When Is a Man (8 page)

He lifted the last fish and saw the red tag and then the bullet wound. She'd come back. “Gave up, did you?” he said. “Or got confused, poor girl.” He let her go, as he had the male, but didn't expect to see her again.

The
RCMP
showed up late the next morning after Paul had finished his morning count. Paul recognized the driver as the officer who'd stood with Tanner on the road. The other, younger than Paul, had a cocky swagger, good-looking but rugged, a hockey player who'd somehow avoided breaking his nose or losing any teeth. The older cop greedily sniffed the fresh air as he approached, his face lifted to the warm breeze.

“Pretty sweet set-up you've got. I haven't been this far up the mainline since a fishing derby two summers back, I think.” He introduced himself as Cliff Lazeroff and the younger man as Davis.

“Coffee?” Paul asked.

“Please.” Lazeroff looked a little apologetic. “Should talk about yesterday, but it'll wait. Let's pull up some chairs here.”

They grabbed two log ends near the fire pit and dragged them close to the camper. Paul kept the door open and listened to the men talk idly while he brewed coffee and herbal tea for himself. Lazeroff was saying something about dry fly casting. The younger cop owned a powerboat and spent most of his time on the lake. “New motor on it. Hauls ass out to my favourite spots and back in an afternoon. Have to watch out for deadheads, though, especially the north end,” he told Paul. “Sometimes an old snag that's been standing underwater comes loose and pops straight up and out. Like a rocket.”

“It's a spooky thing to see,” said Lazeroff.

“There's a whole forest underneath the reservoir,” Davis said. “It's gotten better over time, but it's best to stay out of certain areas.”

They went quiet, as men do when they're given an image of danger, envisioning deadly scenarios, savouring, in a way, the possibility of disaster.

“So about yesterday,” Lazeroff said, once Paul sat down. “Going by the description you gave Tanner, I'm pretty sure we know who it is.” Davis shook his head and smiled into his coffee.

“Oh?”

The constable gestured downriver. “His name's Hardy Wallace.”

“Hardy Wallace,” Paul repeated.

“You know the day you came up with Tanner?”

“You were directing traffic.”

“That man who drowned. An older fella, Caleb Ready, not that the name's going to mean much to you.” Lazeroff coughed. “Hardy spotted the body from his kitchen window.”

Davis interjected. “He was pretty shaken up.”

“I remember him now. He was standing on the deck.”

“He's got a history. Gone off the deep end before,” Lazeroff said. “Lives alone. Always has, from what I understand. A Lambert local, as they say.”

“Lambert? Is that the place with all the shacks and summer homes?”

“No, that's Bishop. Lambert was a village across the lake from Bishop, before the dam. Lambert folks were given property in Bishop as compensation for getting flooded out. From what I understand.”

Paul nodded impatiently. “So what do you mean he's got a history?”

“This isn't the first body that's ended up below his house,” said Davis.

“First time, a young woman, a rafting accident upstream,” said Lazeroff. “He took that okay. A real tragedy, was all he said. Then that child on the May two-four weekend.”

“That's right, three years back,” said Davis. “Horrible. Fishing trip near the falls, kid stumbled off the bank.”

“Threw him for a major loop. Some folks had to look after him until he got his head back together. And now, Mr. Ready.”

“That's—that's a lot of bodies,” said Paul.

“It's the current,” said Davis. “If the corpse doesn't get caught on a sweeper upstream, or stuck in spin cycle beneath some falls, it'll end up in that eddy.”

“Bad luck, the house being where it is,” Lazeroff said.

“This Ready guy we haven't figured out,” said Davis. “He certainly wasn't a kayaker, or fishing.”

Lazeroff gave Davis a quick glare, then shrugged. “Damned shame. Bottom line is, maybe Hardy's still a bit rattled. It's partly up to you, of course, but we'd like to not make much trouble.”

Paul shook his head, confused. “Trouble for whom?”

“I'm just saying, there's not much to gain. Did he, in fact, threaten you with his firearm or point it at you?”

“More or less,” said Paul. This was all because he wasn't a local. If he was someone like Tanner, things would be handled differently. “I don't know.”

“Hard to say he did anything on purpose?”

“Except shooting the fish.”

“Any dead?”

“One. He wounded a female too, but it looks like she might make it.” Which made him laugh a little crazily. The cops looked at each other. He went inside and brought out the killed trout he'd kept in the freezer. They hummed and hawed, and finally said they'd take it back with them. “We'll probably end up eating it,” Lazeroff said.

Paul sighed, irritated. He didn't want complications either—or more visitors. But he didn't want to be shrugged off.

“Look, I'm willing to let it go,” he said. “But I need to know I'm safe. I need to work in peace.”

“You will.” Lazeroff looked relieved. “We'll go talk to him right now. Maybe turn things over to the conservation officer. He'll likely get a fine.” Or nothing, Paul thought.

“Might be worse than going to jail or a hospital,” said Davis. “Can't imagine he's got a lot of money.”

The cops nodded at him, looking for agreement, so Paul obliged them, still unhappy. Did they expect him to feel sorry for the old loon?

“Hey,” said Lazeroff suddenly. “You mind taking us down to the fence? I'm curious for a look.”

