Stung

by William Deverell

  “What?”

  “Number Ten. The tax lady.”

  “Say again?”

  “We won. We fucking won.”

  Miss Pucket: “How do you find the accused on count one, guilty or not guilty?”

  “Not guilty.”

  You’d think the courtroom would explode. But an eerie stillness settles in. A mass holding of breath. Her Ladyship’s nose vibrates like a rabbit scenting the advancing hounds. Khan sighs and shakes his head, in disbelief or disgust.

  Then the second count: break, enter, and theft. Not guilty. Theft. Not guilty. Possession of stolen property. Not guilty.

  Judge Donahue seems stunned, unbelieving. Doc is immobile, confused about what just happened, unsure whether to stand, sit, or go. Someone at the back yells, “Yay!”

  Donahue hollers, “Remove that person!” The miscreant, a Bee-liever, departs on her own, raising a fist of solidarity. But with that “Yay,” with that fist, Donahue must finally feel the full extent of the jury’s betrayal.

  “Dr. Knutsen, please join us down here.” Arthur offers a chair behind counsel table. Absentminded, homesick Arthur Beauchamp is the only composed person in this vast room. Tough cookie Nancy Faulk may be the least composed. She jumps up, does a dance step, hugs Doc, wipes tears.

  “Joe Meekes,” the clerk calls. Jurors finally look at us, observing our reactions, as Okie Joe gets acquitted on all counts.

  I swivel left, right, behind me. There’s too much going on right now, too much to take in, everything is just a series of snapshots. Azra Khan stops shaking his head, and bends over his doodling pad. His minions look like they just came out of electrotherapy. A radio reporter flees to break the news. Another follows. Then another.

  An intense vibe comes from the remaining press section as they compose their ledes: A rogue jury acquitted the Sarnia Seven on all counts today . . . Judge Donahue looks at the media rows with poorly masked dismay — their reviews of her starring role will be disastrous. I can only imagine the state of her panties.

  Joe takes a chair beside Doc. Next up are Ivor, then Amy. After they leave the dock, quickly acquitted, Nancy bundles them out to the hallway, where we can hear her whoop.

  Lucy rises beside me, squeezes my shoulder, and as she gets cleared she blows kisses toward the jury. Rockin’ Ray solemnly bows to them when it’s his turn, a gentleman at the end.

  I’m up last, accused number seven, the last one busted. And I’m thinking, Right on, I’m free, I’m hauling ass for Golden Valley to celebrate with Mom and Dad. I don’t care if it’s still black fly season. More power to the bugs!

  As we work our way through the several charges against me: not guilty, not guilty, not guilty . . . bang! my fantasy dissolves. “Guilty,” says the foreman, wincing, clearly uncomfortable. It’s the charge of using a fraudulent passport.

  Mabel Sims gives me a gotcha stare. I get it — they had to give her something. I was the jury’s compromise. I was the lamb sacrificed at the altar of unanimity. And I am now the only person in the prisoners’ dock and I’m about to take one for the team, a high hard one between the eyes.

  “Defendant will be remanded in custody for sentencing.” In Donahue’s steeliest voice, her fury at events barely under control.

  Arthur is up. “If it please the court—”

  Donahue interrupts. “We’ll need a pre-sentence report — Mr. Khan, how fast can the probation service deliver?”

  “Probably a month, but we will check.”

  Arthur tries again. “Surely Ms. Levitsky can remain—”

  “Mr. Beauchamp, you can argue till the cows come home. Your client is going into custody immediately. Parliament has recognized this as a very serious indictable offence, with a fourteen-year maximum. A custodial sentence seems almost mandatory.”

  “A higher court, M’Lady, might hear that observation as having come from a mind made up, if not closed.”

  “Mr. Beauchamp, a higher court might also like to reflect on whether the verdicts that went your way could be sustained. I expect Crown Counsel has already turned his mind to that.”

  The jury still hasn’t been excused, so they must listen to the judge imply they did a shitty job.

  “I intend to carefully consider your submissions on sentence, Mr. Beauchamp. In due course. In the meantime, I am ordering a pre-sentence and I am putting this matter over a week, at which time I expect counsel will have agreed on a sentencing date. We are now adjourned.”

