Arthur tugs Ulysses off the road as Mattie Miller’s farm truck overtakes them at the rise looking over Hopeless Bay’s wharf, store, and bar. While normally she might haul feed or tools, today her cargo is a herd of hitchhiking hippies from Bleak Creek, with their packs and bags and children, all on a shopping trip.
Mattie has obviously noticed the RCMP cruiser in the lot, and lets out her dozen non–wearers of seat belts on a private, secluded driveway. Arthur stops to engage with her, mostly about Tigger: even though he took down one of her alpacas, she forgives and hopes he has swum off.
Meanwhile, the Bleak Creekers have found Ulysses a great curiosity and mob him. He mobs them back, excited by the attentions of a pack of whiskery, long-haired young humans with interesting odours. A couple of preschoolers take a special shine to Ulysses, and pet and hug him and get licks that have them squealing with laughter.
The new bulletin board provides an excellent hitching post for Ulysses. The cougar warning is still posted there, as is a photo of the once-missing pot-bellied pig. The “barley used” wood chipper is still for sale. A psychedelic-design leaflet about a “solstice midnight party” in Quarry Park reads: “Celebrate the Equinox under the Sign of Aries!!” Arthur finds this wondrously confusing, given the spring equinox was three weeks ago and the summer solstice is over two months away.
His first purchase is a box of tissues, quickly put to use. Then a brand of pills that promises to dry him out. He adds some fruit and sundries to his basket, then steps outside to see if Ulysses is okay. A four-year-old boy hugs him around the neck. Another toddler trips over his prone form and is scooped up by a Bleak Creek mom. Arthur is proud of his maturing pup. When he is not making mischief, he is remarkably gentle, especially with the young.
Ulysses’s sole known enemy, Constable Dugald, is in the pub. From what Arthur can make out, through its windows, he’s having words with a table of TexAmericans: Tug Cooley and his crew of watchdogs. They seem in a sullen mood, especially Cooley. Maybe he’s in a snit about the belated equinox party planned for the quarry.
Arthur will wander over there presently, for his tea, but first must summon courage to wrestle with Abraham Makepeace for the rights to his mail. The postmaster is not at his post, however — he is in the utensil section with the Bleak Creek families, either helping them or guarding against their presumptive urge to shoplift.
Or he may have been crowded out by Nelson Forbish, who is again behind the counter, stuffing his Bleats into the boxes.
“Nelson, could you do me a favour and fish out my mail? Box ninety-two.” Arthur sneezes and honks into a tissue, gets a “Gesundheit” but no sympathy.
“That would be highly irregular,” says Forbish, “plus Abraham would kill me. This will keep you busy.” He passes Arthur a copy of the Bleat. “I found out too late about how Mrs. Rollick’s pig survived by hiding in the graveyard, but I can’t be a hundred percent perfect all the time.”
Pet Porker Latest Cougar Cuisine, says the headline. “The actual latest cougar meal,” says Forbish, “was Tug Cooley’s corgi. That’s why he’s knocking back the bourbon.”
Those at Cooley’s table have got very loud now that Dugald is no longer a calming influence — he has gone down to his vehicle and appears to be radioing for instructions.
Poor Dumbbell. Arthur remembers how he snarled and barked at Ulysses. A similar show of false bravery may not have impressed Tigger. As Forbish pieced the story together, Cooley and a few of his crew, armed and boozed up, went cougar hunting last night in Gwendolyn Park, leaving Dumbbell alone to guard the TexAmerica work site. The dog’s remains were found this morning in a nearby gulley.
Forbish has a theory: “Maybe if the damn cat wasn’t being chased all over the island it wouldn’t always be so hungry. If I had hunters pursuing me, I’d need all that extra protein too.”
Their attention is again diverted to the Brig, where obscenities are being exchanged between Cooley’s mates and Emily LeMay, who appears to be cutting them off. One of them is impaired enough to poke her in the chest. She cuffs him so hard he nearly ejects from his chair. This brings Dugald racing back up from the lot.
Makepeace too is absorbed in this scene, so Arthur leans over the counter and steals his own mail. Just a few bills. No Priority Post from Nancy as promised, but none expected. Maybe tomorrow.
