The Cardinal Divide (17 page)

Two stories. Two mines. Two closures.

Was Mike Barnes a hatchet man?

Had Athabasca Coal hired him not to make a mine like the McLeod River project a roaring success, but to quietly shut down its existing operation at the Buffalo Anthracite Mine without raising suspicion, or upsetting shareholders?

Cole went over his conversation with Barnes. Dangerous, Barnes had told him, for the town to put all of its eggs in one basket. Darn tootin', thought Cole.

Cole ate another piece of pizza. Athabasca Coal had definitely picked the right man for the job, he mused. Mike Barnes was smooth as Ex-Lax.

But was he clever enough to plant a mole inside
ESC
o
G
to ferret out information, or maybe even plant information, to help the environmentalists mount an effective opposition to the project? Even aid and abet the environmentalists through the placement of the mole so that the company could then blame the extreme greens when the proposal for the McLeod River project failed? Cole had no doubt that Mike Barnes was that clever and then some. Now he wished he had asked Mike Barnes that question directly. He was angry with himself for not thinking of it sooner.

He stood and stretched. It was ten o'clock. He flipped to
CBC
and watched the evening news. Nothing new. The pizza had satisfied his hunger, but now his thirst needed quenching. He'd check his email, and retreat to The Quarry for a night cap, just one or two beers, and then turn in early. Big day tomorrow.

He downloaded his messages and scanned through them. His heart leaped when he saw the message from Sarah. “Hi Daddy,” it said. “I miss you. I hope that you are saving the world. I love you! Sarah.”

He pounded his fist on the little desk and the pile of papers he'd picked up that morning cascaded back down to the floor. He let his head fall forward into his hand. He hadn't called Sarah since arriving in Oracle, despite telling her that he would.

He grabbed the phone from the desk and dialled Jennifer Polson's number. It rang. And it rang. On the fourth ring he heard her voicemail click in. She'd probably checked her call display and chosen not to answer. He thought uncharitable thoughts about his ex-wife.

Then Cole closed his computer, grabbed his keys, and beat a hasty retreat to the bar.

How could he be so stupid, he thought as he walked into the now familiar, crowded place, and made a bee line for the service counter. How could he forget to call his little girl? The number of stupid things Cole had done since arriving in Oracle was piling up, it seemed. This was supposed to be his chance to prove himself.

He arrived at the bar expecting to be served by George Cody, but was instead served by a man in his early twenties.

“Where's George?” Cole asked, and ordered a pint of Alexander Keith's.

“He got called away this evening,” said the young man, serving him his beer. “I usually just work on the weekends, but he called me in. Said he'd be back late.”

“Cheers,” said Cole hoisting the pint and drinking deeply, distracted by his self-loathing.

He resolved then and there to call Sarah every second or third night from now on. Resolute, he turned his mind to the new challenge of stopping a mine that might very well stop itself. How do you get any leverage against a project that for all intents and purposes doesn't want to proceed? Cole would have to devise a tricky little bit of strategy to stop the road and the rail line from destroying Cardinal Divide. He guessed that there wasn't a single piece of paper that said that the company didn't really plan to go ahead. And if pressed, Athabasca Coal would simply say that the road and rail were necessary to set in place the operation to take advantage of evolving market conditions. What were five or ten years to them? But to this town? And to Cardinal Divide itself? It meant life and death.

Cole swallowed the last of his beer when he was jostled heavily from his left. “Watch it, faggot,” came a gravely voice.

Every nerve in Cole's body exploded. “My fault, sorry,” he managed as his heart rate soared and a surge of adrenaline rushed through him. All his distractions vanished and the world around him slowed. He could see everything in front of him with sudden clarity.

“Fuck you,” said the man who had jostled him. He was facing Cole now. Cole sized him up quickly: baseball cap, short dark hair, scruffy beard, dark eyes. He wasn't a large man. Cole guessed welterweight, around a hundred and fifty pounds and maybe five nine. Wearing a jean jacket, so he'd be a little slow. He wasn't holding anything in his hands. Cole pushed his glass away so it wouldn't get caught in the scrum.

