Chapter 17
“It’s a crock of shit,” Bob said, then picked up a menu and said, “but it’s your shout,” and sat down.
We’d met in a small restaurant in Fenelon Falls. “Had enough of the lodge for now,” he said.
“What’s a crock of shit?” I wanted to know.
“Whatever this do is about.”
“Have you ever camped alone?” I asked.
“What?”
“Have you ever camped alone?”
“I’ve camped on my own tod all the time. Even with all sorts in the same tent.”
“That’s not what I meant. I meant by yourself, with nobody else for miles.”
“I could use a cigarette.” He had a bowl of chili in front of him. I had a pot of tea and a piece of toast and had not ordered fries.
I waited.
“Yes,” he said. He thought. “Three - no - four times, all in the last year.” He added pepper to the chili. “Not counting the time I did a bunk from the rest of the bad ‘uns on the penitentiary camping trip and they spent the night looking for me. But sure, four times.”
“There are noises,” I said, “in the night that you don’t hear during the day.”
Bob said nothing, so I went on. “After you’ve dismissed every creature in the woods, you’ve got to conclude that either something has wandered in from the Galapagos, something has survived from the cretaceous, or some creatures from a UFO are singing in Arcturan.”
“I got maybe an hour’s kip that first night,” Bob said.
I nodded. “About the same. And it’s completely different if someone’s with you. Anyone, however helpless, and I can sleep like a baby.”
“One sound I heard was like something was tearing small trees up, stuffing them up its nostrils, and choking on them.” He laughed. “I expected to ‘ave a bear chipping it from my tent. I didn’t ‘alf use up my torch batteries on that one, and didn’t find nowt.”
“You never find anything.” I scowled at the toast, then ripped open a peanut butter cartridge and spread it on.
“I ‘ear you got shot at.” Bob reached for a spoon for the chili. He was wearing a plaid shirt, a plaid jacket, and very clean jeans, as well as a tractor hat with a wolf logo.
“Official word is that it was a rabbit hunter being careless.”
“Official word,” said Bob, “is that the gormless bastard popped ‘is clogs by falling in his bloody canoe.”
“You don’t believe that?”
“Beats me, but I have a feeling someone might have cock-‘anded the fratchy bastard with a paddle.”
I raised my eyebrows.
“No,” he said. “Not me. If I want to get at you, I’ll fist you. If I want to be serious, I don’t faff about; I use a knife.” He stared me straight in the eye. “I’m not a gun person, and I sure as bloody ‘ell would never ‘it anyone with anything but my fists. Don’t need to, ever.”
“Gotcha.”
“You doing this for the old Bill?”
I raised my eyebrows. This one missed me.
“For the cops?”
“Just for myself.”
“Why?”
“Bothers me.” I scratched at my head.
“You ever find George’s paddle?”
“Pardon?”
“George was a tall yob. ‘e always took ‘is own paddle. Same as the others, but longer. I checked - it never came back to the lodge.”
I thought about it. “There was a paddle in the water, but it wasn’t any longer than any of the others.”
“Well, they’d ‘ave taken a spare paddle, so it wants finding.”
“You’re thinking one that might have blood stains on it?”
“That’s right. But come to that, it’s dead easy to ‘ide a paddle in the bush.” Or burn it.”
“When I came to that first portage camp, where Ned and Patrick were,” I told him, “they had a fire going in the middle of the afternoon. It seemed strange to me at the time.”
“Still think I’m trying to pull a stroke on you?” Bob finished the chili.
“Nope. But what did Belinda mean she said, ‘I could tell them where you were yesterday’?”
“We’d ‘ad a right barney. I’d slung my ‘hook. I was gone ‘alf the day. I guess she figured I’d ‘iked over the ’ills some way and offed the nutter.”
“You didn’t like him?”
“Toffee-nosed asshole. I don’t know if I could have ‘iked over the ‘ills and beat the crap out of ‘im. It’s not ‘alf rough country from the look. Even if I’d known where ‘e was, which I didn’t.”
“You couldn’t have. We checked. Just too far”
‘So now what?”
“I don’t know,” I told him.
“Do you ‘ave any idea why anybody, especially the two who ‘ired him as a guide, would want to scrag ‘im? Although it seemed to me they could shift for themselves dead easy.”
I hesitated. “I’m not sure it deserves to be told.”
“A wink’s as good as a nod to me.”
