Falling From Grace (8 page)

The next day at noon we walked to Sally's Diner. Mel lurched along on his spider legs, shoulders hunched like a vulture, bracing against an imaginary wind, his hands in his jacket pockets, head topped by the Tilley hat he wore whenever he went out in “the weather,” as he called it. By the time he reached the diner in a parking lot at the edge of the beach, I trailed half a block behind. He waited at a picnic table for me to catch up before we went inside.

Contrary to what my mother thought, I had dreaded this lunch with Mel since Patrick and Steve related their experience to me one night in the back yard. Their main advice, “Take a book.” But in the back of my mind, I maintained a faint hope my father might one day meet my eyes and ask, “Tell me one important thing about your life.”

We ordered fish and chips and ate in silence. Mel gazed out the window at the ocean, at his food, around the room. His pale blue eyes flitted behind his glasses from table to table as if searching for old friends who might spirit him away from his predicament, from this odd small person, his daughter. He seemed perpetually restless, unable to settle at a single task, concentrate on another human for enough time to understand we walked and talked and felt emotions. I worried about Patrick, a physical clone of Mel. Would he lose his affable disposition, his social graces? By the time dessert arrived—a piece of strawberry rhubarb pie and ice cream topped with a gritty pink birthday candle he fished out of his pocket and lit with a paper match—I wanted to slink out the door. He did say “Happy Birthday” after I blew out the candle, but the sentiment ended with an upsurge in his voice like a question mark that left a whiff of smoky uncertainty in the air. I dawdled home along the beach and arrived a half hour after Mel. Grace met me at the door. “How'd it go, dear?” she asked. “Dad said you enjoyed yourselves.”

“Sure,” I answered, then headed out to the back yard and my refuge, the tree house my brothers had built me when I was seven and that I should have outgrown long ago. “He brought me a candle,” I mumbled as I walked past my mother.

I looked at Rainbow. She couldn't put a name to her father, let alone a face or an accusation. “Yes, I have a dad.”

“Where is he?”

“In Qualicum.”

“I don't have a dad.”

“Everyone has a dad.”

“I know. About sperms and eggs. Mary says I'm like baby Jesus. He didn't have a dad.” She took three hops ahead and whirled around. “Mary doesn't always tell the truth.” She twirled in a circle on one foot. “Is he small too?”

“Baby Jesus?”

“Noooo.” She raised both arms in irritation and let them flop to her sides. “Your dad.”

“He's a bit taller than Paul.”

“Is your mom small?”

“No.”

“Do you have brothers and sisters?”

“Brothers and they're not little either. Keep walking.”

“How did you get small?”

“An evil fairy godmother put a spell on me. I used to be taller than your mom.”

She stopped and swung around to face me. “Truly?”

“No, not truly. I was born this way.”

“You were a big baby,” she exclaimed.

“I was a little baby. I grew and . . . I stopped.”

“Will I stop too?'

“You ask too many questions.”

She ran ahead, bent over to peer between her legs and waddled backward. “How much farther?”

“About five minutes.”

Suddenly, she straightened, turned around, and wailed. Huge sobs wracked her slender body as she shuffled along, head down, shoulders slumped forward.

Bewildered, I trotted up beside her. “What's the matter with you?”

She continued to weep, face hidden in the folds of her sleeve.

I turned her toward me and cupped her chin. “Rainbow, what's wrong. Are you hurt?”

She peered out above her forearm, pupils clear and cheeks dry. “I'm practising for Mary.”

I failed to hold back a smile. “Here. Give me your hand before you fall on your face.”

For once she complied and we trudged hand in hand along the road, the dwarf and the wailing child, trees a living roof above our heads.

My station wagon appeared around a curve in the road ahead. Paul drove alongside and rolled down the window, knees up at shoulder level.

“You could have taken the extenders off,” I scolded.

“I like the challenge,” he answered with a grin. “I came to pick up Rainbow,” he said. “What's wrong with her?”

I smoothed the hair plastered to Rainbow's forehead and patted her heaving back. “She's upset her mom left her behind.”

“We didn't want to wake you up. Sorry. Hop in and I'll drive you the rest of the way.”

Rainbow tugged on my hand and continued up the road.

“I think she prefers to walk.” I fell into place beside her. “What's happening up there?”

“Not much,” he answered. “A company pick-up pulled up an hour ago, turned around and left. I guess I'll see you back there.” He did a
U
-turn, and glided past, waving like the Queen, his antics eliciting no response from Rainbow.

We arrived at the entrance to the upper valley road to find the protesters milling about, talking, in front of the locked gate—a single bar of red-painted steel. Rainbow received a great deal of mileage out of her theatrics, Mary beside herself with guilt at her daughter's distress. Protesters carried placards over their shoulders. Three men were chained to the gate. No sign of loggers, logging trucks, or machinery.

Paul drove me back to camp and we spent a strained afternoon checking traps, avoiding talk of the protest, the subject of Mary. At the end of the day, we walked the trail through the buffer zone and counted the timber marks. Five trees. I wanted to cry.

“Marbled murrelets are nesting in here,” Paul announced as we stood at the base of a giant fir.

“What?” I asked, surprised he hadn't told me earlier. Nobody cared about arthropods, but marbled murrelets carried threatened status, their nests and eggs protected. An occupied nest could mean no road building, no cutting of trees. “Why didn't you tell me earlier?” I asked.

“I'm wasn't sure, but I've heard adults call and”—he dug in his pants pocket and pulled out a piece of tissue, unfolding it into his hand to reveal a delicate green-hued fragment of shell blotched with purple—“I spent an hour yesterday searching the base of these trees.” He handed me the shell fragment.

I held the near weightless shell in the palm of my hand. “Any idea which tree?”

