helped pick up the pieces, had to salvage a murder trial when Pomeroy fell apart in court and signed himself into a drug treatment centre.

  “God only knows where he is. A cabin somewhere in the tundra of the Northwest Territories. He’s gone Indian. That’s not racist.” Not from her. She was Cree on her mother’s side. “He has a mail drop somewhere up there. I’ll try to find it.”

  Arthur slipped behind the door as it opened. A high-pitched, excited voice. “Front desk says Mr. Beauchamp dropped by. Where did he get to?”

  Augustina shrugged. “Search me.”

  Wentworth scowled. “Damn, he promised to spend a few days with me.”

  Arthur held his breath until the door closed again.

  12

  Abalmy ten Celsius on the last day of November on Garibaldi Island (ten below in Ottawa), the fields draped in mist, a splendid day for a jaunt to the General Store — a cherished routine: get the mail, buy groceries, catch up on island gossip, while away an hour of lazy afternoon.

  From Blunder Bay to Potters Road to Centre Road, up the Breadloaf Hill hairpin, past
the driveway to the handsome new community hall, and as one descends toward the flats a cinema-scopic view of scores of four-wheeled relics rusting in Stoney’s two acres. There was Arthur’s beloved 1969 Fargo, waiting in line outside the garage, waiting for the master mechanic to install the rebuilt transmission promised two months ago. From within that garage, the revving of an engine, an ugly spew of exhaust from a broken window. His helpmate, a stubby fellow known only as Dog, scrambled out, coughing.

  Stoney claimed to be selling his crop for top dollar, and there was evidence of that in the yard, a boat trailer with a shiny twenty-foot cabin cruiser. As well, it was rumoured that he had bought a hot-air balloon from a mainland hobbyist. Arthur shuddered, almost uncontrollably, at the thought of going up in one of those things. With Stoney.

  Next door, the Shewfelts, as usual, were rushing the season: Christmas elves had appeared on their lawn. They’d be garishly lit at dusk, a frightening sight to any tourists wandering by. Soon, Santa, Rudolph, Donner, Blitzen, and the rest of the herd would make their annual appearance upon their flat roof.

  Arthur had pulled into Garibaldi late yesterday, in good cheer after his rescue of Zack Flett, looking forward to some repose at Blunder Bay. A few days, maybe, while a powwow was set up with Erzhan’s wife and landlord. He must engage with Brian Pomeroy too, who maintained a mail drop in Fort Malchance, a village in the Subarctic vastness, off the telephonic grid. Augustina Sage was trying to locate someone up there with a satellite phone, the mayor or chief or whoever was in charge.

  Savannah Buckett, predictably, had been hosting a meeting when Arthur pulled in, lending her expertise to islanders opposing Starkers Cove, a condo development at the bottom of Norbert Road. That curling country byway was to be widened to highways standards, a waterfront acreage to be deforested. “When on Garibaldi, act locally,” she said. “Save Lower Mount Norbert Road,” said their stencilled signs.

  Savannah had rewarded Arthur with a bone-crushing hug for freeing Zack, who’d called from Vancouver, where he was conferring with radical soldiers of protest in the inner city. He was off to the Kootenays next, taking on a larger role, organizing, speaking at rallies, seeking coalescence among eco-activists. Savannah seemed not to be pining for her mate — maybe she needed a break from their squabbles.

  That night, while reading in bed, Arthur had been startled to see her enter his bedroom, in her pyjamas, looking confused. A sleepwalking episode. She’d confessed to bunking in his room after some chilly set-tos with Zack, so Arthur presumed she’d acted out of unconscious habit. After dazed hesitation, she’d reversed herself, descended to the main-floor bedroom.

  He took a turn past the Bulbaconi vineyard, another failed enterprise by another hobby-farming dilettante, this year’s crop green and small and hard as pebbles. Another curve, and Hopeless Bay opened up, and he could see carpenters hoisting roof beams for Abraham Makepeace’s new tavern. The dour, skeletal postmaster-bootlegger was finally going legitimate.

  Wildly out of character with the venerable old store, the addition was of radical design, cantilevered over the saltchuck, offering opportunities for the drunk and depressed to contemplate a watery end. In the meantime, it was business as usual in the enclosed porch, which for years had provided liquid relief to islanders. Practically every local had signed the petition in support of the lounge licence, all attesting to the owner’s fault-free history.

  The five poker players at the far end of the porch seemed weary and worn, faces stubbled with old growth — all but Emily LeMay’s — and reeking of booze and sweaty effort.

  “They been at it for four days and four nights.” Makepeace rang up Arthur’s few purchases, staples for the kitchen. “Some drop out, others join. Herman Schloss hasn’t slept for two nights running, only stops to piss and shit.” Schloss, a music impresario from Los Angeles — either retired or on the run — had recently bought twenty-three acres up by Sunrise Cove. He brushed long tangled hair from his glazed eyes, peeked at a down card, folded.

  Makepeace brought out a grab bag of mail, uncollected for several days. “Your Geographic and Lawyer magazines, postcard from your grandson in Australia, he’s looking to graduate from high school with top honours, so you may want to wire him a little reward. This here fancy letter is from Simon Fraser University, they want to give you an honorary degree next year.”