So I told him about the petroglyphs and the ore body. And the land claim. For some reason I wanted to be free of the whole thing. Nobody had sworn me to secrecy, and I liked the feeling of being free of the burden. It occurred to me again that it would have been to someone’s advantage if I died before I told anybody. So I told people.
“You think the Indians ‘ave their feet under the table with the geologist?”
“Or they’re going to have a duel over it.”
“Well,” he said. “To say fair, if I was a geologist and ‘ad a lot of mining friends, I’d know where to get a few sticks of dynamite that fell off the back of a truck.”
“Dynamite?”
“If those Indian drawings disappear, a lot of someone’s problems would get solved.”
“Holy shit,” I said, “I never thought of that.”
“Yeah,” Bob said. “Holy shit.”
“I talked with Bob,” I told Kele.
“And just what did Bob have to tell you? Where he was when people were shooting at us?”
“Well, not that, but I can’t see a city kid skulking through the woods for miles, stealing people’s guns from them and disappearing like that.”
“Gotta agree with that one. Any word from his redheaded girlfriend?”
“Belinda? No, I didn’t ask about her.”
Kele squinted over his coffee. We were at a Tim Horton’s donut shop in Peterborough, where we’d met by agreement. I couldn’t get over the number of people anxious to get away from the woods and into the towns and cities. He was wearing a big leather cowboy hat and a brown leather jacket. “Did you miss all the important things?”
“Speaking of important things, has anybody decided what to do about the big problem on that hill?”
Kele picked up a chocolate donut. “Samuel’s working on it.” He looked out the window, where a constant stream of cigarette-smoking drivers waited in line for the take-out window. Since municipal law had made smoking indoors illegal, the drive-through windows had got really busy.
“What would be the ideal solution?”
“A car accident with Ned and Patrick and a transport carrying concrete. That would give us more time.” He smiled. “I’m not serious, of course.”
“Well,” I said, “it seems to me that the best compromise from your point of view - the First Nations, I mean - is that you get the land because of the petroglyphs. Then, a few years later, Ned and Patrick get to do some mining, under contract with the band.”
“That’s been mentioned. In fact it’s more or less what came up at the campfire while you were snoring.”
“Bob suggested a solution from the geobuddies’ point of view.”
“You and me and Samuel all have a traffic accident?” Kele sipped from his cup. The coffee, it seemed, stayed hot quite a while.
“The Brit’s got a devious mind. He suggested the petroglyphs might have an accident.”
Kele sat up. “Like
?”
“Like maybe geologists have access to explosives and rock-smashing stuff.”
Kele pondered that one for a long, long time. He looked out the window, where a blonde with a bright red coat was fighting the wind to open the door. He went to the counter and bought six donuts, a chocolate-chip cookie, and a coffee.
“I have a question for you,” I said, when his mouth was full.
“Mmmph?”
“You couldn’t have shot at us, because you were with us. Pica couldn’t have stolen the rifle, because she was with Seth and me.”
“Mmmm.”
“But you could have stolen the rifle, passed it to Pica, and let her do the shooting.”
He ate in silence, his brows furrowed. He pushed the plate of donuts closer to me, and I took a honey-glazed.
“Why?” he asked.
“To keep people away from the hill.” I took a maple donut, put it on top of the honey-glazed, and discovered, with a bit of a stretch, that I could eat both at once.
“But I didn’t know anything about the site at the time.”
“So you say.”
“Mmmmm.”
“Or,’ I said, “Samuel could have been involved. Or both of you.”
“Ah. Of course. There’s a secret society at the lodge and Samuel and Pica and I are the leaders. Our mission is to protect the Great Secret.”
“It seems a bit unlikely,” I said. “After all, Samuel told me. And I’ve spread the word around.”
“If there’s a chance those bastards have dynamite, then perhaps it’s time to spread the word a bit.”
“You could lose on this thing.” I could still see a large mining operation in the area, with a tiny space fenced off around the petroglyphs. Or perhaps someone would pry them loose and take them to a museum to protect them.
“It might be time to go public.” Kele was in thought. “I should phone Samuel.”
“Samuel’s the boss?”
Kele shrugged. “He’s the one that found the carvings, at least for our side. He gets input.”
“Not that I care,” I said. “Whoever gets that stretch of woods is going to make it off-limits to this photographer.”
“We could adopt you into the tribe. Give you a real name, like Dodges the Bullet, or something.”
