The Last of the Lumbermen Read online

  “Nice guy to have around when there’s trouble.”

  “Yes indeed,” she agrees. “If it weren’t for him, you’d likely be in intensive care with electrodes stuck in both ears, with some idiot planning to open you up for an exploratory surgery.”

  WE HAVE JUST FIFTEEN minutes at the house before we have to leave — time to put Bozo outside for the day, and Fang out for a quick pee. Being what he is, Fang wants to spend the day pretending he’s a Newfoundland. He tries to follow Bozo through the snow, but since the recent snowfall is still powder he simply goes submarine and I have to dig him out of the tunnel he digs, grousing and nipping. If Bozo had Fang’s personality and ambition, we’d have to put her in a steel cage to keep her from eating the neighbourhood.

  As I try to settle Fang down, who has by now decided that my pantleg is a raccoon, I replay last night’s telephone messages. The one that interests me is from Wendel, left while Esther was at the hospital picking me up, saying that the Coalition is meeting at one at the Alexander Mackenzie coffee bar to discuss the government’s announcement.

  I’ve never been to a Coalition meeting. People who think they’re right have a way of being righteous about it, which in my mind isn’t quite the same thing as being right. It’s usually the opposite of knowing the right thing to do. Righteousness is what a few too many Coalition members run on, and like Wendel they can be a real pain in the ass when that’s all they’ve got.

  But since Wendel is my pain in the ass, I’m going to drop in on the meeting to see if there’s anything I can do to nudge him and his friends toward the real world. Gotta start somewhere with being his father, and if I’m going to start laying a parental hand on him it best have some practical application.

  Esther is standing in the hallway. “Ready to hit the road?”

  “One sec. Do you know where my briefcase is?”

  I see her eyebrows rise slightly. “It’s probably in the spare room with your other junk.”

  “Right.” She’s surprised because I almost never use the damned thing, preferring to carry whatever I need either in my pockets or in my head. But in the briefcase is one of the few organized things I’ve been working on recently. It’s a handmade analysis of forestry employment records and job multipliers I’ve been fiddling with over the last few months. What my research shows is that forestry employment has been dropping steadily since 1979, and that under current industry values there aren’t any employment multipliers. This might prove useful to Wendel.

  I busy myself scattering papers and books across the spare room without finding the briefcase, and then remember that it’s in the trunk of the Lincoln. I spin around, and there’s Esther leaning against the doorjamb. She’s laughing at me. She’s seen this routine before, and there’s no contempt in her laughter. She told Gord one time that I don’t clean up or do housework, I fight chaos. Or spread it.

  I DROP HER OFF at her office and drive over to Jack’s apartment, which is over a second-hand store in the nearly derelict downtown. Jack’s business would do better if he moved out to one of the shopping centres, but he’s like Gord that way: he has his loyalties. He lives and works where he does because he believes his job is to do services for the community, not just “do better” for himself. So he stays in the old downtown because that’s where Mantua is — for better or worse. The malls could be anywhere in North America, and what goes on in them is pretty much the opposite of what he means by community. His office is at one end of the building overlooking the street, and his living quarters at the back. He owns the building.

  He’s lived in the apartment since he broke up with his wife, who got the house as her part of the settlement. That was about twelve years ago, before I knew him. In my time I’ve seen women come and go from his life, much as they’ve come and gone from Gord’s. Jack will tell you he’s still looking for the right woman, and then laugh and say she doesn’t seem to be looking very hard for him.

  I retrieve my briefcase from the trunk, and use the keys Esther gave me to let myself into Jack’s place. It doesn’t take long to find his flight bag in one of the closets, spread out the bag on the bed, and begin to put together what he’ll need. I find his shaving kit in the bathroom, toss in his toothpaste and a new toothbrush still in its plastic case, and a bottle of shampoo. There are five vials of pills in the medicine cabinet, and, not sure which he needs, I take them all and return to the bedroom.

