by Terry Fallis
“All because I’m a little past my best-before date. Just doesn’t seem fair.”
“Well, it isn’t fair, but they hold all the cards,” I said. “I’ll try to get all of your story in front of the key players before your age even becomes an issue. But in the end …” My voice trailed off.
“Right,” was all she said.
We paddled farther up the lake, as I marvelled at the scenery. Take the best Canadian beer commercial ever made, with shots of our fresh water, towering mountains, and big sky, and it couldn’t come close to what I was seeing from a canoe on Cigar Lake.
“Did the RCMP ever officially close the file on your father’s disappearance?”
“About two months later, they declared him lost in an air crash and haven’t done a thing about it since.”
“Do you ever wonder what Sherlock Holmes would make of this mystery?” I asked.
She smiled.
“I’ve reread the entire Holmes canon several times over searching for some insight that might help. I rediscovered my love of Doyle’s writing, but I’m no further ahead in finding my father.”
We turned and headed back to the dock.
Half an hour later, my clothes were dry and packed, and my bag was loaded on the Beaver. I took a last look around, taking in the idyllic cabin, canoe, dock, trees, lake, and mountains. I’m not sure I’ve ever been to a more beautiful and untouched sliver of Canada. I climbed in, fastened my seat belt, and pulled on the headphones as if I’d been flying for years. Landon reached in and started the engine, the propeller disappearing from view as it gathered speed. Then she slipped back out onto one float to cast off from the dock. A few seconds later, she too was buckled in. She pointed us west and hit the throttle. It took us a while to get up a head of steam but we eventually lifted from the surface of Cigar Lake, climbed over the trees at the west end of the lake, and turned for Mackenzie.
“By the way,” I said over the headset. “How can I reach you? I mean other than flying back out here.”
I heard Landon’s voice in my ears as she rhymed off a cellphone number. I grabbed a pen from my jacket pocket and wrote the number down on the back of one of my business cards I’d found in my wallet.
“You have cell service way up here?”
She pointed out the side window back to the west.
“On the next lake over, a wealthy tycoon from Seattle with more money than brains built a cell tower on his land so that he is always reachable. I can pull in quite a strong signal from my place. I just don’t like to give the number out. But I’ll make an exception for you.”
She reached behind her and grabbed a brown paper bag and handed it to me.
“What’s this?” I asked.
“Have a look.”
I reached in and pulled out a small tin. I opened it and saw and smelled chocolate chip cookies.
“For the trip home. You’ll need something,” Landon explained.
“Thank you. That’s very kind of you. Can I try one now?”
She just waved her hand in assent. The bag was not yet empty. I reached in again and pulled out the 1930 Doubleday edition of The Complete Sherlock Holmes. I was taken aback.
“Landon, I can’t accept this. It’s in pristine condition!” I protested.
“Ah hell, I’ve got two more in a box in my closet. Take it. I don’t meet too many fellow Sherlock fans. I’d like you to have it. You’ve come a long way to see me, and I probably didn’t make it very easy on you.”
“I don’t know what to say. It’s very generous,” I said in all sincerity. “I appreciate it very much.”
“Now pass me a cookie, would you?” she asked with hand outstretched.
We flew on. At about the halfway point, even though the air was smooth, I was beginning to feel a little queasy. I must have looked a little green around the gills.
“Use this if you need to,” she directed, handing me a large Ziploc freezer bag. “I can’t wash down these seats with a bucket of water without short circuiting the entire instrument panel.”
I just nodded and opened the bag.
PART 3
CHAPTER 8
“Welcome home, David,” Diane said as she settled into the chair at the head of the boardroom table, no paper, no pen. “We weren’t sure you were ever going to come back.”
It was late Monday morning, the day after I’d returned from my memorable visit to Cigar Lake, B.C. My stomach was almost back to normal, although sitting in a swivel boardroom chair was almost more than I could handle right then.
“By the look of your numbers in PROTTS, you’ve sustained your torrid pace. You’re averaging more than fifty hours a week billable on this project. Very impressive.”
