The Darkening Archipelago (26 page)

Lance Grey stood up. “You can't come into a minister's office and make that sort of accusation. You can't sit in
my
office and accuse
me
of bribery, or whatever it is you're doing.”

“I've got one piece left to fit into the puzzle, Lance. Then I'm taking this whole thing down.”

“You'll go down with it, Archie.”

“I'm past caring.”

“Think of your family, Archie.”

Archie walked back toward the entrance of the Legislature. His hands were sweating and his face was flushed. He felt his whole body become weak, and he had to stop and put an arm on a marble column to steady himself. He closed his eyes and took a breath. He saw ravens, their black backs iridescent in the sun. He opened his eyes. One more trick up his sleeve, he thought.

Instead of walking back downtown after leaving the Legislature, he headed south, through the character houses with their four-colour paint jobs, into the neighbourhood of James Bay. In fifteen minutes he was on the seawall. He sucked in the air greedily, its coolness revitalizing him. He found a set of stairs and made his way to the pebble beach below. The winter storms had deposited driftwood and kelp in a hurly-burly fashion there, and he stepped through the tangle and found a place to sit. He let his legs dangle, tucked his hands inside his pockets, and looked across the Strait of Juan de Fuca at Washington state's Cascade Mountains and the Olympic Peninsula. Archie watched gulls wheel overhead. He watched container ships bear down the strait, heading for the open ocean beyond.

Archie felt a momentary sense of envy. How he would love to head out to the open ocean right now. His people were inland water people. Unlike the Nuu-chah-nulth, who had taken to the vast open waters of the Pacific, his heritage rested on the smaller waters of the inland straits. But at that very moment, Archie Ravenwing wanted nothing more than to feel the vastness of the big water surround him. He thought of salmon, how they are born in tiny creeks deep in the Coast Ranges, and how, when they are still so young, migrate toward the immeasurably vast waters of the Pacific.

The sense of liberation these tiny creatures might feel when at last they break free of comparatively claustrophobic inlets and channels, and, for the first time, join with the incalculably vast ocean, was something Archie Ravenwing dreamed of.

He watched ships pass in the opposite direction, making for the Port of Vancouver, or for Seattle at the head of Puget Sound. Archie could now see that the decisions he had made over the last few years had begun to confine him to smaller and smaller waters. Soon, he knew, he'd be on dry land.

He had been sitting for half an hour when his cellphone chimed.

“Ravenwing here,” he said, pressing the phone tightly to his ear.

“Hi, Archie, it's Charles.”

Archie's mind raced.

“Charles Knobbles, from The Pacific Salmon Foundation.”

“Right, hey, Charles. Sorry, I'm getting old, didn't place the voice.”

“You're in town, aren't you?”

“Yeah, how'd you know?”

“Someone at your house told me. Can we have a coffee?”

“Sure, I could use one. What's up?”

“It's better I tell you in person. Half an hour?” They arranged to meet at a James Bay coffee shop that doubled as a bookstore.

“Sounds fine,” Ravenwing said, snapping his phone shut.

Archie stood, worked the stiffness from his joints, and walked back into the community. He strolled through the streets admiring the neatly painted houses, and within thirty minutes he found the shop and stepped inside. It was warm and smelled like fresh baking.

“Hi, Archie.” A man approached him. Now he remembered. The Pacific Salmon Foundation was part of the sos coalition, and Charles was their lead person on salmon farming. They shook hands.

“Can I buy you a coffee?”

They sat and drank coffee, and Archie ate a massive apple fritter doughnut. The food and coffee warmed him.

“What brings you to Victoria?”

“Last ditch effort to convince the minister he's making a mistake.”

“Minister is out of town today.”

“I know. I found out too late. Chickens or something. Somebody caught a cold.” Archie laughed. “I met with Lance Grey instead.”

“He's a slippery bastard,” said Knobbles.

“He sure is,” said Ravenwing, finishing his food and wiping his mouth on a napkin.

“I sometimes get the feeling that Grey is running the show on aquaculture. That the minister is just a public face and that Grey does all the thinking on that file. Makes all the decisions.”

Archie drank his coffee. “Not so unusual,” he said.

“No. But scary. The guy hasn't been elected. We don't know anything about him. He's certainly got no qualifications to be making such decisions. Christ, he's got a degree in economics, not ecology or anything relevant. And he's what? Like twenty years old?”

Archie smiled at Knobbles. “Just listen to us old war horses,” he said.

Charles Knobbles returned the smile. They sat for a moment. “So, what is it that you wanted to talk to me about?” Archie asked.

“Right, I almost forgot. Listen, it's good that you're here today. In person. There's going to be an announcement soon, I don't know when. But soon. I just got wind of it from someone in the premier's office. The minister of economic development, the minister for Aboriginal relations, and the minister of agriculture, maybe even the premier himself. They're going to announce a new First Nations training fund. It's designed to help First Nations people transition to resource economy jobs. Mining, forestry, and aquaculture.”

“It's been in the works for years,” said Archie. “I saw it when I was on council.”

“Well, it's about to be announced. And here's the thing I thought you should know: It's got a hefty budget attached to it for industry incentives. Big bucks. There's going to be a bunch of money pushed through for business and First Nations partnerships. I think there's going to be one between the North Salish and Stoboltz.”

Archie smiled. “I should have seen that coming. How much?”

“Not sure, but it's going to be in the hundreds of thousands, at least. Likely in the millions. It's a ten-year agreement. It's on the up and up. From a lot of people's perspectives it's a good deal.”

“Except that it cements salmon farming as the backbone of our economy.”

