The Darkening Archipelago

by Stephen Legault

  “Grace, I’d — are you sure?”

  “Yes, I’m sure.”

  “You don’t want to do it?”

  Again she pushed tears from her cheeks. “I don’t think I can. Not now. But there might be something important in there.”

  They sat listening to the sounds of the house for a few minutes. Cole watched Grace Ravenwing. She was beautiful and epitomized her name with the way she moved and spoke and acted.

  “Of course I’ll do it,” Cole said finally.

  “The box is there under the table, behind all the files,” she said, pointing.

  “I’ll go through it later and let you know what I find.”

  She stood up. “Maybe we should join the others. We’ve got a big fish stew on the stove.” Cole stood too and stepped toward her. She walked into him and he put his arms around her. She smelled of the wind that had blown across them all day, and of saltwater spray. She placed her face against his chest and he held her close. He felt her body move as she cried, and she wrapped her arms around his back. They stood that way a moment until another gang of children raced into the office, and then she pulled away, wiping the tears that tracked her face.

  “Let’s eat,” she said cheerfully, and herded the children toward the kitchen.

  Cole stood in the empty office and looked out the huge windows to the unfinished deck, then down at the treasure box that had survived one of the worst periods in the history of the North Salish. Beyond it all he saw the lights of the village tucked around the harbour, the final glow of the day being absorbed by the pan-flat sea.

  They ate at the long table in Archie’s dining room while the children sat at a low table and watched Finding Nemo. Fresh clams, salmon from the previous season, and halibut with a thick, savoury broth was ladled into bowls and eaten with bread. They drank water and tea. When they finished, Cole helped clear the table with Grace’s sisters Myrna and Rose, and her sister-in-law, Betty. All three of her siblings lived on Vancouver Island now, and rarely came back to Parish Island except for seasonal celebrations. The women laughed together in the kitchen as Cole dried the dishes and looked out the window. When the kitchen detritus was cleared away, he went to the office and sat alone for a few minutes in the darkness. Then he switched on the desk lamp and maneuvered the treasure box out from under the long table. It was two feet long and nearly as tall, and it was painted with the intricate artwork of the North Salish. A raven adorned the lid, painted black against a red and white background, where a supernatural halibut man stood on one side, and a salmon giving birth to a man graced the other. Cole touched the box with his fingers and, after a moment, opened it. It smelled of earth, and Cole realized that Archie’s grandfather must have buried the box and its contents to hide it.

  Indeed the box seemed to be full of simple possessions: the title to the Inlet Dancer, the title to the Bluff House, some other documents about the status of the Ravenwing family. Cole found documents pertaining to Archie’s father’s attendance at the residential school in Alert Bay, and then found a certificate of attendance for Archie, too. Cole shook his head at that dark period of time in Canadian history.

  There were photos of Archie’s wife and children. There was a Hudson’s Bay blanket wrapped around a framed photo from Archie’s wedding day. Cole studied the man in the picture and felt tears welling inside of him. Archie had been so proud. And then, under the blanket, he found a cd. It had a yellow Post-it note attached to it, and Cole recognized his own handwriting. “For when you are down,” the note said.

  It was Blue Rodeo’s Lost Together, one of Cole’s favourite albums. It was released during Cole’s first year at the University of Toronto. He had seen the band play at the El Mocambo on Spadina and bought the album afterward. He knew the words to every song on the cd. He had sent it to Archie two years ago after spending time with the man, his family, and colleagues devising a strategy to stop fish farming in the Broughton.

  Cole switched on Archie’s computer. He slipped the cd into the player and sat back in Archie’s chair. The music started and Cole closed his eyes. The first track had been the tune that had inspired the gift. It was called “Fools Like You.” The song amped up, and Cole found himself drumming on the desk, eyes closed.

