Stung

by William Deverell

  Cherry returns, retrieves the file, beckons Arthur to follow. “Counsel may now approach the bench.”

  Arthur takes a deep breath and goes in to meet the judge, who roosts on a high-back swivel chair behind a massive oak desk bearing several trophies, a gavel, and a phone off the hook.

  Squirely rises and raises a full whiskey glass in greeting. “I am honoured, Mr. Beauregard. Sit, sit, we don’t stand on ceremony here. A little tipple before we call proceedings to order?”

  “There was a time, Your Honour, when I—”

  Cherry nudges him into silence, seats him, pours him a short one. Arthur pretends, dutifully, to sip, his nostrils filling with the delicious, nagging aroma, then with shaking hand sets his glass on a window ledge.

  Cherry takes over, briefing the judge as to why the illustrious Mr. Bo-Champ has come to pay his respects, explaining he’s here to help poor Charlie Dover out of the goodness of his heart, and is suing the crooks running the Chemican corporation, and believes the settlement is null and void.

  By the time she peters out, the judge is snoring.

  Cherry retrieves Arthur’s glass of whiskey and disappears, leaving him alone with the Charlie Dover file.

  It was opened in February of 2004. An initial interview with him discloses that he and his twin sister, Tammy, were raised in a farming area near Joplin, where their dad is a veterinarian. Charlie considered himself lucky that he was among the 103 chosen for Chemican’s testing program. Agrochemicals were widely used in rural Missouri and he had no fear of them. The $3,000 stipend was an impelling enticement for a nineteen-year-old sophomore working on a Bachelor of Science degree.

  In September of 2003, he was administered a three-millilitre dose of ziegladoxin in a glass of apple juice, following which he felt a slight, transitory dizziness that the testers shrugged off as an anomaly — no one else among the 103 had shown adverse symptoms.

  On a second go-round, during the Christmas break, Dover downed a juice containing eight point five millilitres of the neonic. A physical examination followed the next day, which he passed handily. Blood and urine tests showed no abnormalities. But a day later he began enduring not just dizziness but acute spatial disorientation. A physician attached to Chemican’s research group prescribed a tranquilizer and told him to go home and rest. It was beyond any possibility, she said, that the dose of neonicotinoid was related to his condition.

  Arthur is suffering a condition himself all of a sudden, the kind of tingling a lawyer gets when he is looking at a multi-million-dollar action in damages. Yet this was settled for $200,000.

  Charlie Dover’s difficulties continued unabated through the next several weeks, during which he was examined by his family doctor, then taken to see a neurologist, who wanted tests, and more tests, the bills mounting up while Chemican denied access to their medical records.

  Enter W.W. Squirely, retained by the Dover family to seek redress for their son. A flurry of correspondence ensued, resulting in Chemican kindly offering to retain “independent specialists” — their quotes — to examine Charlie.

  Bulking up the file is a battery of reports from these specialists — three neurologists, an internist, an allergist, a psychiatrist, all absolving Chemican, most expressing confidence that Charlie would recover, or, as one put it, “grow out of it.”

  * * *

  The judge has an apartment back of his office, and that’s where Cherry is making him dinner — Arthur hears a sizzle of frying through his open window. Despite all her down-putting of the senile judge, she must be devoted to him: she has created a credible façade behind which he can enjoy the pretence he’s doing something more than knocking back the Jack.

  Both Charlie Dover and his twin sister, Dr. Tammy Dover, seemed relieved when the judge left. The reason for that, it turned out, was they did not have kind things to say about his skills as a lawyer and negotiator.

  In 2003, both siblings were taking courses at Missouri Southern to prepare them for medical school, though only Tammy got there, a radiologist now, at the still-young age of thirty-six. Squirely was referred to them by parents and friends of parents: he was respected, well known for his twenty years as a judge.

  “He got bombarded,” said Tammy, “by bullshit from the quacks Chemican hired. He actually believed their prognoses. Believed Charlie’s symptoms would vanish with time. One of them claimed he had a pre-existing condition, another suggested substance abuse. The shrink said it was a mental disorder — like he was compulsive about bumping into walls? This case was way above the judge’s pay grade, he should have referred it on.”

