The Last of the Lumbermen Page 14

  He’s finished. He’s about nailed it, and everyone in the room knows it. He asks if anyone has comments or questions, and stands there, calm and collected, to field them.

  TWENTY-ONE

  THE COALITION HAS THE same problem everyone has these days: it’s a lot easier to see what or who’s being screwed than to do anything about it. These are people who understand that everyone and everything in Mantua is being humped by the multinationals, and that this isn’t going to stop until someone — or something — stops them. Some of the Coalition members, like Wendel, even have a fair idea what changes need to be made.

  It isn’t that they don’t have the courage of their convictions. There are situations in which courage isn’t enough. You need imagination, and a willingness to question some much more basic beliefs, the ones we all get drummed into our heads from elementary school on: that in a democracy the government belongs to the people and, ergo, life is supposed to be fair.

  I’ll tell you what I mean. Just after I came back to Mantua, I assembled some industrial land for a guy named Sid Brickman. He’d pulled together the finances to do something that should have been done around here thirty years ago — he built a fingerjoint stud mill.

  Finger-jointing is where you take two pieces of scrap wood and glue them together to make a piece of spaghetti otherwise known, non-metrically, as a two-by-four. The result, both in theory and practice, is construction wood superior in strength to an ordinary two-by-four. Even better, the profits are good because you’re using wood that’s already been milled and rejected, and because the process is relatively labour-intensive it produces jobs and helps out the local economy. In short, it is what every government in the Western hemisphere has been whining about the need for since the gravy started thinning out after the oil crisis in 1973.

  Sid got his mill up and running, three shifts and one hundred fifty workers, and it was doing fine until some bureaucrat in the Forestry Department assigned his wood supply contract to InterCon. Sid’s mill was soon getting wood he couldn’t fingerjoint into decent toothpicks, and when he squawked about it, the wood got worse.

  Eventually, Sid recognized that InterCon was deliberately trying to put him out of business, and he sued for damages. But the moment the papers were served InterCon cut off his wood supply altogether. And that’s where it sat for close to three years, until Sid won his court case. Guess what? The award didn’t come close to covering his costs, and the mill, meanwhile, was gathering dust. Right now it’s still running at a quarter capacity, because a multinational corporation has ways of ignoring court rulings.

  Now, many of the Coalition members would prefer just to hold news conferences like the one they’re planning this afternoon, and then go home to their out-of-the-industry jobs feeling morally superior. Reason? Bickering and bitching about corporate malfeasance or government incompetence is safer and easier than sticking your ass into a multibillion-dollar meat grinder. But today, Wendel and a few of the others aren’t willing to give up so easily. One of the independent loggers stands up and starts explaining how this is the right time to begin setting up a logging co-operative that will do things differently, even if it has to do it on a demonstration basis. This is the route Wendel wants to take, too. Another group wants to go a different, nastier route — they want to block the highways, sabotage the railways, or do whatever else is needed to keep the sawlogs from leaving town. The rest — a minority, for once — just want to be outraged for a few hours, go to the bar, and then go home and watch television like they usually do. The way things are going, the three factions are probably going to deadlock, meaning that very little is going to get decided. From the frustration in Wendel’s face, he sees it too.

  I haven’t planned to do anything more than watch, but after another fruitless go-around I find myself standing in front of everyone tapping my finger on the table like some schoolmarm. There’s about a hundred things I could say that everyone in the room already knows, so I offer the one thing I have that they don’t know about. One or two of them — Wendel being the only one I care about — might find it useful.

  “I don’t know whether you’re aware of this,” I say, “but I own one hundred acres of fairly decent industrial land down on the flats. If you need a location for your scaling yard, you can have the use of it.”

  The room goes stony silent for what must be nearly ten se- conds. That’s how long it takes around here for surprise to percolate down to cynicism. The first response comes from one of the smartassed academics.

  “Oh sure,” he says. “What’s the catch?”