  I just don’t understand

  This world of mine

  I must be out of touch

  Or out of my mind

  And will the profits of destruction

  Forever make your eyes blind

  Do you bow to the corporations

  ‘Cause they pay their bills on time

  God bless Elijah

  With the feather in his hand

  Stop stealing the Indian land

  Stop stealing the Indian land

  Stop stealing the Indian land

  When he opened his eyes, the track was over and he turned off the computer, closed the box, and pushed it back under the table. He stood and, rubbing his eyes, found Grace in the other room and told her he was going for a walk. He put on his leather coat and stepped out into the evening air.

  He made his way down the hill to the harbour and stood on the pier, looking at the sea. He could smell the ocean. The air was still, in stark contrast to the hard biting wind of the afternoon. The sky above was clear, and a broad smear of stars roofed the heavens. The temperature had dropped, and Cole could see his breath as he looked out over the sea, toward the mouth of Knight Inlet. Where are you, Archie Ravenwing? he thought. Where have you gone?

  He walked back to the dirt road that ran along the harbour and found himself in front of the town’s pub. He hadn’t had a drink in two days — none of Archie Ravenwing’s children drank very much, so he had restrained himself around them. But as he stood in front of the pub, his body yearned for a shot of Irish whiskey and a pint. Then he recalled that Darren First Moon had told him that some of the local townsfolk would raise a glass in Archie’s honour tonight, and that was all the excuse Cole Blackwater needed. He stepped through the salt-blasted door and into the warmth of the bar.

  He let his eyes adjust to the lights of the room. The Strait was just one large space with scuffed, rough-hewn board floors, a plywood bar along the wall opposite the door, and a dozen mismatched tables arranged on both sides of the bar. The long, raw rafters were festooned with fishing gear: nets, tackle, and floats of all shapes and colours. The lighting in the room came from brass lamps that hung from nautical rigging strung between the pillars. The room was loud, warm, and welcoming. Cole immediately felt at home.

  He had begun his precautionary scan of the room when he heard his name ring out. “Hey, Cole,” came a voice from a set of tables to the right of the bar. “Good to see you!” It was Darren First Moon, his large, powerful arm waving from a group of men who sat together drinking pints of golden ale. Darren pushed himself to his feet and made his way shakily toward Cole. Cole grinned, watching the big man approach him, his face round and happy like a child’s. “Good to see you, brother,” Darren said, simultaneously shaking Cole’s hand in his huge paw and pounding him on the back, jarring Cole’s left shoulder and producing a loud slap against the leather of his jacket. “Come on, let me pour you a pint.” Cole let himself be led by Darren First Moon to the table of revellers. “Everybody, this is Cole Blackwater,” Darren said loudly. “He was a good friend of Archie’s. He’s a kick-ass, take-no-prisoners environmentalist,” he said, slurring a little. “And he was working with Archie to shut down the salmon farms.”

  Cole managed to grin at the faces looking up at him, and became aware that others in the room had become more subdued. He felt eyes on his back and realized that, apart from the large group of Archie’s friends sitting to the right of the bar, a quieter group of white men sat at a table to the left, not a part of the merrymaking in Archie’s honour.

  “Good to see you all,” Cole managed to say before Darren First Moon found an empty glass, poured draft into it, and handed it to him. “To Archie!” he called out, and the group of twenty or so drinkers sang
out together, “To Archie!” Their glasses raised overhead, clinking and sloshing beer onto the tables and the floor. Cole managed to turn a little to his left as he drank, and from the corner of his eye could see five or six men sitting together at a table on the far side of the room, watching him from beneath ball caps.

  A chair was found for Cole, and he sat down and listened as the men told stories about Archie. It seemed a general consensus that Archie was a pillar of the community, but also a bit of a prick, something that didn’t surprise Cole Blackwater. “Old Ravenwing could burrow under a man’s skin like a teredo worm burrowing into a log,” said one man, taking a big slug of beer. “We loved him, and we hated him at the same time,” said another.