“It will be pretty hard to argue that salmon farming isn't good for Port Lostcoast. Everybody in town will be driving a new boat.”

Archie breathed out and sat back in his chair. It seemed that the trickster had been tricked again.

That was how they did it, thought Archie. They didn't need to hide the cash in a paper bag and pass it under the table. They could make an announcement about it on the six o'clock news and get above-the-fold coverage in all the newspapers. They could use the provincial treasury like their own private slush fund to pour taxpayers' money onto the fire that was burning and destroying a culture older than time. And they could get people like Greg White Eagle to stand up and applaud when they did it.

Archie was sitting on the bed in his hotel room at the Traveller's Inn. He had his coat off and his feet up, and he was flicking through the channels. He felt beaten. He had nothing new on what Stoboltz was up to in the Broughton, or why the samples of sea lice being analyzed at u vic were so much more virulent than the samples he and Cassandra were finding. He had been shut out of the minister's agenda. He'd been laughed at by Lance Grey. And threatened. “In way over your head,” Grey had told him.

Maybe, worst of all, he was about to be made a fool of by Greg White Eagle. Here was a man, thought Ravenwing, who had taken money, which he used to win an election. Here was a man who had likely bought the votes of his own people with that money, and who was about to be a hero when the minister announced the agreement between the First Nations, the province, and Stoboltz. Greg would run for chief, and the whole Nation would fall under this thumb.

It made Archie Ravenwing sick to his stomach.

He flicked the channels.

He was about to have a shower when his cellphone rang. Maybe it was Gracie, calling to see how the day had gone. It would be good to hear her voice. Instead it was a voice he didn't know.

“Is this Archie Ravenwing?”

“It is. Who's this?” The caller id said the number was blocked.

“We haven't met, but I have something for you. Something I think you want.”

“What is it? Who is this?”

“Can you meet me?”

“When?”

“Now.”

Archie looked at this watch. It was ten-thirty. “Okay,” he said. “Where?”

“Chinatown. Fan Tan Alley.”

“How will I know you?”

“You will.”

The line went dead.

Archie looked at the phone in his hand. This day will never end, he thought. He peered out the hotel window. The night was thick with pea-soup fog. Archie stood and put a fleece coat on and pulled his raincoat over it. He found a pair of gloves, slipped his keys in his pocket, and left the hotel to walk downtown.

Mystery man said he had something for him, something he would want. Well, let's see, thought Archie.

It was just few blocks from the Traveller's Inn to the corner of Douglas and Fisgard, and from there he turned right and made his way toward the small, historic Chinatown. Oldest in the continent, he knew. The Chinese and the province's First Nations shared a common historical thread, both having been exploited and demoralized, their resources stolen from them. The First Nations had been imprisoned and abused in residential schools, had their culture and language stolen, their fish, trees, and minerals taken without compensation. The Chinese had been forced to pay a head tax, and toiled in near slavery in the gold mines and later on the railroad.

He crossed Government Street, passed under the Gates of Harmonious Interest — the ornate archway adorned with lions and colourful scrolled woodwork — and walked down the nearly deserted street. The air had grown cold, and the heavy fog that had formed on the inner harbour rolled in sheets through the downtown core of the city. The streetlamps were haloed in mist, and Archie couldn't see the far end of the street. He walked briskly, feeling the chill through his clothes. He passed an open restaurant that served won ton noodles, and walked past two people sleeping in a doorway to a green grocer. Then he was at the mouth of Fan Tan Alley. He stopped and looked around him. A few people strolled up from Store Street toward Government. He watched them go. He peered into the alley, so narrow that in many places a man could reach across and touch both sides. It was dark, except for the light from a hooded lamp in the doorway of one of the alley's shops, which cast a pale glow into the gloom of the night.

Archie stood for another minute, waiting to be approached, then walked down the narrow alley, taking his hands from his pockets. It was a gamble. It had occurred to him that he was being set up. But then Fan Tan was a game of chance. He was taking his.

He got halfway down the darkened passage, to a place where corridors led to courtyards, and wooden doors indicated where opium dens once operated, replaced today by a music store, a new age shop, and a traditional barber shop. He heard footsteps behind him. He turned and saw a man moving toward him through the misty night.

The man passed under a dim light, but Archie couldn't make out his face. He spoke, and Archie couldn't place the voice. “Thanks for coming, Mr. Ravenwing. I've got something that I think you're going to find very interesting.”

19

Nancy Webber always sat next to the window when she flew, especially if she was flying over the Rocky Mountains. She watched below her as the foothills disappeared beneath the airplane's fuselage. It was late afternoon, and the sun was sinking into the western horizon, casting long, liquid shadows across the convoluted earth below her. She moved her face to the window and looked south, toward the horizon of bumps where just that morning she had walked. She could not discern the dark shapes of the Porcupine Hills from any of the other windrows of earth in the distance, but she knew they were there. Was it just this morning, at dawn, that she and Walter Blackwater had stood on the hilltop looking west toward the mountains painted by the rising sun? Now, as the sun faded, casting long, creeping shadows over the dales, Nancy Webber wondered what exactly she had gotten herself into.

Every decision she had made in her life had been proceeded by what she thought of now as “a moment of truth.” An instant of clarity that provided her with a choice. In that moment — really just a split second of insight — she could choose which direction to follow. She could make a choice to pursue a thought, an idea, a story, a person, or not. Sometimes she chose well, and other times, not so much. Of course, the trick was choosing in the absence of knowledge of outcomes. Who knew? Who knew what the choice might lead to? If she knew, would she choose differently? It was a false argument. She couldn't know.