“Here, let me buy you a beer,” said Cole, cursing himself for failing to see this coming. For not seeing this waiting for him when he stepped into the bar. My cover is really, really blown, he thought, and then the man took a swing at him. It was a big roundhouse swing and Cole had been right, the jacket restricted
his movement and made the punch a little slow. Cole easily stepped back and the blow went wide, the man sprawling on the bar from his own momentum. Glasses and beer bottles crashed to the floor and the room was suddenly silent. As Cole feinted back he bumped into another patron, blocking his escape. Instead Cole stepped forward with a quick left jab as his attacker straightened himself, and another to set up the knock-down blow. As his assailant stepped back from the second left jab, Cole delivered the right hook. The force of the blow sent the ball cap flying from the man's head, snapping his face back. A spray of blood erupted from the man's mouth and painted the bar. The attacker stumbled and dropped onto his butt on the floor in a daze.

Landed it that time, Cole was thinking.

But it wasn't over. Cole reeled as he was hit from behind with considerable force, the blow connecting with the back of his neck and the base of his skull. He fell forward and tripped on the man he had just knocked down, stumbling along the tavern's hardwood floor. He guessed the brute that had slugged him used a sap, a plastic club about six inches long that could be easily concealed in a pair of jeans. Stumbling, feeling suddenly sick to his stomach, he turned to face the new threat. The man bore down on him. The room was silent, the eyes of every person on him. The big man stepped into him. Cole knew that a giant like this could kill him if allowed to get a hold of him so he quickly stepped to his right, away from the bar, and brought his left knee up into the man's solar plexus. This wasn't the ring. This was the real world. As the big man doubled over, Cole stepped up to him and stood at a right angle to his attacker, and used all his might to hit him with a right jab in the ear. The head is softest there, and he saw the giant wince in pain, close his eyes, and collide with the bar with a dull thud. Cole also felt a hot rush of pain in his hand that extended all the way to his shoulder. Good Christ, he thought. I just broke my hand.

That's when the chair hit him and Cole's lights went out.

The phone rang. The sound felt hollow and distant at first, like a mosquito buzzing in his ear in the darkness. That's a rotten way to wake up for the second morning in a row, Cole Blackwater thought. It was as if he had his very own personal wake-up service jangling in the hollows of his brain. But this morning he couldn't make his hand reach for the phone even when the ringing seemed to grow louder, as if insisting the urgency of the caller.

Cole lay still, his eyes closed, his memory swimming back to break the surface of the day. He wasn't at home. This wasn't east Vancouver. But where? He lay still, eyes pressed shut, waiting for memory to return. Oracle, Alberta. A motel room. The ringing phone felt like daggers in his ears.

Yesterday he had been awoken with bad news. What had it been again? Dale. Dale had mouthed off to a reporter and now Cole's strategy to stop the McLeod River Coal Mine had been blown. Ringing. He'd only been on the job for two days now and already his plan was
DOA
. His head ached, but not just from the constant ringing.

Cole pressed his eyes closed to will the jangling to stop and was rewarded with a brilliant burst of painful fireworks right where the ringing had been. That stopped it. He cautiously opened his eyes and the fireworks were replaced with a sensation like shards of glass piercing his eyeballs. At least the ringing has stopped.

He lay prone on the bed and fought through the layers of unconsciousness, something dark and thick, much deeper than sleep, trying to wake up. His face hurt. His head ached. He realized his hair was wet and his right hand seemed to be caught in a vice grip.

He was in Oracle, Alberta. He closed his eyes and groaned. Now he had been awakened by the phone again, though he had never managed to answer it. Cole Blackwater was accustomed to laboured starts to his days. But this didn't feel like a hangover. He reached up and touched the back of his head with his throbbing right hand. “What happened?” he asked himself out loud.

“You were jumped by three goons,” said a voice from the bath-room. Then Cole heard the toilet flush.

