Snow Job (15 page)

Arthur slipped behind the door as it opened. A high-pitched, excited voice. “Front desk says Mr. Beauchamp dropped by. Where did he get to?”

Augustina shrugged. “Search me.”

Wentworth scowled. “Damn, he promised to spend a few days with me.”

Arthur held his breath until the door closed again.

A
balmy ten Celsius on the last day of November on Garibaldi Island (ten below in Ottawa), the fields draped in mist, a splendid day for a jaunt to the General Store — a cherished routine: get the mail, buy groceries, catch up on island gossip, while away an hour of lazy afternoon.

From Blunder Bay to Potters Road to Centre Road, up the Breadloaf Hill hairpin, past the driveway to the handsome new community hall, and as one descends toward the flats a cinema-scopic view of scores of four-wheeled relics rusting in Stoney’s two acres. There was Arthur’s beloved 1969 Fargo, waiting in line outside the garage, waiting for the master mechanic to install the rebuilt transmission promised two months ago. From within that garage, the revving of an engine, an ugly spew of exhaust from a broken window. His helpmate, a stubby fellow known only as Dog, scrambled out, coughing.

Stoney claimed to be selling his crop for top dollar, and there was evidence of that in the yard, a boat trailer with a shiny twenty-foot cabin cruiser. As well, it was rumoured that he had bought a hot-air balloon from a mainland hobbyist. Arthur shuddered, almost uncontrollably, at the thought of going up in one of those things. With Stoney.

Next door, the Shewfelts, as usual, were rushing the season: Christmas elves had appeared on their lawn. They’d be garishly lit
at dusk, a frightening sight to any tourists wandering by. Soon, Santa, Rudolph, Donner, Blitzen, and the rest of the herd would make their annual appearance upon their flat roof.

Arthur had pulled into Garibaldi late yesterday, in good cheer after his rescue of Zack Flett, looking forward to some repose at Blunder Bay. A few days, maybe, while a powwow was set up with Erzhan’s wife and landlord. He must engage with Brian Pomeroy too, who maintained a mail drop in Fort Malchance, a village in the Subarctic vastness, off the telephonic grid. Augustina Sage was trying to locate someone up there with a satellite phone, the mayor or chief or whoever was in charge.

Savannah Buckett, predictably, had been hosting a meeting when Arthur pulled in, lending her expertise to islanders opposing Starkers Cove, a condo development at the bottom of Norbert Road. That curling country byway was to be widened to highways standards, a waterfront acreage to be deforested. “When on Garibaldi, act locally,” she said. “Save Lower Mount Norbert Road,” said their stencilled signs.

Savannah had rewarded Arthur with a bone-crushing hug for freeing Zack, who’d called from Vancouver, where he was conferring with radical soldiers of protest in the inner city. He was off to the Kootenays next, taking on a larger role, organizing, speaking at rallies, seeking coalescence among eco-activists. Savannah seemed not to be pining for her mate — maybe she needed a break from their squabbles.

That night, while reading in bed, Arthur had been startled to see her enter his bedroom, in her pyjamas, looking confused. A sleepwalking episode. She’d confessed to bunking in his room after some chilly set-tos with Zack, so Arthur presumed she’d acted out of unconscious habit. After dazed hesitation, she’d reversed herself, descended to the main-floor bedroom.

He took a turn past the Bulbaconi vineyard, another failed enterprise by another hobby-farming dilettante, this year’s crop green and small and hard as pebbles. Another curve, and Hopeless Bay
opened up, and he could see carpenters hoisting roof beams for Abraham Makepeace’s new tavern. The dour, skeletal postmaster-bootlegger was finally going legitimate.

Wildly out of character with the venerable old store, the addition was of radical design, cantilevered over the saltchuck, offering opportunities for the drunk and depressed to contemplate a watery end. In the meantime, it was business as usual in the enclosed porch, which for years had provided liquid relief to islanders. Practically every local had signed the petition in support of the lounge licence, all attesting to the owner’s fault-free history.

The five poker players at the far end of the porch seemed weary and worn, faces stubbled with old growth — all but Emily LeMay’s — and reeking of booze and sweaty effort.

“They been at it for four days and four nights.” Makepeace rang up Arthur’s few purchases, staples for the kitchen. “Some drop out, others join. Herman Schloss hasn’t slept for two nights running, only stops to piss and shit.” Schloss, a music impresario from Los Angeles — either retired or on the run — had recently bought twenty-three acres up by Sunrise Cove. He brushed long tangled hair from his glazed eyes, peeked at a down card, folded.

Makepeace brought out a grab bag of mail, uncollected for several days. “Your
Geographic
and
Lawyer
magazines, postcard from your grandson in Australia, he’s looking to graduate from high school with top honours, so you may want to wire him a little reward. This here fancy letter is from Simon Fraser University, they want to give you an honorary degree next year.”

Arthur picked it up. The flap was sealed, didn’t seem tampered with. “Abraham, I’m not making complaint about your reading my mail, that seems part of the local folkways, but please tell me how you know what’s inside this envelope.”

“You hold it up like this.” Toward the fluorescent lamp. “Half the stuff coming in here is junk mail, which, if you recall, you asked me to intercept.” He sounded peeved. “It’s a lot of extra work.”

“Well done. You’re absolutely right.”

“Overdue notice from the phone company. Maybe them two renegades up at your place aren’t taking care of business.” He reached under the counter. “Here’s a roll of posters they ordered. Bundle of mail for your good lady. Mostly friendly, a couple neutral, one hate letter.”

Arthur stuffed everything into his backpack with the groceries, but didn’t shoulder it yet, took a moment in the lounge with the several kibitzing locals. Oddly, they seemed more interested in watching the poker game than yakking about Bhashyistan’s war declaration. Maybe because it was beyond contemplation. How far Garibaldi Island seemed from the wearying world.

