The Geomancer's Compass (9 page)

“What the …?” Brian squinted bug-eyed into the distance through a pair of retro Ray-Bans. He was driving the lavender Heibao Helio that Mom had rented for us at the Regina Airport. It was one of the new plug-in hybrids that came with mandatory cruise control, which meant that, as hyper as Brian got, he could only ever do the speed limit. This was good because Brian has that irritatingly adolescent male need-for-speed gene in spades, and I really didn't want to be a passenger
in anything that gave him the option of putting the pedal to the metal.

“It looks … like a moose,” I speculated. A moment later, the GPS, whose name was Hermione, confirmed this in her ritzy Bond girl British accent. “On your left is Mac the Moose, the world's largest moose statue, completed in 1984. Mac is made of metal piping, mesh, and cement. He stands thirty-two feet tall and weighs ten tons.”

“A giant moose statue,” said Brian. “That's something you don't see every day!”

To which Hermione added, “Mac the Moose serves as the gateway to the city of Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan.”

“Oh, gateway,” said Brian. He nodded sagely. “In China the gateways are guarded by lions; in Moose Jaw, by moose.” He elbowed me across the divide. “Hear that, cuz? Almost there. We've been driving for forty minutes and I still haven't been able to wring the reason we're going to Moose Jaw out of you.”

I sighed. You need to time-release information to Brian in manageable gobbets. Otherwise his brain explodes. “I did so tell you,” I said. “A-Ma wanted us to pay homage to The Grandfather's brother at his grave site – you know, Qingming stuff.” Qingming Festival, a.k.a. Bright Festival, a.k.a. Tomb Sweeping Day, is when you drag the whole family out to the cemetery and perform prayers and ceremonies and rituals in honor of your ancestors so they won't be pissed off at you and
wreck your life. You also tidy up the grave and put fresh flowers out and set off firecrackers to ward off evil spirits. “I guess his grave, being out in Moose Jaw and all, hadn't been swept for a long time and it was … I don't know … preying on her conscience. She was, like, stressing out about it. Anyway, it was A-Ma's dying wish and that's why we're here.” I wasn't exactly lying. I'm sure A-Ma would have wanted us to sweep Qianfu's tomb … once we found it.

“
C'mon
. There's got to be more to it than that. And what was The Grandfather's brother doing out in Moose Jaw in the first place?”

“People don't always stay in the same place,” I said vaguely.

“Turn right in half a mile.” This from Hermione.

Brian turned off the Trans-Canada onto Caribou Street. “Sure you don't want some chips? They're righteous.”

“They're disgusting and very bad for you.” I glared at him as disapprovingly as a person who had consumed her body weight in cupcakes the night before could manage. Brian eats constantly. He had been eating when I met him at the arrivals gate in the airport and he was still eating. His backpack bulged with snacks, none of them healthy. So did the gazillion pockets of the khaki photographer's vest he wore over an orange and peacock blue Hawaiian shirt featuring what looked like exploding palm trees. By rights he should have been the size of an elephant, but his hyperactivity
coupled with his height (he was nearly six feet tall to my five) kept his weight in check.

“In one quarter mile, turn right onto Main Street,” Hermione crooned.

Brian turned onto Moose Jaw's wide Main Street, four lanes separated by a brick median brimming with flowers and lined, for the most part, with heritage buildings dating from 1900 to the late 1920s – Italianate in style, constructed in stone or brick or faced with limestone. He was impressed. “Look at this architecture. I didn't expect this.”

“What did you expect?”

“I don't know … early grain elevator?”

“Your destination is on the right,” Hermione advised.

And there it was, the hotel Mom had booked for us, the Prairie Rose, an unprepossessing four-story walk-up built in the 1920s, drab and water stained.

“Now, that,” said Brian, “
that
is early grain elevator.”

I felt a tug of anxiety. What had Mom been thinking? It had looked so much better in the online photos. Would the bathroom be clean? What about bugs? Have I mentioned that I am just the teensiest bit germaphobic? I patted my knapsack. Relief at having brought along a travel pack of industrial-strength hand wipes washed over me.

