The Cardinal Divide (6 page)

It was over dinner that he told her. “I've got to go away for a few weeks, Sarah.” He ate a hamburger and she munched on chicken fingers in a classic mom-and-pop style diner run by an elderly Chinese couple.

She poked at her French fries. “Again?”

“I don't travel that much anymore, do I?”

“You were gone for two weeks just last month.”

“That was in February.”

“Seems like last month.”

“I know it does, sweetheart,” he said, taking a drink of Pepsi. “It feels that way to me, too. But my work involves some travel, you know that. That was the price of moving out here, away from Ottawa. I sometimes have to go and meet with people to do my work.”

“Are you going to Ottawa?”

“Not this time, sweetheart. Alberta.”

Her face brightened. “Will you see Grandma?”

“Maybe,” he said, taking a bite of his burger. “I'm going to a place called Oracle, west of Red Deer. That's about six hours from Grandma's place, but I'll try to get down to see her.”

“When can I go to visit Grandma?”

“When would you like to?”

“Soon.”

“
OK
, we'll go soon. July is a better time than May or June to go and see Grandma,” said Cole. “It's often really rainy in the foothills in June. Sometimes it snows. July is better. The hills are covered in wildflowers, and the cattle have been put to pasture. We can go riding.”

“I like to ride horses,” said Sarah matter-of-factly.

“I know you do. Let's plan on a trip there this summer. Deal?”

“I've never been to Grandma's ranch, you know,” Sarah said, eating a French fry.

“Really?” asked Cole, though he knew it was the truth.

“Really.”

“Well, I haven't been there in a while myself,” said Cole, introspectively. “Three years. Since I moved out here.”

“Really? Don't you like it there?”

“Sure I like it there, sweetheart, but I just never find the time or money to visit. Grandma comes here once a year to visit you.”

“But it's not the same. I want to see the horses.”

“Well, then we'll have to go.”

“Promise?”

“I promise. We'll go this summer. Deal?” he repeated.

“Deal.” The girl reached her hand across the table and Cole Blackwater shook it firmly.

On Sunday he changed the oil in the Toyota and did a quick tune-up, changed the spark plugs and cables and blew out the air filter. Sarah handed him tools. Then he packed. Along with his street clothes, he chucked outdoor gear into a duffle bag. At the last minute he added some riding gear: boots, his aged and worn chaps, and a dusty Stetson that had belonged to his father and which Cole had never worn. This he threw into the bed of the pickup. Then he packed his laptop and other technology into a shoulder bag along with some mostly clean clothes he herded from the floor, his closet, and the drawers of a dresser.

He spent Sunday afternoon with Sarah. They walked along False Creek and then downtown and had a late lunch at an outdoor café packed with Vancouverites basking in the sun. They caught the SkyTrain back as far as the Main Street Station and walked up Main Street.

“I'm tired,” Sarah complained.

“Not as tired as I am,” said Cole.

They stopped for gelato at a new trendy shop on Main and dogged it the rest of the way home.

“I'll drop you at your mom's on the way out of town,
OK
, sweetheart?”

“I'm going to miss you, Daddy,” she said.

“Me too, angel.”

Late in the afternoon they drove down Main, turned west on Broadway, and threaded their way through afternoon traffic to Kitsilano.

There was a scene. He saw it was coming.

“You can't keep expecting me to pick up your slack, Cole,” Jennifer said when he told her that he couldn't take Sarah the following weekend.

“It's just one weekend, Jennifer.”

“You always say that, and then it's two and three. Do you think I'm stupid?”

He refused to answer that question. “This is an important job, Jennifer.”

“Who's it for?”

He told her.

“Sounds like you're sinking, Cole, taking work from backwoods yokels.”

He didn't say anything. A thin smile came to his lips as he looked away down the tree-lined streets. All the cherry trees were in bloom, and the air smelled of blossoms. Finally he turned back and said, “It's an important issue.”

They stood there in silence.

“Well, fine,” she finally said. “What can I do? You go off and do this important job. I'll take care of our daughter.”