  Let’s see. Pyjamas, bathrobe, check. Three pairs of undershorts — no, five — a half-dozen pairs of black socks, some T-shirts, three shirts, a couple of pairs of cotton trousers, a pair of casual shoes, and a suit, which I hang over the door with a clean shirt and tie. I’m packing the last of it in when I lose my grip on the pyjamas and bathrobe. They fall to the floor.

  I pick them up and stretch the sleeves apart for refolding. The pyjamas are enormous — big enough, probably, to fit Gord. The bathrobe is the same. I refold them both and place them beside the flight bag. I check a set of drawers across the room, find proper-sized pyjamas, and, on a hook behind the bathroom door, the right-sized bathrobe. I put those next to the bigger ones, and sit down on the bed.

  I reopen the pocket on the bag that has the shaving kit and the pills, and check the label on the pills. Only three of the five vials have Jack’s name on them. The other two have Gord’s. I begin to check around the room. On the night table shelf on the left side of the headboard are two books on forensic medicine and a biography of Michel Foucault, a French writer Gord has been talking about recently.

  I do the two-plus-two, and it comes to four. Then I do the subtractions, the multiplications, and the long division on a few dozen loose ends that have been there all along, flapping around inside my head. It’s still two plus two equals four. I wander out into the living room, laughing out loud. Jesus H. Christ, you guys. What am I going to find out next? That Junior is an extraterrestrial?

  TWENTY

  I DROP JACK’S PACKED BAG at the top of the stairs and unlock the office so I can type up the insurance release on his aging IBM Selectric. I’ve got most of the phrasing in my head: name, address, and so forth. I’ll adapt the limited liability clause from the releases we’ve all signed as players. What that says, basically, is that neither the Mohawk Hockey Club nor the City of Mantua is liable for damages or loss of income resulting from injury, and that a player can’t sue the Club or the City for general or punitive damages resulting from his or other players’ actions. Of course, if the Coliseum roof falls in during a game and kills us — always a possibility in Mantua — or some other equally gross instance of facility operator incompetence occurs, we have the same rights as anyone else. Our heirs can sue them, and wait until hell freezes over for the courts to rule that we’re to blame for everything.

  Somewhere along the line I learned to touch type, so putting together the release form doesn’t take very long. I use Jack’s fax machine to make a couple of copies, slip them into my briefcase, and I’m off to the hospital to deliver the bag and traveling clothes. The entire operation has taken just forty-five minutes.

  It takes a few minutes to locate Jack at the hospital. I assumed he’d been sent up to one of the wards the way I was, but Gord has kept him in emergency, probably as a way of keeping him mindfucked until he’s on the plane. Gord isn’t pleased to see me with the bag.

  “Jesus Murphy, Weaver,” he scowls. “I hope Esther didn’t let you pack that thing.”

  “She had a bunch of appointments,” I answer. “Who else was there?”

  “Anyone but you. You’re not supposed to lift anything for two weeks. Are you taking those pills I gave you?”

  I’ve forgotten them at home, but I pat my hip pocket anyway. “Right here,” I lie.

  “Show me,” he says. “You’re due for one just about now.”

  I start fumbling in my pockets. “Uhhmm …”

  “I thought so. Listen. You’ve got to use those
things exactly on schedule, or your chest is going to keep seizing up on you. And if you have another seizure here and I’m not around, you’re liable to wake up and find Milgenberger’s treated you to a heart transplant.”

  “Yeah, yeah, I know. And he’ll probably just jam it up my ass, right?”

  I’ve made a homosexual allusion, for Christ’s sake. Worse than that, Gord picks up on it instantly. The look on my face must have given me away.

  It’s a ridiculous situation. I go off to pack a bag for a close friend, and when I come back there’s about two thousand things I can’t tease him and another close friend about anymore. I mean, let’s be blunt. I’m surprised to find out that Jack and Gord are gay, but really, it doesn’t change anything. They’re still my two closest friends. On the other hand, this is a small town, and if Jack and Gord wanted people to know about it they’d have gone public. The really silly thing about it is that just as I’ve unloaded my biggest secret, I have to put up with theirs. I giggle out loud at the thought.

