Blink & Caution

by Tim Wynne-Jones

  The Boris laugh track kicks in, but Drigo isn’t being funny. It freaks her out how well he knows her.

  Then the big man winks, and it’s her cue to go.

  She turns to the door, tries the knob. It won’t move. Drigo presses a buzzer and now it turns.

  “Hey,” says Boris. “You give Merlin our love, okay?”

  “Yeah, right,” she says. Then she turns her eyes back to Drigo. “Thanks again,” she says, and means it this time. “It was true about the coffee.”

  “No problemo,” he says.

  She has almost closed the door when Boris calls her back.

  “Yeah?” she says.

  “You come again, okay?” he says.

  She shuts the door on his smoke-stained laughter, but it follows her down the corridor, the sound of a hyena in heat.

  Out on the street, the sun is shining, the air is fresh, the wind rustles the remaining leaves on the maples along this street of dilapidation. It’s over. She did it. Well, sort of. She looks at the time on Merlin’s iPhone. Just before eleven. He didn’t get in until five or so. He’ll probably sleep for hours yet, which will give her time to hit the grocery store, get home, and have coffee brewing for him when he does finally wake up. It’s all going to work out fine, she tells herself.

  Then the tears come, just like that. It’s the tension, she tells herself — all that waiting in the cold. Testing herself, testing her mettle. Suicidal? Yeah, well . . .

  “Oh, Spence,” she says, looking up through the red shift of maple leaves toward the blue October sky. “What am I doing?”

  She wipes her eyes. Sniffs, sucks it up. And a memory drifts down to her like a leaf that can’t hang on a moment longer. A memory from Wahnapitae.

  She’s six and stuck in a tree house that Spence built with their cousin Wayne-Ray. She’s sitting at the entranceway, her bruised summer legs hanging over the edge, looking down through her naked brown feet to where the two of them stand on the ground, a hundred miles below.

  “You can do it, Kitty,” says Spence.

  “You got up there good,” says Wayne-Ray.

  Her bottom lip is trembling. It’s too far down.

  “Come on, Kitty girl,” says Spence. He’s fifteen — nine years older than her. She’s an “Oops! baby”; that’s what Auntie Lanie calls her.

  “Ah, get a move on,” says Wayne-Ray. He’s thirteen and doesn’t like it that Spence lets her hang around with them so much.

  “Take your time,” says Spence, not one bit impatient. He’ll wait for her at the bottom of the tree forever. Knowing that makes it easy to shimmy her butt another inch or two closer to the edge.

  “That’s my Kitty,” he says.

  And then she just pushes off. No ladder for our Miss Kitty.

  For a moment she’s in free fall — terrified, thrilled — then Spence has got her in his arms and hugs her close even as he tumbles backward into the high dry grass, falling over with his little sister on top of him, screaming with laughter.

  She scrambles up to her feet. “Let’s do it again,” she says.

  Caution leans against a dusty factory wall, trying to get her balance back, trying to get her scuffed black sneakers lined up straight underneath her. Spence isn’t there to catch her anymore. So why, she wonders, does she keep throwing herself out of trees?

  If you could MapQuest her, Blink, on that smartphone of yours, you’d be surprised how close Miss Caution Pettigrew is. If you could Google-Earth her, you’d find she is on the same wildly spinning planet, 3.97 kilometers away: hardly any distance at all. Except for the huge distance of not knowing her — not even knowing she exists. Patience. That is about to change.

  Captain Panic. Oh, you are a brave sailor to have such a passenger aboard. Thinks he runs the ship. There’s only so much you can take before the Captain steps in, throws one of his tantrums. He’s the one who makes you blink like that, yes? He stands at the helm in your leaky skull sending coded messages out to sea through your eyes. And there’s no one out there to decipher them.

  You sit on a park bench in Philosopher’s Walk, across the road from the hotel, shuddering a bit in the shadows. The upside-down television on the hotel room floor promised it would be unseasonably warm, but not where you are, boy. The museum looms above you, behind you — still intact. Things only seem to burst into flames, don’t they, Blink? That’s the Captain at work.