We peered again up into the canopy to study the green confusion above. Which tree, which ancient limb, which moss mat held the shallow depression where a murrelet would lay a single egg?

“I'll inform Roger in the morning,” I said. “He can't ignore murrelets.”

“This fir sure is a giant,” Paul observed, head craned back. “Makes me feel like a dwarf.”

“Me too,” I said.

He nudged my boot affectionately with his toe. “Sorry, I forget.”

I nudged him back. “Me too.”

Late the next afternoon, I received an email reply from Roger.
Interesting about the murrelets. I'll send our ecologist in soon to check it out. Roger. P.S. It's a boy!

7

After the
fifth day of occupying the road with no signs of loggers, the protesters—who referred to themselves as forest defenders—straggled back at dusk, dirty after days of camping and no showers and discouraged by the lack of progress. A meagre dinner of pasta and canned tomato sauce fuelled a growing frustration.

“This is crap.” A middle-aged man overturned his bowl on the ground; the sauce splattered like blood across the stones and forest litter at his feet.

A woman burst into tears. “It's not our fault. All we had was pasta.”

“I'm not talking about the food,” the man growled. “I'm talking about this whole damn thing. It's a waste of time.”

“I agree,” a plump woman soaking her foot in a cooking pot full of warm water echoed. “Let's go home. I need a shower.”

Marcel heaved himself off the ground and banged his bowl and cup together. “If we go, we will be playing into their hands,” he argued. “The company, they are trying to outwait us, eh.”

“Yah, aren't we in this for the long run?” an older man called out.

“The multinationals are the ones in it for the long run. Seventy-five per cent of the island's old-growth's gone,” a young woman with a mass of wild black curls retorted. “If we don't stand up and say no, they'll keep cutting until it's all gone to toilet paper and tabloids. I'm staying.”

“Twenty-five per cent left, Sue?” the man who dumped his dinner argued. “I can hear them. Still twenty-five per cent old-growth left? Plenty for all of us, toothpicks, you tree-huggers and the birds.”

“Bull-shit. Their head office is in New York. They don't care about the animals,” Cougar chided. “Or us.”

“What do you think, Faye?” Terry turned to me. “You're the scientist. Is twenty-five per cent enough?”

I had avoided their political discussions, feigning disinterest to keep them at bay. Weren't the issues too complex to solve by civil disobedience? Processes existed to deal with the problem without breaking the law. But my research had uncovered more questions than it answered. “We don't know much about these old rainforests,” I said. “We're finding new species of arthropods in the canopy all the time. I'm for keeping all the bits and pieces.”

“Yeah, how many species have gone extinct before we know about them?” Sue said.

I squirmed at the comment the way I did when Mel observed I spent my time recording species before they disappeared. Underneath my well constructed and scientific counterarguments, I heard the cruel truth in his words. Protecting small tracts of land in parks wouldn't prevent a loss of biodiversity.

How much intact wild land does a wolf, an elk, a goshawk, a canopy beetle need?

“My job will go extinct if I'm not back to work by next week,” the plump woman argued.

“Mine too.”

“Okay.” Terry held up his hands. “We can't expect all of you to hang in here forever. Do we have a core group of people willing to stay as long as it takes? The rest of you can leave for home and work from there. If it gets hot on the road and they arrest people, we'll need supplies, new recruits, and support from outside.”

A number of people bobbed their heads in agreement.

“Raise your hand if you can commit to stay.”

A smattering of hands went up, among them Marcel, Mary, Rainbow, a white-haired Japanese man dressed all in black, Sue and two of her student friends from Vancouver, the dreadlocked man, Cougar, and his silent companion who went by the name of Squirrel.

“Excellent,” Terry said. “We should manage to keep the road closed. I'll let the Victoria office know if we need backup. If you leave, keep in touch with them.”

• • •

A black
bear hung around the perimeter of the camp, attracted by the smells of cooking, curious about the increased activity in its territory. At night, his grunts and footfalls sounded through the thin walls of the tents, and as he grew braver, he ventured farther into the clearing, tongued huckleberries off bushes, raked open logs for ants, left claw marks in tree trunks, knocked over gear and brushed past tents. The campers took extra care to cache their food supplies up a tree or in a car, and I insisted they rinse all the dishes three times to remove temptation from our night visitor. One afternoon before dark he appeared at the edge of the clearing. His big shaggy head rocked back and forth, nostrils flaring.

“Git,” I yelled, clanging together a pot and its lid as I stepped toward him; I prayed he wouldn't charge.

He swivelled his gaze in my direction, stood on his hind legs and sniffed the air, then dropped his front paws back to the ground and lumbered away into the forest without a backward glance, the fat and muscle on his haunches rolling as he walked.

• • •

The reduction
in the number of people trampling the forest floor came none too soon, hiking boots and rain a destructive combination, the trail to the road and the latrine path rutted and muddy. I stopped my lectures on the danger of compaction at the base of trees and instead erected short fences of flagging tape and sticks around all the trees at the edge of the clearing. An unmistakable and effective message.

The remaining protestors spent their days on the road from pre-dawn until mid-afternoon when confident the logging crews had vacated the area in a crummy for home. Once back at camp, they pitched in with cooking and camp maintenance, took naps in their tents or the sun when possible, swam in the river, and sat around discussing strategy and the politics of cutting trees. Terry, who became more harried over time, spent endless hours on his radiophone, frequently dashing off in his car to find a clear-cut with better reception. He made pronouncements about the status of the court injunction, the political moves of the company who had hired a
PR
firm to greenwash their image and downplay the protest, and the progress of the letter-writing campaign to the premier and the forest minister. “Supporters are marching to the Legislature on Saturday,” he declared one evening.