When Is a Man (17 page)

For the benefit of their audience, he swung the conversation around to something professional-sounding, thanked her for the names and ideas she'd given him, and described some of the literature Dr. Tamba had recommended: a study of the Allegheny Tribes displaced by the Kinzua Dam, articles on the nearby Arrow Lakes, and
The River Dragon Has Come!
by Dai Qing. Tamba, deeply skeptical, was demanding a bigger sample list of participants, proof that Paul was committed to the project and already engaged in the research. He needed volunteers, and quick.

“I'm glad your mother has agreed to this,” he said.

“She hasn't. I only suggested her name. She doesn't like to talk about those days. Could be a tough sell.”

Paul's fork wavered in front of his mouth. “How about your father?”

“They divorced in the eighties. Might be in Fort St. John. That's where my brother works—we don't talk much. I'm sorry about Mom, but don't worry, she'll come around.” She talked between mouthfuls of pad Thai. She tossed out a few names and he jotted her suggestions down on a notepad.

One of the men kept trying to catch his eye. Paul leaned closer to her and whispered, “I feel under the microscope.”

“You get used to it.”

“Do you?” He pictured a bar brawl, chairs and fists flying. When they rose to leave, one of the men said, “Gina.” He cocked an eyebrow and thrust his chin, just slightly, toward Paul. She said nothing.

They stood outside the restaurant, in view of the fogged windows. “I should go rescue the babysitter,” she said. “She's got school tomorrow.”

“That wasn't your ex in there, was it?” Paul said.

She chuckled without much enthusiasm. “No. No, that would have been a different scene altogether. Believe me.”

“Something to look forward to,” he muttered.

“Those were his sledding buddies. Snowmobiles,” she added when he gave her a confused look. “I'm glad you decided to stay.”

“Are you?” he asked. She looked tired, her face blank, eyes heavy-lidded. He couldn't help but wonder again if he'd disappointed her back at camp. Or maybe she was worried he had expectations and would be constantly phoning and following her around. She didn't let him walk her back to her car, and in full view of the restaurant windows, they went their separate ways.

Peter Woodbury
, forester (b.1900–d.1983)

I spent part of the afternoon at the Shellycoat Historical Society watching a video tape of an interview conducted in 1980. The tape was in rough shape, the
VCR
ancient. I transcribed bits of the interview, just the things that jumped out at me. I worried that if I rewound the tape too much, the machine would eat it and Elmer would banish me from the archives.

Peter: I came to the Immitoin Valley for the orchards. For me, it was either falling trees or picking fruit . . . I knew some veterans who'd been given land grants under the Soldier Settlement Act. A beautiful place . . .

I worked for Donald Wallace—well, I worked under his head arborist, Marcus Soules, but it was Wallace's orchards. Soules was a magician at pruning and grafting, getting the trees through a rough winter. Good man, good teacher too. I still use all his techniques on my trees in the backyard.

Fruit industry went downhill by the end of the Second World War. So I stuck to logging and the like . . . Lambert had its own crew after the war, and they were an ornery bunch. Frederic Wentz ran the operation, then he and Wallace partnered up.

They started off horse logging in the lower elevations for Monashee Power, which was just a small lighting and power utility company at the time. They also built flumes so whatever they didn't mill on site they could run as raw logs down the Immitoin. It was a damned impressive set-up.

Interviewer:
Did you work for them at all?

P: Never did, no. There was unrest between them and the community. Once whispers about the dam started, people got worried about their future. Neighbours in Lambert started fighting each other, and I didn't want to get mixed up in any of that.

Halloween night, while typing out his notes on Woodbury, he was interrupted by a knock on the back door. He found himself wandering downtown with a couple of zombies, a bloodied and unidentifiable superhero, a nun with a rather revealing habit, and a bare-chested devil—Jory with his hairless, buff torso covered in red paint. The nun was Sonya, Jory's girlfriend.

Paul had only seen her once since he'd moved in. When he'd finished unloading his vehicle and piled his few belongings outside on the porch, she'd come downstairs with Jory to help. Her natural dull blond hair was streaked with black and a faded electric blue, cut just short enough to reveal the series of piercings in both ears. She'd worn a tight-fitting but unremarkable grey T-shirt underneath an unzipped black hoodie, both tops covered in the logos of a snowboard company. She and Jory almost could have been brother and sister. Unlike him, though, her smile was forced, a brief creasing of alabaster cheeks.

“Don't mind all the crap,” she'd mumbled in a low voice and shoved aside a garbage bag full of empty beer cans.

“The last guy was never here,” Jory apologized, “so we kind of took over.”

“I don't have much,” Paul said. Sonya gave his duffle bags a wary look, perhaps disturbed by his lack of possessions.

“Aren't you, like, a university professor?” she asked.

“My dad's shipping the rest of my stuff,” he said and watched as the last hint of respect or interest vanished from her eyes.

They wandered into a nightclub, confronted by a grab-bag of aliens, undead, superheroes, and devils crowding the dance floor. Here and there he saw grey ponytails and weathered faces, aging hippies oblivious to anything but the music, which was tribal, all afro-Cuban percussion and robotically incessant synths. The people his own age were invariably couples, and carried the look of careless affluence, throwing their summers' earnings into pitchers of beer and oversized martinis. Big, hip fish in a little pond. Sonya had dressed conservatively next to the sea of lingerie, bondage gear, and angel wings that drifted past their table. He sipped his gin and tonic, his first drink in months—he wasn't wearing a pad—and wondered when he could slip out of here without offending his new friend.

Jory leaned over to Paul's ear. “Analyzing the situation?”

“In a way,” he said.

“We're going to pop some E,” Jory said. “You want half a hit?”