  Cole watched it all, finishing two glasses of draft before rising to make his way to the bar, empty jugs in hand, in search of refills. He stepped to the bar and rested his arms on the plywood counter, painted and sealed with a heavy coat of varathane, but worn and scuffed over the years by many arms and full pint glasses. The bartender was a large man, heavy in the middle, who wore his hair back in a ponytail, and who filled the pitchers without being asked. “And a Jameson, neat,” said Cole, digging into his pockets for money. He fished a few bills from his pocket, along with half a dozen elastics, a tube of lip balm, a broken pencil, a small collection of paper clips, and a shocking assemblage of multi-coloured lint. The bartender gave him his whiskey and took his money. Cole stuffed the rest of the debris back into place.

  “Sounds like you’re some kind of white knight,” said a voice to Blackwater’s left. Cole had seen the man rise from the group on the far side of the bar. Cole watched him settle in next to him without making eye contact. Cole could see that he wore a bc Wildlife Federation baseball cap stained with sweat and grease, and a red-checkered shirt tucked into a belt with a large silver buckle.

  Cole ignored him, but watched him from the corner of his eye. Tonight, he reminded himself, was a celebration of Archie’s life. He wasn’t in the mood to mix it up.

  “Sounds like you’re some kind of angel avenger,” said the man again. Cole paid for the jugs of beer and sipped his whiskey. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. He could feel the blood flowing in him, and the heat of the Irish whiskey warmed his throat and stomach.

  “You’re not going to introduce yourself?” said the man, looking at him intently.

  Cole turned and smiled. “You haven’t.”

  “Dan Campbell.”

  “Cole Blackwater,” he said, offering his hand, which Campbell shook.

  “You must have been Archie’s man in Vancouver.”

  Cole smiled. Archie liked to advertise.

  “He told me that he had some help down in the city. Said he was getting some help when he was trying to shut down the grizzly hunt.”

  Campbell’s name suddenly came back to Cole. Dan Campbell was part of a vocal group of local guide-outfitters who was often on the radio and in the newspaper trying to keep the grizzly hunt open. When the c bc needed to hear from someone in support of the ongoing hunt, they called up Dan Campbell. He represented bc’s version of the Wise Use movement, a collection of industry-financed, kitchen-table, and back-room organizations conceived to paint a thin, green veneer over the ongoing exploitation of natural resources. About two years back Archie had been working to shut down the grizzly hunt in Knight Inlet and along the mid-coast of BC. He had turned to Cole once or twice for advice, and to help broker a relationship with the larger provincial environmental groups who were also working on the issue. “A real motherfucker,” had been Archie’s blunt description of Dan Campbell.

  “See you’re drinking with the Indians tonight. Why don’t you come and join us over here for a few pints?” said Campbell, grinning under his ball cap.

  Cole sized him up. Super middleweight at best, he thought. Strong enough looking, and likely the veteran of many a bar brawl, given his charming disposition and outright bigotry.

  “Men are men,” said Cole, not looking at Dan Campbell’s face.

  Campbell laughed. Cole watched as he turned back to his friends and grinned. “I’d think a guy like you, coming from the big city, would know otherwise. Just a bunch of drunks on the street corners in Vancouver, aren’t they?”

  Cole felt the pulse in his wrists quicken. He threw back the rest of his whiskey. “How’s a guy like you live in a place like Port Lostcoast?” Cole asked him, his voice quiet.

  Dan laughed. “What do you mean? Live here with all the Indians?”

  Cole didn’t smile.

  “They mind their own business, I mind mine.”

  “This town is a First Nations town,” said Cole, looking around him.

  “Half-and-half. They keep to their side. We keep to ours. We meet here in the middle.”

  “You’re the minority here.”

  “Maybe. Maybe in numbers. But not up here,” he said, tapping the side of his head with his forefinger. “Up here, we still call the shots.” He grinned.

  Cole felt his vision narrowing. It was always like that. He felt his heart beating in his throat and his muscles tense. He tried to breathe, to flood his body with oxygen before his muscles sprang into action.

  Dan went on. “You see, the Indians may have some say in what goes on here on Parish Island and at Alert Bay, but the government still listens to us. Maybe you Indian lovers want to help them shut down the grizzly hunt and fuck over the fish farmers and stop us from cutting in the so-called Great Bear Rainforest.” Dan wobbled his head mockingly. “But the government is not listening to you.”

