The Last of the Lumbermen Read online

  I pull Wendel’s wallet from my pocket and plunk it on the table in front of her. “Wendel has two birth certificates in here. One says he’s twenty, the other says he was born a year earlier. He left his wallet in the car, and I …”

  For a split second there’s anger in her eyes. There’s no point accusing me of going through Wendel’s wallet, because I’ve already confessed to it. She doesn’t, and the flash point fades. “I wanted to protect him from it while he was young,” she says. “And Leo agreed. We weren’t exactly expecting his father to show up and claim him.”

  That one makes me wince. “How long has Wendel known?”

  “He doesn’t. Oh, I had to tell him about the age business when the Rangers drafted him. He was born in December, so I just told him I didn’t want him starting school at five. Sooner or later it would have come out, and I didn’t want him to be unprepared. But he doesn’t know Leo wasn’t his father.”

  She turns her back to me and stares out the kitchen window into the darkness. “Look, I was going to tell you everything — not that there’s very much to tell. There was a boy from one of the teams at the last Mantua Cup. You know how things like that go. I was drunk, and so was he. It just happened. I was going with Leo at the time, but we weren’t … you know. When I turned up pregnant, I told him. I had to. I was supposed to enter nursing that September, but by late June I was already starting to show.”

  Bozo is nuzzling my leg, wanting her chow mein. I push her away, but she’s insistent. She grabs my sleeve in her mouth and nearly drags me off the chair. Esther turns from the window to watch, distractedly. I gesture at the nearly full platter of food. “Do you want any of this?”

  “No,” she says absently. “Give it to her.”

  I slide the platter in front of Bozo and she greedily buries her face in it.

  “We left town in July. Eloped. Leo worked while I had the baby.”

  “That was a generous thing for him to do,” I say.

  “Leo was a generous man.” She seems troubled by that thought for a moment. “Anyway,” she continues, “the next fall I went to Simon Fraser instead and took a B.Sc. in psychology. I went there because I could take classes year round. It only took three years. Then I went to UBC and started an MA in social work.”

  “What was Leo doing all this time?”

  “Working for a logging supply company. And being supportive, whenever he was around. We lived at the university residences, so there was daycare and all that. It wasn’t so bad.”

  “You didn’t come back here at all?”

  “Not until Wendel was three-and-a-half. By then nobody asked questions. Why would they? He was small for his age. Anyway, when I was a year into the MA Leo’s father died, and we moved back here so Leo could take over the company. You know most of the rest of it.”

  The crisis point has come, and, despite my good intentions, I embark on a deception, if not quite an outright lie. “What about …”

  She cuts me off. “His biological father? He disappeared, the poor bastard.” There’s neither malice nor resentment in her voice. While I listen to her version of who I was and what I did the night after I helped her conceive Wendel, I feel a strange kind of elation. She does something I’ve never quite been able to do: she forgives me, all the way to saying that it wasn’t my fault. She knows the basic details of the bus accident, right down to the drunken bus driver and the fact that two of the dead were my closest friends. She’s also aware that I flew the coop before the vehicular homicide charges reached the court. It’s another bizarre moment. She actually tries to excuse me:

  “Really, what else could he have done? Such a waste.”

  TWELVE

  WENDEL OPENS THE BACK door and barges into the kitchen, oblivious to everything but what’s sizzling in his private frying pan. For once, I’m grateful.

  “What’s with you guys?” he asks, stopping in his tracks as a flicker of recognition alters what began as a greeting into a real question. He isn’t used to seeing his mother in tears.

  “Oh, silly stuff,” Esther answers, wiping her nose with the back of her hand. I reach up and pull a Kleenex from the box on top of the fridge and hand it to her.

  Wendel glares at me — this must be my fault, he’s thinking — while Bozo happily shuffles around his legs, demanding attention. Wendel leans well over her so he can scratch her ears without getting a face-full. With a Newfoundland, position is an important tactical consideration unless you’re wearing snorkeling gear.

