Smoke River (6 page)

Stephanie watches her mother return to the stove and lift half a dozen expertly crisped heart-shaped waffles from the steaming pewter and dig a scoop into the butter.
Here we go
, Stephanie thinks. One generous soft sphere for the edge of Las’s plate, and now –
whoa, didn’t see this coming! –
a smaller one for Stephanie’s. She must know I’m watching her lowball both my appetite and butter-worthiness.
So freakishly predictable
, Stephanie thinks.
Because I have hips. Like a normal fucking female!

But she doesn’t say anything. Her mother must have held back the guts gene from Steph’s
DNA
. Las slides onto the banquette opposite her with a belch. Stephanie surveys the outline of her brother’s deltoids under his tight T-shirt, the sun-bleached tips of his uncombed hair, his overall irreproachable hot-guyness.
Stupid as shit, though
.

How easy it would be to shock her mom, her dad, Las, if only she had the nerve. She’d announce her intentions to see a drag queen show, chew qat with the high school’s two Somali kids, wear a headscarf in solidarity with the quietly courageous Nala Nahid, or hold hands with a girl and walk the length of downtown Dorkville. Yup, there’d be some jaws hanging open.

“Hungry?” Her mom’s laser-whitened smile beams at her brother.

He nods. Her mom slides a heaped plate in front of Las, who doesn’t acknowledge it.

“Ma, what’s going on with the barricade?” he says. “Fucking natives make us look like wimps.”

“Dad and I are working on it. Something’s close.”

“What’s the holdup? You own the property, they’re blocking it. It’s against the law. Drag the assholes off there. Christ, I’ll do it.”

Stephanie stares at the three small heart-shaped waffles on her plate, the half-dozen raspberries, teaspoon of sour cream, half scoop of butter, and two strips of bacon, cooked the way Las likes, a molecule this side of carbon. She feels the hunger that will outlast this breakfast and the humiliation of already wanting more before she begins.

“Whose law?” says Stephanie.

“Wha?”

“You said it was against the law. So I asked you whose law.”

Las chews a mouthful of waffle. As he pushes his food down, his face folds into a simian squint. “Our law, you idiot. The law of the land!”

“Steph, let your brother finish his breakfast.”

The glare she aims at her mother, who’s eating a bowl of muesli doused with vanilla soymilk and wiping the counter between bites, goes unanswered.

Stephanie feels wobbly in her conviction. Daryl Inksetter followed her around like a puppy dog all grade nine, and she
had rushed to keep her distance from him, not because he wasn’t cool – Stephanie herself never made a team in Dorkville’s blood sport of cool – but because his hair was cut in a mullet and he wore a buckskin and bead choker that was, well, too native. In grade ten there was Nate Bastine. She’d caught him taking all of her in, up and down, in what her photography teacher, Mr. Ward, would surely call the “appraising gaze” or the look of the “surveyor.” At the beginning of grade ten it so flummoxed Stephanie that she thought she would burst into tears. But he was native, and she was already scrambling for friends. So she unthinkingly abided by the unspoken rule that you didn’t hang around with the native kids, that they roamed apart in no-entry-allowed packs, at the back of the classroom or on the periphery of the cafeteria or at the far end of the soccer field.

And if occasionally there was a kid like Phil LaForme, who as a fullback on the football team penetrated the inner circle of Dorkville popularity, it was largely because he cut his hair like all the other football players and preferred American Eagle shirts and jeans to the low-riding Iroquois gangsta vibe. Most of all Phil was appreciated because he did not make them uncomfortable, he did not remind them. Even when there was a protest or a blockade or it was National Aboriginal Day, Phil didn’t force people to recognize that he was native.

“It’s an important point, Mom. Since when are the Mohawks subject to our laws? Are they a conquered people? Did they sign a treaty giving away their sovereignty?”

Las stops eating, holds his fork in the air.

“What the fuck, Steph? When did you turn red? This is about your family, about our private property.” A spray of maple syrup and sour cream speckles the table in front of him.