  She marches off without a word of thanks to the jury for their service. The media charge through the door like a herd of spooked buffalo. Court officers usher the rabble out behind them. The jury file out silently, watching as I am cuffed.

  My comrades are also required to leave. The prosecution team follows. I am almost alone with Arthur now, except for the guy locking the main door, and two women officers waiting to take me to the cells. But they give us space, a few minutes together.

  Arthur goes, “I’m sorry, that seems the price we had to pay.”

  “A bargain! It’s nothing! Everyone else walked! I’ll do the time happily, Arthur. It’s not going to kill me.” I’m almost as enthusiastic as I sound.

  “I’ll ask the Appeal Court for a continuance of bail. I can get on that right now.”

  “Don’t, Arthur. Please don’t rock the boat. We appeal, they appeal — isn’t that the way it works? Goddamn it, Arthur, just go, you got a flight at four.”

  “Rivie—”

  “Just go!” I turn myself over to my guards. The cuffs rattle as I blow Arthur a two-handed kiss. “I love you! You were brilliant! When I get out I want to meet Ulysses!”

  Chapter 26: Arthur

  1

  Sunday, July 21

  “Seen much of Jeremiah’s ghost lately?” Margaret can’t help taking digs at Arthur’s dig — his curious obsession, she calls it. “So when is the official unveiling of whatever the heck is supposed to be down that well?”

  Margaret is in Newfoundland and they’re on FaceTime. Arthur has to set his phone down to pull on his hiking boots. Ulysses whines impatiently — he resents the intrusion of old human friend’s little talking tool.

  “The first Monday of August — that’s the fifth, I think, British Columbia Day. A confluence of New Agers and senior citizens of the Historical Society have deemed this to be the extravaganza of the century, with both incorporeal and historic significance.”

  “I’ll be there. My Atlantic tour ends Friday, then just a couple of stops in Quebec. I can’t wait to see all the disappointed faces when they open the tomb. Can you keep a secret?”

  “I made my living doing so.”

  “I’ve finally got Environment interested in cliff swallows and resident falcons. Keep mum and stay tuned.”

  Arthur assumes she means the feds may buy out TexAmerica’s mining rights and attach the quarry to the existing park. That might be something else to celebrate on BC Day.

  “Can you keep another secret?”

  “What?”

  “I’m retiring from politics. I’m coming home. Full-time.”

  “What? Why?”

  “To keep an eye on you. Blessed is the man that endureth temptation, especially when his wife isn’t three thousand miles away. Joking. It’s time. The party needs rejuvenation and I need a life.”

  “Well, I am deliriously happy, darling.” He can’t count the times she has sworn to do this. Never before had he heard such conviction in her voice.

  “Good luck on Wednesday, Arthur. Give her a hug from me. Tell her I love her.”

  And with a loud, anxious sigh she signs off.

  * * *

  “Come along,” he tells Ulysses, who knows where they’re going and bounds ahead toward the north pasture, leaping over six cedar rails with grace and power.

  Arthur is in less hurry, and uses the gate, stepp
ing around the poop patties, his emotions at war — he’s elated by Margaret’s news but dismayed over Rivie, feeling he has failed her. Margaret’s big sigh was an expression of her deep concern for the young woman, who in three days will likely be shipped off to a federal penitentiary.

  At the hearing last week, Justice Donahue reserved formal sentencing to this Wednesday, having forewarned Rivie she will be condemned to “an appropriate term of imprisonment.” Her reasons will be carefully written, the pithy lines widely quoted. Her final stab at gaining honour and respect. Language that will hold up on appeal.

  Arthur had argued well, but to predictably deaf ears. Yes, M’Lady, Ms. Levitsky tried to sneak out of Canada with a fraudulent passport. But who suffered injury as a result? Who has been hurt, what property was damaged, what harm has been done to anyone or any thing? Ms. Levitsky earned a sterling pre-sentence report, she’s a first offender, deterrence is a negligible factor, surely a suspended sentenced with probation is called for.