“More prairie than rose, I think,” said Brian. “Well, it's not as if we're going to be spending much time here. Or are we? Just what are we doing in this burg, Randi?”

I was beginning to feel a little shaky: hypoglycemia alert. The car smelled oppressively of potato chip; it was late morning, hot and stuffy, and in penance for last night's cupcake orgy, I had skipped breakfast. “Just leave it alone for a few minutes, OK? Let's check into this dump and get something to eat, and I promise I'll give you the full scoop.”

“Y
essir, the Prairie Rose, she's full of history, all right,” the desk clerk informed us as we checked in. A wizened old prune of a man in a tartan vest, he fit right in with the hotel lobby's threadbare carpet and water stained ceiling. His teeth were yellow and kind of crumbly and his fingers were stained with nicotine. Also, he had this really nasty wart on his chin with stiff white hairs sprouting out of it. His tarnished nameplate identified him as Oscar. When I think of Oscar, I think of two things: Oscar the Grouch on that old television show and the Oscar Mayer wiener. I wouldn't like anyone to associate a grouch or a wiener with my name. What was his mother thinking?

“History?” asked Brian. “How so?” Brian likes to talk to people. Anybody. Creepy, not creepy – doesn't matter. Especially homeless people, whom I avoid like the plague because they're usually pretty dirty. I know it's not their fault, but still.

“Oh, we've had us some pretty famous clientele over the years,” Oscar said proudly. He spoke with what I was beginning to suspect might be an actual Saskatchewan accent, pinched and nasal, with a peculiar hint of Irish to it. “Why, Al Capone used to stay here when he was in town.”

I wrinkled my nose. The lobby smelled funny, like a combination of mouse pee and mold. Or maybe it was Oscar. Whatever it was didn't bode well for my allergies. “Al Capone?” The name sounded vaguely familiar, but not so much that I could place it.

Brian turned to face me. “Randi. C'mon! You've never heard of Al Capone? The famous gangster? You know,
Scarface
?”

“I was never much for rap music.”

Brian sighed and shook his head. “Not
those
gangsters, Randi. The
real
gangsters – back in the early twentieth century.” He turned back to Oscar. “When was Capone here?”

Happy to have found an audience, Oscar leaned forward conspiratorially. “In the 1920s. During Prohibition. You see, the Canadian Pacific's Soo Line runs from Chicago to Moose Jaw. That's how the Mob moved liquor across the border into the U.S. They'd hide the hooch in the tunnels – in those days, they called them the Boozarium – until it was time for a shipment, then carry it out through a tunnel that opened into a shed in the CPR rail yard, load it onto the train, and send it south to speakeasies run by the Mob. Just like that, bold as brass.”

Hooch? Boozarium? Maybe I should have consulted the Urban Dictionary. But I did know who the Mob was.

I could see that Brian was enthralled. His eyes sparkled and he leaned in closer to Oscar, doubtless breathing potato chip breath all over him. Oscar didn't seem to mind. He was probably breathing cigarette breath right back at him. “Tunnels?” Brian asked. “What tunnels?” I suppressed a sigh and rolled my eyes. Brian loved all things underground: sewers, caves, the Chunnel…

“You don't know about the tunnels?” Oscar sounded surprised. “Why, the Moose Jaw tunnels are world famous. Run all under downtown, crisscrossed and interconnected. Went on forever; nobody knows how many miles long they might have been in their heyday. Over the years many of them were filled in. New construction. Infill.”

“Brian, come on,” I urged him, tugging at the hem of his photographer's vest. “Can we hurry this along a little? I have to pee.”

Brian grinned and pointed at me. “Princess Tiny Bladder,” he told Oscar. “That's what we call her at home. Hold on, Randi. This'll only take a minute. The tunnels, Oscar – did the gangsters actually build them?”

I scowled, pressing my legs together. I really did have to pee.