Arthur felt privileged to be in on the making of a rumour about Starkers Cove, so-called because of its summer use by local skinny-dippers. “It’s gonna be a nudist colony.” “Where’d you hear that?” “Look how they adopted its historic name. I saw them people at the bylaw meeting, they looked tanned all over.” Other vital news of the day: the Sproules’s ram sneaked into Mabel Grundy’s pen and seduced her heirloom ewes.

He shared a coffee with Al Noggins, Reverend Al, as everyone called him, the local Anglican priest, who was ruefully contemplating the poker players. “I’m here on assignment from Schloss’s wife. If I don’t get him out of that game, she’s going to shoot him. I can’t budge him, so she’s going to have to do that.”

The undercapitalized Hollywood impresario, it turned out, had lost four cords of winter wood to Ernie Priposki, his DVD collection to Emily LeMay, his twenty-foot cabin cruiser to Stoney, and two of his twenty-three acres to Cud Brown.

“Duck. Here she comes.”

Mookie was her name, minor fame as a 1980s B-movie starlet, still attractive but red-faced now with anger. Ignoring Reverend Al, striding directly up to Schloss, pulling him by his pigtail. “Goddamnit, Herm, you’re coming home right
now
.”

“Last hand, baby.”

“You said that at eleven o’clock last night.”

“Killer hand, babe.”

If it was a bluff, it didn’t work. Local cultural icon Cud Brown, a scrofulous poet who subsisted on grants and readings and part-time jobs, raised him back the two acres of land he’d won. Everyone else threw in their hands, stared solemnly at Schloss, who frantically scribbled something on a slip of paper.

“I thought we agreed, man,” said Cud. “No more IOUs.”

Reverend Al bent to Arthur’s ear. “Cud wants his Land Rover. Herman dotes on that car.”

Mookie jerked his pigtail again. “Let’s fucking get out of here while you’ve got your skin.”

“Two nights with her,” Schloss blurted.

“With who?” Cud asked.

“Mookie. A weekend.”

Arthur couldn’t read anything in her face, not even astonishment. Lost in the State of Catatonia.

“Don’t blame me if she decides to stay for a week.” Cud laid down his hand. “Full house, aces on top.”

Schloss laid down four nines and a joker. “We did it, baby!”

Mookie toppled him backwards over his chair, and he somehow managed to get stuck in the rungs. As he flailed she kicked him in the ribs while howling curses. Reverend Al finally pulled her away, while others scrambled to pick up cards, chips, and IOUs that had spilled to the floor.

After several minutes, peace was restored, and after a long debate about apportioning the spoils the game resumed, the players despondent over losing the mark. Herman Schloss was last seen fleeing by foot from his presumptive life partner.

Arthur’s appetite for local colour satisfied — Margaret would delight in his dramatic retelling — he was about to hoist his backpack when he heard a voice behind him, chillingly recognizable. “I heard there was a game.”

He turned to look upon smiling Ray DiPalma — the crisp new jeans and Stetson defined him as a tenderfoot from the city. Arthur
edged away, unsettled, confused. Should this man be in a ward for the emotionally disturbed? Why was he leeching onto Arthur?

But DiPalma paid him no heed. He was answering a come-hither call from the poker players, another city slicker to be skinned.

Two hours later, in the shank of the warm and misty afternoon, still grumbling about DiPalma’s intrusion on his sanctuary, Arthur was tossing bales into his hay wagon, the last of the fall crop from the northeast pasture. Too damp for animal feed after recent rains, but fine for mulching the garden.

A white compact slowed on Potters Road and disappeared behind a dense thicket of blackberries that served as a natural fence. Seconds later, as Arthur was about to mount his tractor, he heard the frantic squeal of spinning tires, and he sighed and clomped off to help. He could make out the white car, glimpses of it, through the thick tangle of leaves and thorny vines.

Even the sorriest fool wouldn’t park among blackberries, but somehow the incident made sense when it was confirmed for him, unsurprisingly, that the driver was Ray DiPalma — who was now struggling through the heavy growth, catching his new country clothes on the barbed vines, gingerly prying them apart, ducking, crawling.

Arthur ducked too, so he could see him, five feet away, his wire-rims hanging from his nose, a bloody scratch on his cheek, a lesser one on his forehead, others on his unprotected hands.

“Arthur, just the man I want to see. You alone?”

“Yes. Stay there, I’ll cut you out.” The preferred alternative being to attach a chain to his leg and pull him out with the tractor. He retrieved long-handled clippers from the toolkit behind the tractor seat, and on returning found DiPalma squatting, lighting a cigarette.

“Saw you pitching hay, needed a place to park where I wouldn’t be seen. What a tinpot car, no traction, I kind of slid in there. You
look peeved, Arthur, I don’t blame you, but I had to see you about Zachary Flett — they have him down as some kind of ringleader.”

“We’ve figured that out, Ray.” Arthur was close enough now to take in the smell not of nicotine but of cannabis, with an underlying base of Makepeace’s cheap rum.

“There was a crew working him over all weekend — he’s tough. So the deal is this: I was assigned to nose around here on Garibaldi. I told Crumwell, my handler, that I’d been in your apartment, that I’m infiltrating you guys — I had to, in case it got out. He congratulated me, he thinks I’m doing a masterful job. I’m back onside with him.”

Arthur gave him a hand, pulled him to freedom. “Am I to understand that this Crumwell fellow has sent you here to spy?” Arthur’s relationship with DiPalma was threatening to become a comedy of errors. Or no comedy at all, something dangerous. It was hard to believe DiPalma’s superiors were so dull as not to know he was in a state of near collapse. If indeed he was, if it was not a pretense.