“You okay, Nick?”
“Absolutely.”
“You sure?” Looking at him penetrating, maybe seeing the evil. “Don’t do nothing stupid, okay?”
17
“Goway bigpack,” Kim Lee says inscrutably, as Arthur spoons up granola in skim milk. She pantomimes a woman walking, followed by a four-legged creature: Lotis has gone off somewhere with Slappy. Arthur stuffs a basket with hot muffins and jam and a Thermos of vegetable soup, and pours a coffee for the drive.
A mile up Potter’s Road, he comes upon Slappy waddling behind Lotis’s big pack–strapped to it are a rolled foamy, sleeping bag, rain jacket, sweaters. She hoists this freightage over the tailgate, helps Slappy in, climbs in beside Arthur, and as he pulls away, she says gaily, “Hauling supplies to the front line.” She has dyed her hair green and painted her lips green. Green fingernails.
“Supplies for whom?”
“Well…me. I’m quitting smoking, it’s my cold-turkey project. I’m going to have a dialogue with your life partner. I’m going to try a prisoner exchange.”
Arthur is torn: however much he longs for Margaret’s return, he can’t afford to lose his articling student to a tree. Or, as could well happen, to the Women’s Correctional Centre. He reminds her that Corporal Al has been ordered to limit occupancy up there to two persons.
“I can handle Corporal Al. If Margaret wants an excuse to come down with head held high, I’m that excuse. I’ll stay just long enough to get over the nic fits. Three, four days at the outset.”
She appears not to understand that a proper barrister doesn’t dye her hair green and run off to join a forest sit-in. “Santorini’s vanity is of the sensitive kind, he’ll see it as a personal slap that a lawyer defies his order so deliberately.”
“Am I missing something? The Appeal Court voided his order.”
“I know this fellow. He will take pleasure in finding my articling student guilty of contempt. You will be made an example. You will be jailed. Denied admittance to the bar. You must not do this.”
“Yeah, well, having a law degree doesn’t exempt you from the picket line. I’ll handle Santorini. He likes me. I say that because he can’t stop undressing me in court. This is my baby, this project. Spartacus didn’t lead from behind. Nor did Joan of Arc. Or Ghandi.”
Arthur picks up a hint of grandiosity, a martyr complex, a disability that has been the downfall of revolutionaries throughout history. He plays to her vanity: a splendid career is at risk because of a flip and ill-considered decision.
A lazy shrug of unconcern. “‘Too rash, too unadvised, too sudden.’” Another of Juliet’s lines. That riles him, her mocking tone of smug superiority, her lack of deference to a wise elder. His initial impression, the hippie schemer in the Rise Up T-shirt, may not be that far amiss.
“Sorry, I’m cranky, I’m on withdrawal. I am going to do this.”
He imagines it was like this with Saint Joan: one is arguing with a wall. He’ll try not to appear self-righteous as they’re handcuffing her; he’ll try to ignore the roars of laughter in the Confederation Club: poor old Beauchamp, he had to go bail out his student.
He lets her off at Stump Town. More tents, more activists, more banners. Scantily dressed young people, some in green face paint, are performing a slow, ritualistic tableau. A modern dance company? A theatre group?
“You won’t find a place to park,” says Baldy Johansson, at his car window. “There’s gonna be a pagan ritual. Or something.”
“Snug yourself in here, Arthur.” It’s Todd Clearihue, pulling out from Garlinc’s reserved space. He’s in an old Ford pickup and wearing a Budweiser cap.
Lotis has been busy with her pack, but now is looking icily at Clearihue. His unsubtle approach, after he picked her up hitchhiking, has quickly become a part of island lore.
“You want to be careful with that one,” Clearihue says as their trucks pause abreast. “We had her checked out. B-movie teen actress, flamed out at twenty-five. Divorced parents, drugs, sex, abortion, total crack-up, can’t deal with her life, runs away to Canada. Professional shit-disturber, way out in left field. Commies in the family tree.”
He isn’t telling Arthur much he hasn’t already heard or guessed.
Clearihue squints at the painted dancers. “This is starting to look like a bazaar in Kathmandu. You should move those kids out, Arthur, they don’t enhance the image for the fundraising.”
Clearihue isn’t aware Lotis is at his open passenger window until she says, “What did you do to your image, Todd? You were always so clear-cut. Sorry, I mean clean-cut. What’s with this old beat-up truck?”