  “I’m glad you’re finding life so amusing,” Gord says, and strides away, I assume to get me a muscle relaxant. Or some arsenic.

  “Anyone talked to Junior yet this morning?” I ask Jack.

  “He’s upstairs someplace. Milgenberger wants to keep him under observation for a couple of days, and I think it’s a good idea.”

  I pull the insurance release form from my briefcase and drop it in front of him. “How’s that look to you?”

  A shrewd look crosses his face as he reads it. “It’s fine. But listen. I’ve got an idea for you. Why don’t you get Milgenberger to tell Junior he can’t play for six weeks unless he’s wearing protection. Meanwhile, you go down to Wally’s and pick up that mask I’ve had sitting there for the last two years. We might be able to make a goalie out of Junior yet.”

  “You’ve had a mask ready for two years?”

  “Sure. I’ve been waiting for a puck to whack him this hard ever since Blacky Silver crushed his cheekbone three years ago. I’ve even had Wally paint the goddamned mask in fleshtones, so Junior can pretend it’s just part of his face.”

  “I’ll do what I can. But I ain’t taking side bets Junior will go for a mask.”

  “Just talk about how good young Stan was looking,” Jack grins. “That might soften him up. But make sure Gord doesn’t get wind of this. You know how he is. Oh yeah. One more thing.”

  “What?”

  “Well, I was talking to Old Man Ratsloff last night before the Roosters left. He mentioned that Artie Newman is shacked up with some babe over in West Camelot. You might want to drive down there and see if you can talk him into playing for us the rest of the season. The Old Man said he tried to get Artie to play with the Roosters, but Artie pulled some routine about not wanting to upset his father.”

  “The lad is deluding himself. Alpo is offended because Artie breathes oxygen, not because he might play for some out-of-town team.”

  “Go talk to him,” he says. “First thing Monday.”

  Gord returns, tosses me a smaller vial of pills than the first one, and sits on the edge of Jack’s bed.

  “Time to get ready, pal,” he says. “Plane’s leaving at one-fifteen.”

  I tell them I’ve got to go, wish Jack luck, and ask him, as an afterthought, if he has any more instructions about running the team in his absence. He tells me there’s an envelope in his desk drawer at the Coliseum with a list of all the things that need to be taken care of.

  “Try not to mess up too bad,” he laughs. “Gord will be watching you.”

  “Take that muscle relaxant before you go,” Gord adds.

  I open the vial and pop the blue and white capsule into my palm, then into my mouth. “Done,” I say. “These aren’t going to fuck up my head, are they?”

  “No more than usual.”

  Okay, I deserved that one. “Be serious,” I say. “I can drive the car, right?”

  Gord pauses to think. “Go ahead,” he says. “You should be okay if you don’t start popping them like they’re candy.”

  I PARK THE LINCOLN in the usual spot at the Coliseum, and hoof it over to the Alexander Mackenzie Inn through the new Civic Centre complex. “New” isn’t the right word for the complex because it isn’t really new, and, if we were being precise, the only thing complex about it is whatever motivated City Council to tear down half of the old Centre just because they wanted to get rid of the city’s disreputable boxing club. Once they had what they wanted, though, they realized they’d created an eyesore. So they added a few meeting rooms and tatted the whole thing up with cheesy ironwork, series lighting, and walkways made of concrete pavers. Now, if the old folks going to bingo night are senile enough they think they’re in Las Vegas.

  The ironwork and the lights weren’t the worst of it, either. No one told the architect he was building on a land-filled slough, so he gave the walkway contractor normal specs for the foundations. Of course, the contractor cut corners and put down five centimetres of crushed rock instead of the twenty it needed. The whole damned network of walkways turned into an obstacle course when the first spring thaw buckled everything, and a few drunk old-timers tripped on the popped-up pavers and broke their hips. Eventually they’ll have to tear up the entire mess and asphalt it like they do everything else, but not until the injury lawsuits are through the courts. And since the frost boils keep popping the pavers, and the Civic Centre walkways are just a lurch out of the direct route between the town’s two biggest bars, the lawsuits will probably go on forever.

