The River Burns (15 page)

■   ■   ■

Doubts concerning her new town
surfaced when the biggest event of the season appeared to be a meeting. People even put up flyers,
for a meeting,
tacked onto telephone poles. Her new business partner never mentioned attending, and possibly assumed she'd have no interest in attending herself, or that she was too busy making her new digs liveable. Yet Tara felt a strong pull to be among people, and so showed up at what the older women gabbing on the streets were calling “the kafuffle.” If nothing else, she'd find out what could possibly be controversial about a broken-down old bridge.

The gathering was infinitely more popular than she anticipated. People were flooding in, everybody and their second cousins twice removed from up north or down south, and included in the multitude was none other than Willis Howard. She intuited that he was going to be a problem. Immediately upon sharing a quick greeting, he was revelling in her company, basking in being seen at her side in full and drastic public view.

Wearing her like a bracelet.

Willis was in the process of steering Tara to where he believed they should be sitting—if he succeeded she'd chalk up the night as ruined. She didn't have any particular concerns about how people might perceive her, but neither did she want to be judged as Willis Howard's trollop date. Nor did she want to be obliged to endure his commentary throughout the evening.

His claim on her just felt so irritating.

She preferred the rainstorm she'd been caught in the previous evening.

Tara tried to break free once, as if by accident, only to be chided by Willis for entering the inner sanctum of the tree huggers. A second move away would have put her among loggers, no better a choice in his rigid hierarchy.

“Are these like reserved seats?” she complained.

He laughed at what he perceived to be a feisty spirit. “Nothing like that.” Indeed, the turnout was exceptional. More chairs were being unfolded and put out. “You don't want to sit among the loggers or the environmentalists.”

“I don't, huh? Why not?”

“Each group needs to make itself look as strong as possible. We'll be with the tourism industry—the merchants and innkeepers. That way we can show that our point of view is well represented.”

“Who are those people, over there?”

Willis leaned in front of her to look across the room. “Strangers,” he noted. “You know what that means.”

They didn't look like strangers to her. Well-groomed men in suits and ties, and women in spiffy pants suits, were reminiscent of her former enclave. She could only speculate on their purpose here. “Actually”—annoyance crept into her voice—“I don't.”

“Bureaucrats. Provincial, federal, municipal, the works. Lawyers.”

She cast a glance their way. That's where she should properly be seated, but she didn't want any part of that group. Tara supposed that she should just go home. She was on the verge of feigning a headache, or of declaring that it was too nice outside to be indoors and really she never intended to be in such a big crowd. But to leave would countermand her own curiosity. What could sufficiently interest this spectrum of diverse people to not only turn out in numbers but to seem so animated, so energized?

A bridge?

“Who're the other suits?” she inquired. Another gaggle sat forward of the loggers on the same side of the room.

“Logging company officials. Their lawyers.”

More lawyers. More of her own kind, yet she felt so estranged from them now. Behind them arrived the minions, a broad public panoply eager for an evening's entertainment that promised to outdistance the summer fare on TV.

As Willis was seating himself she finally found a way to elegantly slip loose from his company. “There's Mrs. McCracken now. I promised to sit with her.” Her first business partner lie.

Willis Howard came up with no retort. Although his disappointment showed, he politely let her go, and Tara settled in four rows behind him and a few seats over—still within the bounds of the tourism industry—beside the elderly firecracker.

“You don't know what you just saved me from,” Tara whispered.

“Oh, Willis can be a bore,” Mrs. McCracken chimed in. Somehow, she just got her, this woman. They smiled.

“I hear you've been firing blanks at burglars.”

“Oh, shut up.” Despite the words of protest, Mrs. McCracken smiled as she spoke and did not seem to mind her comment.

“Spill the beans,” Tara continued. “Explain to me why so many people are here. I've heard about community involvement but this is ridiculous. Something about a bridge?”