He makes no effort to turn toward her, says wearily, “Good morning, Lotis.”
“The new you just doesn’t work for me. Local yokel with a beer commercial on his head. When you’re trying to fake your way into the community, you don’t wear five-hundred-dollar boots.”
Clearihue strenuously ignores her. “How’s the fundraising coming, Arthur? I’m concerned, I mean it. I must’ve put in nine hundred myself, all told. Sunk at least sixty into the bingo last night.”
He alights from the cab. “A private word,” he says, finally glancing at Lotis in her bold maquillage, the Green Avenger, then moving nose to nose with Arthur. “Between you and me and our tax accountant, I could persuade my associates to go as low as fourteen if we get the right charitable concessions. And here’s the kicker: we may even be willing to carry mortgages for half of it. A monthly payment plan. We’d try to enlist the major landholders. Like yourself, Arthur.”
Arthur shivers, plays with the unspeakable concept of Garlinc foreclosing on the entire island, owning Blunder Bay. He contents himself with, “More foundations will offer more grants if the price is reasonable.”
“Can’t do.” Clearihue steps back from Slappy, who is sniffing at his shiny cowboy boots. The green-face troupe is going single file up the Gap Trail. “Guess there’ll be a lot more when university’s over. I’m hip to it. I marched for peace, I was pretty radical back then.”
“Whoa, baby, I can see why that image had to go.” Lotis again. “Marching for peace at the wheel of a fifty-thousand-dollar topless Audi?”
“You keep coming from behind, don’t you?” Clearihue says.
“I heard that’s the way you like it.”
Clearihue returns to his Ford, his smile unwavering. “Okay, buddy, good luck. See you in court tomorrow.”
Lotis isn’t through. “By the way, whatever happened to our little sail?”
Clearihue seems unfamiliar with his stick shift, can’t find low gear. “You don’t want to get too close to this one, Arthur. She’s a bit of a tart. You wouldn’t believe how much she was willing to extend herself for a ride in a fast car.” A glare at Lotis. “Quit stalking me.”
“You lying self-admiring sociopathic freak!” Lotis starts after him, but he is finally in gear and down the road. Arthur can see why her film career “tanked,” as she’d told Arthur, after too many scraps with directors and producers.
Glowering, Lotis hoists her pack and goes up the path with Slappy. Arthur follows with his food basket, joins a gathering by the Holy Tree. “What’s happening?” he asks a wild-haired teenager.
“They’re tryna get the tree to vibe with love, or some hokey shit like that.”
News cameras are aimed at a circle of performers–some green-faced and clad in garments adorned with leaves, others wearing animal masks, all holding hands around the tree. Somehow they have coaxed Reverend Al into joining the circle, and he’s flushed with embarrassment. The women holding his hands are protected from the elements only by sprays of leaves.
The vibes are more Vedic than pagan, if Arthur correctly interprets the chant. Hands go up. “O-mm,” intones the leader, who leaves the circle, flapping her arms. The others join her in a choreographed dance of birds flying, all chanting “O-mm.” Corporal Al, standing to the side, looks on approvingly.
Watching from above are Margaret, sta
nding, wrapped in a blanket, and Cud, swinging in a hammock. Life is sweet for the poet laureate of Garibaldi. One of his short works has been quoted in the New York Times. Liquor Balls has gone into a second printing. Single women are writing letters to him.
The omming continues for several minutes, bystanders joining in, until even Arthur, enveloped in the hum, finds himself giving voice. A hush follows, broken by Cud. “What kind of horseshit was that?” Not loud, but carrying well in the silence. Margaret looks at him severely.
The circle breaks up, and Corporal Al says, “Real interesting. Now I want everyone to kindly leave, except those with business.” The performers and onlookers go, but the press stays on, alert to human interest when Margaret’s husband is mooning around.
Lotis sets her gear down beneath the platform’s overhang, relieves Arthur of the basket, calls for the supply line. Cud, sensing food, maybe smelling the biscuits Arthur baked by hand, bounds from the hammock, lowers the rope.
Arthur asks Margaret about her health. She is focused on the green-haired, green-lipped waif below her. “What? Oh, I’m loads better. Temperature normal.” She says this with clogged nose. “The farm?”