  It unsettles him that Rivie insists she won’t appeal her sentence, however punitive it may be. But there is a rationale: Why encourage counteraction? Though Azra Khan has gone through the motions of filing notices of appeal against the not-guilty verdicts, he has let it be known he has little appetite for fighting a new trial. The public mood is strongly opposed. The Crown has a face-saving conviction. As Rivie put it, why rock the boat? Why risk a new trial with a less sympathetic jury?

  Certainly, the chances of being blessed with a similarly brave and defiant jury are slight. The prospects of empanelling another Irish wolfhound lover seem infinitesimal. But that may have been a factor in last month’s acquittals because it turns out that juror Joyce Evans, the SPCA board member, keeps a pair of them. Arthur learned that while sharing an elevator with her after the verdict. She’d read about Ulysses’s heroic rescue of a toddler in Quarry Park. She showed Arthur a wallet-sized photo of her two, and they shared wolfhound lore until Arthur realized he’d missed his floor.

  Ulysses leads him down to a wetland vividly decorated with bracken fronds and the giant, Jurassic leaves of skunk cabbage.

  Arthur thought he’d gotten over his obsessive sightings of Jeremiah but there’s his scrawny shape moving about in a copse of salal and alder. Ulysses also sees him, because he stiffens. But of course it’s a deer, and Ulysses is off faster than a speeding bullet — on what turns out to be another profitless quest, returning to Arthur with his tongue hanging out and a blanket of burrs on his coat.

  Up the hill is Stoney’s backhoe, consigned to the sidelines while Stoney and Dog do the delicate handwork. Dog, anyway — Arthur can see him from the rim of the well’s moat, seven feet down, working with a trowel around the cemented rocks at the base. The laconic little stump of a man waves to him, then continues to plug away.

  A pump and generator have been used sporadically to drain runoff from the moat, but the well itself seems dry — though it’s no longer a well but a stone column buttressed with timber braces. It has developed a lean that’s slightly less angled than the Tower of Pisa.

  Dog’s boss seems missing in action — then Arthur spots him sleeping with his boots on under a hanging tarp. Pooped out already at noon.

  Ulysses slurps him awake, or at least half-awake, mumbling, “I love you, Marylou.” A reference to a comely newcomer who offers spiritual bodywork in the Wellness Centre.

  Stoney struggles up. “I’m not blaming you, sire, but you interrupted my midday meditation. No offence taken. Let’s get to work here.”

  Rubbing his eyes, he leads Arthur to the moat, talking nonstop. “What we got on our hands here is an enigma. Now, your ordinary well, there has to be a way for water to seep in, but this here’s a dry well, sealed right to the bottom. Which means Jeremiah couldn’t have drowned, according to your theory.”

  Arthur follows him down a ladder onto some planks on which Dog squats and scrapes.

  “Now normally when you fall down a well, it’s because you were hauling up water while trashed on booze or dope. But that ain’t the case here, because the element of water is missing. So instead of a fairly comfortable watery death, old Jeremiah lay down here all crippled and screaming for help until he starved to death—”

  “Shut up, Stoney. Show me proof this is watertight.”

  He invites Arthur to stick his arm into a snug tunnel dug under the cemented base of the well.

  Arthur declines. “It’s not that I don’t trust you, Stoney.”

  2

  Monday, August 5

  The Day of the Big Dig, a sunny holiday, has attracted a grand turnout for Jeremiah’s hoped-for exhumation. The entire Historical Society is here, among many other island dignitaries — including the ever-skeptical Member for Cowichan and the Islands. “Be careful,” she hollers down to Stoney, who’s chipping away rocks to create an entry point. “He may still be alive.”

  A tent settlement of overnighting hippies is nearby, including the curious denizens of the Bleak Creek commune, many in loose robes gaily decorated with garlands of flowers and twigs.

  The usual barroom habitués are here too, drawn by rumours of liquid refreshments, which, to their disappointment, turn out to be coffee, tea, and lemonade prepared by the Ladies of the Hall. But there are also sandwiches and cookies.

