‘He is coming like the glory of the morning on the waves; He is wisdom to the mighty, He is succour to the brave…’
I think I must have said something like, ‘You can’t leave them to drown,’ for he stopped singing long enough to shout above the engine’s busy noise, ‘Can’t I? Don’t you know why they were coming up here, to the hut? I heard it all on that thing.’ He pointed to the walkie-talkie. ‘They were going to play around with Miriam. Do whatever was necessary to get me to sign. And I wouldn’t have had any alternative. I’d have signed away High Stand to save Miriam, and you want me to hang around and pick the bastards up.’ He gave a wild laugh, the two heads fading into the mist, open-mouthed, their shouts inaudible.
‘So the world should be His footstool, and the soul of time His slave. Our God is marching on!’ He sat down suddenly, throttling back on the engine and staring into the void. ‘I don’t care if they drown. I should have killed them, up there at Ice Cold. And Wolchak. What about Josef Wolchak?’ His eyes fastened on mine. ‘He’s down there at the camp, isn’t he? And Mandola. What about Mandola and all the others?’
‘What others?’ I asked.
‘I don’t know.’ He shrugged. ‘All the others, the men who run the pushers, the big boys who pull in the money. Who’s down at the camp?’
‘Wolchak was the only one I saw, apart from the loggers and truck drivers.’
‘And Brian’s down there?’
‘Yes.’
‘They’re still felling, then. Have they got a scow there?’
‘A barge,’ I said.
‘Scow, barge — what the hell! Aleksis said something about it having to be loaded by morning. He was talking on the radio. Wolchak had to have my signature to the document by noon tomorrow at the latest. That was when they expected the tug.’
The wildness seemed to have gone out of him, the eyes dead, as though the destruction of the canoe had got some of the anger and the hate out of his system. He was staring along the cascade shore of the lake, trees like phantoms standing in the mist, his eyes blank, his thoughts turned inwards. I didn’t say anything, thinking of Camargo and Lopez, two heads in the water beyond the inflatable and disappearing into the void, wondering whether they’d be able to swim ashore or whether the coldness of the water and cramp would drown them first.
Even then I hadn’t realized the violence of the world into which I’d been dragged. Only Miriam knew, and she was silent, huddled in the bows, her face tense and very pale. ‘You all right?’ I asked her and she nodded, no glimmer of a smile, no change of expression, and her eyes on Tom.
‘Where did those two come from? There’s a way down; at the end of the lake, is it?’ He had to shout to make himself heard above the engine.
‘Just follow the shoreline,’ I told him. ‘There’s a bit of a bay. I’ll point it out to you. It’s not far then to the old extraction track.’
‘You’ve been down it, have you?’
‘I told you.’
He nodded, but I could see he hadn’t taken it in, so I told him again how we’d gone down into High Stand, watched the felling of the timber, and then, when Wolchak had driven Camargo and Lopez to the start of the track, Brian had stayed there while I hurried back ahead of the two South Americans to commandeer the boat and arrive at the hut just when Rodrigo was leaving. ‘I suppose he told you he’d take you to where Miriam was being held?’
He smiled then, but it was more of a grimace. ‘I didn’t trust him, of course, but I was desperate. I wanted to believe him, and then when I saw Miriam… I’d forgotten they could communicate by VHP, that the whole thing could be stage-managed so that she was there, tied to the door bar; that was all I saw till that bastard with the big ears swiped me across the back of the head.’ He put his hand up, feeling it gently. ‘I’ve still got a hell of a bump. Then they flung me into that room with the corpse of poor old Thor … One day perhaps I’ll be able to look Rodrigo in the face knowing he’ll spend half the rest of his life behind bars. Perhaps I should have…’
But I stopped him there, for we were approaching the end of the lake, the mist swirling to a puff of wind and trees appearing in the gap. He slowed as I motioned him to turn towards the shore and then the aluminium bottom of the boat was bumping on boulders, scraping on the dark grit that ran up to the tree roots. Without being told, Miriam took the painter and stepped over the side, moving slowly, like an.automaton, as she splashed her way to the bank. Tom was bent over the outboard, unbolting it from its bracket, and when he’d brought it ashore he looked at me with a quizzical expression. ‘Don’t reckon we’ll be wanting it again, do you?’
I shook my head and he smiled, walking with it to the sloping rock where Brian and I had landed from the canoe and tossing it into the lake. He stood there for a moment, watching it sink, as though in that action he had virtually burned his boats. His mood communicated itself to me, so that as we gathered up our things I had the feeling that whatever lay in store for us down below, there would be no turning back.
It was almost three in the afternoon when we started down that track, myself in the lead and seeing my own footprints in the mud. The breeze was moving the mist, so that the light came and went, strange cloud shapes forming, and there was a rustle of leaves, or was it the distant murmur of the water falling? I felt very tired then, my limbs heavy, my brain numbed with lack of sleep and the unaccustomed exercise. I think we were, all three of us, pretty near the limit of our reserves, Miriam in particular. She didn’t talk. Even when asked a direct question she scarcely bothered to answer. There was no expression in her face, and the way she moved she seemed to be in a daze.
We reached the end of the spur, and before following the curve of the hairpin, we stood for a moment looking down at the camp through a gap in the clouds that were billowing raggedly between the rock walls of the inlet. The barge, lying against the quay, was deeper in the water now, the logs stacked in two great bundles, butts facing outwards against the blunt ends of the vessel, the tapering tops laced together like the ringers of some huge hand; there were at least a dozen more logs stacked on the quayside, the boom crane moving all the time as it lifted others from the big tractor transporter. Another log was clamped in the rock niche against the cliff, the A-frame mobile rig drilling into the butt end. ‘Your son thinks they’re constructing a logging boom,’ I said. ‘And that that means they’re going to fell the whole area of High Stand.’
‘Could be.’ He nodded slowly. And then suddenly he turned on me and said in a voice taut with nerves, ‘So what the hell does he expect me to do about it? What can we do?’
‘Get an injunction, I suppose.’ I said it without any enthusiasm for the idea, my tired mind thinking ahead to all the work involved in getting an action like that against an American company through a British Columbian court.
‘An injunction! That’s all you lawyers can think of. Fees for yourself and a court order, a bloody little piece of paper and some poor devil of a bailiff, if there is such a thing, traipsing all the way up here from Vancouver… Have you any idea of the sort of people he’d be dealing with? Well, have you?’
At the time I don’t think I really understood what he was talking about, but I could see his point about the bailiff. It would be a civil action and the police would only become involved if there was contempt of court. By then, of course, so much time would have passed that the whole of High Stand would have been felled and shipped, our only recourse the courts again for payment of a proper price for the sale of the timber standing.
The clouds were lifting. For a moment they were above our heads, so that we could look right down the long arm of water, great banks of vapour vaulted over it, the mountains either side cut off, everything looking sombre and very wet. He had turned his head and was staring down at the camp again, men moving around the drilling rig and on the flat platform of the quayside where two of them were working at the butt end of the log that had just been lowered to them. ‘What do you think they’re doing?’ I asked.