by Fred Stenson
The grass had not been grazed over winter. By the look of it, there hadn’t been much cow action in the fall either. When they’d had over a hundred head, this field was always overgrazed, a sacrifice zone near the corrals and barn. Now it was restored, like only prairie can do.
He walked to Tom’s feedlot. The disaster of time had struck it flat. Silver slabs blown off their nails lay rotting on the ground. Only a few leaning posts and the well shack remained. The one-lung pump engine was still in its shack and giving off a smell of ancient oil.
Back at the house, Jeannie had made lunch. Sitting down to the table, Bill noticed, as if for the first time, how the pattern was worn off the Arborite in five places. His hair rose to see these ghosts. They were sitting at their childhood places, and, seeing this, Jeannie said, “Stupid,” and shifted to Ella’s chair at the end.
The lunch was exactly as Ella would have done: two slices of cold roast beef on each plate, with a few refried potatoes and a slice of raw tomato. From a Brown Betty, Jeannie poured tea of shocking blackness.
Donna and Bill awaited a pronouncement.
“Okay,” said Jeannie. “This is what we’re going to do.”
Jeannie held down the wire so Donna could crouch through. There was a No Trespassing sign hung on the fence, and Jeannie gave it a slap with the back of her hand. “There’s no security,” she said, in the same way one might say, Our enemy is weak.
They were on the land that Bauers had sold to Aladdin. The current owner was trying to start a different kind of plant, fed by gas from the old one. Jeannie and some neighbours had organized against it.
They walked across a broad dip and came to some plastic flags. Each marked a corner of the proposed building. Farther on, Jeannie pointed into a low spot that was to become the runoff capture.
“When they had the first MD meeting, the company said the runoff would never go into our coulee,” Jeannie said. “It looks designed to go there.” She added, “I don’t think they thought anyone would care enough to object.”
“That’s what most projects are based on,” Bill said.
“That people don’t care?”
“They care but they don’t think they know enough to challenge the industry or the government. No matter how many screw-ups happen, they still trust industry’s professionalism and government’s duty to protect.”
“Do industry and government have those values?” Jeannie asked.
“Sort of. But protecting people isn’t concern number one.”
As they poked around, Bill wondered whether Jeannie and her friends had a hope. When a Cree trapping family comes up against an eight-billion-dollar oil sands project, nobody bets on the trapper. Maybe down here, on a small project, it could be different.
A silence from his sisters caught his attention. They were staring at him.
Jeannie said, “I’ve got the papers the company filed with the MD at the house. Would you look at them?”
“Sure.”
Next stop was St. Bruno’s. They drove up the hill and parked by the concrete steps of the church. The door wasn’t locked, and his sisters went inside. Bill walked to the graveyard and let himself through the gate. Tom and Ella’s grave looked nice. Jeannie had been looking after it. The dirt surface was smooth, ready for flowers.
Bill felt a child’s kind of shame. Here he was with his addiction and all the failings that came before. If things were to change, what better place than here and now?
“I will do better,” he said aloud. Cleared his throat and said it again.
There came a rush of pride, awe, grief, all messed together.
His sisters were walking from the church, heads inclined together, hands gesturing. The wind combed the hair back from their high foreheads. Love, he thought. That’s what this was.
Come evening, they split up. Donna had discovered a school friend who was back living in Haultain; she was going there for dinner. Jeannie had a meeting in town with the group that opposed the new plant. It was a momentary glitch of goodwill when she asked Bill to come with her, and he said no. To compensate, he spent an hour with the documents the company had filed.
He was relieved to see how childish the process drawings were, and the few lumpen equations, stuff that anyone could come up with using a search engine and a database. In the written part were claims of proprietary technology: company secrets. This was a usual justification for saying nothing.
Bill imagined facing an appeal board. Besides calling the drawings generic, he would note the absence of a material balance. How can you assess a proposal if it doesn’t account for what goes in and what comes out? They claimed there would be no emissions, and that would be another mistake. Bill would turn it into a joke. “That’s quite a plant you’ve got there. You’re going to do what no industrial facility in history has done.”
He told Jeannie some of this and wrote a few things down before she left. She couldn’t wait to pass it on.
Donna insisted on taking Elmer to town because she did not believe Bill would stay home. He said he would; imagined himself walking around the farmhouse, poking his nose in places where he had played and hidden as a child. If that got tired, he had novels to read.
After two hours of listening to the house groan and tick, the good feeling of the past two days was frayed. Without Donna and Jeannie, the house was a shell, empty of everything but memories he’d rather not have. He got in his truck and drove.
Jeannie had told him about a new restaurant at Hatfield Corners, on the site of the old service station. She said the food was good and you could get a drink. Once there, he did not feel like eating. He sat up to a tall bar that divided the kitchen from the tables and ordered a beer. As he drank and watched sports, he took occasional glances at the others in the room. He thought he didn’t recognize anyone but gradually understood that he did. A stiff-backed cowboy had the face of a kid he’d ridden with on the school bus. A pretty young woman turned out to be the daughter of the woman he thought she was. People came and went wearing the DNA signatures of families he’d grown up near. He introduced himself to a few, and when they told him about their lives and families, it pleased him beyond measure.