  A surprise guest pulled in Saturday: Stefan Petterson, the wildlife-whispering ex-farmhand, whom Solara Lang is putting up for the long weekend. “I couldn’t resist,” he said. A comment veiled by ambiguity: he may have been referring to the ardent hospitality from his host, who cheerfully strolls about with him and Ulysses.

  Margaret aroused Arthur for a sunrise walk this morning and mischievously took him by Solara’s house. A sneak peek through an uncurtained bedroom window revealed the pair entwined in presumably exhausted sleep. “I knew it,” Margaret whispered. Arthur hadn’t; he was nonplussed.

  Margaret’s buoyant mood — she’s been thus since announcing her return to civilian life — is also fuelled by the soon-to-be-announced decision by Parks Canada to annex the quarry to the national park. The discovery of a rare species of bat taking up residence in the caves sealed the deal.

  Despite worldwide species loss, despite the climate crisis, despite the wildly ignorant refusals to accept scientific consensus about this warming planet, there have been victories this year, and Arthur proudly counts his own contribution, the defence of the Sarnia Seven and its impact: many governments have been racing to curb the use of neonics; many are accelerating efforts to save pollinators and their habitats.

  The one hiccup to the courtroom coup is the vindictive sentence Rivie Levitsky got for her victimless crime: two years in a federal penitentiary. Arthur has no doubt that Colleen Donahue took out her anger at the jury on her, anger stoked by her frustration and her sense of humiliation. Arthur suspects Azra Khan filed notices of appeal against the acquittals merely to placate her.

  Rivie’s decision not to provoke him by appealing sentence is a strong indicator of forensic craftiness, an essential quality for a winning counsel. When Arthur last visited her, a week ago, he found her studying for her LSAT.

  She’s taking her sentence well. Could have been worse, she insists: she’s in Grand Valley Institution for Women, in Kitchener, Ontario, in minimum security, sharing a cottage not a cell, kept apart from the hardened inmates of the neighbouring cellblock. Arthur now must focus on getting her out on early parole. He will pull no punches. Faulk, Quan, Dubois is working on it.

  P.W. Peedles, chair of the Historical Society and pillar of Garibaldi high society, has been watching the hippies with trepidation and distaste, and seems particularly offended by a blatantly exposed breast feeding a baby.

  He catches Margaret grinning at him, and pretends he was actually looking at Stefan, a pair of yellow warblers on his outstretched arm. “How does he do that?”

  “Inexplicably,” Margaret says.

  The pum
p goes on, sucking up the water pooling around Stoney’s boots. Dog clambers down to take a turn with pick and shovel. They’re close to breaking through, and as the crowd gathers round, the Garibaldi Highlanders pipe band strikes up one of their favourites, something called “The Miners’ Lament.”

  Finally, the opening is wide enough for Stoney to poke his head in and probe with a flashlight.

  An exultant call: “Gangbusters!”

  A clay jug tumbles out, stoppered with a thick, round wooden peg and sealed with wax. Another jug follows, then more.

  * * *

  The well ultimately yields up a dozen such containers, all full. But not Jeremiah’s bones. Arthur’s pet theory has failed, and Margaret joshes him about that, yet he’s glad the old bootlegger didn’t die ignominiously in a drunken fall.

  The message from his ghost is simple and generous. The jug that is his constant companion on his wanderings was the overlooked clue. “There’s more to be found, lads,” Jeremiah was saying. “Have a nip on me.” This well-aged moonshine is his gift to Garibaldi.

  The Historical Society has rescued most of the jugs but Chairman Peedles is persuaded by an enthusiastic show of hands to allow a trio of brave volunteers — Gomer Goulet, Ernie Priposki, and Baldy Johansson — to do a taste test.

  About a hundred and ten proof, says Baldy, an expert, twice busted for illegal stills. Gomer remarks on its lingering aftertaste of potatoes and rhubarb. Ernie claims to have tasted heaven. Cud Brown insists on trying. Then Stoney and McCoy and Emily LeMay, and then a couple of jars begin going the rounds.

  Some locals leave, some come late, but the party goes on into the long evening. The fumes of these distilled spirits seem to drift about the encampment like low-lying mist, and for the first time in twenty-six years Arthur finds himself a little squiffy.