  “Well,” Wendel says without looking up, willing to be satisfied with Esther’s bland explanation and with me as the source of all domestic evils, “I’ve got some news. The government’s going to cut the annual harvest by forty percent. The Coalition finally got to the Minister.”

  “How’d you hear this?” I ask, suppressing any trace of scepticism. I’ve heard these rumours before, usually via other Coalition members — the college professors, local industry screwees, and the one or two union members I know who aren’t so terrified of losing their jobs that they’re more pro-cut than the multinationals.

  When it comes to forestry, Wendel is always willing to talk, even with me. “You know the routine, Weaver,” he says, sitting down at the table beside his mother. “Everyone in Mantua who isn’t on a respirator knows the multinationals have been overcutting the forests for thirty years.”

  I nod, hiding my skepticism.

  “Course,” he says, “now the multinationals are going to put on a big show about being upset about the cuts. And you know what bullshit that is.”

  I shrug. “That’s their way of stoking up everyone who’s dependent on the industry. What do you expect? They’re out to whip up whoever thinks the forests are the only gravypot in the universe. If you threaten to downsize the industry, you’re threatening their livelihoods or their pickup trucks or whatever.”

  “It’s so stupid,” Wendel complains. He goes on to explain what he thinks is going to happen, though it’s murky: someone sent him a fax outlining a still-secret Cabinet document that will recommend sharply reducing the annual cut, and so forth. Normally I’d be teasing him for sucking on his own wishbone, supposing that a government is capable of planning further ahead than the next election. But not tonight.

  “What’s the difference between this and all the other times cutbacks were supposed to happen?” I ask, trying to sound neutral.

  All he’s got on that is his optimism. “Well, this time it’s going to happen, for one.”

  “Then what?”

  “Hopefully the bastards will pull out, and leave us to do our own logging.”

  I’ve heard this before, too. It’s an idea that is teasing the brains of a lot of people around here, and not just the greenheads. But tonight I want to hear his version. “Explain how that will work.”

  He looks at me to see if I’m setting him up, decides he doesn’t care, and launches into it. “The theory behind it is pretty simple, once you accept that we don’t have to do exactly what our predecessors have done for the last two hundred years,” he says. “First, you stop clearcutting the forests.”

  “Stop? How do you stop it?”

  “It’s easier than it sounds. For one, you won’t have to kick out the multinationals. Once clearcutting has been banned they’ll close down on their own, because the equipment they use won’t be efficient and neither the harvest nor their profits will be fat enough. Having them leave won’t involve the huge loss in jobs most people think, because the harvest technologies they’re using have become so labour-efficient they don’t provide that many jobs.

  “There’s something else about multinationals nobody pays any attention to. In the twenty-or-so years since the takeover of the forests began here, the profits have completely stopped going through Mantua. The resource simply gets harvested and exported” — he pauses here for effect — “and so do the profits. The multina
tionals don’t just take the profits out of the region, either, they ship them out of the country. What we’re doing right now is letting our future be shipped to Hong Kong, Tokyo, and New York without any compensation. And with stumpage fees as low as they are, and with all the raw log exports, it’s a complete giveaway.”

  “So what you’re telling me is that since nobody around here is getting anything out of the harvest the logical thing to do is to close down the industry? Okay. But how does the alternative work? You can’t just do nothing.”

  “We start small,” Wendel answers. “We wedge the locals into what’s left of the forests to harvest trees on a selective basis. But to make this practical there has to be a local co-operative to scale and sell the logs to the highest bidder — hopefully someone in Mantua who can do some local added-value manufacturing and create more jobs. The result? More jobs locally, and whatever profits are produced stay in the community. It’s called Equivalent Community Value.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It’s a political idea. It means that a community has a right to a fair share of the profits that come from the use of the natural resources around it.”