  “Best government money can buy,” said Cole.

  “It isn’t just the money. Those fucking Indians are just stupid savages,” said Dan, spitting the words. “Sure, we closed down the residential schools, but we’re still having our way with them — ”

  It was too much for Cole to take. As Dan pointed his chin, Cole brought his fist up from the bar in a neat, clean uppercut that took Dan Campbell right off his feet. A trail of blood followed him through the air in a graceful parabola. Campbell’s hat came off, and, when his feet touched the floor again, he stumbled backward, his left arm grabbing for the bar, knocking over stools and falling back into an empty table. He tumbled over it and onto the floor. It was a spectacular scene. Cole stepped toward him as Dan, mouth leaking blood and spit, picked himself off the floor and hurled himself at Cole, catching him in the mid section and driving him into the bar. Cole managed to get his arms around Dan and, as he collided with the counter, wrenched his body sideways and half pulled him onto the top of the bar. Dan thrashed his head and connected with Cole’s sternum, knocking some of the wind from him. From below, Cole quickly landed two right-hand jabs to Dan’s face, and another spray of blood leaped across the plywood.

  “I’m going to kill you, you motherfucking Indian lover,” Dan hissed, spitting blood into Cole’s face. Dan kicked himself off the bar, and he and Cole crashed into a second table. Darren First Moon and his friends leapt to their feet, grabbing pint glasses and pitchers as they did. Cole ended up on top of Dan on the floor, but Campbell brought up his knee into Cole’s gut and Cole rolled to the side, winded and in pain. Dan threw a flurry of left- and right-hand punches at Cole, who absorbed them with his shoulder and arms as he struggled to his feet. Dan landed a right on Cole’s cheek before Cole got his feet under him and stepped in with his own quick left-right combination, sending Campbell into the wall, his nose mangled.

  The bar was quiet. Every man in the place was standing. Dan Campbell’s five friends had stepped to the middle of the room, but didn’t come any closer. Darren First Moon and his friends stood in silence watching the fight, but didn’t step toward either of the fighters. The bartender stood at the centre of the room, watching both groups of men. Dan Campbell was hunched over, his back to the wall, his nose twisted and bleeding. Blood ran down his shirt from his mouth. Cole was three arm lengths from him, hands up and ready. His left cheek was glowing red, and a small cut at the corner of his mouth
bled. He wore a spray of Dan’s blood across his face. The adversaries stared at each other.

  “I think that’s about enough,” said the bartender. “You boys take this outside. You’re going to bust up the furniture.”

  Darren walked over to Cole and put a hand over his left forearm. “Come on, Cole,” he said. “Let’s buy a round for the house. Keep peace in the village.” Cole looked at him, then back at Dan Campbell.

  “Why not?” Cole said, breathing hard. “What do you say?” he asked Campbell. Campbell looked at his friends, at the group of men around Darren, and then at Cole.

  “Fuck you,” he said. He straightened up and walked out the door. Cole caught the words, “You’re a dead man,” as Campbell exited.

  Cole dropped his arms and looked around the room to see if any of Campbell’s friends wanted to continue where their buddy had left off. Nobody indicated as much.

  Cole walked over and picked up the table that had been knocked over, looking up at the five remaining white men as he did. He righted the table, took one of the empty pitchers to the bar, and, when it was filled with frothy beer, placed it at their table. Then he stepped back to the bar for refills. He bought another whiskey and sat down next to Darren First Moon, his heart still pounding, his cheek and fists sore.

  “Okay, who wants to fight Cole next?” Darren said, grinning, and everybody laughed.

  — When he left the bar, it was two am. He was drunk enough not to feel the pain in his face or hands, but not so drunk that he couldn’t walk or be aware of what was happening around him. Darren and two other men walked him home. “Just to be on the safe side,” they said. Cole grinned. It was good to have friends to watch your back.

  He stumbled in the door, expecting everybody to be asleep at Archie’s. But the light was on in the study, so he stepped cautiously to the door and looked in. Grace was sitting at the desk reading a book. She looked up when he entered and frowned.