I lit the cigar at 9:46 this morning. At 4:32 in the afternoon there’s a cannon-like blast from behind the tent frames. Naturally, I’m in the latrine and miss the initial ignition, but I get out in time to see a white cloud mushroom into the air. When I arrive the brush pile is engulfed in flame — the blast from the gunpowder has splattered the diesel.
From down by the creek, I hear the rumble of a fire pump. Firefighters appear from the shade of the trees, headed for a nozzle at the end of a nearby hose. Good response time, but I don’t want the fire put out and gesture with a hand across my throat; kill the pump. The firefighters hesitate, ready for action. The hose fills with water like a snake coming to life. There’s a cough and sputter from the nozzle and a thin jet of water rockets through the air. I shake my head and the firefighters look disappointed, idly spray the ground around the fire. I make a call on my radio and the pump falls silent. The nozzleman looks at me like a kid with an empty water pistol.
“What’s up boss?” Alphonse, arriving from the creek.
“I’m going to let it burn. I want to see what’s left in the pan.”
He gestures to his men. They retreat to the shade of the trees.
He’s sweating, big droplets running down his cheeks. “Gunpowder worked good, huh?”
“What gunpowder?” He wasn’t supposed to be watching when I put it together.
“I sorta peeked.”
“Yeah, I figured.” I don’t want anyone getting ideas. “Just don’t pass it along.”
He grins. “My lips are sealed. Omerta, man.”
I sit in the shade of the trees, do some math as I watch the pile sizzle and settle. Total elapsed time from ignition to initiation was 6 hours and 46 minutes. Considering I seated the cigar an inch and a half into the gunpowder, that leaves a fuse length of eleven and a half inches. Simple division gives me a burn rate of about 35 minutes per inch. If the arsonist travelled away from the device at a rate of 60 miles an hour, how far away would he be at the time the fire started? The problem echoes like a word question from sixth grade math class. My answer: 406 miles. Mathematically, this is correct. Practically, this means we’d have to search half the province.
“What do you figure, boss?” Alphonse, lying on his side on the moss,the natural angle of repose. “You think this is how he’s doing it?” He watches the news like everyone else.
“Maybe.” I ponder the flickering pile. “He sure knows what he’s doing.”
“How many fires has this guy started?”
“Too many, Alphonse. You think any local boys are looking for work?”
For a minute Alphonse is silent. Natives can be touchy about the suggestion they’ve started fires in the past despite this being a traditional method of native grassland management. Now it’s a traditional method to manage unemployment. “No,” he says, “I don’t think so. It’s been pretty busy the last two summers. Even without them fires, everyone would be working.”
a half-hour later, the fire is pretty much out. All that remains is a circle of ash and smouldering branch ends the fire couldn’t reach. Toward one edge is the cake pan, no longer shiny and new. We stand around the circle like worshippers at a henge.
“That was a pretty hot fire,” says one of the firefighters.
“What exploded like that?” asks another.
“I saw him put in some gas —”
“It was diesel —”
“Diesel don’t explode like that.”
Alphonse gives them a look and conversation ceases. I squat, inspect the contents of the pan. Grey wood ash, fine and powdery. I blow lightly, which lifts some of the ash out of the way. There’s a loose, cylindrical lump of coarse ash — the remains of the cigar — and a thin black scab about two inches in diameter, probably the pop bottle. The evidence is fragile, easily disturbed. I’m going to have to be more careful, like the boys from Ident.
“You figure out what you needed to know?” asks Alphonse.
I nod, pick up the pan. “You can spray this area down now.”
Three hours into Saturday afternoon we get a call and my holiday in the woods is over. I spend a few days in smoke and ash, favouring my good ankle, working in heat like the blast out of a jet engine. The fire isn’t large, but because the ground is so dry the fire has burned deep into the forest floor. I call the fire extinguished on Wednesday morning and by Wednesday afternoon I’m in the duty room, still wearing my hardhat and charcoal-smeared coveralls, weighed down with a radio belt and water bottles, ready to be debriefed.