  Arthur picked it up. The flap was sealed, didn’t seem tampered with. “Abraham, I’m not making complaint about your reading my mail, that seems part of the local folkways, but please tell me how you know what’s inside this envelope.”

  “You hold it up like this.” Toward the fluorescent lamp. “Half the stuff coming in here is junk mail, which, if you recall, you asked me to intercept.” He sounded peeved. “It’s a lot of extra work.”

  “Well done. You’re absolutely right.”

  “Overdue notice from the phone company. Maybe them two renegades up at your place aren’t taking care of business.” He reached under the counter. “Here’s a roll of posters they ordered. Bundle of mail for your good lady. Mostly friendly, a couple neutral, one hate letter.”

  Arthur stuffed everything into his backpack with the groceries, but didn’t shoulder it yet, took a moment in the lounge with the several kibitzing locals. Oddly, they seemed more interested in watching the poker game than yakking about Bhashyistan’s war declaration. Maybe because it was beyond contemplation. How far Garibaldi Island seemed from the wearying world.

  Arthur felt privileged to be in on the making of a rumour about Starkers Cove, so-called because of its summer use by local skinny-dippers. “It’s gonna be a nudist colony.” “Where’d you hear that?” “Look how they adopted its historic name. I saw them people at the bylaw meeting, they looked tanned all over.” Other vital news of the day: the Sproules’s ram sneaked into Mabel Grundy’s pen and seduced her heirloom ewes.

  He shared a coffee with Al Noggins, Reverend Al, as everyone called him, the local Anglican priest, who was ruefully contemplating the poker players. “I’m here on assignment from Schloss’s wife. If I don’t get him out of that game, she’s going to shoot him. I can’t budge him, so she’s going to have to do that.”

  The undercapitalized Hollywood impresario, it turned out, had lost four cords of winter wood to Ernie Priposki, his DVD collection to Emily LeMay, his twenty-foot cabin cruiser to Stoney, and two of his twenty-three acres to Cud Brown.

  “Duck. Here she comes.”

  Mookie was her name, minor fame as a 1980s B-movie starlet, still attractive but red-faced now with anger. Ignoring Reverend Al, striding directly up to Schloss, pulling him by his pigtail. “Goddamnit, Herm, you’re coming home right now.”

  “Last hand, baby.”

  “You said that at eleven o’clock last night.”

  “Killer hand, babe.”

  If it was a bluff, it didn’t work. Local cultural icon Cud Brown, a scrofulous poet who subsisted on grants and readings and part-time jobs, raised him back the two acres of land he’d won. Everyone else threw in their hands, stared solemnly at Schloss, who frantically scribbled something on a slip of paper.

  “I thought we agreed, man,” said Cud. “No more IOUs.”

  Reverend Al bent to Arthur’s ear. “Cud wants his Land Rover. Herman dotes on that car.”

  Mookie jerked his pigtail again. “Let’s fucking get out of here while you’ve got your skin.”

  “Two nights with her,” Schloss blurted.

  “With who?” Cud asked.

  “Mookie. A weekend.”

  Arthur couldn’t read anything in her face, not even astonishment. Lost in the State of Catatonia.

  “Don’t blame me if she decides to stay for a week.” Cud laid down his hand. “Full house, aces on top.”

  Schloss laid down four nines and a joker. “We did it, baby!”

  Mookie toppled him backwards over his chair, and he somehow managed to get stuck in the rungs. As he flailed she kicked him in the ribs while howling curses. Reverend Al
finally pulled her away, while others scrambled to pick up cards, chips, and IOUs that had spilled to the floor.

  After several minutes, peace was restored, and after a long debate about apportioning the spoils the game resumed, the players despondent over losing the mark. Herman Schloss was last seen fleeing by foot from his presumptive life partner.

  Arthur’s appetite for local colour satisfied — Margaret would delight in his dramatic retelling — he was about to hoist his backpack when he heard a voice behind him, chillingly recognizable. “I heard there was a game.”

  He turned to look upon smiling Ray DiPalma — the crisp new jeans and Stetson defined him as a tenderfoot from the city. Arthur edged away, unsettled, confused. Should this man be in a ward for the emotionally disturbed? Why was he leeching onto Arthur?

  But DiPalma paid him no heed. He was answering a come-hither call from the poker players, another city slicker to be skinned.

  Two hours later, in the shank of the warm and misty afternoon, still grumbling about DiPalma’s intrusion on his sanctuary, Arthur was tossing bales into his hay wagon, the last of the fall crop from the northeast pasture. Too damp for animal feed after recent rains, but fine for mulching the garden.

  A white compact slowed on Potters Road and disappeared behind a dense thicket of blackberries that served as a natural fence. Seconds later, as Arthur was about to mount his tractor, he heard the frantic squeal of spinning tires, and he sighed and clomped off to help. He could make out the white car, glimpses of it, through the thick tangle of leaves and thorny vines.

  Even the sorriest fool wouldn’t park among blackberries, but somehow the incident made sense when it was confirmed for him, unsurprisingly, that the driver was Ray DiPalma — who was now struggling through the heavy growth, catching his new country clothes on the barbed vines, gingerly prying them apart, ducking, crawling.

  Arthur ducked too, so he could see him, five feet away, his wire-rims hanging from his nose, a bloody scratch on his cheek, a lesser one on his forehead, others on his unprotected hands.