April Fool (18 page)

The byplay with Hoover, the exchange of advice for a crotch caress, keeps returning like a dirty joke. Did you hear the one about the hooker and the lawyer? A subtle joke, because who knows who's screwing whom? Arthur feels used by her, but isn't sure why. Had he somehow invited that intimate au revoir?

That he had fantasies involving her is disgusting. A young prostitute…Her lick and fondle, her offer of more, her
warning about nasty rumours: a shot across the bows? A threat to embarrass him in court if his questions are too probing?

“‘More is meant than meets the ear.' Who said that? Milton?”

This vocalizing to the void has got to stop, it's a habit from the garden, talking to his beets. He tries not to think of the farm (he shouldn't have allowed Stoney loose with the backhoe), it only keeps him awake. But two cups of instant coffee are doing that anyway.

The kids must still be arriving. He closes his eyes and counts goats, but the image of them springing over a broken fence makes him more fretful. His thoughts finally find their bumpy way to Margaret. He is in dire need of her comfort, her confidence, her ability to keep her amateur farmer husband from tripping over his feet. He must devise a face-saving plan to bring her down from that tree.

He backs up, that's wrong. He must think in new ways if he's to grapple with the ineffable inexplicableness of the female psyche. Margaret wants no face-saving plan. She wants to be rescued.
You're going to perform like Cyrano or else.

The storm abates for a while, and there is an eerie silence but for the murmur of trees shedding rain, then the winds start anew. He finally surrenders to sleep and agitating dreams of looking on while Margaret hugs a fleshy, muscular tree.

 

15

A
fter his fitful sleep, Arthur is anxious to put a gruesome night behind him, and, as Syd's Beaver coasts into Blunder Bay, he entertains thoughts of a nap. But he is suddenly wary because Stoney is waiting at the dock, effusive in welcome, eager to be the porter of Arthur's bag.

As if trying to shield Arthur's view, Stoney walks backwards in front of him. “While you were gone, I must've put in fifty hours, I wanted to surprise you. Struck a spring, it looks like, it's filling fast. We weren't expecting that rainstorm last night, she kind of caved in on the sides, but not a problem.”

When Stoney steps aside, Arthur sees a berm has been cast up beside the pond, a clay mound on which Lotis Rudnicki and Shiftless and Underfoot and two geese are standing, watching events unfold. Nearby, Dog is hitching a chain to the backhoe, which is running, but with a slight cough.

“Had to make an emergency run for diesel yesterday, missed the gas station by five minutes. I would of siphoned the Toyota, but the tank was locked, and I couldn't find where you hid the key.” An accusatory tone. “Anyway, when I got back, I parked the old girl by the edge there. Must have slipped out of gear overnight, and started rolling. It was one of them chance events you can't predict.”

Arthur manoeuvres past him to the pond, where he observes the cab of his Fargo, or that part of it that shows above the water.

“We'll have her flushed out, carb cleaned, the fuel lines, everything, and she'll be ready to roll when the roosters crow.”

Arthur watches in an exhausted daze as Dog uncoils the chain and wades into the water fully clothed. While fastening the chain to the undercarriage, Dog slips, submerges. Finally, to Lotis's applause, he rises. He waves to Stoney, who climbs aboard his backhoe and puts it in gear. Predictably, it utters a final cough and dies.

Stoney taps at the fuel dial for several moments, as if that might correct the problem. “There's always something, eh, Arthur? Maybe I can use the tractor to pull it out?”

Arthur shakes his head. His little tractor would end up joining the Fargo.

“Okay if I borrow the Toyota then? I'll be back in five minutes with some diesel.”

Margaret's truck is clean, undented, he'd bought it last year for her birthday. But Arthur is too enervated to resist, and he yields up the keys.

He stares at the submerged truck for a while, a meditative time disturbed only by the chattering of Dog's teeth. Lotis sends him in to warm up. “You're still my hero,” she calls after him.

 

In the Woofer kitchen, Arthur hovers over Kim Lee as she slices a warm whole-wheat loaf. “Lotis make.” Lotis, the baker, wonders never cease. Kim rewards him with the crust for his sad-faced pantomime of hunger.

Retrieving peanut butter from the fridge, he glances down the hall at Lotis leaving the bathroom, topless, pulling up her jeans, hurrying to answer the phone. He averts his eyes from this casually immodest performance.

“Yeah, we're packing a lunch for them. I'll get a ride with Arthur. Ciao.” She strolls into the kitchen tugging down a new T-shirt: I'm a Friend of Gwendolyn. “We've ordered
three hundred.” She hands him one. “Thirty bucks. Who was Gwendolyn, anyway?”