Amanda slipped into the room and sat down next to me, her smiling face full of anticipation.
“So, how was it? How’s our guy?” she asked, rubbing her hands as if they were cold.
I hadn’t provided any kind of an update while I was gone or even when I got back over the weekend. I was still trying to figure out how I was going to handle this.
“Are we waiting for anyone else?” I asked, feeling a little tense.
“Nope, it’s just the three of us to start. We’ve got half an hour before our call with the D.C. team so we thought you could brief us first. You know, no surprises,” replied Amanda. “So …” She moved her hand in a way that made it clear she wanted me to start talking. So I did.
“Right, well, let me bring you up to date,” I began, trying to stick to my plan for as long as I could. “Reaching Cigar Lake was a little less challenging than Shackleton’s quest for the south pole, but not by much. The Toronto to Calgary leg was fine but my connection through to Prince George was a little unnerving. The plane was so old I expected Orville and Wilbur to welcome us on board from the cockpit. But we somehow made it, and I went on to Mackenzie by car. Then it was the final push to Cigar Lake aboard a Beaver float plane.”
“Okay, okay, we know it was a tough trip to B.C., we got it,” chided Amanda. “Tell us about our winner.”
“I’m getting there. I’m just trying to set the scene. So Cigar Lake is shaped kind of like … um … a cigar. We landed and I was eventually delivered to the cabin of our winner, and was introduced to Landon Percival.”
“I bet he was over the moon,” Amanda said excitedly. “What does he look like? Are we happy with him?”
“Well, actually, Landon is a woman’s name. I don’t know why we assumed L. Percival is a he, but he’s a she.”
“Really. Well, that’s fine. It’s better in some respects,” Amanda noted. “What does she look like? Can we see a photo?”
I’d totally forgotten to snap any photos while I was there except for shooting those few minutes of video of Landon whirling in her hepped-up carousel-on-crack.
“Um, I haven’t been able to transfer the photos from my camera to my computer yet. I have a glitch somewhere. But she’s very nice. Not big. A bit wiry and very strong. Very pleasant looking,” I started. “But you won’t believe her story. I think we’ve hit the jackpot with Landon Percival.”
“Carry on. We’re listening,” Diane prodded.
“Okay. In a nutshell, she’s passionate about space and has been for almost her entire life. She’s a physician and a bush pilot who flies in to remote communities to see patients all through Northern B.C.”
“Nice!” Amanda said. “I like that!”
“Wait, there’s more. In her spare time, she’s spent much of her life searching the area for any trace of her bush pilot doctor father who’s been missing and presumed lost in a plane crash, um, some years ago. Finally, and get this, she’s been training to be an astronaut on her own in case she ever got the chance to go up. She’s in peak physical and mental condition and even trains daily in a home-built centrifuge that simulates the G forces of a shuttle launch and re-entry. She’s articulate and intelligent. She’s just amazing, incredible.”
I spent the next fifteen minutes or so thoroughly brief
ing them on my visit, while studiously avoiding any reference to her age, sexuality, or penchant for morning skinny-dipping. I knew I’d have to come clean sometime but I wanted them on my side before they learned she was born before the start of World War II. I recounted my encounter with the bear, my trip on the centrifuge, our canoe around the lake, our mutual interest in Sherlock Holmes, and the glories of the monohole outhouse. I was starting to get into my story. Amanda and Diane seemed transfixed, perhaps even spellbound.
“I think you’re right, David, she sounds like a brilliant candidate,” Amanda said.
“Yes, she certainly has crammed a lot into her life for a twenty-one-year-old,” Diane observed. “I didn’t know you could actually be a doctor at twenty-one.” She tilted her head, puzzled, squinting at me.
And there it was. The end had kind of snuck up on me just when I’d been starting to enjoy my own story. Time to fess up.