“Hovering at the brink of disaster. I’ll write the details.”
Lotis affixes both the basket and her heavy pack to the line, and Cud must work up a sweat hauling them up.
“Beam me up next,” Lotis says. Hearing this, Corporal Al walks smartly up to her, and they engage in a low, intense debate.
As Lotis pleads her case, Corporal Al glances at Arthur. Finally, he joins him, away from eavesdroppers. “Sorry, Arthur, I didn’t realize you were falling apart that bad.” He bows, Tai Chi style, and leaves.
The rope ladder flutters down, followed by a safety line. Lotis hooks up to it, and climbs, hamming it up, waving to the cameras, falling into Cud’s arms as he helps her over the railing. After hurriedly unravelling herself from his grip, she dares Margaret’s germs, whispers words that, astonishingly, cause her to laugh. The two of them disappear from view. Cud pulls up the ladder with a broad, swaggering smile. Now he has a harem.
Lotis’s ascent has reporters talking into satellite phones. Activist-lawyer defies courts. Arthur can only wonder what Santorini’s reaction will be to this nose-thumbing by another agitator from the Blunder Bay farm team. It might take not much more than a stalled vehicle on the causeway to inspire another exponential sentence.
Vowing to return to his hike-a-day regimen, he trudges up the hillside. Slappy, twice deserted, scrambles behind. He pauses often to catch his breath and enjoy the panoramic views above the Sproules’ pastures. “Splendid,” he pants. “Majestic.”
He wonders if the Sanskrit om, that spoken essence of the universe, has found its winged target, but he sees no eagles. He’s still put out at Lotis, but supposes that was her idea of a noble gesture. Her mess, but he’ll try to pull her out of it.
Near the top of the switchback, not far from the bluffs, he makes his way to a mossy granite ledge, and lies on his back to regain his wind. Slappy finishes a tour of the area, and settles beside him. The day is warm, the sun high, and doves moan in the trees. The moss is warm and soft, and his body tired, and he allows sleep to come.
On awakening, he is disoriented by many things. First, by a remembered dream of Promethean death: he was bound to a cliff-face, an eagle flying off with his innards to Margaret and Cud in the nest, mouths wide, demanding to be fed.
An awareness even more morbid: Doc Dooley is kneeling beside him, taking his pulse.
Add to that a distant, disturbing shout: “There’s a good shot from here.”
Arthur becomes aware that evening is nearly upon them, a crepuscular light. Another call from afar, a woman: “A better shot over here.”
“What are they shooting at?” Arthur asks, rising to his elbows.
“How many fingers?” Dooley’s bony hand is in front of Arthur’s face.
“Five. I’m in fine fettle.”
“How is he, Doc?” Corporal Al’s voice, from a radio on Dooley’s belt.
“Rumours of his death are greatly exaggerated. The bugger was asleep.”
“Sorry if I’m a worrywart,” says Corporal Al, “but he’s been having an emotional crisis.”
Dooley frowns. “What were you doing out here, Beauchamp? Spread-eagled on the moss, you were, like a human sacrifice.”
Arthur sits up. “I stretched myself a bit, took a nap. What’s all that shouting?”
Now it’s Reverend Al on the radio: “Doc, a television crew is heading your way.”
“What’s happening?” Arthur asks.
“What’s happening is…” A pause to build suspense. Arthur takes pleasure in watching the doctor’s face crease into a rare smile: so rare that he wishes he had a camera. “We have an eagle pair. The mate has returned to the nest.” Arthur is astonished to see him take a few light steps, as if from a long-remembered Irish jig.
Dooley is pleased with his place in history–he was the first to sight the returning male, talons clutching a love offering: a large, overripe fish for the female, who has taken to the nest. Other witnesses include members of an Oregon birding club who pause on the way down to show Arthur digital images: two fiercely frowning eagles perched by the nest.
The television crew appears, straining under the weight of equipment. Puffing along behind, as if drawn by the magnet of their camera, is Kurt Zoller, with a squawking walkie-talkie, Corporal Al issuing commands: “I want no more than half a dozen folks up here at a time, and I want them quiet.”
“Roger, copy that, over.” Because he has an authoritarian bent, Zoller is regularly deputized for traffic control. He takes up position to guard the pass.