Her mom clunks her bowl down on the counter. “Steph, really. Why do you have to be so provocative? It’s stressful
enough, what we’re going through. Everybody has to obey the law.”

Stephanie feels her face burn. “You guys don’t get it. Most of the Mohawks were British allies. They never agreed to be subject to our laws. In fact, the British signed treaties
protecting
them from some of our laws. I can’t help it if I’m the only one in the family who knows something about
history
.”

Las stands up abruptly; his plate rattles away from the edge of the table. He glares at Stephanie. “You know what? You’re making me sick!”

“Las!”

Stephanie wishes her mother’s protest sounded stronger, wasn’t so easily ignored.

Her brother points his long arm at his mother. “And you and Dad are a fucking embarrassment!”

Her mother reels back. The beckoning cheep of a cellphone frees her; she runs to locate it, her face drained of colour.

Stephanie turns to the abandoned syrup-soaked waffle hanging over the edge of her brother’s plate. With a queasy mix of vengeance and self-loathing, she spears it. She doesn’t feel as if she’s scored any points. She is as much a hypocrite as they are. Perhaps worse.

Her mother returns to the kitchen, fist-pumping the air and yelling, “We got it! Las, Steph, we got it! We got the injunction!” Steph looks up with a weak smile, then shoves the last piece of waffle in her mouth.

M
ayor Peg Redhill sits in her plum-coloured
SUV
with the windows closed to keep the air conditioning in and the public out. The barricade is just temporary, she tells herself. A minor blip. Cooler heads will prevail. She takes a big gulp of coffee that scalds her throat, makes her eyes water. When she thumbs through the messages on her smartphone, everything blurs except a succession of capitalized texts from municipal budget chief Reid Wellings.

WAIT!
Lawyers on phone
NOW
. Do
NOT
talk to press about injunction
YET
.

She fumbles in her purse. Damn, no reading glasses. It takes her a moment to focus on the words between
WAIT, NOW, NOT
,
and
YET
. Even in his texts Wellings has a talent for sweaty condescension. She looks up at the Jarvis Ridge billboard. The giant legless couple with impossible good looks appear to be falling out of the photograph while gripping beaded glasses of
Chablis. Across the road from it is a green flat-line of tobacco.
Such a mixture of intransigence and hope in this place
, she thinks. The barricade – its milling natives, scattered reporters, awkward sentry of cops – looks like an accident scene, jarring but temporary. Surely it can’t stand in the way of all Doreville’s recent good energy.

The sun presses its pink-umber belly into the horizon. She stops idling the car, afraid it is sending a message that she’s ready to bolt, though without air conditioning she will look as greasy as an Easter ham on camera. Interlake special constable Reggie Holland, newly arrived, walks into view with his nice, if tired, eyes. Peg Redhill feels better instantly. There is a handsomeness to his kind of burly, settled man that she is always ready to appreciate. She detects the oppression of middle age in him: a marriage that’s fleshy but reliable, two kids under the age of ten, a golden retriever that sits on command, and a debt load that wakes him up at three a.m. with panting existential panic. His blonde-helmeted wife with the Slavic jaw had better rub that man’s strong back. She cranks open her window, dabs at her forehead with a tissue, notices that her nail polish is chipped. Peg tucks a hand under her arm, checking for dampness on her favourite salmon-coloured silk-blend blouse. But Constable Holland is looking baked by the sun too. They’re all overheated, anxious.

“Mayor Redhill,” he says, and his large hand folds over the edge of the open window.

“Constable Holland, good to see you.”

Reg leans in. “Thought you should know there’s a special team from outside of Doreville they’ve put in charge of policing.”

“Yup, yup. Knew that.” She smiles, lets her eyes wander to his shoulders, the small scar under his chin.