He grinned again. Two stab wounds were all that he could take. His smile faded. “Someone still has to fight for what they believe in,” he said, “and not just fight for a paycheque.”

“That's tough talk, Cole. Tough talk.”

“The truth hurts,” he said.

“The truth is we're all fighting for a paycheque,” she said.

He looked around the neighbourhood, up at the two-storey house, the lawn, the Lexus in the driveway. The whole scene was worth a cool mill, maybe more in the hot Vancouver market. “Some of us don't seem to have to work too hard,” he said. “What's Roger pulling in?”

“Fuck you, Cole,” she said.

The chitchat was interrupted by a tiny voice. “Please don't fight. I hate it when you fight.” Sarah pushed past her mother and stood on the step between Jennifer and Cole.

“We're not fighting, munchkin,” said Jennifer.

“Yes, we were,” said her father. “I'm sorry.”

“It's
OK
,” said Sarah. “Be safe,
OK
Daddy?” she said brightly, beaming up at him.

“I will be. It's just a campaign plan. Nothing dangerous,” he said, bending down. “Kisses?”

She put her arms around him and hugged him. “I love you, Daddy.”

“I love you too, angel. I'll call you in a couple of days when I get settled.”

He walked down the driveway and got into his truck. He waved and was gone.

He drove as far as Kamloops that night and checked himself into the Motel 6 after midnight. On Monday he rose early and by 7
AM
turned north on Highway 5 and drove toward Clearwater, Valemont, and Jasper National Park. The day was clear and bright and Cole Blackwater felt good to be on the road with a stint of meaningful work ahead. By late afternoon he crossed the Columbia River and turned east again to climb up the western slope of the Rocky Mountains through Mount Robson Provincial Park. His timing was perfect, and he was rewarded with a view of the highest peak in the Canadian Rockies. In the crepuscular light the giant peak stood chiselled in white, stark against the indigo sky. It was good to be back in the Rocky Mountains. He slipped an old Blue Rodeo disk into the truck's after-factory
CD
player and listened to the band croon the same sentiment:
And I'd rather be back in the Rocky Mountains, than sitting in some bar on Queen Street.

The Toyota laboured over the Yellowhead Pass and slipped into Alberta. The anticipated push and pull of his home province hit him. He was ready for it. At least he thought he was. Three years ago he swore he would never be back. He was on the run then from the ruins of his Ottawa life. His stopover in Alberta was a spur-of-the-moment decision; in a dilapidated state of mind he felt an urge to be in the comforting hills of his family's ranch. But he found no comfort there. His visit culminated in nothing short of calamity. That tragedy sent him skidding across British Columbia to come to rest on the wide Fraser River delta, in Vancouver, and he'd never looked back.

Until now.

As he crossed the Great Divide and drove down the long back slope of the continent, he was coming as close to home as he had been in a while. Panic gripped him by the throat. As he neared the town of Jasper, his breath quickened and his heart seemed to skip a beat. Keep it together, Cole, he thought. He gripped the wheel and struggled to focus his eyes. You haven't been in Alberta an hour and you're falling apart.

He stopped in the town of Jasper to stretch his legs and steady his nerves. From a phone booth he called Peggy McSorlie to tell her he'd be in Oracle that night. They arranged a 10
AM
meeting at
her house the next day, and he took directions to get to her spread a half hour outside of town.

Seeking some comfort in human company, he made a call to a friend he knew from his days at the Canadian Conservation Association. The phone rang three times and then he heard the familiar voice: “Jim Jones.”

“Jim, Cole Blackwater here. How are you?”

“I'm well, Cole. Been a long time. Long time.”

“It has. Say, I'm in town. How about a quick drink?”

“Sure thing. Why don't you come by the place, Cole?”

“
OK
, but I can't stay too long. I'm on my way to Oracle tonight.”

“No trouble, Cole. Oracle's not more than an hour's drive. I'll have you on your way safe and sound.”

“Fine, fine. Where you at?”

Jim gave him directions and Cole navigated through Jasper's back streets to the address.

