The Early Investigations of Joanne Kilbourn (2 page)

“You look happy,” I said.

“I’ve got every reason to be,” he said. “I’m with you. The weather’s great. I managed to get over to the stage in time to hear the fiddlers and I got away before those little girls started dancing. What is it that they call themselves?”

“The Tapping Toddlers,” I said, “and I doubt if they chose the name. My guess is that the parents who let those kids wear hot-pink satin pants and sequinned bras are the ones who came up with it. Sometimes I don’t think we’ve come very far.”

“Sometimes I agree with you.” He shrugged. “Come on, Jo. It’s too nice a day to despair of the human race. Let’s go over and watch the chicken man. I’ll buy you an early supper.”

I groaned. “I’ve been eating all day, but I guess the damage is already done. As my grandmother always said, ‘In for a penny, in for a pound.’ ” And so we walked over to the barbecue pit across the road from the stage. A man from the poultry association was grilling five hundred split broilers. Up and down he moved, slapping sauce on the chickens with a paintbrush, reaching across the grill to adjust a piece that didn’t seem positioned right, breaking off a burning wing tip with his thick, callused fingers.

Howard’s old hawk’s face was red from the sun and the heat, but he was rapt as he watched the poultry man’s progress.

“Jo, the trouble with politics is that it doesn’t leave you time to enjoy the little things. Look at this guy – I’ll bet he’s
cooked two thousand chickens today. He’s a real artist. Go ahead and smile, but see, he knows just when to turn those things. That’s what I’m going to enjoy now that I’m out of it – the simple pleasures.”

“Going to find time to smell the roses, are you?” I said, laughing. “Howard, you’re a fraud. Two days ago you told me that anybody who doesn’t care about politics is dead from the neck down. I don’t think you’re quite ready to trade the back rooms for a bag of briquettes.”

Across the road, the entertainment had ended and the speeches had begun. The loud-speakers squawked out something indecipherable. In the field in front of the stage, the crowd roared, and the man of simple pleasures was suddenly all politics again.

“Whoever that is onstage has really got them going,” he said.

I linked my arm through his. “Are you going to miss all this?” I asked, indicating the scene around us.

“Yeah, of course I am.”

“You could change your mind and run again, you know, or just stay around behind the scenes. Andy could use somebody who knows how to keep things from unravelling.”

“No, I wasn’t cut out to be an eminence grise – lousy fringe benefits.”

The man from the poultry association was taking broilers off the grills now, grabbing the tips of the drumsticks between his thumb and index finger and giving his wrist enough of a flick to propel the chickens into an aluminum baking pan he held in his other hand.

“How about you, Jo? Have you thought any more about running? That guy who won Ian’s seat in the by-election is about as dynamic as a cow fart.”

“Not a chance, Howard. I’m happy right where I am. I think I’m over Ian’s death. The kids are great, and I finally
have some time to do what I want to do. This year off from teaching is going to be heaven. And, you know, the speech writing I’m doing for Andy is going to fit in perfectly. It’ll give me some good examples for my dissertation. If I get it done in time for your birthday, I’ll give you the first copy. Want to read a scholarly treatise called ‘Saskatchewan Politics: Its Theory and Practice’?”

“God, no. I might find out that I’ve been doing it wrong all along.” He looked at his watch. “Time for the main event. Let’s grab a plate of chicken. Incidentally, guess who I strong-armed into giving the warmup speech before Andy comes out.”

“His wife?”

Howard winced. “I’m not a miracle worker, Jo. Although Eve is here today. I saw her in that little trailer thing they’ve got in back of the stage for Andy’s family and the entertainment people.”

“How did she look?”

“The way she always looks when she gets dragged to one of these things – like someone just beamed her down. Anyway, you’re wrong. Eve isn’t introducing Andy. Guess again.”

“Not Craig Evanson.”

Howard pointed at the stage across the road and smiled. “There he is at the podium.”

“You underestimate yourself,” I said. “You are a miracle worker, especially after that terrible interview last night on Lachlan MacNeil’s show. I can’t believe Andy isn’t more worried about it. I tried to talk to him, you know, but he says people will forget about it in a week, and besides, since everybody knows what MacNeil’s like, no one’ll take it seriously.”