“They will stick-handle the response to the injunction, but I expect it’s all going to be straightforward – getting the barricade
down, peaceful dispersal of the crowd – you know the drill. Not too complex, even for these regional desk jockeys.” He winks. Peg wonders if he’s making an extra effort to seem assured, light-hearted.

“Okey-dokey, sounds good. Let’s get this done. I have no appetite for this, Reg. Every one of these little disturbances costs the town money, lots of it.”

“So, you talking to the press soon?”

“Just waiting for the go-ahead.”

As if on cue, Peg’s phone vibrates. Constable Holland ambles away. She wants to call him back, make a quip that will light up his smile.

Reid Wellings sounds as if he isn’t inhaling enough air. “We can’t support the injunction, Peg.”

“Oh Christ. You can’t be serious.”

“The lawyers say that because we have not assumed responsibility for the roads through the development, it’s not our issue. Can’t risk the liability.”

“Omigod. Do you realize the position I’m in? We’re going to look spineless.”

“Better not to say anything, Peg. Just leave.”

“Are you kidding? I’ve been here for an hour; they all know I’m here. I’m not scurrying away like some nervous ostrich.”

“Peg, I’m telling you—”

She clicks the phone shut, shouts, “Asshole!” into the emptiness of the car, and turns to see a petite brunette in khakis, a snug lavender blouse and a fresh application of lipstick moving towards the truck with an officious gait. Just as Peg reaches for the button to close her window, a manicured set of fingers grabs on to the glass.

“Mayor Redhill. We’re hoping to get you on camera before the injunction is served so we can catch all the action and meet our deadline.”

Peg wonders how she got so old that everyone looks younger than her own kid.

“Otherwise we’re going to have to say you were unavailable for comment and run a B-roll of you sitting in your truck.”

Where do they come from, these women? Girls, really. Playing dress-up, icing their eyes and lips in birthday-cake colours, asking serious questions that they themselves don’t fully understand. A college diploma, a microphone, and skinny, Stairmaster-hardened calves. And do they really expect her to speak plainly? If she could raise the money to move the reserve to the other side of the country, she’d personally pay business-class fares for every one of these Mohawk troublemakers. That would make the girl’s pretty little mouth pucker with surprise.

Peg takes a deep breath and musters her high-wattage maternal warmth. “Your deadline, of course. I’m so sorry to keep you waiting. I’ll be right with you.”

Peg pinches her waist. She hates the thought of being on the late news looking bloated, overfed, hypertensive. Then she presses on the door handle and unfolds herself from the car, freighted with all the ways Doreville’s potential could be looted if she doesn’t do the right thing.

The first rule of remaining unnoticed in a town like Doreville is not to drive up in a limited-edition Mercedes the colour of a newly birthed fawn. That’s a car people look twice at, often stooping to the window to remark
Nice ride
, or
I’ll be getting myself one of these little babies after the Dodge Caravan kicks it
. It’s a car people remember. But today Elijah Barton wants to be another forgettable schlep rubbernecking the little drama at the new development: curious, but not curious enough to quit the inside of his vehicle, with its tinted windows and anonymity. As
the mayor shambles into the fray, Elijah pulls his red pickup into an inconspicuous vantage point thirty metres behind her
SUV
. He looks around and sees at least a half-dozen other Dorevillians just like him, sunk low in their car seats and truck cabs as if they were at a drive-in movie.

Even he can see that the policing situation is a mess. Holland must have been stuck with the thankless task of negotiating how the chain of command would work between the local cops and this infestation of out-of-district forces. By the way Holland keeps looking to the sky and then letting his shoulders slump, Elijah guesses the hapless guy had his sights on an afternoon golf game, now downgraded to a bucket of balls at the driving range. Soon he’ll have to give up that too, and even the Sunday night barbecue, coming home instead to grilled food shrunken and cold in its foil wrappings.

Just beyond the mayor’s car somebody has set up lawn chairs and a hibachi. Beers are being tossed from open coolers.
Townies are treating it like a freakin’ tailgate party
, Elijah thinks.