Jim Jones met him at the door. The house was a cedar Pana-bode with a few additions since its original construction three decades before. The home was set in a yard strewn with monolithic boulders, piles of aggregate stone, slabs of limestone, and clusters of round and water-polished river rock in various states of arrangement. Some of the larger rocks had been ordered in clusters and erected as monuments, while others were simply piled, awaiting attention. There was no lawn. Instead, crushed gravel filled the spaces between the arrangements. The effect was pleasing, despite being a work in progress. It felt like a combination of Japanese Zen garden, quarry, and construction site.

“Doing a little landscaping?” Cole asked, walking up the pathway that wove through the stone.

Jim Jones was a geologist, though he'd spent most of his sixty years doing other things. But his passion for stone was obvious in his front yard.

“Just a little,” Jones smiled, extending a large, rough hand with a few bandaged fingers for Cole to shake. “Good to see you, Cole,” he said.

“Good to see you, Jim. What's it been? Five, six years?”

“About that, I'd say. I was in Ottawa when they reviewed the National Parks Act. That was an epoch ago now, it seems.”

Cole stepped into the house. It was warm and smelled pleasingly of wood smoke. “Hang your coat behind the door there, Cole, or just toss it wherever you like. What will you have?”

“What have you got?”

“Most everything a road-weary body could want, I'd guess.”

“A nice cold beer would be great,” Cole said, mouth watering.

“Kokanee do you?”

“Fine.”

They settled into the living room with their beer. Jim sat in an Ikea reclining chair in front of the wood stove. Cole walked around the room, beer in hand, drinking deeply and looking at the artwork on the walls and the books stacked on the shelves.

“So, Cole, are you still with the
CCA
?”

Cole smiled. He assumed that his departure from Ottawa was common knowledge in the enviro world. He was simultaneously pleased and disappointed that someone, even someone living near the edge of the universe as Jim Jones did, didn't hang on his every parry and thrust. Finally he said, “No. Not for more than three years.”

“They quit you or you quit them?”

Cole took a drink of his beer. “Good question. I guess a little of both.”

Jim's eyes twinkled. “Sounds like they quit you.”

Cole kept his back to Jim, reading the spines of books in a floor-to-ceiling bookcase built into the wall. “I'd say I had a little help in my decision to go.”

“Its no matter one way or another,” said Jim, taking a sip of beer. “I've never had a job so good that I couldn't quit or get fired from it. Hell, I've been fired from half a dozen jobs, and quit far more 'n that. All that really matters is that you keep some pride and dignity and in the end,
walk
away, not run or get your ass booted out of town.”

“Suppose so,” said Cole, his lips on the beer bottle's mouth. His metaphorical ass still sore, he meditated on that while taking another deep pull of his beer.

“So what are you doing these days?” Jones asked.

“Freelance stuff,” said Cole, happy to turn the conversion to the present, regardless of how dismal it seemed to him. “Consulting. Strategy. Communications.”

“Hired gun, hey?”

“Suppose you could say that.”

“So what brings you to Oracle, as if I can't guess?”

“I'm doing a little job for the Eastern Slopes folks.”

“The McLeod River Mine down below the Cardinal Divide?”

“You got it.”

“That's a fucking nightmare if I ever heard of one. And I've heard of a lot of them,” said Jones, shaking his head and pulling at the label on his beer.

“What do you know about it?”

“About the mine, or the bunch of folks trying to stop it?”

“Both, I guess.”

“Well, if you ask me, and I guess you just did,” he smiled, “I'd say they were both a damned mess.”

Cole sat down across from Jim on a long, worn couch. He looked at the man, inviting him to continue.

“The mine is being planned as your typical open-pit coal job. It's going to be just south of the headwaters of the McLeod River.”

“That's right along the southern ridge of the Cardinal Divide, isn't it?” interrupted Blackwater.

“'Tis. The plan calls for them to dig straight back along the southwestern side of the divide toward the park boundary. Build an all-weather haul road over the divide, and then a railway line north to move the coal out to Oracle. The mine is going to be nearly twenty kilometres long,” said Jones, shaking his head.