Arthur sees this as a strategic error on the part of the authorities. The media may be fickle friends, but are far more influential than most judges want to admit. By and large, the Save Gwendolyn Society has been winning the war of images.
He strides off to the trail head, where he comes upon a uniformed woman standing sentry.
“Sorry, sir, we’re not allowing the public…”
“I’m not the public.” He steps by her, marches ahead, pausing only when he sees Flim and Flam-they’ve snuck through the forest, are behind a fallen tree, aiming cameras at five uniformed men. They, in turn, are looking up at the heavy-bolted fortress. At the railing, Margaret is dwarfed by three young men with the sinewy physiques of basketball players. She looks frail beside them, defiant nonetheless-Arthur knows that arms-folded look, understands there’ll be no early homecoming.
The commanding officer is a sergeant of stern military bearing. He waves his handcuffs, shouts up to them: “I have orders to take you in unless you leave immediately.”
“We forgot our parachutes,” a blond ponytailed leviathan says.
It is then that Arthur sees the rope ladder in a twisted heap at the officers’ feet. The sergeant looks mistrustful, as if assuming they’re withholding a solution. He may be right-the materiel for the zip line isn’t in view, most of it has been hauled high into the canopy. “I call on you to identify yourselves…”
Arthur breaks in. “I instruct my clients to remain silent.” A commanding voice that has the sergeant almost snapping to attention before he turns. A quick spate of introductions, then Arthur engages him in a testy debate about the press ban. Their uncaring attitude about the niceties about fundamental freedoms has him enraged, and his dressing-down has them stalking off.
A thick silence ensues. Then all four above applaud. So do Flim and Flam. Margaret blows him a kiss.
The next morning, half an hour after gulping his granola, Arthur is back in Vancouver. He’s gratified that Tragger Inglis is footing his sky-high account with Syd-Air. Indeed, Roy Bullingham has gone solidly to bat for the Gwendolyn team, has donated old Riley to the cause, and they’ve come up with twelve grounds of appeal. There will be a price to be paid by the sweat of Arthur’s brow.
He leads Selwyn and Lotis into a courtroom filled with reporters, many of whom smile at the lawyer who stood up for them yesterday. Today’s application, before a single judge, is to stay proceedings until a full-dress appeal can be scheduled.
The gods are with Arthur: the judge is Bill Webb, a fellow reformed drunk, founder of the Trial Lawyers’ AA chapter. His chances buoyed, Arthur argues vigorously that Kroop showed bias. Prudhomme responds with the hoary argument about the cost of these many delays of the inevitable, but His Lordship lets him know that justice will not be rushed.
Gwendolyn wins a one-week reprieve. Bill Webb looks poker-faced at Arthur. “By the way, welcome back. We’ll adjourn.”
“Whoa, have you been sleeping with that judge?” Lotis looks at Arthur with awe, perhaps sensing unrevealed powers. But there’s a bond between alcoholics who’ve shared pain and confession; it’s worth an occasional seven-day adjournment.
“The appeal won’t be so easy,” Selwyn says. The pessimist is right. Kroop took a few wide bends but never went off the road. Rhetoric isn’t appealable.
At the other end of the table, Todd Clearihue has a waxy smile as he confers with his legal team. Prudhomme smiles too, clinking the coins in his pocket.
Faloon pulls a soggy tobacco pouch from his sink, squeezes its juice, dark and brackish, into his tin cup. It’s the right time to do this. He’s alone, it’s after six, the quiet time, the doors unracked, the occasional guy listening to a radio or reading.
Faloon is on last grub call and he’s going to try to make it as far as the lineup even if it means doing a swan dive into his mashed potatoes. He puts the pouch under the tap, gives it another soaking. He read somewhere once how just a few drops of pure nicotine on your tongue can kill you in thirty seconds.
He hopes Claudette got around to putting the Nitinat in her name. Also that she got word in time so she doesn’t come out to see him tomorrow, her regular day, Friday. He didn’t plan this too well, they could’ve had one more visit. He keeps telling himself he’s doing this because she truly loves him, and he wants to give her a better life. Because if Faloon ends up doing a back-gate parole in a coffin she may spend the rest of her life in her own prison, the prison they call heartbreak, like the song goes.
Even Arthur Beauchamp couldn’t beat every rap, sometimes you get a dozen people in a jewellery store all picking you out of the lineup, you got to cop a plea. It’s a risk-filled line of work, if you’re caught behind the display cases, all you can do is act indignant, you go, Hey, I was only looking for the bathroom, and you hope you brazen it out the door, but sometimes you can’t.
And he isn’t going to brazen this one out, either, this murder beef, not with having confessed it to Father Rechard, even if it was in his sleep. Not with the DNA. Not with his dumb moves, his stupid plan to get the hell out of Dodge City dressed as Gertrude, it was like admitting guilt to the world.
The Sleepwalking Killer. I couldn’t help myself.
He’s now collected half a cup of tobacco juice with this latest squeeze, which is about what the recipe says. If you picture a full ashtray left out in the rain, you get a rough idea of what it looks like, but worse. It smells like cat shit.
He raises the cup, close his eyes, and does a little prayer just in case. He thinks of how Eve Winters had small talk with him that night at the Breakers, finding him more interesting than the condo guy. How they shared confidences, and her poetic way of talking. The wild relentless surf.
He gulps the juice, swallowing, gagging, swallowing again, the sludge burning its way down to his stomach, prickling like a thousand tiny biting spiders. Bleat goes the sound system, it’s last call for chow. The thought of food is suddenly a very alien concept, he feels himself already turning green, but he’s not going to die unnoticed in his cell if he can help it.
His body has started to race as he moves out, gets into line, staggers, makes it almost to the cafeteria, staggers again, some guys laughing, thinking he’s drunk. But when he’s in the banquet hall, steadying himself against the stacks of plastic trays, suddenly his weakness and nausea are gone.
He’s strong, a fierce power is racing through him, he could actually tear the heart out of the guy serving the boiled cabbage.
But this is nothing compared to when the nicotine really hits, because now he’s in costume with a cape, he is Super Kangaroo, he can spring over everyone’s heads, spring to freedom, he’s out of this joint.
With a roar, he jumps. He makes it high into the night sky, where there are only stars and sound, distorted familiar commands, “Inmates return to units!” “Count up!”
Emerging from his crowded house, Arthur bows as his Tai Chi master dismounts from his bicycle. “Sorry,” says Corporal Al, “I couldn’t get through by phone. I didn’t know you were having a meeting.” He is looking at a rusty VW bus festooned with stickers urging inhabitants of the planet to save it.
“Lessons in civil disobedience.” In the event that the appeal fails, Lotis has recruited an instructor for a brigade of civilly disobedient youths. “We’ll take tea on the porch so as not to disturb them.”
It’s evening now, and Arthur has spent much of this day haggling with the stiff-necked sergeant. But finally reporters are free to roam where they want, and the tents are returning to Stump Town. An eighty-foot ladder, a type used by firefighters, lies athwart the stumps. The police weren’t able to wiggle it through the thickly wooded forest surrounding the Holy Tree.