When Is a Man (37 page)

The fuggy, fried-egg smell in the A&W was strangely comforting. Elmer was stirring a packet of cane sugar into his tea, managing not to look out of place, while Lazeroff dutifully picked away at his breakfast sandwich. The constable had no particular love for the food, Paul realized. It was a prairie sort of loyalty (he didn't know why the prairies came to mind) to an atmosphere that had changed little since the seventies, that resisted contemporary gestures toward luxury and leisure, the foaminess of coffee shops, their vanilla and hazelnut frills. A loyalty to the old men in their denim jackets, their baseball caps advertising excavation services and chainsaws.

“You talk to any of these guys yet?” Lazeroff gestured at the other tables.

“I'll get to it,” Paul said. “Our list is pretty big.” Jory's death and the earlier town hall meeting had pushed his research into the public consciousness. Life had become busy, scarcely giving him time to think or grieve except in the quietest hours of the night. Strangers phoned to talk about the past, and Monashee Power had proposed that Paul, with Elmer's help, create a comprehensive website about the reservoir: the history of the communities and the dam, rare photos, video interviews with the displaced. If the funding came together, the contract could easily run a year or two in tandem with Paul's dissertation.

“They want me to interview Hardy again,” he said. As far as he knew, the old man wasn't leaving the psych ward in Trail anytime soon.

“Who does?”

“Monashee.”

“Jesus,” Lazeroff said. “He's in no shape for that. Most days he still thinks it's 1965.”

“Did Jory look anything like Kai Soules?” Elmer asked dubiously. “Same age, I suppose.”

“There was enough resemblance, I think, to bring back Hardy's shock at seeing Kai in the pool all those years ago,” Lazeroff said.

“But he didn't see him,” Paul said. “His father did—that's what he told me. I'd say it's the shock of killing Kai Soules.”

That was how he figured it. He imagined Kai alone on the riverbank, downstream from the flumes, completely out of his element, timidly prodding each passing log as though it were a sleeping beast. Some of his friends have already gone over to Caleb Ready and Monashee Power, and the only reason he hasn't left yet is because he's scared to tell the Wallaces. He lives with them in Lambert, and at the bunkhouse downstream from the mill, and he's been under Hardy's wing the whole summer. Now that his parents have left for Kamloops, the Wallaces are the closest thing to family he has. So when Hardy charges over, rips the peavey from his hand, he figures it's nothing, he's just doing a lousy job again. All the foremen have rotten tempers, but they get over it quick. And then Hardy shoves him, hard. Kai topples backward off the bank into the water between logs.

Hardy thrusts the peavey like a man spearing a fish, metal striking bone. He forces Kai under, and pins him there until a cluster of felled timber sweeps over and takes the boy with the current. Maybe Cyril has been watching the whole time, and this will bind the two men even more strongly than the memory of Lambert and everything else they will lose.

Suppose it was true that Hardy was Marcus's son. Which was the greater tragedy, that Hardy knew, or that he didn't? Did he unwittingly murder his nephew out of frustration, a self-righteous rage at Kai and Arthur's betrayal? Or was it simply too terrible a wound for his mind to handle, to be abandoned by his own blood?

“Considering all the accidents that happened in those logging camps,” Elmer said, “I doubt we'll ever know the absolute truth.”

“Someone knows,” Paul said. “Half the Dalton Creek crew could have witnessed his death. Maybe if we ask around at the Barber Chair.”

“You've been in there,” Elmer said. “Did you honestly get the sense those men would give up that kind of secret?”

“Or any secret, for that matter,” he admitted. “Doesn't bode well for our project, does it?”

“Not to be a pessimist,” said Lazeroff, “but even if you got to the bottom of the Kai mess, would it change anything for Hardy? I doubt it.”

“He'll be home eventually, right?” Paul asked.

Lazeroff shrugged grimly.

Elmer changed the subject. “So what do you need us to bring?” he asked the constable.

“To the party, you mean?” Lazeroff's wife had made the invitation cards by hand, thick, soft paper with dried flowers and stamped with pastoral scenes and fish in faded blue ink. Very confusing, or maybe she had a strange sense of humour. “Depends if you're willing to eat
pyrahi
,
golupsti
—oh, and steak. Mostly it's steak and cake,” Lazeroff said. “Bring more beer, how about.”

“No retirement gifts?”

“Accepted in the form of fishing lures.” Lazeroff smiled and, inexplicably, patted his belly. “Otherwise, please don't.”

“And what happens after you ride into the sunset?” Paul asked.

“I'm going fishing, obviously. All goddamn summer.”

“What about the grow op?”

“Someone will keep an eye on it, see if anyone returns. But it still won't prove any connection to Ready's death.”

“They won't come back,” Paul said. “The mill's open again, Billy doesn't need to take that risk.”

Lazeroff's eyebrows raised, though his face remained tellingly blank.

“You know it was them.”

“I don't
know
, otherwise—well, that's how these things go. They can drag out for years, so buckle up for the long ride or forget about it.” Lazeroff paused to wipe his hands on a napkin and emphatically tossed it on the table. “And live your life in the meantime.”

Two evenings ago, Paul had bumped into Billy in the grocery store. Billy's jacket was stained with chain oil, the cuffs of his jeans blackened by mud, and he swaggered as he pushed a cart filled with jugs of milk, white bread, and deli meat. He wore his layer of sawdust the way other men wore expensive watches. He glared at Paul with heavy eyelids, his jumpy rage tempered by fatigue and restored pride. Cocky too—Hardy was institutionalized, and he was still a free man. As he passed Paul, he said over his shoulder, “Hey, thanks for gettin' Shane to that dentist appointment.”