“Julie Evanson’s taking it seriously,” Howard said grimly. “She tracked me down this morning and told me Andy should either resign or be castrated – I think she felt that as
the aggrieved party, Craig should have the option of selecting the punishment that fit the crime.”

“Well,” I said, “if Craig decides on castration, I might volunteer to hold his coat. Didn’t you ever take Andy out behind the barn and tell him the boys and girls of the press can play rough? He should have known better. Craig and Julie had just about gotten over Craig’s losing the leadership and what does Andy do? He tells Canadians from coast to coast that if we’re elected, Craig had better forget about being deputy premier or attorney general because he’s too dumb.”

“Be fair, Jo, that shithead MacNeil really drove Andy into a corner. All Andy said was that when we’re elected he’ll find a job for Craig that’s suitable to his talents. And you know as well as I do that Craig isn’t the brightest light on the porch.”

“Oh, God, Howard, I know. We all know Craig’s limited, and I’ll even grant you that he shouldn’t be deputy premier or A-G. But he’s a decent man, and more to the point, he almost won. Andy only beat him by ten votes. That’s not much. I wish MacNeil hadn’t made Andy run through that list of all the serious jobs and say Craig wasn’t up to any of them. And I really wish that Andy hadn’t risen to the bait when that twerp asked him to name a job Craig would be capable of handling. Minister of the Family? My dogs could handle that one. No wonder Julie was mad. Speaking of … we’d better get over there. Julie’s always been able to look at a crowd of five thousand people and know exactly who wasn’t there to hear her Craig.”

The man from the poultry association opened a metal ice chest, pulled out the last bags of fresh broilers and began laying them on the grills. It was a little after four o’clock. The ballplayers were coming off the diamonds tired and hungry. The poultry man wouldn’t be taking any chickens back to the city with him tonight. For a moment Howard
was still, watching, absorbed. Then he shrugged and grabbed my hand.

“Let’s go, lady,” he said. Hand in hand we crossed the road and moved through the crowd toward the stage.

When we got close, Dave Micklejohn ran out to meet us. He had been Andy’s executive assistant for as long as I could remember, and his devotion to Andy was as fierce as it was absolute. No one knew how old Dave was – certainly he was past the age suggested for the retirement of civil servants, but he had such energy that his age was irrelevant. He was fussy, condescending and irreplaceable.

That day, as always, he was carrying a clipboard. Also, as always, he was immaculate. He was wearing white, white shorts and a T-shirt imprinted with a picture of JeanPaul Sartre.

“I like your shirt,” I said.

“I tell everyone he’s running for us in the south end of the province,” he said. “You two were certainly no help. I run my buns off getting that bunch up there at the same time –” he waved at Andy’s family and friends, sitting like kindergarten children on folding chairs along the back of the stage “– and you two vanish into thin air.”

“Howard wanted to watch his hero, the chicken man,” I said. “Anyway, we’re here now. Did you find Andy to give him the fresh shirt?”

“Of course,” he said, “I’m a Virgo. I know the importance of details.”

I reached over and touched his hand. “Dave, don’t be mad at us. You’ve done a wonderful job. How did you ever get Eve to come?”

I could see him thaw. Then, unexpectedly, he looked down, embarrassed. “Well, it wasn’t easy. I had to agree to sneak a piece of quartz onto the podium today. She says the electromagnetic field from the crystal will combine
with Andy’s electrical field to erase negativity and recharge energy stores.”

“Oh, God, Dave, no.”

He squared his shoulders, and Sartre rippled defiantly on his chest. “She’s here, isn’t she? And look.” He held up a sliver of rose quartz that glittered benignly in the sunlight. “You can put these things in water, you know. Eve says they charge up the people drinking it and bring them into harmony with their environment. Actually, we had quite a nice talk about it.”

“Why don’t you make Roma a nice cup of water on the rocks?” I pointed to the far end of the stage, where Andy’s mother, Roma, was sitting stiffly, as far away as she could get from her daughter-in-law. “She looks like she could use some harmonizing. Actually, what we probably need is a slab of quartz dropped in the water supply for the whole city – take care of all our problems.” Beside me, Howard gazed innocently in the direction of the ball diamonds.

Dave snapped the clip on his clipboard. “You don’t have to be such a bitch, Jo. In fact, if you could manage to let up a little, I could tell you about our real triumph.” He smoothed the crease of his shorts and looked at me. “Rick Spenser’s here today.”