  That was her opening salvo. She was calmer during the next two hours, filling in gaps as her brother responded to Arthur’s gentle grilling.

  Despite his disability, Charlie is smart and alert and as well spoken as his sister, though more subdued. His blue eyes rove a lot, as if trying to judge distances and directions. He’s a little hefty because of lack of exercise, while Tammy is slender with the weary look of one who worries excessively.

  Both have followed the Toronto trial in the media and online — local coverage has been extensive.

  “You’ve had interview requests?” Arthur asks.

  “Maybe,” says Charlie. “I don’t answer my phone because I can never find it. I don’t open the door, because I can’t find it either.” Whenever they go out, Tammy takes his arm. She or her husband drives him to and from work. He has a suite in their house full of stuffed furniture. In case of emergencies, his address is on a wristband with Tammy’s cell number.

  “It’s best if you continue to keep the press at distance until we get you to Toronto.”

  “No problem,” Charlie says. “When do you want me?”

  Arthur calculates. Two more days of Crown evidence, then the defence begins. “Late in the week, maybe Thursday.” He looks at Tammy.

  She says, “We’ll find the time.”

  Arthur stuffs the Dover file into the brown briefcase with Khan’s binder of clippings. It’s six thirty; he has a plane to catch.

  5

  On landing at Pearson International, a chirrupy, amplified voice reminds Arthur he may now use his cell phone, whereupon he realizes it was on airplane mode all day.

  He finds two texts from Margaret: one four hours ago letting him know she’s arriving in Toronto tonight, not the morning. Surprise! Surprise! A smiley face, a heart. The second message, sent from the Ottawa airport nearly two hours ago, urges him to turn on his phone. A voice mail offers similar advice. Rivie clocked in twenty minutes ago with another voice mail: “Hey, the leader of the Green Party is here. Stop being offline, and puh-lease don’t still be in Missouri.”

  It’s from the house phone. Jostling for position in the jammed aisle, clutching his briefcase with its precious goods, Arthur makes a couple of failed stabs at returning the call before he finally connects.

  Rivie doesn’t bother with a hello. “Margaret says your phone was probably in airplane mode all day. Tell me that’s not true.”

  Arthur pleads guilty. He’ll be there within the hour, hopes they’ll wait up.

  Margaret comes on, reminds him about his penchant for breaking dates with her, but in a lighthearted way. Arthur welcomes her to Chez Punky Kiefer and asks what she and Rivie have been doing.

  “I’m regaling her about your absentmindedness, darling, over a lovely Spanish rosé.”

  Her jolly mood is fortified by good news from Garibaldi, where the results of the recall petition have just been certified. “It was signed by two-thirds of our residents, my love. Zoller and Shewfelt have been formally turfed and the by-election is set for the last Saturday in June.”

  By now, Arthur has made it to the arrivals lounge and can breathe again.

  “The bad news,” says Margaret, “is those two jerks are going to run again.”

  “And who will be on our team?”

&nb
sp; “Zoë Noggins and your favourite female predator.”

  That was spoken with a cynical lightness, but Arthur grimaces nonetheless.

  6

  Saturday, May 25

  Arthur sleeps in till almost eleven, blinking awake to the sound of female mirth and the smell of fresh-brewed coffee. Last night, after he went to bed — feeling like an outsider, Mr. Staid-and-Boring — Margaret and Rivie carried on in their merry way, to the smell of fresh-smoked cannabis.

  He woke up when she finally slid in beside him at three a.m., and he wanted her, but pretended to sleep, fearing a rebuff, however gentle. There is always tomorrow, he told himself, and stayed awake for a long while before drifting off to dreams of Blunder Bay and a wolfhound named Ulysses.

  He gets the sense, as he pauses at his washroom door, that Margaret and Rivie are sharing intimacies or bawdy anecdotes. They’re getting along far too well, he decides. In a rash moment of weakness, of letting go, he’d told Rivie too many details about the episode with Taba, details not shared with Margaret. Rivie knows about Taba’s offer to fellate him, and how she came within a hair of doing so.