“Take a load off,” Carl says, waving away an imaginary cloud. “And shower.”
I unclasp the belt, drop it with a clunk on his desk.
“Not here,” he snaps. His desk is cluttered with grocery orders and smoke messages. His face is cluttered with stress lines and he hasn’t shaved in a few days. The big wall map is busy with magnets — when I was in the ash there were three other fires going, all started by careless weekend campers. Good little boys and girls give matches to moms and dads. One of the fires is still out of control, trying to climb out of a gully and overtop a ridge. The bombers have gone to higher priority fires up north, leaving us without major airstrike capability. Carl’s patience is thin.
He rubs his fists against his eyes. “How’d the fire go?”
“A lot of work for a few acres.”
“Any clue who started it?”
“No. It was abandoned. Random camping area.”
“I know the place,” says Carl. The radio squawks; the debrief is over.
I wait until he’s finished on the radio, consider telling him about my cigar experiment but now probably isn’t the best time. Later, when we can both relax. “You need me tonight?”
“Why?” he says. “You got a date?”
“There’s a Mountain Guardian meeting I want to go to.”
Carl gives me a disgusted look. “Waste of your time, Porter.”
The radio demands attention again, asking when the drinking water is coming out to the fire. An anxious voice claims the men are getting pretty thirsty. Carl frowns, shifts through a sedimentary scatter of paper. “Shit,” he mumbles, looking at me. “I forgot to send some. Can you run some water out there?”
I look at the map; it’ll be a quick trip. “Sure.”
Carl keys the mike. “cr-3, this is dispatch. Your water is on its way.”
I pick up my radio belt. “You sure you don’t want to come?”
“To that meeting?”
“Yeah, see what it’s about?”
Carl shakes his head. “A bunch of self-appointed do-gooders sitting around and talking. They don’t understand ecology and the only thing they ever accomplish is pissing off a few loggers.”
“So you’ve been to a meeting?”
“Porter, they think the Forest Service is secretly splicing the genes of Arctic char into pine trees, so they’ll be frost resistant. Like we’ve got some secret laboratory in a cave somewhere. Trust me, the Mountain Guardians are a waste of your time.”
“So, that would be no?”
“Regrettably, I’ll be stuck here. But feel free to pass on my regards.”
I borrow Carl’s forestry truck, drive to the cache behind the office. The cache is the name given to the building behind every ranger station where basic supplies are stored and minor maintenance is carried out on chainsaws and hand tools. During fire season the cache gets pretty cluttered, and today I have to pick my way over piles of dirty hose. I search for empty water pails — a scarce commodity because no one ever seems to return them — fill several from a garden hose and load them in the back of Carl’s truck.
The fire is 30 miles out of town and I drive through pasture-land, simmering under rippling waves of heat, and into the forest, dormant, waiting for rain that is weeks overdue. From a rise in the road I see an anvil of grey smoke and call a nearby helicopter to ferry in the pails of water. When the bird lands, I’m tempted to jump in, lend a hand at the fire, but instead load the machine and watch it auger away. The fire will be here tomorrow. Or there’ll be a new one.
On the way back to town I get a flat tire, make it to Carl’s place just before eight o’clock. I’m faint from heat, work and lack of food, but there’s no time for rest or chow. I take a two-minute shower and take 20 minutes to find the Chowder Creek community hall.
13
THE CHOWDER CREEK community hall sits across the road from a tiny church and graveyard. The hall is an old, white-painted clapboard building scarcely larger than a house, no doubt built at a time when people travelled by horse and buggy. Back then, people worried about surviving in the shadow of the mountains. Today, a different generation is meeting here to help the mountains survive.
Or so they believe. Opinions differ.
A handmade cardboard sign tacked to a fencepost by the driveway announces the meeting and a dozen vehicles fill the parking lot in front of the hall, but there’s no one in sight. I’m late and park along the shoulder of the road. An orange Volkswagen Beetle with a dented fender crouches among the minivans and I feel a twist of anticipation.
The hall door is propped open and I go in.
“Your name please?”