Paul laughed incredulously. “No. No. It's been a while.” He'd gone through his own party phase, a pretty tame one in comparison, and was finished with it. Of course, some of the greybeards out there on the dance floor would have gone through the disco days, bluegrass and jam band revivals, the roots of the rave scene, and danced their way through all of it, picking up on the new sounds, switching to the latest drug du jour. The idea of that continuity made him nostalgic for a life he'd never had. Flares of energy charged the room, while his own spark sputtered and faltered.

“The old guys on the dance floor are impressive,” he said to Jory.

Jory laughed. “Thank Christ my dad's not out there. It wouldn't surprise me at all.”

“They're locals, huh?”

“Born and raised. Except if they're draft dodgers. But that's as good as being born here. Like my dad's friends. They run the tree-planting companies, the health food stores. Shellycoat wouldn't be what it is without the dodgers.” The music was pounding now, and Jory's breath condensed against Paul's ear as he leaned in to talk. Sonya looked bored and twitchy.

“Shellycoat wouldn't be anything without the orchardists and miners,” Paul said.

“That's way too far back for me.” Jory slipped a few pills out of a small tin of mints and pressed one between Sonya's lips. They nursed their drinks in silence, eyes on the crowd. Minutes passed, and then Sonya whispered something to Jory and they stood up and wandered away. She danced with her eyes closed, with modest, subtle motions—she had a sensuality some of the more daring girls lacked. Or maybe their eroticism was too overwhelming, white noise to his long-deprived senses, and Sonya's operated at a level he could handle. She danced for herself, while Jory bounced up and down, conscious of others, inviting them in. High-fives over people's heads, a pause for a quick, sweaty hug with a bro.

The music dropped to something low and throbbing. He heard a faint click and realized he was tapping his finger on the table, keeping time. He wondered what effect the drug would have had on him but brushed the idea aside. He'd stay another minute. This wasn't a total waste of time. Surely somewhere in the throng of sexy nurses and robot vampires were the grandsons and granddaughters of Lambert. Everything he did from now on was research.

Sheets in the wash because he'd wet himself after two gins. After his shower, he went out to the covered porch, cleared the table of its empty beer bottles and full ashtray, and set down a French press filled with coffee. Snow fell but melted instantly on the sidewalks and road. He wore a heavy flannel coat he'd found at a church thrift store for three dollars. The coat had the woody, dusty smell of mudrooms and woodsheds, of firewood and chainsaw oil. It was a relic, something outside its time.

Sonya stepped onto the porch, wearing her usual black hoodie. She was more pale than usual, her cheeks lined from a pillowcase or patterned couch cushion. “Hope we didn't wake you when we staggered home,” she said, clearing her throat.

“Didn't hear a thing. Coffee?”

She gave him a slow nod. “Thanks.”

Paul went inside for two more mugs, and when he came back out, she had a cigarette burning in her hand as she stared out over the valley.

“Hope you don't mind I'm on the porch,” he said.

“You were here first.” She squinted at him, then looked away.

They sat in silence until Jory stumbled down to the porch, bare-chested, still smeared with red paint. He shivered, wild-haired. “Fuck, yeah,” he said as he poured himself a coffee. He squeezed in behind Sonya, wrapping his arms around her as he braced against the post.

“So, the night went well?”

Jory laughed, his voice burbling up through gravel. “Some guy in a gorilla suit grabbed her ass outside the bar.”

“Jory lost his mind,” Sonya said dryly. “So that was fun.”

Paul whistled. He didn't see any sign of a beating on Jory's face or knuckles. “Anyone get hurt?”

“Aw, it's all good. We worked it out,” Jory said.

“I had to tear them off each other.”

“I thought everyone was in love on Ecstasy,” Paul said.

“Jory can be overprotective sometimes.”

“That's not true,” he said. “I was being a gentleman. That fucking clown.” Jory chuckled, his chin on Sonya's shoulder, but Paul could see her face darken underneath her hood.

“What do you think, babe, should we make some breakfast?” Jory mumbled. His face disappeared into the folds of her hoodie. “Or go back to bed?”

She closed her eyes as he nuzzled her through the heavy cotton, and when she opened them, her face had softened, the events of last night pushed aside. Paul couldn't help watching them. He felt an upwelling of sadness almost pleasurable in its intensity. A memory of his own past, seeing the two twining into each other, amused by their own exhaustion, their bodies resilient, the deep, full well of their libido.

Paul remembered being in love like that at Jory's age—he recalled only fragments of his time with the girl, but it didn't matter. There really was nothing quite like being in love at twenty. It was unstable and volcanic. It shook the earth, then dispersed like a breeze. So elemental and simple. It was not vegetative, developing cell by cell, sending branches up and taproots down. A boy's love didn't anchor itself. It fought, as likely to linger when it lost as vanish when it conquered. Would he ever return to that again? Was that even possible?

Molly
(b. 1943, 66 yrs old)
and Joseph
(b. 1940, 69 yrs old)
Kruse

Partial transcript. Taped at their home, a few kilometres south of Bishop, Nov. 9, 2009.

Joseph was born to a Lutheran family in Lambert, growing up at a time when neighbours worried about the dam, the future of the valley uncertain. Nonetheless, after he and Molly married, they decided to stay at his family's acreage until Lambert's final day of relocation in the late summer of 1969.

Molly: Joe's father made furniture. He found all his materials along the lake and river.

Joseph: We'd canoe to the mouth of the Immitoin above Bishop and find pockets of birch, willow, and maple. Most of those groves are underwater now. He had an old lathe in the workshop . . .

Paul:
So the loss of those wetlands, that way of life—it must have had a disorienting effect on you. Confounded your sense of place.

J: Well . . . I still miss gathering up the wood. If that's what you mean.