Despite his various maladies, Cole Blackwater sprang up from the damp bedsheets, hands held up in front of him in a typical
boxer's stance as the bathroom door opened. He stumbled and tried to focus, but his eyes would not cooperate. His feet caught in the tangle of sheets and he lurched sideways, knocking the phone from the nightstand, sending it crashing to the floor. Cole made out a hulking shape emerging toward him as his hands shaped themselves into painful fists.

“Easy slugger, easy,” said the shape. “It's George Cody.”

Cole Blackwater let his hands fall down to his sides. “George?” he asked, and swayed unsteadily. “What the fuck were you doing in my can?”

“Nature called. Are you
OK
?”

“What?”

“Are you
OK
?”

“Your john busted?”

“I've been here all night, Cole. Sorry I couldn't get to the phone. Shitty way to wake up.”

“I'm going to be sick,” said Cole, shaking his feet free of the sheets, and stumbling toward the bathroom. He collapsed in front of the toilet and managed to get the lid open before retching.

He slumped beside the bowl and pressed his face against it. The cool porcelain eased the ache in his face and head. Thank you toilet bowel for being so cool, he thought.

“You
OK
?” said George Cody again. He sounded very far away.

Cole didn't move, and moaned in response.

George righted the phone and stepped into the bathroom and helped him get up. “Come on fella', time to get back into the game.”

“What time is it?” asked Cole.

“About eight o'clock.”

“In the morning?”

“Yup.”

“What happened?”

“You got beaten up pretty good.” George guided him out of the bathroom toward the club chair, but Cole stopped him. George was broad across the chest and shoulders, and had the powerful arms of the football lineman he had been in college. Though Cole was taller than the man, he felt small next to his girth.

“Wait, George, let me get a look at myself.”

George grinned and said, “You might want to hold off on that, Cole.”

“I can take it. I used to do this for fun.”

“Suit yourself.”

Cole felt his way back through the bathroom doorway and flicked on the light. Eyes closed, he steadied himself with both hands on the sink, hunched forward toward the mirror. Slowly he opened his eyes.

“Good God,” he said, and heard George chuckle behind him.

His right eye was black and blue and swollen half shut. A nasty gash under the eye extended from his nose across his cheek more than an inch. It was red and raw, but was neatly taped and had long stopped bleeding. By the look of it, a stitch or two were required to ensure he didn't go home looking like Frankenstein. His nose was all in one piece – still crooked and bent – but no moreso than before.

When he lifted his right hand to touch the battered eye he noticed that the hand too was blue and swollen. He flexed it and extended the fingers and decided that nothing was broken, but it was badly bruised. Then he felt his head and near the crown he discovered a goose egg as big around as his fist.

Sarah would be plenty disappointed in him.

“Somehow the chair didn't break the skin,” said George. “Just dumb luck, I guess.”

The chair. Last evening's festivities started to come back to him.

“I've been icing it on and off all night. I don't think you suffered a concussion. But to be on the safe side I woke you every hour or two.”

Cole touched the top of his head with his bruised right hand. He grimaced at his face in the mirror. Just like old times. “How many of them were there?” he asked, watching George in the mirror.

“Three.”

“I only saw two of them.”

“Third one got you from behind with the chair.”

“Right. I remember seeing it break around me, but never saw who hit me.”

“You hit the ground after he hit you.”

“What happened after that?”

“That's where I came in.”

Cole recalled now that George Cody had not been in the bar of the Rim Rock Hotel when he had entered. Cole thought back on the events, touching the puffy red bruising around the gash on his face. He had been distracted by his own long list of shortcomings, and by something else, and had failed to notice the thugs that jumped him moments later. He had let his guard down again. He shook his head, which felt as though it rattled his brains. A wave of nausea washed over him.

“I walked in the door to see one of my chairs being broken across your back. Good thing I'm a cheap bastard and that chair wasn't much more than toothpicks and carpenter's glue.” George laughed. Cole grinned too, which hurt.