“A corruption of a Salishan name–G'win d'lin, a maiden of the forest who joined her lover in the Salish sea, and who lives there now, and whose long hair can be seen drifting like kelp with the tides.”

This causes Lotis an odd moment. She seems speechless. There's a shine to her wide oval eyes as she says, “That is fucking beautiful.” She turns spirited, theatrical. “I want Gwendolyn's
role
. For every tragedy, there must be a balcony scene. ‘O, swear not by the moon, the inconstant moon, that monthly changes in her circled orb.' East Pasadena Rep, I was fifteen, it ran two weeks.”

A creditable Juliet. “‘How silver-sweet sound lovers'tongues by night.'”

“I'm beyond impressed.”

He's too modest to boast about his heralded performance with the Garibaldi Players: Sir Toby Belch in
Twelfth Night
.

Lotis hands him a thick file: Dr. Winter's entire output of published columns, three years'worth, magically secured from the vast tangle of information that floats about in the World Wide Web.

He idly leafs through them as he relates his adventures in Bamfield, capped off by Holly Hoover's nocturnal visit. “She made a rather bold sexual advance before she left. Awkward. For me, at least.”

She wrenches the details from him, how Hoover offered sex as payment for advice.

“Were you tempted?”

He responds huffily: “Of course not.” It will be a task confessing to Margaret. Confessing? He's guilty of nothing.

“And you don't think Jasper Flynn is humping her?”

“She says not.”

“And what? You believe her? You think Flynn turned her down when she grabbed
his
dick?”

Arthur can find no delicate way to respond.

Lotis is intrigued by the spat overheard in Cotters' Cottage between Ruth and, presumably, Eve Winters. “‘It's over, Ruth'? Whoa, I should've figured they were keeping something from me.”

She lunched Saturday at the home of Dr. Glynis Bloom, an anaesthetist, and Wilma Quong, an accountant, who were cooperative but subdued. Dr. Bloom was the more outgoing, and talked fondly of Winters, a friend of a dozen years. Also there was the graduate student, Ruth Delvechio, closed and apprehensive. She and Eve Winters had been romantically interested, but no mention was made of an affair-ending quarrel.

“A few bitching sessions–you expect that on a tough sixday hike–but ‘Fuck you, your fucking highness' never came up. I can see why Winters wanted to shed her, she's chronically gushy. ‘It's lovely that you're working for the environment, that's just
so
important.'”

The unofficial reason Winters stayed on in Bamfield might have been to escape Ruth Delvechio, but Winters told them she wanted to spin out her holiday. She'd written two columns in advance, and was charmed by the village. The others had to return to their work and studies.

The name Adeline Angella meant nothing to them, but they recalled Winters's display of temper about a threatened court action. “Apparently Eve could let fly, which makes for a different image of the cool-headed shrink.”

Lotis also met with Dr. Winters's secretary, who was of little help. “Didn't recall Angella's name, only vaguely recognized her photo. Doctor Eve keyed all the patient interviews into the computer herself, all except the clerical odds and sods, appointments, accounts.”

Arthur is missing some of this. He's sitting, absorbed in one of Winters's columns, “The Man Who Thinks He's a Masochist,” advice to Mr. J: “It is not unnatural to be attracted to strong women. In fact, it is a healthy sign. Through antiquity,
women have sought strong males, now in this more liberated age there is a greater balance of attraction. Unconsciously we seek healthy partners to improve the species.” She tells Mr. J he must rid himself of any notion he suffers masochistic tendencies.

“Quite right,” he says aloud. He reddens, covers the page.

“Earth to Arthur Beauchamp.”

“Sorry, there's too much traffic in my head…You've done some good work, Lotis.” For some reason those were difficult words. Why does it rankle him that she's so unexpectedly competent? “I hope I'm not pressing you into service too severely.”

“Shit no, I'm pumped.”

He can't remember, even as a young lawyer, having such bumptious energy. Or idealism, however flawed. He had no passion to change the world. The law was based on centuries of common sense. The law was his god, the courtroom his universe. He was born stuffy.

“I dragged Buddy Svabo from his backyard barbecue to ask if he'll release Dr. Winters's files. ‘Not,' he said. He wants to argue it tomorrow.” The disclosure hearing. “Also, he's hinting he has a jailhouse informant. A fink, I don't know who. He says he doesn't have to identify him.”