  “No catch,” I answer. “How about a rental contract for one dollar a year? Plus the co-op pays the taxes on the land if and when it starts making a profit.”

  Another silence. I catch Wendel’s eye and try some telepathy on him. I want him to stay out of this for a moment. He seems to understand, and sinks, watchfully, back in his chair.

  The academic is the first one to start flapping his mouth. “Well,” he intones, “this is all well and good. But isn’t the Forest Service conducting feasibility studies on community scaling yards? Maybe we ought to wait for them to give the go ahead.”

  I’m tempted to blow the chicken-hearted turd-polisher off, but a glance at Wendel convinces me to circle around him instead. “Maybe we should wait for the Forest Service,” I answer. “But maybe we shouldn’t. I don’t know if you’ve heard about that photo the Chief Forester has hanging in his office — the one with the line of about thirty haul trucks coming out of the Bowron?”

  A rumble crosses the room, and a couple of Coalition members laugh out loud. “I see some of you get my point about what those feasibility studies are going to say. Everybody’s known for decades that the industry has the Forest Service in its pocket. That isn’t going to change unless we can convince a few more people that having the Forest Service in cahoots with the multi- nationals isn’t part of the natural order, and that there’s some other routes we can go.”

  I haven’t intended to make a speech, and I’m a little amazed that I’m parroting things I’ve made fun of Wendel for saying to a bunch of strangers. But the clear approval in Wendel’s face tells me to go on.

  “I mean, look at the long view. If we know what the words and the pictures really mean, don’t we have to make some choices? One of the choices you people have to make is between your anger and your cynicism. The fact that the people who are supposed to be taking care of our resources for everyone aren’t doing their jobs ought to make us all angry as hell. But what does knowing that get us, unless we do something about it?”

  “So what are you saying?” the academic pipes up, this time with a whiny ping in his voice. “What are you asking us to do?”

  “Get up off your behinds and commit to the community scaling yards, for starters. I can’t give you technical advice. For that you’ll have to find somebody who knows the business end of a chainsaw from his ass. I don’t.”

  After repeating that the offer is a totally serious one, I sit down and sip coffee while the uproar dies down to a calculating buzz. I’ll be surprised if they take me up on it, but if they do I’ll damned well stand behind it. My speech does flush the chickens out of the underbrush, and the conversation moves on to the practicalities. That’s good. It’ll help Wendel and his supporters.

  Meanwhile, it’s time for me to head out. I’m on a roll, so I may as well find James Bathgate’s parents this afternoon. Promises are promises, and I’ll need to get the kid’s insurance release signed so he can be at the practice tomorrow. I repeat once more to the Coalition that my offer is serious, that I’m not about to skip town or run for political office, and that they can appoint whoever they like to carry out the negotiations when and if they’re ready to go forward on the deal. I hope I’ll be talking to Wendel about it before the day is out. As I leave the coffee bar, he winks at me and mouths a “thank you.”

  It’s a beginning.
Even if it ends up costing me a bundle, I’m okay with it.

  THERE’S AN UP-TO-DATE PHONEBOOK at a payphone in the lobby, and it lists four Bathgates besides myself. I fish some quarters out of my pocket and start dialing. I draw blanks on the first two, one of them X-rated. The third call gets a woman with a bright, reasonable-sounding voice.

  “I’m sorry to bother you,” I say, “but I’m trying to locate one or both of James Bathgate’s parents.”

  There’s a slight hesitation on the other end of the line. “Yes? I’m his mother. I hope he hasn’t gotten himself into trouble.”

  “Oh, nothing like that,” I say, trying to sound reassuring. I explain that I’m from the Mohawks hockey team, and that we’d like her son to be our stickboy, etc. etc.

  “Oh, yes,” she says, sounding relieved. “James did mention something about it, but I thought he was telling tall tales again.”