“Oh no, not a bridge, dear,” Mrs. McCracken corrected her. “Although two are involved. Our beautiful old covered one and a new monstrosity that's not even built yet and hopefully never shall be. No, dear, this is about our heritage, for starters, and it's also about our hopes for the future.”

“Nothing trivial, then. Whose side are we on?”

“In tossing your fate to the wind, my dear, you have landed with the tourism industry. We are supported by the ecologically aware young people in our midst, and by different levels of government. Keep in mind that the latter can never be trusted. But we enjoy the support of the good, the pure, and the enlightened people on our planet.”

She loved this gal's wit. “Such good news. And our enemies are?”

“Loggers.”

“Thought so. They don't favour our heritage and future?”

“They do not. They're in it for the money.”

“Whereas the tourism industry . . .”

“Oh, shut up.” This time, she may have meant it.

“So what's the difference?”

“The loggers are dunces.”

“Undoubtedly so. But what's their case, their point of view?”

“My dear, listen to me when I'm talking to you. They're dunces. Nothing more needs to be said.”

Tara shot a glance at the enemy trenches. Men turned out in good numbers and looked ready for bear. She did not have a handle on the issues, but she couldn't simply endorse Mrs. McCracken's position without further articulation. Her elite training as a lawyer taught that adversaries could be creeps and malcontents, pathological liars and brutes, rapacious villains or wretchedly needy imps, but they were never dunces, unless you planned on losing the case, which made you the dunce.

“Mmm,” she said.

“I know what that means,” Mrs. McCracken opined.

“No, you do not.”

“Now you be nice, dear, or I'll send you back to sit with your Mr. Howard.”

Tara shot her a glance. “You wouldn't.”

Mrs. McCracken clicked her fingers. “In a trice,” she said. “Like that.”

Laughing lightly, Tara touched the old lady's bare forearm. “I'll be good,” she promised. “Boy, you people around here play rough!”

■   ■   ■

Alexander O'Farrell was not alone
in noticing the new young woman in town. Every person in attendance at the meeting succumbed to some awareness of her presence. Her newness as well as her beauty were magnets, and while many found excuses to glance in her direction, a few numbskulls blatantly stared. Not only men were the culprits. Women glared as if mentally preparing for a catfight if she dared come into contact with their husbands. Government agents, who had no clue that she was a newcomer in town, craned their necks as if scanning the audience to assess its size, but specifically to bolster their initial impression that a rare creature resided in their midst. The evening might not be a total waste. Alex, observing her, did feel concern for his eldest son. Ryan had come to grief in his life, and this woman struck him as being a walking heartache.

He wished that Ryan thought to join him at the meeting, though. He might have found a chance to introduce himself to her. What was so important that he was avoiding this?

Alex appreciated how the young woman was relating to old Mrs. McCracken. The two interacted like schoolgirls, giggling together. He liked her, an impression not wholly tied to her fine looks. She received the attention of the room, she was fully aware of it, yet she didn't play to that attention, or exhibit any sign that it was either justified or necessary. Nor was she intimidated by the interest of the room in evaluating her, for none of her gestures appeared remotely self-conscious, and she didn't perform for the wide-angle lens of that camera's eye.

Something odd occurred that quietly strengthened Alex O'Farrell's positive view. The woman turned to look right at him. So many were gazing at her and yet she returned the scrutiny of just one man, the one who, in his estimation, was sympathetic to her plight. That perception bowled him over. Yet he did not react as he might with any other, did not turn away or pretend that his gaze was accidental. He'd been found out, observed, and so confirmed his study of her by meeting her eyes for the few seconds that she returned his look, before her attention reverted to her companion. Mrs. McCracken soon shot a glance over her shoulder. So the young woman was asking about him, and now Mrs. McCracken conveyed a report.