Paul stopped, thinking for a moment he sounded genuine.

“Tell him his dad can't always be there because he has a real job. You know, unlike his mother and her deadbeat boyfriend.”

“He's a smart kid,” Paul said. “I think he gets it.”

“Go fuck yourself.” Billy grinned sourly and sauntered on. When he pushed Caleb into the river, Paul wanted to ask, did he do it for his father or himself? He could ask Hardy the same question about Kai. And he could have both stories dead wrong.

He stared at Lazeroff across the table. How could a person come this far, gain nothing, and then just carry on?

“You thought about Basket Creek?” the constable asked. “Tagging those trout?”

“Not for me this summer,” Paul said. “Too busy.”

His friend looked disappointed. “It's such a great set-up.”

“It is,” Paul said. “And I did get you a retirement gift, of sorts.” He took out Tanner's business card and handed it to Lazeroff. “I told him you're the perfect man for the job. Apparently, you're allowed to bring your wife. Improved working conditions, he calls it.”

9

After the Canada Day weekend, the Yellow Pine Creek campground was still three-quarters full. The celebrations in Shellycoat had fetched enough income for Gina to take time off before driving the catering truck to a music festival outside Nakusp, so they'd reserved a site in the shady inner loop of the campground, a short walk to the beach and playground. Paul and Gina had a tent to themselves and made beds for Shane and Elsie inside Gina's camper. Elsie set the propane grill on the picnic table and unpacked the ice coolers. The sound of children echoed through the woods, while
RV
s slowly circled the loop looking for empty sites.

On their way down to the beach, Shane pointed at the saskatoons that towered over the path. “See? Toiletberries.” But he'd already outgrown his own joke. Paul reached up and plucked a few ripe ones, gave some to the boy, and ate the rest. A grainy texture, the sun's warmth trapped in the juice. They went past the playground, where the grassy meadow—a minefield of groundhog holes—sloped down to the water. The beach was a narrow strip of gravel and sandy patches. The water was brutally cold—Paul tested it with his toe and retreated back to his lawn chair—but Shane waded up to his hips while he worked a pair of goggles over his face. He dipped his head under, looking for minnows, shyly edging their way toward the other children.

Motorboats crisscrossed the reservoir, towing teenagers on inner tubes and wakeboards. Closer to shore, a few people in canoes and sea kayaks slipped past, looking for solitary beaches. “What time is Sonya coming tomorrow?” Elsie asked.

“Around nine.” A line of sweat trickled down Paul's belly.

“Will you be all right with Shane, Mom?” Gina asked.

“Of course.”

Shane emerged from the water, shivering and looking wistfully at the swings and spiral slides. Gina wrapped a towel around him and walked him to the playground, leaving Paul and Elsie to sunbathe in their chairs. Paul twisted around to look at the field. There were clues to what this place had once been: by the playground where Shane now dangled upside down on the monkey bars, a lone hawthorn stood near a very old apple tree, spaced evenly between two others that had died long ago. They were inconspicuous, their grey bark fading into the field, overshadowed by the pines and tangled hedges of wild rose and thimbleberry.

A difficult task, to imagine the soil that would have covered this loose, lacustrine stone, to mentally restack the layers of dark, chernozemic dirt, replant the bunchgrasses and the plowed earth. To superimpose fences, fallow pastures, horse paddocks over the glassy water, or replace the flat field with rows of
Robinia pseudocacia
that the tree farmers grew to burn in the steamships. Or the bulrushes and willows and muskrat dens, the smell of an evening on a verdant shore. Most difficult of all, to resurrect a farmer, or a war widow, or a family. Difficult to do so without presumption, without romanticizing sorrow and loss, without burying the present under a dredged-up past. There was no denying the solidness of what was before him now, the families on the beach, the children in the playground. No denying the goodness in these ill-gotten things.

Elise would remember this place, a farm not too far from her childhood home. Instead he asked, “Was it true—that you didn't know Caleb had died until I told you?”

She was sipping a beer, seemingly fixated on the hills across the reservoir. Hardy's descent into squalor and madness had devastated her, he knew, and the discovery of his relation to the Soules must have been equally disorienting. When she spoke, it was with an almost cheerful finality. “When I heard that he'd washed up at Hardy's, I just assumed—well, I thought it best to say nothing.”

Paul's back peeled wetly from the chair as he stood. How naive he'd been. Everyone he'd interviewed had known. It was like a signal had gone out the moment Caleb's waterlogged corpse was hauled onto shore. He stepped into the water, shuddering, forced himself deeper until his shorts were wet to the hips, then dove. It was clear enough underwater that he could open his eyes and see tufts of sedges stretching away into a green, impressionist haze. The bull trout would be preparing now to travel up the Immitoin, gathering at the head of the lake, where Jory's body had come to rest.

The thought sent him kicking to the surface. He spat, stood rubbing the water from his eyes, lifted his face to the sun. When he was warm enough, he hesitated a moment, then dove again. He gave up his game of re-envisioning the vanished farm, the drowned valley, and, for the afternoon at least, surrendered to his own ignorance, his outsiderness. Today, the reservoir was just a lake, and this was just a beach, just water.