Crossing the ramp to the Brig, he watches Dugald escort Tug Cooley and his boys to his big SUV. He’s a good guy at heart, this island cop, and Arthur expects he’ll take them back to the quarry. As for Cooley, he’s an annoying loudmouth, and so was his dog, but he loved his pet, and that counts for something. Arthur feels bad about his loss.
Settling down with his afternoon tea and antihistamine, Arthur opens the Bleat and turns to his favourite column, Nelson Forbish’s “News Nuggets,” the second-last of which salutes “our ever popular ravishing redhead Tabatha (Taba) Jones” for collecting nineteen recall signatures “while going door-to-door all the way to Blunder Bay on Potters Road, which she says is her favourite road on our island. Not surprising because she’s our favourite potter!”
Arthur’s headache returns.
8
Friday, April 12
Arthur wakes up to a wet slurp across his face. It’s the giant, four-footed alarm clock. Someone had opened the bedroom door to allow Ulysses entry. Probably Solara — he can hear her chatter away to Stefan in the kitchen.
He wants to go back to sleep and finish his dream, to parse it: Arthur was in divorce court, beltless, holding up his pants with both hands. Taba Jones was in the witness stand, stroking what looked like a candle holder as Azra Khan huddled in a corner with his client, Margaret Blake.
His duty done, Ulysses abandons muttering old man on bed, returns to the happier humans in the kitchen, Solara laughing. The smell of fresh-brewed coffee finally pulls Arthur upright; he swings his legs off the bed, lets his feet search for his slippers in the darkness.
It’s just after five o’clock; sunrise is at seven twenty-five. The plan is to be at the quarry in an hour. Tigger, who prefers to hunt at night, returns to his hidey-hole in the twilight — so Stefan theorizes. Yesterday, he’d spent a few hours up there, and found enough prints and scat across the chasm from Bob’s Leap to satisfy him that its den was close by.
Still in his pyjamas, armed with a coffee, Arthur joins his two co-conspirators as they hover over an aerial map spread on the kitchen table. Stefan has highlighted a path from Bleak Creek — it cuts through Gwendolyn Park and crosses Hamish McCoy’s driveway, then enters the quarry well away from TexAmerica’s grumpy gatekeepers.
Arthur knows that trail well. “It isn’t marked and isn’t often used — except, apparently, by the youthful denizens of Bleak Creek.”
While Arthur climbs into his clothes, Solara coaxes Ulysses into Stefan’s van, then returns with a weather report. “Mostly clear. Half a moon. Chilly. Y’all bundled up, Arthur?”
He has extra layers on, topped off by a jacket with many pockets. He has a Thermos of tea in his pack. Water, flashlight, granola bars, dog biscuits. Walking stick. Pepper spray. Cell phone fully charged. He spoons up his oatmeal. He is ready.
Stefan folds the map into a pouch, tells Solara: “Stay close to your phone, okay?”
“Yes, sir, massa.” With a smile, but Arthur has sensed an impatience with Stefan. Maybe because of a bruised heart from feelings unshared. Maybe because she has detected an imperious air. She wanted to join them but was needed here. Should they locate Tigger’s lair, she would relay the coordinates to the Conservation Service tip line — but not before exacting a promise that Tigger would be freed unharmed in the northern wilds.
* * *
It’s well before six as they near the quarry turnoff. Stefan motors past it slowly, following instructions from his back-seat driver. “The road narrows here,” Arthur says. “Ends at the national park. There’ll be a few downhill hai
rpins.”
Arthur is in fact in the back seat, serving as comfort human to a nervous passenger. Ulysses stopped whining when Arthur switched from the front, but he’s clearly not at ease being taken for a ride at this dark and spooky hour.
Arthur still has reservations about bringing his pup into this — Ulysses has never harmed another animal, while the cougar survives by doing so. Arthur worries that his carefree pet may have gotten too cat-friendly, hanging with Underfoot and Shiftless and one-eyed Mouser.
“In about two hundred yards the road trifurcates. Take the right.” That leads to Hamish McCoy’s hobbit house. Mattie Miller’s alpaca ranch is to the left, Gwendolyn National Park half a kilometre ahead.