I was impressed. “What’s he doing here? I know this is big stuff for us, but it’s penny ante for the networks. Why would those guys at
CVT
send their top political commentator to cover a little picnic on the prairies?”

“I don’t know,” said Dave, “but I’m ecstatic. There are a lot of nice visuals here today – all the little kids guessing how many jellybeans are in the jar, and the old geezers throwing horseshoes and reminiscing. How many points do you think all this heartland charm will be worth in the polls, Jo?”

“You’ll have to ask Howard. He’s the expert.”

But Howard was heading behind the stage, where the major players, as they liked to think of themselves, were talking politics and drinking warm beer out of plastic cups. It didn’t matter. We couldn’t have heard Howard anyway because Craig Evanson had finished, Andy was walking across the stage to the podium, and the crowd was on its feet.

They had waited all afternoon for this, the moment when Andy would stand before them. Now he was here and they were wild – clapping their hands together in a ragged attempt at rhythm and calling his name again and again. “Andy, Andy, Andy.” Two distinct syllables, regular as heartbeats until throats grew hoarse and the beat became thready.

We could see Andy clearly now. He was wearing an open-necked shirt the colour of the sky, and when he saw Dave and me, he grinned and waved his baseball cap in the air. The crowd cheered as if he had turned stone to gold. Finally, Andy raised his hands to quiet them, then he turned toward Dave and me and made a drinking gesture.

“Water,” I said.

“Taken care of,” said Dave, and he ran behind the stage and came back carrying a tray with a glass and a black thermal pitcher. When he went by me, he stopped and pointed to a little hand-lettered sign he’d taped to the side of the Thermos:
“FOR THE USE OF ANDY BOYCHUK ONLY. ALL OTHERS DRINK THIS AND DIE.”

I laughed. “So much for the brotherhood of the common man.”

Dave passed the tray to the woman who was acting as emcee for the entertainment. She was a big woman, wearing a flower-printed dress. I remember thinking all afternoon that she must have been suffering from the heat. She handed Andy the tray with a pretty little flourish, and he took it with a gallant gesture.

I moved to the side of the stage. There was a patch of shade there, and it gave me a clear view of Andy and of the crowd.

They were arranging themselves for the speech – trying to find a cool spot on their beach towels, pouring watery, tepid drinks out of Thermoses, slipping kids a couple of dollars for the amusement booths that had been set up. Afterward, even the police were astounded at how few people had any real memory of what they saw in those last moments. But I saw, and I remembered.

Andy filled his glass from the Thermos, drank the water, all of it, then opened the blue leather folder that contained the speech I’d written for him. It was a sequence I’d watched a hundred times. But this time, instead of sliding his thumbs to the top of the podium, leaning toward the audience and beginning to speak, he turned to look at Dave and me.

He was still smiling, but then something dark and private flickered across his face. He looked perplexed and sad, the way he did when someone asked him a question that revealed real ugliness. Then he turned toward the back of the stage and collapsed. From the time he turned until the time he fell was, I am sure, less than five seconds. It seemed like a lifetime.

As I looked at the empty podium, I knew it was all over. I hugged the portfolio to me. In it was the last speech I would ever write for Andy Boychuk. The solid line of family and friends shattered into dazed groups. Eve Boychuk, Andy’s wife, moved from her chair to the portable staircase. She was blocking the stairs, trying to keep the ambulance attendants from taking her husband away.

The August sun was getting low in the sky, and as she stood blocking the stairway, Eve was backlit with golden light. It was a striking picture. She wore a short sundress
made of unbleached cotton and she seemed to be all brown limbs – powerful athlete’s shoulders, strong arms, long, taut-muscled legs. She looked strong and invulnerable. But her face was dead with disbelief, and her eyes were terrible – vacant and unseeing.

The sirens were getting closer. Dave Micklejohn came up behind Eve, moved her from the staircase, and started giving directions to the ambulance attendants. “Bring him over to the side of the stage,” he said, then he turned to me. “Come on, Jo, let’s jump down over here and they can lower Andy to us.”

And that’s what we did. When she saw what we were doing, Eve came over and grabbed Dave’s hand, and we all jumped down together. We must have looked like actors from the theatre of the absurd, but it was right that we were the ones who took Andy from the stage that last time.