  “Okay,” I say, sitting down across from him. “But what are you going to do about practical reality?”

  “Practical reality?” he hoots. “You call what’s been going on practical? It’s totally nuts.”

  “Nobody ever said practical means sane. The multinationals have got a billion-or-so dollars of capital investment invested here. They aren’t going to leave willingly. They’ve also got their dicks stuck in the government and the big unions up to the hilt, and whenever people like you try to shake them loose with common sense they hump harder, and what’s already loony gets worse.”

  “It takes a leap of faith,” Wendel says, sounding a little lame. “We’re all going to get fucked if we’re as cynical as you are.”

  “I didn’t say I don’t agree with you. I think you’re right about this stuff. But what have you got so far? Some grunting by a few powerless Cabinet committees, and the usual horseshit promises that the interests of the community are, har, har, foremost in the minds of the experts?”

  He doesn’t buckle. “That’s just more cyncism,” he says. “What if you turn it inside out? There isn’t any alternative to what we’re proposing. Not in the long term. The locals have to get off their asses.”

  I don’t know what the hell Wendel was doing at school while he was in Junior hockey, but he’s got his head further around this than I have. My cynicism and my twenty-some years of exper- ience seeing little guys being worked over by bigger guys haven’t taught me anything. I stand up. “Okay, kid. I think you’re onto something here, if you can get around all the ifs.”

  “Geez, thanks for telling me,” he answers, his voice dripping sarcasm.

  He is onto something. And he’s not about to listen to any advice. Being twenty — twenty-one — he doesn’t see how power- ful those ifs are. Life may have gotten nastier around here than it used to be, but it’s like everything else about living in a fat, wealthy country: relative. There’s a point where getting screwed forces people to smarten up, but we haven’t reached it around here. There’s still beer in the bars, money and perks to buy off local politicians, and now there’s fifty channels to keep us in front of our TVs.

  “Where’s your truck?” I ask, hoping to distract him from further sermonizing.

  “Still in the garage. They want to replace the queen pins, or whatever.”

  Wendel’s grasp of auto maintenance is a touch lighter than his grasp of forestry. “They’re king pins,” I say. “I hope those clowns haven’t been messing around with you again.”

  “Whatever,” he answers. “Queen pins, king pins. Who cares? It’ll be ready Monday night, so …”

  “You can keep the pickup until then,” Esther interrupts, free- ing him of having to ask. “I’m not going anywhere Andy can’t drive me to.”

  With that settled, Wendel cheerfully shifts his focus from us to the refrigerator, which was his original motive for coming over. He hasn’t lived with us since he returned to Mantua from Regina and Juniors, but he hasn’t exactly been a stranger, either. He comes over five or six times a week to hoover the fridge. Esther hoped he’d find a steady girl and settle in with her — or maybe that was me, hoping to cut the grocery bills. I can’t quite remember, all of a sudden.

  Whatever we wished, it didn’t happen, and not because Wendel has been short of girlfriends. There was a steady one for a while, but they didn’t move in together. He just brought her with him to help apply the vacuum to the food supply.

  “There’s nothing in here,” he complains from inside the fridge door.

  “We ate Chinese tonight,” Esther says by way of explanation. “Aren’t there some chicken pies in there somewhere?”

  I can’t stop myself. “If you’d gotten here half an hour ago you could have fought Bozo for the chow mein.”

  Wendel ignores us both, and pulls out a loaf of bread, a jar of mayonnaise, and a block of cheddar, and moves to the counter to fix himself some sandwiches.

  WHILE HE’S BUSY WITH this I have a good look at him — a parental look. It’s hard to see how I missed our physical similarities. He’s built the same way as I am, larger and a little more spectacularly muscled, sure, but he has the same square shoulders and long waist.

  When he turns and I see him in profile the resemblance isn’t so strong. His jawline is stronger than mine, the forehead broader. Hard to say about his nose, since mine’s been broken enough times that its impossible to say what it would look like if I’d grown up to be a toe-tapping banker or violinist.