Stefan’s headlights pick up a staked cedar sign: “McCOY STUDIO AND GALLERY, WEEKENDS ONLY,” and in smaller print, “Parental Advisory.” As they turn onto Hamish’s gravelled driveway, Arthur’s phone rings with a repulsive jingle that he hasn’t figured out how to de-select. He wonders who could be calling this early.
“Fucking hell, Arthur!” It’s Nancy Faulk, with some kind of bad news.
“Hang on a second, please. Pull off here for the moment, Stefan. Yes, Nancy? Is there a problem?”
“Damn right there’s a problem. You’re the problem.” She’s practically shouting.
“Nancy, it’s not quite six a.m.”
“It’s almost nine, you mean — you better get used to eastern time. Damn it, I don’t care what the time is. Selwyn and I need to speak to you right now. Why aren’t you fucking here?”
Selwyn picks up. “Nancy, may I cut in? Go meditate. I asked her not to call you, Arthur, but she claims to have reached her limit. Did we wake you?”
“Not at all. As it happens, Stefan and Ulysses and I are up early on a quest to find our visiting mountain lion. If you’ll excuse me . . .” To Stefan: “That’s the layby, we can disembark there.” Back to Selwyn, heartily: “How did it go with Professor Van Doorn?”
“She’s in. I don’t know how I got the impression she was timid. Quite the reverse, very confident and forthright. She regards the opposition’s Jerod Easling as less a scientist than a professional talking head.”
Selwyn Loo offers a striking contrast to Nancy’s frantic and antagonizing manner, though Arthur sees it as a good-cop, bad-cop routine. He mimes to Stefan to let Ulysses out. This call is holding them up.
“She’s flying to Toronto for the weekend,” Selwyn says.
“Who?”
“Dr. Van Doorn. I’ll be in BC Appeal Court next week, but you’ll have a chance to share time with her. Assuming you have time to spare, given the critical pretrial issue you’ll argue on Monday.”
“One second.” Arthur mutes his phone, hefts his backpack on, gestures with his flashlight. “The path intersects the driveway about fifteen feet up. Some second-growth fir and cedar, then we go by an old barn. Quietly.” It’s just a few hundred feet from there to McCoy’s bedroom. It wouldn’t do to awaken the excitable old runt, or his dog Shannon.
Unmuted, Selwyn continues with an edge of ill-temper: “If I may speak directly, Arthur, we expected you to be in Toronto by now. I am trying to restrain any irritation I ought to feel. Nancy, however, is berserk. I feel she might be on the verge of an emotional collapse.”
She shouts: “Tell him he blows this, he wears it forever.”
Arthur has never met a lawyer quite as excitable as Nancy, but of course the convergence of this major trial with her divorce has rendered her especially vulnerable. Arthur knows he has to do better. “Tell her that if all goes well, I’ll fly out tomorrow.”
Nancy comes on another line: “All goes well means exactly what?”
“All’s well that ends well. Wherein the king is dismayed by the stealth of the inaudible and noiseless foot of time.”
“This scene is more King Lear, with you in the lead role, buddy. I am on my knees begging you to show up tomorrow at seven a.m. at the Victoria airport for your reserved eight a.m. one-way nonstop to Toronto. The only excuse I want to hear is you got mauled by a cougar and are at death’s fucking door!”
* * *
As they trudge off, Stefan asks, “Everything all right with your case back east?”
“Emotions are on display. It typically happens to barristers readying for an important trial. Happily, my associate is at her best when rattled.”
“But not you.”
“I am not. I’m at my best when I find the still point.” Advice from a guru known as Shiva, long, long ago.
Once into the grove of tall trees they lose the moon. Arthur holds the leash, Stefan the flashlight. Ulysses, whose excellent eyesight has earned him the lead, strides along with the confidence of one who has memorized the route. And maybe he has, with his specialized hunting-dog brain, having thrice travelled this way in fall and winter.
With the last clump of Douglas firs behind them, they trudge past McCoy’s old barn. The path takes a right turn at the shoreline, where the star-glittered sky fully opens and moonlight dances on the saltchuck. Ahead, the rising limestone cliffs seem luminescent too. Soon the path morphs into wide limestone slabs, a staircase created by the Parks Commission several years ago.