“Unless it comes with tax breaks, I think I’ll pass.”
“So what are we going to do?” Kele asked, eyeing the last donut.
I broke the donut in half. “Like you said, let’s phone Samuel.”
I sat in my car while Kele talked on the phone for a long time. I watched the cars come and go. Canadians have more donut shops per capita than anybody else in the world. It’s facts like that that made me give up economics for photography. When he came out, he looked cold. “It’s only September,” I told him. “Just wait till winter comes.”
“When winter comes, I’ll dress warmer. Anyway, there’s supposed to be a warm front coming in tonight.” He turned up the car heater.
“As long as you didn’t get that from the CBC,” I said. The CBC, the national broadcaster, has weather forecasts that are at variance with everybody else. I think they take the forecasts that come in, crank the paper one turn to the left, then try to read it.
“Weather channel.”
“I guess that’ll do. So what did you and Samuel decide?”
“We’re going to announce the discovery of the petroglyphs, then try to set up some sort of camp on them. Maybe get a bunch of people to hold a ceremony and invite the press. Until that happens, we’ll go guard the place.”
“You and Samuel?”
“You and me.”
I thought about it. “Try again, bucko.”
“Well, I’m going, and I thought you might want to share the action.”
“I could race motorcycles,” I said, “but I take pictures of quiet waters. I could climb mountains, but I take pictures of quiet waters in the rain.” I paused to turn the car’s heat back down. “Are you getting the basic idea?
“I’m going out there by myself, then. Samuel’s got a lot of organizing to do, and someone has to be on that rock pretty soon.”
I thought about it. “It would be better if you got some other Indians, I think.” I could see the first high clouds from the coming front. There would be rain, I thought, but warmer weather.
“I’m not all that popular on the rez. There are a couple of guys that might come, but….”
“But?”
“We don’t want this to look like an occupation or something. That just brings out the opposition.”
“You need a token white guy.”
“That’s right.” Kele scratched his head.
“Then you occupy the place.”
“Would be nice if it weren’t all renegade natives, you know.”
I knew. “Let me talk to Aisha, first.”
He got up to get out of my car. “I’ll phone you at home.”
“I’d like you to drop by in an hour or so. Aisha’ll want to meet the guy who wants to have her husband go out and face bullets and dynamite.” I handed him a business card.
He nodded, and left for his car.
I sat in the parking lot and thought about the whole thing a lot. I didn’t like any of my options, and thought that I was being manipulated by somebody or maybe life itself.
I drove home in a sudden and heavy rain that pulled the dead leaves off the trees and onto the streets like last year’s hopes.
Aisha was a little concerned. “Personally,” she said, “I’ve always thought that camping alone was pushing your luck a bit.” She passed me an apple, which I had to eat so she wouldn’t know how many donuts I’d had. “And I’ve always thought you would be safer with someone along with you,” she went on. “But gun-toting dynamite chuckers might not be as good for you, if you get my drift. On the other hand, if you eat any more donuts, it won’t matter much who else is after you.”
“I don’t have to get involved,” I noted.
“Someone has to get involved. Those petroglyphs are irreplaceable. I’d go myself, if I could.”
“Listen,” I said. “There’s no evidence whatsoever that anyone’s going to blow up anything. That was just Bob’s speculation. Nothing more.”
“You’ll need enough food for a week,” Aisha said.
The doorbell rang. Aisha let Kele in.
We sat around the kitchen table and talked strategy over herbal tea and tofu-and-zucchini muffins. I don’t like muffins. Muffins are woman food. Take my word for it. But Kele said they were great.
“Interesting mug,” Kele said of the cup Aisha served the tea in. So she told him where she’d got it and introduced him to the rest of her mug hoard. Aisha doesn’t collect mugs; she just takes a fancy to them when she sees them, for reasons unknown to me. Most are just brightly coloured but some have bizarre shapes like a moose or a dozen centipedes having an orgy or something.
We’ve got so many mugs the cups and glasses finally had to be stored in the attic, carefully packed in boxes against the time, perhaps, when she’d lose her fascination with mugs or I would remarry or something. The windows are full of tiny plants desperately trying to survive in mugs with cracks or missing handles.
We agreed that a week would give Samuel time enough to arrange a sit-in. And that we wouldn’t inform the police, in case they stopped the sit-in. We’d leave it to Samuel to inform the media.
“One more thing,” I said. Into the silence, I added, “I’m going to call Bob.”