At the creek, Davis appraised the equipment in the measuring station as if he were shopping at a rummage sale, holding up the Floy tag gun and vials of clove oil, his eyebrows narrowing and then rising, his lips pursed. “Huh,” he muttered indifferently when he finished. Lazeroff, meanwhile, stood at the edge of the fence, the water touching his boots. When he spoke, which he did with a low, almost wistful voice, he pointed out every aspect of the stream—the straight riffle, the curve upstream that created a pool along the far bank.

“You call this a job?” he said. “This is a vacation.”

Paul grimaced. “You aren't here at night.”

“You getting bushed yet?” said Davis. He grinned at Lazeroff.

The constable laughed. “Oh, it's too early. Give the man another few weeks until the cold and the rain hit, with nothing but a pack of cards to keep him company.”

Lazeroff gave him more assurances before leaving. “Pop into the station when you come into town,” he said. “I'll let you know how it turns out.”

For a long time after they'd gone, Paul paced the camp. The cops made the old man sound harmless, an object of pity. Not much sympathy for an outsider—didn't he know madness was par for the course out here? Apparently he'd soon be half-mad himself.

7

He decided to head to Shellycoat the next morning. Food and clean clothes were running low. And it might be best, he thought, to get the trip over with, not have it lurking in the back of his mind all week. When they'd talked about being bushed and coming into town, the younger cop had given him a wink. Oh, yes: women. That's what Davis had implied. Go see some coffee shop girls, cashiers, women jogging in their shorts and yoga pants along the lakefront. That built-up tension, the blue-balled bush man. But what he felt was slightly anxious. He certainly wasn't starved for people's company. They were dropping by camp on a regular basis, for Christ's sake.

While he drove, he kept the
CB
volume turned up and set to channel 5. A trucker's voice came through the radio's static. “Empty, twenty-eight on the Immitoin.” Paul looked for one of the orange kilometre markers so he could call his location. That was how to do it, according to Tanner. Empty when driving up the road, or north, and loaded when heading south toward town.

He passed Hardy's cabin without realizing where he was, and as he looked back in his rear-view mirror, a logging truck swung around the corner, the semi's grill staring him down. “Fuck,” he shouted and tapped on his brakes, too hard, and fishtailed through a water bar, the nose of his vehicle slamming down hard, then skyward. He jerked to the right, his tires plowing through the soft shoulder as the truck slid past him. The driver gave him a long, angry blast on the horn. Paul cranked the wheel again and skidded back onto the road.
Jesus H. Christ
, he breathed.

“Hey, Fred.” An irritated voice crackled over the
CB
. “Some cocksucker in a Pathfinder doesn't have a radio, heading your way.”

“Okey-doke.” The accent sounded Russian. “Empty, twenty-eight.”

His face burning, Paul waited until he saw the next marker. “Loaded pickup, twenty-nine,” he mumbled into the receiver. He pulled close to the shoulder and slowed down. A few moments later, another logging truck rattled around the corner, a cloud of dust billowing up beside it. The driver lifted two fingers off the wheel in greeting, a smirk on the broad, red-cheeked face.

“Fuck you too,” said Paul under his breath as he sped up again. A few hundred metres later, where a power line right-of-way crossed the road, he pulled over. Thimbleberry, bracken fern, and dogsbane, all caked with dust, hung in rows above the ditch. He walked around to the passenger side and dropped his pants. With a few swift movements, he ripped off his damp incontinence pad and flung it into the weeds.

He swung by the police station, his first stop. Behind his desk, under the fluorescents, the constable looked dumpy and bored. Paul asked if there had been any confrontation with the old man. “Didn't wave a gun at me, if that's what you mean,” Lazeroff said. “Caught him at a lucid moment. Says he'll come by and apologize if you'd like. Told him that probably wouldn't be necessary.”

“Or wanted,” said Paul. “Thanks.”

The constable changed the subject and asked him if he'd seen anything out of the ordinary—besides Hardy, of course. They still didn't know how Caleb Ready ended up in the river. “I haven't really explored, to be honest,” Paul said. “Should I?”

“Well, yeah, for your own sake. It's beautiful country.” Lazeroff chuckled. “No need to poke around on our account.”

“That drowned man,” Paul said. “Did he leave a note? At his house, I mean?”

“Cottage.”

“Pardon?”

“Summer cottage by the marina, just up from the dam. He didn't live here year-round,” Lazeroff said. “There wasn't a note.”

He left and found a coffee shop with Wi-Fi, deciding to sit outside and soak up the small town buzz. He was enjoying himself far more than he'd expected, which maybe wasn't saying much. The late summer heat of Shellycoat was different than the coast, tailor-made for sitting outside. Smells didn't come and go on an ephemeral ocean breeze but hovered in the still air and accumulated in richness: deli meat, bagels and mustard, coffee and fresh bread. Mountain bikes leaned against the ornate metalwork railings, a line of men and women in cycling shorts queued up at the coffee counter, brown and grey mud drying on their calves and black apricot-shaped bums. They looked to be all ages, anywhere from twenty to fifty, all of them hard and lean with tanned and veiny arms. On the curb near Paul, two men in khaki uniforms spread maps and clipboards on the hoods of a truck marked with a Monashee Power logo, their travel mugs perched at angles on the gleaming metal.

He checked his e-mail, sent a quick reply to his parents to say he was all right, the river was beautiful, so were the fish, sorry he'd be out of touch for the next while. Most of the incoming messages he could ignore, put off, or delete. Like the one from Dr. Elias Tamba.