A walking heartache for sure, Alex concluded, unless she happened to take to his son, in which case—and he was surprised by how convinced he became of an opinion he could only call rash—they'd be well suited for each other. For he knew Ryan as no one else did, better, perhaps, than the young man knew himself, and not merely as a father might know his son, although that aspect was involved. In Alex's mind, Ryan possessed a quality that transcended the familiar, setting him apart, a native intelligence he hadn't fully tapped into yet and, depending on life's circumstances, might never fully experience. He possessed a generosity of spirit—his wife, Ryan's mother, alerted Alex to this—as rare as it was precious, in her words, and as vital as it was undefined. The boy didn't know about any of that, Alex considered, pulling his gaze away from the woman out of courtesy while thinking also about his long-deceased wife. But a woman such as this one, if his instincts regarding both young people held true, could aid him with that discovery.

As the meeting was about to begin, Alex sensed that he was the one hot to trot here, vicariously, on behalf of his elder son, and even, strangely enough, on behalf of this new woman in town. He consciously reverted his attention to the meeting to see how the younger of his two sons might fare.

The retired mayor called the meeting to order and Alexander O'Farrell sensed the partisan tensions rise, one side of the room pitted against the other, as if they were all a pack of brawling in-laws at a shotgun wedding. “This could get interesting,” he whispered to those seated just ahead of him.

To bring people to order required more than the formality of pounding a gavel, although the former mayor of Wakefield, Anton St. Aubin, gave it a try. He was selected to be chairman due to his experience with similar gatherings, as the organizers prevailed upon the presiding mayor to step away from the task. No one wanted the discussion to seem controlled or even sponsored by any level of government. The meeting was meant to allow opposing factions into the same room to see what could be jarred loose from their mutual antagonism, to learn who could be placated and what could be done, if anything, to calm the waters.

Even, although this idea was deemed a pipe dream, to find solutions.

As anxious as the populace felt attending the meeting, many were not above treating it as a social outing. To get people to quiet down proved difficult. The old mayor finally resorted to virtual profanity. He roared into the microphone set before him on his table, “Everybody, will you just shut the”—he lingered for a breath to give people time to fill in the blank for themselves with the appropriate expletive, then titter, before he finished—“up.”

He'd won their attention.

The old mayor, a youthful seventy-five, albeit with a widower's characteristic malaise—spills on his tie, a crumpled shirt, for he'd sloughed off his jacket as the room warmed up, and he was in need of a haircut despite a shiny, liver-spotted pate—spoke with a smile.

“How's everybody doing tonight?”

Most everyone concurred that they were doing just fine.

He announced that dignitaries and professionals were to be introduced, and as he did so they joined him at the head table facing the congested room. Only outside officials sat at the table, provincial bureaucrats at one end, federal at the other. In the middle, closest to the former mayor and on either side of him, experts on bridges, on roads, on forestry, and on the economy converged, and while no one explained who employed them—“We're consultants,” the junior bridge expert attested—those in attendance could detect in the strangers' manner the long arm of government agencies.

Each man and woman at the head table was invited to speak, and each had the decency to keep their opening remarks brief and noncommittal. An operative phrase for the meeting, “We are here to listen,” underscored that they were neutral observers, and those in attendance abided their statements with patience. Not that anyone believed them to be as neutral as they claimed.

The audience sat waiting for the fireworks to commence. Without the advantage of that expectation, accustomed to meetings so dull and monstrously detailed that they bordered on the carcinogenic, Tara Cogshill settled in for an evening of tedium. She took comfort in the advantage of this introduction to her new community. Loggers and shopkeepers, innkeepers and artisans, the old and a few young, misfits and the genteel commingled. She gathered, with help from Mrs. McCracken, who whispered pertinent, if blatantly biased, notes, that an old covered bridge impeded traffic, and that the forestry industry felt imperilled. “In days of yore,” as one man began a poetic effusion, logs were driven south on the Gatineau River. Those great floating masses of timbers worked well for more than a century but over time threatened to choke the life of the river, and eventually were deemed an ecological hazard. So now logs were trucked out of the woods to mills.