“Well, you’ve hit upon an interesting part of this story, Diane,” I started. “You see …”
The speaker phone pod at the centre of the board table suddenly blasted its nuclear ring tone, either signalling that a foreign air force was about to start carpet bombing Toronto, or that there was another party on the line eager to speak with us. It was the latter. You might say that the piercing sound caught me somewhat off-guard. You might say that, because in my advanced state of surprise, my reflex was to fling my pen straight up in the air where it stuck fast in a ceiling tile. I mouthed “Sorry” to Diane as Amanda hit the big green button.
“Crawford, is that you?” she asked the sleek speaker phone pod.
“Hello, frozen Canadians. Yes, it’s Crawford here and I’ve got the D.C. team with me. I know we’re a few minutes early, but are we all ready?”
“We’re all set here. David was just giving us a bit of a sneak peek at our lucky Canadian winner and I think you’re going to be pleased,” Diane said.
Great, just great, I thought to myself. By dragging out the story, and skirting the seventy-one-year-old lesbian elephant in the room, I was setting myself up for a big fall in front of the entire team. Nicely handled.
“Looking forward to it,” Crawford responded, taking control of the meeting. “All right, let’s get started. Our agenda for this call is quite straightforward. First, we’ll introduce you to our American citizen astronaut. And we’re quite excited about him. Then we’ll turn it over to Toronto to hear about the Canadian winner. Sound good?”
No one replied, so Crawford filled the silence.
“Okay then, let’s start. Here in the U.S., the very first name we drew has passed through our qualification procedure with flying colours and we’ve already briefed NASA on him and they’re happy. So if they’re happy, we’re happy,” Crawford declared. “So let me tell you a bit about him. He exactly fits the model we were hoping to find. His name is Eugene Crank. He’s a thirty-eight-year-old deputy sheriff for a small county in Texas. Born and raised a couple states over in rural Mississippi, he’s a God-fearing Christian, married with two sons. He’s good looking, in great shape, and is no stranger to the microphone, having won several local karaoke competitions. In my mind, he’s the archetypal American hero, protecting his fellow citizens, serving his community, and soon, carrying the dreams of a nation into space.”
Unfortunately, I was no longer carrying the Ziploc freezer bag Landon had given me that last time I’d felt close to losing a meal.
“We’ve now spent some time with Eugene and believe that he is the ideal candidate, which is why NASA was so quick to add their stamp of approval. While he’s slightly older than expected, he’s just the kind of winner we were hoping to find when we presented this idea to NASA several months ago.”
“Crawford, it’s Diane here. I assume you’ve done a full background check on this guy. It would not be good to have something from his past bite us in the ass when the eyes of the world are on him.”
“Already done, Diane. He’s as clean as they come. He’s a lawman, for God’s sake. I’m telling you, can we pick ’em or can we pick ’em!”
The D.C. contingent clapped for their fearless leader, so we did too, though somewhat anemically. They couldn’t see us, after all.
“Thank you. Okay. Now let’s hear about our Canadian candidate. Diane?”
“Thanks, Crawford. I’m going to ask David Stewart to introduce Landon Percival, our Canadian citizen astronaut. David?”
Amanda smiled at me as she pushed the phone pod closer to me so that when I went down in flames, everybody on the call would be able to hear the crash in Dolby surround sound.
“Hi, everyone,” I started. My voice was higher than usual. Here we go. “I’ve just returned from Cigar Lake in northern British Columbia where I spent a couple of days off the grid with Landon Percival. This is a distinctly Canadian story, which is just exactly what we were looking for.”
I proceeded to spin Landon’s extraordinary tale with every bit of drama and emotion I could muster. Her birth on the shore of Cigar Lake, her home schooling, her stint in the big city, her success at medical school, her mother’s tragic and early death, her father’s last logbook entry and mysterious disappearance, her return to Cigar Lake to search for her father and carry on his work, her lifelong dream of becoming an astronaut, her years studying space, her own personal astronaut training in the centrifuge she built out of parts from a sailboat and a snowmobile, and her sheer delight and excitement at having been granted the chance to live her dream.