Arthur decides not to tarry, Kim has made dinner. He’ll return this evening for the changing of the guard ceremony. On his way down, he comes upon Nelson Forbish panting against a tree, looking as if he might explode. “How far, how…am I almost there?” Arthur knows he’s not going to make it, and leads him back to the Gap. “I was the first one to hear, I could’ve had a scoop.”
At Stump Town, a guitar-banjo-bongo trio is warming up for a celebration. Reverend Al pours Arthur a hot toddy from his Thermos, and they click cups. “I have to admit the pagan ceremony brought faster results than mine. Little twinge of doubt there.” He has just returned from the Holy Tree, whose tenants are celebrating too. “They’re having a gay old time scripting a set-piece for this evening, though God knows what. They want you there. I’ll pick you up.”
Though still smarting from Lotis’s defection, Arthur is buoyed by the hope of reuniting tonight with Margaret. Tomorrow, he will make a vigorous pitch for Lotis–Santorini may not slap her in irons now that the eagles are nesting. He can hardly allow cutting to begin now anyway.
Reverend Al pulls into the driveway, beaming. “I’m thinking of incorporating a few Vedic ceremonies into my next service. One must borrow the best from other creeds.”
“What brings this heresy on?”
“We have eggs, Arthur, two of them. Enjoy this.”
A glossy photo: two frowning eagles perched by the nest, surveying their realm, the Kingdom of Gwendolyn Valley. Partly obscured by the lip of the nest are two grey oval shapes.
“Leif Thorson came out of retirement, fused vertebrae and all, put on his spurs, went up the rigging of the tallest fir on the bluffs, and rappelled to a tree overhanging the Gap. Two healthy-looking eggs, Arthur. Thirty-five days of incubation, eighty days before the juveniles leave the nest. Have we bought the summer?”
“I’m not sure.” Who knows what could happen with Santorini the Unpredictable. Never mind, if today’s rustic ceremony plays out as he expects, Margaret will be home tonight. He has baked a lemon pie. A little scorched on top, but a respectable effort.
Musicians are playing again at Stump Town, the band swollen to six, augmented by fiddle, flute, and ukulele. Young people are dancing. Corporal Al is standing by his bicycle, panting in sweat-soaked regimentals but g
rinning with the accomplishment of his steep haul to the Gap.
“This is getting too noisy,” he says. “I’m shutting it down before Vern comes by with his trombone. Can’t use the hall, it’s got a spring flower fundraiser, so I’ll ask the Rosekeepers if they mind moving the party to their picnic grounds. It’ll probably go all night, in case you boys feel overcome by the need to dance.”
Nearing the Holy Tree, Arthur hears two female voices, joined in a chant. In their aerie, Margaret and Lotis have their arms around each other, and are reciting a banal oft-quoted poem: “Woodman, spare that tree.” They’re hamming it up, a vaudeville routine.
Cud Brown leans scornfully against the trunk, arms folded, refusing to add to some lesser poet’s celebrity. The performance draws a sardonic cheer from a couple of reporters.
The rope ladder flutters down. Arthur wonders if he’s expected to climb it, to participate in this revue, join them in a soft-shoe, or perhaps the grand quartet from Rigoletto. But clearly his role will be to receive Margaret in his arms as she descends from her throne. He should have brought flowers. He must think of bon mots for the intruding microphones.
Arthur settles under the ladder, holding it steady. She’ll not forget the safety line, he hopes. Slappy knows what’s up, he’s wagging his tail fiercely. It’s a beautiful scene, lit by a spike of sunlight through the trail. What descends, directly above, is a floppy pair of large boots below knobby knees and hairy thighs. Arthur steps back to widen the angle, confirms that the scruffy shape coming down is Cud Brown, with his old army rucksack. His sour face hints that this is not his finest hour.
Margaret launches one of her paper gliders. It takes a wide circle toward Cud, then catches a breeze and dips several feet down, and is finally hooked in the claws of a dead branch within Cud’s reach.
He has the gall to open and read it. He shouts to its author: “Oh, real sensitive. I got feelings.” Cud resumes his descent and drops the now formless airplane. Arthur sticks it in a pocket. And now he’s assailed by a miasmic stench. It’s a whiff of Cud, now only a body length above him. The loosely booted feet, when level to Arthur’s nose, have a peculiarly rich tang.
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