By the time he left, he should not have been driving, even on the lonesome back road he nursed his truck along. He stopped to pee in the amazing stillness. After that, he stopped two more times just to look into the dark and listen to the coyotes sing.
He was thinking of Marie, had been all night. He imagined she would have liked the café and the people. She would like this too: the Milky Way unobstructed by upgrader light. He pulled out his cell phone, rolled to her number, and poked it.
When she answered he did not say who it was. Said only, “Hi.”
“Oh,” she said.
“I’m down at my sister’s place. At the farm. I’m staying here. I went out tonight.”
“Gambling?”
“Drinking. Visiting with locals.”
He was wishing by now that he hadn’t called.
“You should see the stars here. There’s almost no light pollution.” He could tell she was arguing with herself. Let him talk or hang up.
“Coyotes are singing.”
“How drunk are you?”
“A little.”
“Stars are pretty good here too. With the upgrader shut down.”
“That’s good. I’m glad it’s still down. They won’t be calling me.”
“It’s kind of late, Bill.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I’m not. But I’ve got to go. Take care of yourself.”
The wind started up in the night and blew fiercely. Morning arrived with a bend in it. On days like this along the mountain flanks, things blew down and things blew up. School buses fell over sideways. Roofs de-shingled themselves like a card trick. Sometimes people went crazy and did things they would never have done otherwise.
Bill came downstairs conscious that his mind was not the sweet thing it had been the night before. The idea of te
lling his sisters about it—the people in the café, the drive home—was torn by a conviction that the message could not pass from him to them intact. Donna and Jeannie sat in their own rings of mood. The three made and ate their breakfasts separately and without comment.
Even though the wind would rip him lengthwise, Bill needed to be outside. He drove the two miles east to the Lower Place. He left his truck by a wired gate and started down. The wind wrapped his trousers tight to his legs, and his windward ear hurt. At the bottom of the slope, the renter’s cattle were lying in the shelter of a cutbank. Closer up, he saw them chewing their cuds, many with their eyes closed. They would have paid more attention to a tumbleweed.
When he returned to the house, the kitchen was full of the rich, sweaty smell of chicken: a Hutterite meat bird in the oven. Jeannie and Donna had cracked beers, and he pulled another from the fridge, twisted the cap off, and sat.
“Where have you been?” Jeannie asked.
“Lower Place. River bottom.”
“Vic Sebald’s been telling people a grizzly denned there last winter.”
“I didn’t see anything. Couple of deer.”
The conversation bumped along. Jeannie and Bill had a second beer. Donna opened wine.
The silent drinking continued until Donna said, “The harshness and inexplicable strangeness of life.”
“What?”
“That’s what Hermann Hesse said we need alcohol for.”
Bill carved the chicken, and, after they filled their plates and took the first bites, Jeannie said impatiently, “Why don’t you two just move here? Move into your old rooms and be done with it. We’re old enough to retire. There’s not going to be anywhere cheaper. Life could be easy, like it’s meant to be.”
“Life’s meant to be easy?” Donna said. “Why didn’t anyone tell me?”
“Bill’s and my kids are grown up. None of us has a partner who needs to be involved. What’s not easy about it?”
The moment was confounding. Bill couldn’t imagine them all living in this house, but it was true they could live somewhere down here; in something like peace, perhaps.
Donna pointed at the chicken. “No offence, Jeannie, but until this big guy started roasting, I was thinking how much the plant still stinks. You’re probably used to it and maybe I could be again, but I’m not sure I want to be.”
“And Calgary’s what? A posy?”
Everybody shut up and ate.
“Another reason,” Jeannie started up again, “is because we could make a difference down here. Bill, you told me a couple of times that the oil sands are out of control. I think you said ‘out of anyone’s control.’ Down here, the oil industry isn’t that strong anymore. Power is proportional to money, and the oil companies here are cheaping out. They’re losing control. Seriously, things could be done. I want to see that old plant gone. The land reclaimed. No new plant in its place.”
Donna said, “Can I fight from the city? From somewhere with good coffee?”
“First my house stinks, now my coffee’s no good.”
“Joke. Sort of.”
“Okay. Donna has spoken. She can’t live here because it stinks and the coffee’s no good. What’s your excuse, Bill?”
“I’m at a crossroads. Don’t know much more than that.”
“Well, get on with it. Life is short.”
This idea clubbed them silent for a while.
“What’s your plan, Jeannie?” Bill asked. “If you can stop the new plant, you stay. But if they build it, will you go?”
“I’ll probably stay either way. I’ll probably die here.”
“That reminds me, Jeannie, did Willbilly tell you Lance Evert died?”
Jeannie went blank.
“Jeannie, c’mon. Lance Evert. Ginny’s uncle. The guy who used to work at the plant before your boyfriend’s father? Same one who liked Ella and turned Billy into a boring engineer.”
“Yeah, yeah. Bert Traynor came right after him. You’re right, he did like Ella. I remember when he sent her a letter.”