  To her credit, Rivie didn’t blame him for leading Taba on. She couldn’t understand why he carried such a weight of guilt, given “your local erotic potter” was the aggressor and he’d found the will to resist.

  She also chided him for not being very good at lying to his wife. Arthur wonders: Is it that apparent? He has learned it’s very hard to lie to someone you love. A dilemma — do you hurt her more by the truth or by leaving her in disbelief or doubt?

  The chumminess between Margaret and Rivie, their sudden bonding, astonishes him. Is this the daughter that his childless wife has secretly longed for? With whom long-held secrets are shared? He doesn’t want Rivie playing the role of hippie therapist. If he takes a little break from the traditional scene, so what? Cool. Equal rights for women too.

  Still, Rivie is a refreshing diversion for the Green Party leader, a break from the plotting, glad-handing politicians she must deal with daily.

  As he shaves he hears them planning their day, a photo exhibit, lunch, a Green Party drop-in hosted by a celebrity whom Arthur has never heard of. All of which allays the guilt of being unable to entertain Margaret, though he must at least take her out for dinner. But the afternoon will be spent with Nancy Faulk in her boardroom, going over the Charlie Dover file and Khan’s binder of interviews.

  Yesterday, Nancy was on her own in 6-1 court, pitching relief against Dr. Jerod Easling, as Rivie put it, and keeping him off the scoreboard. Also heard from were a bureaucrat from Canada’s Pest Management Regulatory Agency and an analyst from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, both of whom denied hanky-panky over the Vigor-Gro approval process. A juror in the back row nodded off during this.

  Arthur can’t find his slippers but decides to make his grand entry into the kitchen anyway — then — pauses on hearing Rivie: “You have to take them by the hand.”

  As he steps inside, Margaret is mixing eggs, her back to him. “I know. He fumbles around — sometimes he even finds it.”

  “Here he is now,” Rivie says quickly. “We were talking about how men always lose things.”

  They have zeroed in on Arthur’s primary weakness, his early indicator of senile dementia. He loses stuff: shoes, keys, remotes, toiletries. But why are they so focussed on him? — they seem to take great pleasure talking about his foibles.

  Rivie pours him a coffee. “Milk, no sugar, right?”

  “Thank you. It’s grand to see the two of you so perky.” He looks about. “Has anyone seen my slippers?”

  “They’re on your feet,” Margaret says.

  Arthur looks down at his slippered feet and blushes. He is losing it.

  * * *

  Today celebrates Selwyn Loo’s return to Toronto, on a week’s furlough from the environmental wars in the West Coast courts. There is much catching up in Nancy’s boardroom: about Rivie’s close scrape with the Nazi — who has disappeared from his usual haunts, according to Constable Louella Baker — and the trial’s many twists and turns, and the evolving defence of necessity.

  Selwyn expresses disgust at Chemican’s tactics to force a cheap settlement of Charlie Dover’s claim: the ruthless battering of a country lawyer and, as Dr. Tammy Dover unsubtly put it, the barrage of bullshit from hired quacks.

  Arthur knows only one other victim: hapless security guard Barney Wilson, who gulped down mouthfuls of Vigor-Gro while splashing around on the factory floor. It’s hard to believe that of the 103 student volunteers only one fell victim to this condition. Presumably, the Vigor-Gro triggered some kind of allergic or immune disorder which affects only a small population.

  Selwyn asks, “How are you two getting along with the judge?”

  “She’s been laying off me,” Nancy says. “Not sure why. She still thinks I’m the spawn of Satan.”

  “Fear of the Court of Appeal,” Selwyn suggests.

  “She’s being far too pleasant,” says Arthur. “Prodded the Crown to drop the manslaughter. And now with Azra lying in the weeds, I have no foe to joust with. That’s putting me off my game.”

  “Madam Justice Donahue has suddenly got a hard-on for Arthur. Ever since she flashed the photo that nearly paid off Jake Maguire. She fucked up, but Arthur took the hit.”

  After they unscramble that for Selwyn, he passes judgment: “She feels Arthur did an honourable thing in shielding two senior officers from scandal. Maybe that will pay off.”