  In front of you stands the Royal Conservatory of Music. Some unseen woman is singing scales; some piano player is getting the same fast passage wrong every time. In a nearby oak, a blue jay screams harshly, like he’s heard enough. It’s cooler down here, out of the sun, but the traffic isn’t so loud, and you can almost think. While inside your head, the Captain paces back and forth in the wheelhouse.

  Whoever Jack Niven is, there are a lot of folks trying to reach him. You can’t access his voice mail, but you scroll through his text messages. There’s Sophie, who will forward the exact wording of the injunction, whatever that is; Bernie, who wants to go over a couple things before the meeting with the minister; Sandjit, who will be joining him for lunch; and Roger, who wonders if he’s still on for three o’clock. There’s Clare, who’s been combing through the fine print; Huraki, who says ANS will hold tight; and a reporter from the Toronto Star who has a couple of follow-up questions.

  You look at the BlackBerry. Find Alyson in the address book. Her picture lights up the tiny screen. She’s older here than in the picture by the lake, her hair shorter but filled with sunlight, as if she never goes inside. Her eyes flash like a blue jay’s crest. You get an idea. You go to voice mail, and when the prompt comes for your password, you punch in A-L-Y-S-O-N.

  “You have eleven new messages.”

  “Jack,” says Bernie. “The minister is still onside, but the fucking protest is turning from media circus to nightmare.”

  “Jack, Sophie again. Van Luyten from the Financial Post has phoned three times in the last twenty minutes. He’s caught wind of the creeping tender offer.”

  A creeping tender? You wonder at such words, Blink.

  On and on like that it goes, and it’s not even nine. You switch off the smartphone, shove it in your pocket, and just sit.

  You slip your shoes off. They’re so pretty, those spotless Adidas, but your poor toes are screaming blue murder. Something says to you, Blink, you’re going to need a good pair of sneakers before this day is up.

  You spend ninety of those five hundred and sixty dollars on a pair of blue high-tops that fit you like a glove. You throw in a pair of good socks, too; peel off the ones you’re wearing. You need to bathe those feet of yours, Blink, and you try to think of where there’s a public pond still filled up this late in October. City Hall — but that’s too far. So you settle for the men’s room in the Bay at Yonge and Bloor. You sit on the counter and bathe those tired, bruised feet of yours, and then clip the nails with new clippers you bought, now that you’re a rich man about town. You strap on your new blue wings.

  Ahhh.

  You are floating, man! This is the way feet should feel. You are good to go, Blink, at least from the ankles down.

  You head up to the Toronto Reference Library, and no one even looks twice at you decked out in the Blessed BU, striding with the purpose that comes with shoes that fit you right. You’re some student come to work. You find one of those private reading booths and take out the money you’ve got left. You used five twenties to pay for the shoes and socks, because you’re not even sure the hundreds could be real. You sit in that big library, quiet, and stare at those hundred-dollar bills. You’ve never seen one before, and for sure they’re going to be trouble. Then you get an idea. Hey, it’s a library — the place is full of ideas, and you just snagged one for yourself. You head back to the underground shopping center at Yonge and Bloor and find yourself a drugstore. You buy a greeting card and a pen, sit down on a bench, and write yourself a letter.

  “Can I help you?” says the bank teller, but your clothes don’t
fool her one bit. Your camouflage is wearing thin. She knows you’re trash, and the help she’s offering is the lowest grade of stuff she has available. Her nose looks pinched as if she caught a whiff of you, too, and doesn’t want another.

  “I was just wondering,” you say, trying to keep it cool, trying to sound the part. “My grandmother gave me this money for my birthday? But it’s hundred-dollar bills? And I’m not even sure you can, like — you know — use them in a store?”

  She looks suspicious, so you pull out the card in its envelope and show her the whole pretty thing. “Not so Sweet Sixteen” it says on the front, and there’s a picture of this wigged-out teen, except he’s cartoon cute with a skateboard, long hair, zits, and attitude. Inside you wrote in the shaky hand of some feeble old person: “To my wonderful grandson Sulley from his Granny Smith.”