Arthur pants harder than Ulysses as they breach the wall through a narrow passage and attain the long flat ridge that Stefan aimed for. On this ridge, maybe sixty metres away, is the dark outline of the crag on which Arthur spotted Tigger on Saturday.
Their mossy ridge, where they will camp, is slightly higher than Bob’s End, which is to the east, across the steep gorge. It’s shadowed from the moon down there, and Arthur can barely make out the dim outlines of the long gulley. Eventually it yawns open to a gently sloped grassy meadow: a popular spot before TexAmerica moved in. Families often picnicked there and tossed Frisbees and played hide-and-seek in the nearby caves.
The only signs of human habitation are to the north, where McCoy’s porch light gives off the merest glow, and, to the south, the brighter shine of security lights from the limestone company’s encampment, whose structures, trailers, and heavy machinery hide behind a weed- and moss-encrusted hill of scrap limestone.
They settle themselves on their ledge, bringing out a tarp, flasks of water, and dog biscuits for Ulysses, who gobbles them and lies down to sleep. Arthur joins him, nestling between his paws.
9
Disoriented by the suddenness of his waking, the cold twilight air, and the strange locale, Arthur sits up abruptly. Stefan, who has just nudged him with his boot, lowers his binoculars and raises a finger to his lips: maintain silence, let Ulysses sleep.
The eastern sky is rosy; Arthur’s watch says ten minutes after seven. Rising on his elbows, he sees an almost languorous form lying on the crag, surveying his domain.
Stefan kneels, whispers: “He can make us out too.” He straps on his rucksack. “I’ll try to persuade him to trust me.”
That’s not the plan Arthur remembers. They were to have followed Tigger to his den while staying out of sight, relying on Ulysses to pick up the spoor. If the cougar has indeed gone rogue, and kills for sport — an entertainment normally reserved to humans — Stefan risks his life.
Arthur tries to make that point as he follows Stefan to the lip of the gorge for a pee, but Stefan is insistent. Arthur has brought pepper spray; Stefan hasn’t — he believes its painful effects should be reserved for humans.
“Take the spray, Stefan. I read that it conditions predators to avoid people.”
“It conditions them to fear and hate us.”
So that’s it. There is silence except for the spatters of urine on the rocks below as they watch the sun surmount the horizon over the San Juan Islands and the Salish Sea.
Engrossed in the sunrise, Arthur is startled when Stefan, who rarely swears, says, “Shit!” He stares, or glares, at the grassy meadow where the gully spreads open, the picnic area. There are scrappy tent
s and awnings there, unseen last night. One of the Bleak Creekers stands in the meadow, naked, his skinny arms stretched to greet the dawn. Others emerge, in nightwear.
Meanwhile, Tigger dismounts from his lookout and pads off into the maze of cliffs and caves and twisting alleys. Stefan looks helplessly down at the hippie campsite, then hurries off in pursuit.
Arthur is astonished at Stefan’s confidence, his recklessness, but expects he’s on a Quixotic conquest — the activity below could scare the cougar into the thickly treed Gwendolyn forests. The urban innocents have scuttled a well-laid plan by their mere presence, but for their children’s sake they have to be warned about the cougar and persuaded to pack out.
Ulysses yawns and stretches; Arthur picks up his pack and walking stick, and they begin a descent down a well-beaten zigzag path, into the shadow of the sun.
* * *
They are met by the formerly naked man, who now wears a blanket. It seems unlikely he was overcome by a sudden fit of modesty; he probably got cold waiting to celebrate the sun, which still hasn’t risen above the ridge. He introduces himself as Krishna, bows, and says “Namaste,” and adds, “I guess this is a bust.”
Arthur is confused. “No one’s being busted.” He remembers this fellow Krishna from Hopeless Bay and the health food store, has seen him cycle down Centre Road. Thin as a stick bug, bronze complexion, beard with a comb stuck in it, facial rings and studs. Guru-like, possibly holding some kind of leadership role.
“I mean the night was a bust, man, the solstice party.”
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