  I get across the pavers without breaking an ankle and arrive at the Alexander Mackenzie coffee bar, just as the courier finishes passing around the text of the Cabinet report. As the Minister mouths platitudes from the wall-mounted television, the room begins to buzz with outrage. The hoped-for harvest cuts are announced pretty much as Wendel predicted, but a special addendum to the report that the Minister isn’t going to mention at the press conference, and won’t take questions on, designates a huge area for salvage cutting.

  Everyone in the room knows what “salvage cutting” means. About thirteen years ago the same designation was given to another area southeast of Mantua, just north of the Bowron Lakes Provincial Park. By the time the salvage operations were over the multinationals had created the largest clearcut on the planet, one that the Forest Service admits is fifty-three square kilometres in size, and which, along with the Great Wall of China, is supposedly one of the two manmade objects visible from outer space with the naked eye.

  Gord and I camped out in the clearcut a couple of times several years ago, and it didn’t take any rocket science for us to figure out that the clearcut is a lot larger than the one they admit to. Maybe it was the hundred-metre swaths of old timber separating the primary clearcut from the secondary ones that gave it away. Or maybe it was because it looked more barren than the Gobi Desert.

  I pull a coffee from the urn by the door, plunk some sugar and cream into it, and sit down at one of the tables near the back of the room. Wendel has moved to the podium, and he’s talking about the Bowron clearcut.

  “When the Bowron valley was designated for salvage,” he says, “they claimed it started with a patch of blowdown at the heart of the valley in the early 1970s. This was followed by a couple of mild winters, which supposedly set off a spruce budworm infestation in the area of the blowdown. Most of the valley was what the Forest Service calls ‘over-mature.’ In reality, the valley was what a forest ought to be — a full community of plants and animals, dominated, in size and wood volume, by trees that aren’t getting any younger, and which, in the next three or four decades may — or may not — die and fall on their own.

  “I don’t need to remind anyone here of what salvage logging, multinational style, does,” he continues, his voice rising to oratory pitch. “They move in massive amounts of equipment, and they flatten everything in the designated area under the prete
nse that a public and ecological service is being rendered. The Forest Service won’t admit this, but when the multinationals ‘salvaged’ the Bowron valley, they used the bug infection smokescreen to enlarge the cut area as the clearcut grew. Does that surprise anyone? The companies had their equipment on site, the profits were huge, and they owned the government.”

  One of the academics leaps to his feet to point out that the current government is supposed to be a social democratic one — the kind that isn’t supposed to let this sort of thing happen.

  Wendel doesn’t flinch. “This same government has close ties to the international trade unions, who’ve become more pro-cut in the last ten years than the multinationals. They’d flatten every forest in the province to keep their membership employed.”

  A couple of the progressive union guys in the Coalition nod their heads at this, and the academic sits down. Wendel looks around the room. He spots me, but doesn’t react. He’s got amazing presence for a twenty-year-old, this kid. And just as I’m think- ing that he didn’t get his presence from me, he rolls on.

  “So here’s the bottom line. In theory, the government has cut the official harvest of trees. It’ll sound great to people watching television down in Vancouver, but we know what they’ve really done. The newly designated salvage areas will be removed from the ‘sustained yield’ formula, thus making the sustained yield volume cuts irrelevant but keeping the facade of sustainability in place, and keeping the few Forest Service bureaucrats who haven’t been laid off in the government cutbacks smiling. The multinationals will cheerfully accept the cuts, move their equipment into the salvage area, and go crazy like they did in the Bowron. They’ll get more trees, and more profits, than they would have under the old formula. A few years will pass, more cuts in the harvest will need to be made to keep the facade in place, and another diseased, over-mature salvage area — read ‘old growth forest’ — will be discovered, designated, and then decimated.”