  The teller cocks her head to read it when she picks up the bills, and her lip gloss cracks a bit in one corner.

  “What denomination?” she says.

  “Uh, Catholic?” you say. And now she notches up the smile.

  “I meant the bills, honey: twenties and tens okay?”

  “To my wonderful grandson Sulley from his Granny Smith.”

  Funny you’d think of Monsters, Inc. Sulley and Mike and Boo. You used to love that movie when you were a kid. And Granny Smith? You made up a grandmother who’s an apple! What’s that about? Then you think about your real grandparents: Nanny Dee and Granda Trick. It’s “Granda” not “Grandpa,” you explained to some fool teacher who thought you couldn’t spell. It’s Irish: your dad’s folks. Too bad about that. Too bad about so much.

  In a fast-food place, you catch up on Jack Niven. Whoa! The BlackBerry is smoking. There are twenty-five calls and fifteen text messages. Seems your man never made his ten o’clock.

  You eat two breakfast sandwiches and try to piece together what’s going on, but there are so many players, you can’t make head nor tail of it. Still, it’s kind of cool, like a video game, and you’re trying to figure out how to play. Like it was Grand Theft Auto or something.

  You sit back and look at the face of that sly little machine in your hand with all its functions and all its memory. What can it tell you? Google the man, Blink. Ah, now we’re getting somewhere.

  Niven is the president and CEO — whatever that is — of something called Queon Ventures Development. QVD is a publicly traded company committed to the exploration and development of uranium properties.

  Uranium is big again, Blink. Did you know that? Did you know it had ever been small? You know what uranium is. You weren’t a stranger at school — not until now. Anyway, Queon is sitting on several large properties they have acquired 100-percent ownership of. That’s what they say, anyway. But somebody else says they own the land: the Algonquin First Nations. Indians. By law, it says, the mining company has a duty to consult with them, but as far as you can figure out, this is a different set of laws than the ones QVD knows. Not surprising, is it, Blink? You’ve always kind of suspected that there was one set of laws for one kind of people and a different set of laws for the rest. The Indians don’t want QVD coming onto their property to look for or stake out anything. They don’t want QVD to dig trenches or boreholes or to even so much as cut down a single blessed tree.

  You wade through this stuff. Blink, blink, blink — one link leads to another. There aren’t many images, but you begin to get the picture: the white guys are winning. Like in the old movies Granda Trick liked to watch. When push comes to shove, the white guys have the cavalry on their side.

  The fucking protest is turning from media circus to nightmare.

  The Indians have barricaded the entrance to the land. Everything is pretty peaceful so far, except a couple of people got arrested and somebody’s on a hunger strike and a lot of people are outraged.

  Reading this stuff makes your brain hurt. If this is a video game, you aren’t scoring any points yet. But you keep going. Captain Panic’s gone back to his cabin below deck. You can hear him grumbling, but you’re used to that. You’re all alone again, with cash in your pocket and a toy to mess with.

  It’s not exactly Texas Hold ’Em, not exactly Doom, but something to do with your fingers and your brain. Stepdaddy was wrong about that. You’ve got a brain, all right, just not one he liked to have around. You remember once trying to show him a report card — a good one. He glanced at it, glanced at you, and then handed it back.

  “What?” he said. “Am I supposed to do something?”

  “Oh,” you said. “I forgot. You can’t read. Sorry.”

  You never could leave well enough alone.

  You go back to the story of Jack Niven and Queon Ventures Development. You get the gist of it, except for one thing: QVD says they have something called subsurface rights. Subsurface? As far as you can figure it, Blink, the Indians own the land, but the company owns what’s under it.

  Now, how does that work?

  You hunker down over that smart little phone with your triple-triple coffee and try to figure out what land is — or what they mean by it here. How can you own what you’re standing on and someone else can grab what’s under it? Then you think of your mother’s place and Stepdaddy moving in. Well, there you go.