  I go on to talk about the necessity of an insurance release, mentioning that since he’s at all the games anyway he’s probably safer behind the bench than in the stands. No, I don’t tell her that her son’s biggest safety hazard is the V8 he’s got attached to his mouth — or that I’ve been the chief threat to his health. She digests the technicalities without difficulty, and asks whether he’s expected to travel with the team for away games.

  That hadn’t crossed my mind, so I have to think quickly. I suggest to her that it can be optional, then correct myself immediately, saying that though the Friday away games will probably keep him up too late he might want to travel with us for some of the Sunday games. I make it clear that I’ll abide by whatever she decides is best.

  “We’ve got a practice late tomorrow afternoon we’d like him to be at,” I continue. “Is it possible for me to drop out and get you to sign the release before that?”

  “That’ll be fine,” she says. “But I don’t know who to expect.”

  “I’m Andy Bathgate,” I say.

  There’s an audible intake of breath. “When should I expect you?” she asks.

  “Let’s say somewhere around four this afternoon.”

  Another hesitation. “Then we’ll see you at four.”

  She’s probably going to ask for my autograph. Times like this I wish I was somebody named Joe Fish. On the other hand, that wouldn’t help either. Someone would assume I was Country Joe, and want to know where The Fish have gone.

  THE ADDRESS LISTED IN the phonebook is in an obscure subdivision far north of town across the Nechalko River, but I have enough time to drop around to Wally’s to see whether Jack was kidding about having the goalie mask. If it is there I may as well pick it up and spring it on Junior while he’s still in the hospital.

  There’s no parking spot in front of the store, so I have to double park, put on the blinkers, and hope for the best. “Ah!” Wally says as I breeze through the front doors. “The Great Weaver Bathgate himself, replete with illegally parked civic limousine. What mission of tender mercy brings you to grace our lowly premises this afternoon? No 5030s at Canadian Tire? Can I perhaps sell you a modern hockey stick instead?”

  “Give it a break, Wally,” I laugh. “Jack claims you’ve got a goalie mask somewhere around here for Junior. Is that true or was he shitting me?”

  “Indeed it is true,” Wally replies, sounding not entirely surprised. “Wait here and I’ll get it for you.”

  He disappears into the storeroom, and I hear him shuffling boxes around. “What are you planning to do?” he hollers. “Tease Junior with it?”

  “Nothing so crass,” I answer. “I’m going to tell him he can’t play for six weeks unless he wears it.”

  “Very cunning. Think it’ll work?”

  “Probably not. It’s Jack’s idea, not mine. I take it you heard about yesterday’s game.”

  “I heard,” he says as he comes out of the storage room and plants the mask on the counter. “I saw. Quite a moment in the history of local sport.”

  I pick up the mask and lift it to eye level. It is, as Jack promised, painted in fleshtones. What he didn’t say was that the fleshtone would be corpse-quality. Actually, it’s worse than that. Some of the flesh appears to have decomposed, while the rest looks like it came from someone who just rammed his car into the side of a gasoline tanker. The total effect is roughly that of Jason without his hockey mask. Hard to say whose goofy idea this design is. Somebody has a sense of humour, that’s for sure. Probably Wally.

  “Beautiful, isn’t it?” Wally comments. “And speaking of beauties, your better half was just in here.”

  “My better half is right where it’s been all day,” I answer, checking my fly with mock care so he gets the gag.

  “Very funny.”

  “What was Esther doing in here?” I ask.

  “Nothing much,” he says, then adds, sounding about as mysterious as is possible for someone who resembles the Pillsbury Doughboy, “and none of your business.”

  I GLANCE ALONG THE street as I come out of the store and see that the meterman is half a block past my car. He turns around just as I open the car door, grins, and waves at me. There’s no ticket on the windshield.

  TWENTY-TWO

  HOW DOES THIS KID get to the hockey games? That’s the pleasantly practical puzzle I sort through as I drive through the cheesy subdivisions north of Mantua. It doesn’t sound like the boy’s father is a hockey fan, and I hadn’t exactly gotten the sense from his mother that she was on top of his comings and goings enough to be getting him to and from the games.