Donna said, “Was that when Mom was thinking of leaving Dad?”
Bill startled. “What?”
“Wow,” said Jeannie. “I thought we all knew that.”
“Billy was probably drawing a machine at the time.”
“Is that true? Ella wanted to leave?”
Jeannie turned to him. “When I was trying to get out of my engagement with Hal, Mom came to B.C. with me. We had some heart-to-hearts. She really wanted to go.”
Bill tried to think where he’d been in his own life. University. The year Tom suggested he work at the plant.
“I lived here that summer. I worked at the plant. They seemed fine.”
“I know,” said Jeannie. “I came to visit before I left for Australia. They were fine. I could hardly believe it.”
“It’s weird, in my opinion,” Donna said. “Lance comes back, and Mom and Dad make up?”
“But what did Ella say, Jeannie?” Bill asked. “What didn’t she like about Dad?”
“His obsession with the plant. The stupid lawsuit. The way he wouldn’t give up when it was obvious it wouldn’t happen. But Dad was really different that summer. You must have noticed.”
“Yeah, and I didn’t like it. I was wishing he’d blow his stack so things would feel more normal.”
“Dad wasn’t my favourite when he was grouchy,” said Donna. “Talking big. Saying he was going to do some drastic thing that he never did.”
“It was the plant.”
“Uh-oh. Billy lost the thread.”
“No. It was the plant. The plant made Tom look bad. He wanted to do something about it and couldn’t. Think about it. If there had been no plant, what would he have looked like to you? Strong. Capable. We would have admired him.”
Next morning, they were hurting from the previous night’s excess. But the wind was down. The phone rang.
“Wow, I’d forgotten that thing was connected,” said Donna.
Jeannie answered it. She looked puzzled and handed the receiver to Bill. The voice on the line said, “You have your cell phone turned off.”
“It ran out of charge. How’d you get the number here?”
“I pried it out of the guy who’s taken over your office. Henry. I hate small talk so I’m going to get to the point. I’ve been feeling bad about how I ended things. I’ve also been missing you. I realized that when you phoned last night.”
Jeannie and Donna had figured it out. Jeannie was rolling her hands as if to say, “Get on with it.” Donna had her fists against her temples, as if to say, “Don’t fuck it up.”
“I’ve missed you too.”
“I’m hoping we can see each other again.”
“I’d like that.”
“You might not when you hear my conditions.”
“Fire away.”
“I want you to see a counsellor about the gambling.”
“I’d do that. I tried once in Mac but couldn’t get the guy to talk to me.”
“I’m hoping you’ll try again. This is what I’ve done. I phoned a psychologist in Fort Mac and told him who I was and where I live. I said I had someone close to me who works in the oil sands and has a serious gambling addiction. Sorry about the next part. I said I thought the person might be suicidal. He said the person should come in.”
“The psychologist will think I’m Native.”
“That’s the idea. If you’re white, you won’t get in. They’re too busy. But if you’re Native and you work in the oil sands, chances are much better. Suicidal clinches it.”
“He sees me, then what?”
“I never said anything about your being an Indian. If he says, ‘You’re white, go away,’ you can go to Human Rights and complain.” Marie gave Bill a name and number. “Since I turned it into an emergency, you’ll have to go quick. But maybe now that you know my conditions, you’ve changed your mind.”
6
Fort McMurray
IT WAS THE SAME socia
l services building he had gone to before. After a long sit in the crowded waiting room, they moved him into a small room and offered coffee. Three chairs at a round table; tissue box. He was thinking how exactly the same everything was when the psychologist walked in, the same one as before. He stopped abruptly.
“So the friend who called on your behalf is Native but you aren’t. And we didn’t ask.”
“Guess so.”
“Joke’s on us.”
“On me too. I didn’t know it would be you.”
They studied each other.
Bill said, “Bad idea all round. I’ll go.”
“No. Please.” He was holding out his hand. “Joe Fistric.”
Bill shook his hand. “Listen, Dr. Fistric, I’ve got the same puny gambling addiction and intermittent reliance on alcohol as before. I haven’t become more interesting.”
“I’m not a doctor, not a medical one. Your friend mentioned suicide.”
“I told you back then, I’ve thought about it but not seriously.”
“Listen, Bill, I can’t stop you going, free world and all that, but you must have needed counselling to come here.”
“Yes.”
“After you were here the first time, I felt like crap. I’ve never been farther below professional conduct than I was that day. I wanted to apologize, but by the time I put that thought into action, our secretary had deleted your name and number.”
“Don’t worry about it. Let’s call it square and I’ll hit the road.”
“I have another suggestion. This clinic still has more clients than we can deal with. If I took on a non-violent, non-suicidal client, my partners here would freak. What I’d like to suggest is a kind of friendship.”
“I have no idea what you mean.”
“We could meet for dinner or walks, or drinks. You’d tell me whatever you came here to tell someone. No fee involved.”
“What’s in it for you?”
“I’m assuming I’d talk too. That’s why I’m saying friendship.”