I confess I got caught up in my own performance. Modesty aside, I was on a roll. I was on. My ten-minute soliloquy left Diane and Amanda wide-eyed, even though they’d already heard a pared-down version of the story. To be clear, everything I said was the unembellished truth. I just didn’t quite tell the whole truth.
As planned, I steered well clear of the Landon Percival danger zones, including her 1983 rejection from the Canadian astronaut training program. It would come out soon enough, I knew. I finished with this.
“Landon Percival is a great Canadian with a very Canadian story. We couldn’t have selected a more appropriate candidate. She was born to do this. She was meant to do this. The miracle of her random selection from over 1.7 million entries is, quite simply, destiny. There’s no other way to describe it. It was a privilege to spend time with her as she begins the journey to fulfil her destiny.”
I stopped talking. Silence descended and then abruptly ended in a burst of wild applause and cheering from both sides of the border. Diane and Amanda were beaming as they clapped. I felt sick. I had to play it this way to honour my promise to Landon. I had to draw them in and get them invested in her story. I needed all of my colleagues hugging one another and singing “Kumbaya.” It was the only slim hope we had. Because sooner or later, everyone would know that there were seventy-one candles burning on Landon’s last birthday cake. And that would generate a lot of heat.
“Outstanding. Glad you managed to find such a perfect candidate,” Crawford said. “Can you send us a photo? I’d like to see what this young woman looks like.”
“Um, yes, I’m working on getting photos.”
“Okay, folks, that about does it. You all know how important this is and what our next steps are, so let’s keep moving and stay on track,” Crawford said. “Amanda and David, we’ll need to present Landon to NASA for approval, so can you pull together a bio package on her and get it down to me?”
Amanda, always looking for an opportunity to interact with Crawford, piped up fast. I didn’t even consider responding.
“Absolutely, Crawford, you’ll have it shortly.”
“David, one more thing,” Crawford said over the noise of his team vacating the D.C. boardroom. “How old is this Landon miracle again?”
I clenched. Better for it to come out now than when were farther down the road. I would have been fired later on in the process. Now I would probably just be kicked off the account.
“She’s only twenty-one,” offered the ever-helpful Amanda, chipper as ev
er when Crawford was around.
“Actually, there’s a funny story about that,” I began, in full back-pedal. “Turns out she’s a little older than we thought. But her story is so amazing, I don’t think it should be an issue. After all, sixty is the new fifty, right?”
“Shit, she’s not sixty, is she?” Crawford snapped. “Tell me she’s not sixty. Please somebody tell me our Canadian citizen astronaut is not a decade more than half a century old.”
“Um, of course not, no, not exactly, um, no, she’s certainly not sixty …” I stammered, laughing a little, and watching the moment of truth hurtle towards me like a speeding locomotive.
“Well, thank Christ for that!” blasted Crawford over the speaker.
“Landon Percival is seventy-one years old.”
I kind of mumbled the number, but I did say it.
“Sorry, what did you say? You cut out a bit,” Crawford asked. Everyone else in the room knew enough to stay silent now.
“She’s seventy-one,” I repeated, clearer this time, but still a little under my breath, to be honest.
Crawford was getting a little exasperated.
“Sorry, David, we’re having trouble hearing you,” he began. “That time it almost sounded like you said seventy-one. So can you try it again in your big-boy voice?”
“Landon Percival is seventy-one years old. She was born in 1939, has wiry grey hair, and looks kind of like an apple doll, but with more wrinkles, and she sort of smells like engine grease.”
There I’d said it. It was finally out in the open. Diane and Amanda were both staring at me, faces frozen, mouths agape, undergoing what looked like the first recorded case of synchronized strokes. The silence held for an eternity. I couldn’t stand it.
It was so quiet you could hear a pin drop, just after Crawford pulled it from the grenade. I jumped back in.
“But I still think she’s a great candidate with an amazing story. Let me tell you the best part …”