  Out here, he’s a long way from town. Maybe there’s a neighbour nearby who has regular tickets. Maybe, but the kid never seems to be with anyone at the games. One thing’s for sure. If anyone is with him, he or she isn’t giving him any guidance about how to behave.

  I drop the neighbour transport theory when I find the road named on the scrap of paper beside me on the seat. There aren’t any close neighbours because the Bathgates live a half kilometre beyond the last of the subdivisions, at the dead end of a road that, as I bump the Lincoln along it, isn’t much better than a skid road. But it’s been ploughed.

  The house is half hidden behind a dense grove of young spruce and birch trees that appear to have been planted deliberately to shield it from sight. There’s power and telephone lines, and a clearing that doesn’t stretch much beyond the twenty-five-by-fifty-foot rectangle of freshly flooded ice that ends close to the side of the house, and which probably doubles as a vegetable garden during the summer. Aside from that, pretty well everything else is as mother nature would like to have us live: no wrecked cars in the yard, hand-split cedar shingles covering the roof and outer walls, and, at the edge of the cleared area, a halfburied sod-covered bunker with birch saplings sticking from it like porcupine quills. Beyond the bunker is a thicket of half-grown thirty-to-forty-foot lodgepole pines, probably regrowth after a logging cut or forest fire. A murder of crows is calling back and forth to one another, most of them hidden by the boughs, and whiskey jacks are flitting around a birdfeeder atop the bunker.

  A place like this is unusual for Mantua, whose citizens — when they’re not using their property as a personal dump site — prefer to live in treeless suburbs with lawns that look like they’ve poured concrete and painted it green. Any way I look at the Bathgate house, it just ain’t natural for Mantua: no vinyl siding, no satellite dish, no plastic. The same orderly attention to detail I could see in the landscaping is evident in the house — it’s no slappedtogether homesteader’s shack. I can’t see how large it is, but it’s sizable. Hmm.

  A slim, tall woman opens the door to me just as my fist is descending against it, and I come within a slapstick hair of punch- ing her in the stomach as my introduction.

  “That was close,” I say, stepping back to reassure her I’m not an axe murderer. “I’m Andy Bathgate.”

  “Yes,” she says, “I recognize you. I’m Claire Bathgate. James’s mot
her. Please come in.”

  She moves aside and I step past her into a hallway that looks into a spacious living room. The room is sparsely furnished but comfortable looking, with a large olive-drab couch covered in what looks like old velvet, a couple of stuffed chairs of a darker shade, and a big wooden coffee table between the three. There’s a large deep red Persian rug covering most of the plank floor, and along the far wall are floor-to-ceiling bookcases that, at a glance, aren’t filled with Reader’s Digest condensations. Aside from several lamps and an airtight stove with a deep wood box to one side of it, that’s all. No television, no stereo, and no cereal box bric-a-brac.

  I slip off my boots and pull off my coat, which she takes from me and hangs on a hook on the wall behind her.

  “Would you like some tea?”

  “Please.”

  “Well, why don’t you follow me to the kitchen and we can sign your documents while the water boils.”

  She turns her back on me without waiting for a reply, and I follow her along a hallway lined with black-and-white photographs. Claire Bathgate is probably in her fifties, and as I watch her move I decide she’s gaunt rather than slim. Her step doesn’t give away her age. It’s sure and athletic, and I’m not quite sure why I think she’s over fifty. Her face perhaps, or maybe the care- less salt and pepper of her hair. I kind of like the way she looks, actually. She fits with the house.

  The kitchen is as casually unusual as the living room. Natural cedar walls and cupboards, a circular oak table, and three chairs. The stove is the biggest thing in the kitchen. It appears to be a wood stove, but much larger than any I’ve ever seen.

  I watch her fill a kettle and slide it atop one of the six stove plates. “It’s called an Aga,” she says, without looking at me. “Swedish. We do all our cooking on it, and it heats the hot water and keeps most of the house warm.”