  If this were history class, you’d have given up by now. You’d be like an autumn fly on a hot windowsill, on your back, buzzing and kicking your last. But there is something about stolen knowledge that tastes different. No one is trying to spoon-feed you this stuff. It’s complicated, but there isn’t going to be a test. Well, not that kind of a test. Stick with it, Blink. See what you can make of it.

  The Suit with the beautiful daughter claims he owns the land. The courts agree. That’s what the injunction is about. QVD is suing the Indians for forty-eight million dollars — whoa! But the Indians aren’t budging. QVD says it will back off if the government gives them the money. Gives who the money? QVD, of course. Huh. Anyway, the government’s not talking. Lots of other people are joining the Indians waving signs. They’re bringing in food and medicine for the folks who are occupying the land and protesting the drilling, because they don’t want the uranium that’d be dug up polluting the air and poisoning the rivers.

  You come up for air, Blink, and there’s this maggoty-faced manager standing above you saying you’ve been there too long.

  “You’re right,” you tell him, and take your coffee and your BlackBerry elsewhere.

  It’s hot on Bloor Street. The last of Indian summer. Ha! You never thought about that expression before. What does it mean?

  And what time is it, anyway? You flick a button, and Mr. BlackBerry says it’s just after noon.

  You head back down into Philosopher’s Walk. There are people lunching there, sitting on the grass, catching a few rays, now that the sun is more or less overhead. You find a place by yourself and check out CityNews on the magic machine.

  Bang!

  There it is: the top story.

  Mining Executive Missing. Police Called In.

  Jack Niven, president and CEO of Queon Ventures, did not show up for a top-level governmental meeting at Queen’s Park this morning. Police were called in, and Niven’s room at the Plaza Regent Hotel was found to be the scene of what appeared to be a violent confrontation. The police are keeping tight-lipped, but undisclosed sources at QVD fear that Niven may have been abducted.

  Abducted?

  The meeting he was to attend was called by the Minister of Aboriginal Affairs, the Honorable Cate McCormack, in an attempt to address the controversy over land claims at Millsap Lake in Eastern Ontario. Currently, QVD is at the center of a six-month-long standoff with more than one First Nations organization as well as local residents and several environmental groups over uranium explorations in the area. . . .

  You stop reading. Look up, stunned. Laughter a little way off wakes you up: a couple sitting on the grass, laughing together. There is something odd about them, or about the woman, anyway. She’s maybe thirty, pretty, but acting strangely.
Then you realize she’s blind. She’s not wearing dark glasses or carrying a cane or anything like that; you can just tell by the way she holds her head, the way she looks, and the way she doesn’t look. They laugh again. Then she reaches out and touches her friend’s cheek, lets her hand linger there. He’s nothing to look at, you’re thinking. But she doesn’t know that.

  Then the BlackBerry buzzes and you look down. It’s Alyson.

  There have been a hundred calls and a million e-mails floating into your in-box — his in-box — but this is different.

  You push the picture of the green phone.

  “Dad? Daddy?”

  You swallow hard.

  “Are you there?”

  Your heart is squirming.

  “Mom called me home from school when she heard. No one can reach you, but I’m going to keep trying.”

  She stops again. Sniffs. You wonder if she can hear the birdsongs, the muffled traffic, the laughter so close by.

  “If someone else is listening, please let me talk to my father. Please!”

  You feel like some kind of Peeping Tom looking into the window at a crying girl, and you hate yourself for it, but what can you say?

  Dump this damned phone before you do something rash.

  “Hello?” says Alyson. “I know there’s someone there. If it’s you, Daddy, and you can’t talk, then just be strong, okay? If it’s someone else . . .”

  “They didn’t hurt him.”

  There. You’ve done it now, kid.

  “Who is this?”

  “They didn’t hurt your father.”

  “What —?”

  You lower your voice, curl in on yourself.

  “I was there, okay?” you say in something just above a whisper. “I don’t know what was happening exactly, but your father was . . .” You want to say “in on it,” because that is what you think you saw. But you can’t say that.

  “Please, tell me who this is.”

  “He’s all right, okay?” Then before she can say another word, you click the red phone because you can’t take it anymore.