  Arthur shakes his head. “She will not leave necessity with the jury. Despite Charlie Dover. Despite the health risks posed by ziegladoxin. As a strict matter of law, I fear she would be right.”

  Selwyn nods. “The common law has made us slaves to precedent. What are you picking up from the jury?”

  Nancy says: “Foreman is a low-level architect, over-serious, rarely smiles, so he makes me nervous. The others are even harder to read, except for two. Juror Ten, Mabel Sims, a tax auditor, wants to nail these subversive hippie freaks to the cross. Juror Twelve, Abbie Lee-Yeung, could deadlock the jury if she doesn’t buckle under pressure.”

  Arthur sighs. “So realistically our hopes depend on the pluck and tenacity of a single teenage student.”

  “So that’s Plan B,” says Selwyn. “Hang the jury.”

  Nancy spells it out. “Plan B-E-E.”

  * * *

  They spend the remaining day winnowing Khan’s list of media interviews, choosing those that best advance the necessity defence. This is something new for Arthur. He can’t recall a single trial in which he didn’t fight like a tiger to keep a client’s inculpatory statements from the jury.

  One interview stands out: an hour of video on TVO featuring Doc Knutsen, his points made dramatically and with clarity. A paean to pollinating insects, a bleak scenario of human life without them, the urgent need, as he put it, “to wake the world with a dynamic act of civil disobedience.”

  “No reason now to put Knutsen on the stand,” says Nancy.

  “An excellent reason to keep him off it,” says Arthur. Khan would have a fine day needling Knutsen for his lack of humility, his occasional spurt of arrogance. And his bitterness. Yet he hungers for his day in court. “He will not be pleased at being sidelined.”

  “I’ll handle him,” Nancy says, confidently. “How about we don’t call any of our guys, period?”

  Arthur still wants to think about it.

  A while later, Selwyn alerts them to another useful interview. Removing a set of headphones, he replays a piece on college radio: Rivie and Lucy blithely recounting Rockin’ Ray’s heroic, five-hundred-microgram acid trip.

  “That’s his defence, isn’t it?” says Selwyn.

  Arthur agrees. Intoxication, lack of awareness, of conscious intent. Armed with this, and what is already before the jury — the toxicologist’s confident opinion that f
ive hundred micrograms would bring on hallucinations — the loose cannon of the Extinction Rebellion need not be exposed to the perils of cross-examination.

  That decides it for Arthur: there’s little advantage and much risk in calling any of the Sarnia Seven to the stand. When he affirms that to Nancy, she hugs him. “You’ve had a rough go of it, partner. Why don’t you go home and fuck your wife?”

  7

  Arthur’s plans to take Margaret out for a romantic dinner are scotched when he arrives home to find Rivie has just returned from a fish market. She claims she’s a master trout chef.

  He and Margaret are ordered to “chill” while she heads off to the backyard barbecue with a tray with trout, berries, and pine nuts. Margaret was also surprised by the young rebel’s insistence on treating them to dinner. She too had expected an evening out in a starred restaurant, and looks almost jarringly attractive: long, black slit skirt, freshly reddened lips, and she’s done something to highlight the silver of her eyes.

  She’s in a frisky mood. Parliament is in short recess and she’s off tomorrow for the West Coast to do stuff she enjoys: town halls, mingling with real people. She goes on and on about retiring, but remains a prisoner of Ottawa out of loyalty to those who sent her there.

  Having retreated to the TV room to watch the six o’clock news, she and Arthur are on a fat sofa that he’d stored here. She has poured herself a flute of Prosecco and is not exactly nursing it. She nudges him. “Hello, stranger. Got any plans for the night?”

  Made shy by her boldness, he can’t quite formulate a response except to move closer. She extends a bared leg across his lap and pops a teasing kiss on his cheek —but further progress is interrupted by Rivie’s entrance with a tray of crackers and cheese bites. Arthur quickly removes his hand from his wife’s thigh, then feels foolish when Rivie grins. Still trapped in the puritanical web woven by his severe, loveless parents.