“Nope,” said Oscar. “Steam tunnels originally.”

“Steam tunnels?” Brian's appetite for long, detailed explanations was one that I didn't share, maybe because I
could read about what interested me and he couldn't. If there was one thing I knew, it was that once Brian latched onto a source of information you couldn't beat him off it with a two-by-four. He just glommed onto whatever it was and wouldn't let go. Like a Jack Russell terrier, like a pit bull with good intentions. We might be here for a while. I sighed and began casting my eyes around the lobby in search of a public toilet.

“Around 1900 all the buildings in Moose Jaw were heated by steam,” Oscar was explaining. “That meant everybody had a coal-fueled boiler in the basement. Now, I don't know if you're familiar with boilers, sonny …”

“Excuse me,” I murmured, “but is that …?” I pointed to a door with faded lettering on it that I thought might have, in the distant past, read “Restroom.”

Oscar nodded but did not break stride. “If you got you a boiler in your basement, you want to keep an eye on it at all times. Your boiler, you don't know what it might do. It might rupture, the seams can split, tubes can collapse or dislodge and spray scalding hot steam and smoke out of the air intake and firing chute … and you don't even want to think about what can happen if one boils dry.”

I crossed the lobby to the door, extracted a tissue from my pocket, and used it to open the restroom door. Germs have been known to live over two hours on doorknobs.

“When it's forty-below, you don't want to be coming up from one basement and out into the cold, just to go across
the street or next door so you can go down into a second basement,” Oscar was explaining. “By developing a system of tunnels that opened onto
all
the basements in this area, starting at the train station, the boiler men could move from basement to basement without coming upstairs. And the women liked it better because the men weren't constantly tracking snow and mud in from the streets.”

The restroom was a one-seater and it wasn't pretty. Cracked linoleum floor, a stained sink with no stopper, a wavy mirror smudged with fingerprints, and a toilet I didn't trust for a minute. Unrolling a length of toilet paper, I carefully lined the seat with it, making sure I didn't touch the plastic. (For those of you who think it's totally germaphobic to line a public toilet seat with paper before dropping your bare bum onto it, I have two words for you: fecal bacteria.)

“Does this hotel have a door leading into one of the tunnels?” I heard Brian ask. The walls were very thin.

“Yep,” Oscar replied. “All the basements in this area from this period do. We keep it locked because of the tours. Wouldn't want tourists wandering off and ending up in our basement by mistake. Though, come to think of it, it might be good for business.”

“There are
tours
?” Brian sounded excited.

I peed and wiped myself, then turned and began to peel the paper off the seat.

“Sure are,” Oscar replied. “Let me see if I can find the brochure.”

I wrapped some toilet paper around my hand so that I wouldn't have to touch either the toilet lid or the handle, lowered the lid, and flushed. I washed my hands and reemerged to see Oscar handing Brian a dog-eared brochure.

“Thanks, man.” Brian folded the brochure in half and shoved it into one of his many vest pockets. He would need me to read it. “Randi,” he greeted me. “You didn't fall in.”

“Brian,” I warned him. Honestly. You couldn't go to the bathroom without him announcing it to the world. I crossed the lobby to the desk.

“Mrs. Liu?” Oscar consulted a piece of paper. “You'll be wanting the two rooms? Not the one?”

I blushed. Mrs. Liu? He thought Brian and I were married. Gross. “Miss Liu,” I corrected him. “It's Miss, not Mrs.”

“I'm sorry.” He perched a pair of wire-rimmed spectacles halfway down his nose and peered at the piece of paper. “The reservation was made by a Mrs. Daisy Liu.”

“That's my mother,” I explained. “And yes, we definitely want two rooms.”

Brian laughed – a long, embarrassing hee-haw – and slapped his thigh. He waggled his finger at Oscar. “Not what you're thinking,” he told him. “In the first place, we're just sweet sixteen. In the second place, we're cousins, and definitely
not
the kissing kind.”