The law is aware a zip line is being strung-climbers were spotted in the canopy working with bolts and a hand drill. Arthur worries about how Margaret will get down. With spurs, pulleys, and a rappel line? It sounds fearfully dangerous. She blew him an extra kiss today, a two-hander. A reward for his small victory in court.
Over tea and gingersnaps, Corporal Al explains he’s being transferred to northern Manitoba. He harbours no ill will toward those banishing him, his superiors, the judge who denounced him. “My time on Garibaldi was pretty well up. Headquarters claims you get too friendly with the natives if you stay longer. Flin Flon will be interesting. Brisk climate, good fishing.”
But the reason for this visit, it appears, is not merely to say farewell. “A client of yours, that fellow Nick Faloon, fell ill. They rushed him to hospital.”
“When was this?”
“Maybe an hour ago. Head office asked me to pass the word on to you.”
“It’s serious?”
“He was in the food lineup, and leaped over a railing and collapsed, clutching his chest.”
A heart attack? Arthur is stunned. He can’t help feeling some blame, he should have visited him. Depressed, said Lotis, out of shape. He thinks he’s burdened you with a case you can’t win.
Faloon connects only through flashes, glimpses of the living world: he’s in leg irons, he’s being trussed to a gurney, the ambulance is screeching out the gate, a rubbery scent from the oxygen mask. A hand on his chest, words coming like thunderclaps: “Heart’s jumping all over the place.” Going out again, jerking awake, another voice, morose: “I hate to see guys die right in front of me.”
A flash of Claudette again. Solemn, in black. No, no, she’s happy, an angel. Only snippets of memory are left. Eve Winters, smiling down at the Owl, so beautiful. A last sensation of circling the drain. Then oblivion.
Tension spices the tea and gingersnaps at Blunder Bay. Arthur, Lotis, and Corporal Al are listening to a news station. An excited voice: “We have a live report from hospital. Are you there, Clarice?”
“Yes, I am, Dale.”
A squawk from the radio on Corporal Al’s belt. “Garibaldi, Staff wants to talk to you.”
“…in one door and out the other, to a waiting van,” Clarice is saying. “They wedged the door shut, so the jail escort couldn’t pursue.”
Corporal Al, in Arthur’s left ear: “Well, isn’t that the darndest thing…On a gurney? Holy mackerel, Staff, that’s pretty wild.”
“You’re saying, Clarice, that we have an escaped killer somewhere out there.”
“Here’s what I was told: he was foaming at the mouth when the ambulance pulled in. Two men came running from Emergency in surgical gowns and masks. They told the prison escort they’d take charge of the gurney, and somehow in the confusion they were allowed to wheel it through the ward and out another exit. Police gave this description of the van: a black early 1990s Econoline, B.C. plates, possibly stolen, fresh vomit spattering the right side. The men are considered dangerous. Back to you…”
Dazed and dismayed, Arthur nearly steps on Underfoot as he turns down the sound. Corporal Al clicks off, scratches his head. “Real embarrassing debacle, must have been something to see. No ID on any of the accomplices. Nicotine poisoning, they’re guessing, makes the heart buck like a crazed horse.”
“Glad I quit,” Lotis says.
This is not something one ad libs, so Nick must have despaired of his chances some time ago. It’s Arthur’s fault, denying hope with his broken promises to show up.
Abiit, excessit, evasit, erupit, Cicero cried. He has departed, withdrawn, gone away, broken out. The master of disguise has donned the winged sandals and cap of Mercury, patron of travellers, shepherds, cheats, and thieves.
PART TWO
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May.
20
Without planning to, but drawn by the morbid curiosity felt by a witness to a train wreck, Arthur finds himself taking Slappy up the Sproules’s grasslands, the shortcut to the Gwendolyn Bluffs. He dreads what he is to see, a carnage of fallen trees.
He’d argued the appeal well, had those judges working. Five of them sat, as is common when judicial bias is claimed. They had reserved, and Arthur was optimistic. The ruling came two days ago. Arthur won just a single dissent. The majority opinion: Property rights prevail.
Then at dawn yesterday, through sound-muffling rain, came the vibrations of a falling giant, then another, birds in screaming flight. The Greenpeace climbers sped to the canopy, high enough to gain a pocket view of treetops disappearing.
The crew from Sustainable Logging had come on a landing craft, with saws and jerry cans of fuel. An ambush of the forest, site-clearing for Gwendolyn Village-as the mall is styled in Garlinc’s brochure, “In Harmony with Nature.”
As Arthur scrambles up a mossy abutment, he zips up his rain slick-lowering clouds have begun to shed their burden. He looks at the eagles’ nest, at one of the great birds taking flight. Then he wills himself to view the torn land below, splintered firs and cedars, tangles of boughs, uplifted to the sky as if in prayer.
Some twenty acres of old-growth were felled along the beach before protestors poured in, some through the Gap, others by sea, a convoy. There was a standoff, the crew foreman red-faced and sullen. The loggers retreated but the protest armada remains-Arthur counts thirty boats sitting at anchor or beached. Tents amid the driftwood, small figures milling about. No arrests yet, but warnings issued. And making its way toward the beach: an RCMP cruiser, officers with batons, guns, handcuffs.
Margaret is still in the tree in this unmerry month of May. Day Thirty-five! Emergency rations are sustaining its occupiers, three of whom are adept with pulleys, cable, and rappel line, one of whom raises goats and geese. She was to have rappelled down in a safety harness, but now she is staying, determined to defy capture.
That’s what she declared in a note she floated to him. Unable to talk without crying. That psychopath is holding Gwendolyn for ransom. He cut off one of her ears and mailed it as a warning. If we don’t pay up, it’ll be an arm or a leg.
Her savage metaphor rings true. The ransom fund is slow to build. Four million dollars has been raised from nature and philanthropic societies and corporate grants. A few hundred thousand from individuals, wealthy and poor. More is pledged but not enough. Clearihue continues to hint the price may go up: he has inquiries from investors in the States, from Germany, from Hong Kong.
The national government still refuses to chip in, offering a myriad excuses: money is tight; elected officials must be accountable; Garlinc’s inflated price will have the Auditor General screaming for blood; it’s political suicide if the state is seen as bowing to illegal demonstrators. Underlying alclass="underline" Clearihue is a contributor to the Liberal party, the Opposition will say it’s payback time.
The RCMP cruiser anchors. Officers pile into a Zodiac, and it casts off and heads to shore.
Arthur can smell the powerful odour of destruction. May, nesting time, a time for birth not death. A smell too pungent for Slappy, who turns, urges Arthur home.
The eagle swoops down the valley, screaming.
Arthur remains in a cantankerous mood that afternoon as Syd’s Beaver lifts from Bungle Bay, wipers flapping, rain sheeting by. A misty glimpse of the mess at Gwendolyn Beach adds to his choler. As he was returning from his hike, ten young people were arrested-the maximum the police could handle on their Zodiac.
Lotis and Selwyn are in Victoria, where this first batch of accused are to be hauled before Wilbur Kroop. As part of his crusade against anarchy, he will punish them by setting an example, that’s his style.