Arthur sits up, startled. “That's preposterous. If Buddy Svabo has engaged a lying informer, it will rebound on him.” Would Nick Faloon be so careless with his words in prison?

“I had a quick visit with Nick, he looks like shit, depressed, unshaven, and out of shape. He thinks he burdened you with a case you can't win. Also, he wonders when you're coming to visit him.”

“I haven't found the time yet.” But he must, and soon. Faloon has to be persuaded to come clean about his night with Holly Hoover. Claudette has a forgiving nature.

 

Arthur is naked, lumbering through the woods with gluey slowness, fleeing a pursuing grizzly. He reaches the safety of the road only to find his truck gone…

“Dream bad.” As Kim Lee nudges him awake, he is partly on a sofa, partly on the floor, running from the bear. “Stoney come. Late go now.” This means Stoney is back with the Toyota and Arthur has overslept. She is extending the basket of out-take.

Hurrying out to impound the keys, he sees that Lotis has already commandeered the truck, is in the driver's seat. Stoney has brought not just diesel fuel but a wetsuit for Dog, who is looking forlorn and froglike in flippers, mask, and snorkel. Arthur can't bear to watch this drama play out, climbs in beside Lotis, who turns on the ignition.

“I thought you didn't drive.”

“I'm from southern California. We late, go feed.”

 

A quick stop at the General Store, where Aloysius Noggins, still in clerical collar after Sunday service, is enjoying his reward, a steaming rum coffee. He's waiting for the ferry–he'll be meeting Selwyn Loo, escorting him to the Gap.

Reverend Al studies Lotis's rump as she picks through a bin of oranges. “Blessed is the man who endureth temptation.”

“Speak for yourself.”

“I am.”

He has just come from a meeting of the Save Gwendolyn Society. A bake sale has brought in $324. A bingo at the hall tonight might double that–if enough event-exhausted Garibaldians show up. Against these microscopic amounts, some donations from afar have been sizable, $500,000 from a U.S. philanthropist, $200,000 from a wildlife fund.

The key is to keep Gwendolyn Valley in the news. The protesters are alive to that. Lotis has been brainstorming with them, scripting ceremonies to amuse the reporters, keep them happy.

“
DAY ELEVEN
!” cries the Sunday newspaper. Twenty-one days, Margaret promised, ten to go. She could reneg, and try for the Guinness record. She's become unpredictable in her middle years. It's not menopause, she's over that. Some other womanly thing.

“Any eagle sightings?” Arthur asks Reverend Al.

“I'm about ready to admit to the futility of prayer.”

“Can't stop progress.” Ernie Priposki, over-refreshed, staring with glazed eyes into space, somewhere beyond the canned soups.

 

On the Gap Trail, Arthur is met by Flim and Flam, as locals have taken to calling the filmmakers, and their cameras dog him silently all the way up the trail. At the Holy Tree, he finds Lotis fastening the lunch basket to the rope, Slappy overseeing. Cud Brown hangs over the railing, fixed upon Lotis.

Margaret appears, bundled in sweater, jacket, and toque.

“Are you feeling all right, my dear?”

“A bit of a sore throat.”

Arthur barely heard that, she's hoarse. Cud speaks for her. “Your lady's got a cold. We're trying not to get too close.” His facetious grin.

Arthur's worry level ratchets up another half-dozen notches. “Is she running a temperature?”

“Yeah, she's kind of hot.”

Margaret finds her voice. “It's minor. Over tomorrow.” A switch of topic. “You look like you've been putting on weight.”

“I'm fit as a fiddle.”

“A bass fiddle.”

Cud hauls up the basket, calls down to Lotis. “Man, this smells like it came out of the ovens of Arcady.” Arcady, as if the poseur has studied the Greek myths. (Has he ever read Tennyson? A Shakespeare sonnet? Blake? Housman?) “Who baked this?”

“The person you are speaking to.”

“You don't look like a home-baking type.”

“You don't look like a sexist.” Tossing her hair.

“I wasn't until I met you, my lovely.”

“Yeah, I have this power to bring out the inner jerk in people.”

There is tension in this scene, entertainment for the cameras. It galls Arthur that Cud is loafing around up there,
living off the community dole. These sandwiches came from the kitchens not of Arcady but Bungle Bay. It's the Garibaldi Writer-in-Residence grant.

Arthur makes sure that Margaret has cold medications, and urges her to rest. That's not all he wants to say, he has a host of concerns and questions. Insistent but with misgiving, he calls upon Cud to watch over her, ensure she drinks water, stays covered.