  He has Esther’s features — and her strength of character. When he turns to ask if we’ve got another half gallon of milk in the basement fridge, I see that his eyes are hers too: large, deepset, and the same luminous green.

  Without me realizing it, he’s helped me to make a decision. I’m not going to drop the truth on Esther until I can establish a few more solid links between Wendel and I. He’s going to be a tough nut to crack, though.

  Esther gathers the dishes and, elbowing Wendel aside, begins to load the dishwasher while I crumple the empty Chinese food containers and put them in the garbage. Our talk, apparently, is over.

  Well, not quite. Wendel quits his sandwich-building at six, slices the pile into halves, and sits down at the table with the plate in front of him.

  “I saw you looking at all those stupid team photos this morn- ing in the lobby,” he says, eyeing me with a strange friendliness. “They used to have tournaments here every spring, didn’t they? How come those stopped?”

  Esther answers the question for me. “There was a bus accident after the last tournament,” she says. “Five players from the team that won got killed.”

  “Four,” I say, without thinking. “Only four players were killed.”

  Esther glances at me, and just as quickly looks away. “How come you know about that?”

  “Gord told me the story. You know I’ve got a memory for details.”

  It’s Wendel’s turn. “Since when?”

  “Hey. There’s a lot of things about me you don’t know, kiddo.” I’m veering dangerously close to the truth here.

  “I was thinking,” he says, “we should start up the tourna- ment again.”

  “What in God’s name for?” Esther and I say, as one.

  “Why not?”

  “I just told you why not,” Esther answers. “The last time we had a tournament four people died.”

  “That was a long time ago,” Wendel scoffs. “Who cares about that now?”

  “Who’d want to sponsor a tournament?” I ask, as if it’s a rhetorical question.

  Wendel doesn’t blink. “The City. Why wouldn’t Snell go for something like that?”

  “Because it would bring in ten or fiftee
n teams full of crazy shitheads to wreck the town,” I say. “He wouldn’t want the policing problems. It’s bad enough around here when just the Roosters are in town.”

  Wendel starts to argue his case, speculating that the inde- pendent loggers might sponsor it, and rattling on about the prestige a good tournament would bring.

  I decide that it’s better to let him harangue his mother about this. She isn’t as likely to put her foot in it as I am. I get up from the table and pull my leathertops and snowshoes from the kitchen closet.

  “I think I’ll take Bozo out.”

  THIRTEEN

  “YOU’RE GOING OUT WITH her now?” Esther says, eyeing my snowshoes. “There’s close to a metre of new snow out there.” I reach into the closet again, this time for my wool pants and mitts.

  “It’ll be okay. We won’t go far. And anyway, I rebroke the trails on Thursday. Back in half an hour or so.”

  The instant Bozo catches sight of the snowshoes, she begins to bounce up and down. Wisely, Esther and Wendel clear out of the kitchen and leave me and the dog to our preparations.

  Bozo splatters a mouthful of saliva across the kitchen wall, and she’s ready. She prances up and down while I look for my wool shirt, which isn’t where it ought to be. After a moment’s cursing and fumbling around I find it underneath a nearly full fifty-pound bag of dog chow, with the pockets full of kibble. I shake the bits out onto the floor and Bozo sucks them up.

  By the time I’m ready to leave, mother and son have settled down in the living room to watch the video Wendel has brought with him. I lean in just long enough to watch the credits. It’s one of his Sierra Club videos, with one of those depressing, bearded yo-yos talking about the end of the world in the same bland enthusiasm as a television announcer announcing this week’s bargains at Canadian Tire. They don’t stir when I jam a toque over my skull, open the door for Bozo, and follow her outside with a snowshoe tucked under each arm.

  “Don’t be too long,” I hear Esther call as I release the storm door. It shuts before I can answer.