A young woman, short and plump, dark hair and pale face, stands just inside the door.She holds a clipboard.“Brent Hancock,” I say. She smiles, offers me a warm hand to shake. It’s Kim, Murtow’s assistant, and she’s glad to see me. I tell her I’m glad to be here.
“The meeting is just about to start Mr. Hancock. Please take a seat.”
The hall is long and narrow, the floor made of pine boards darkened with age and use. Plastic stacking chairs, stencilled on the back with the name of the hall, are arranged in uneven rows. Most of the people are in the middle rows. I search for Telson. She’s off to one side and I squeeze along the wall. She has a pad of paper in her lap and moves her knee politely out of the way, then glances over to see who is taking a seat next to her.
“Porter.” She’s surprised to see me.
“Mizz Telson. How are you?”
She brushes hair back from her face. “Good. I’m good. How about you?”
“I’m doing all right. Are you a member of the Mountain Guardians?”
She laughs lightly. “No. I was driving past and saw the sign.”
“Really.” I glance at her pad of paper. It’s blank. “You here to take notes?”
“This?” She looks at the pad. “I was going to write a letter.”
I nod but say nothing. I’m not sure I believe she was just driving past, but don’t want to press her. It’s none of my business if she has a bit of a green side. When it comes right down to it, I think we all do, forest rangers probably more than most. They say if you scratch a logger, you find an environmentalist and vice versa. Lately though, the battle lines have pretty much been drawn. Which is why I’m here. My cruise on the Internet mentioned something called decoupling — a strategy used by some environmental groups to separate their legitimate from their illegal activities. An example of this might be a group which secretly engages in ecotage — sabotage to further environmental objectives — then uses its popular name to receive supposedly anonymous communications from the saboteurs. The sabotage is denounced, giving the group the illusion of respectability while gaining media coverage for both the saboteurs and the group. The Lorax may be a decoupling strategy and I look around for anyone of the same build and size as the man in camouflage I stumbled across near the bombing scene. Hard to tell with everyone sitting.
“What about you?” she asks. “Why are you here?”
“I was just driving past, thought there was a party.”
“I doubt this will be much of a party.”
“Then I won’t bring in my veggie tray.”
She smiles as though privately amused, doodles on her paper.
“I was looking for you the other day,” I say casually.
“Really?” She raises a critical eye.
“I was hoping to take you to the beach.”
“Maybe I don’t want to go anymore. It’s not wise to keep a lady waiting.”
I’m not sure if she’s serious, but the meeting is getting underway. A tall, thin woman walks to a plywood podium. Her hair is long and slate grey, pulled back from a stern, bony face. In her youth, she must have been a striking woman. Now she could be the aging headmistress of an English boarding school. Or the nanny from hell. This must be Angela Murtow, former philosophy teacher, now head Mountain Guardian. She pulls half-glasses from a pocket and coldly stares down the barbarians.
The general murmur of conversation peters out.
“Good evening.” Her voice is strong. “It’s good to see so many of you here. As you know, I called this meeting to discuss recent events. In particular, I’m talking about the resurgence of activity of this so-called Lorax.” She pauses, looks over the top of her half-glasses to check if her class is paying attention. “Until now, we’ve avoided this topic — in my experience, extremism rarely garners sympathy. But this time the Lorax has struck in our backyard and people will look to us for a comment. We have a duty to respond. How we respond will further define how we are perceived. I’m opening the floor for discussion.”
There’s a long silence. Murtow stands and waits, the patient hall monitor. There’s about 20 people here, more women than men, everyone dressed in jeans and Western shirts. I’m tempted to give her my opinion of the Lorax, but doubt it will be well-received. I want to remain inconspicuous. Finally, an older lady in the front row speaks up, her voice thin and tremulous. “I think we have to abhor the violence,” she says. She’s knitting, needles poised, yarn wrapped around one finger. If nothing else, she’ll get a pair of socks out of the meeting. I’m tempted to tell her I take a size eleven.
“Yes,” Murtow says. “Violence is rarely sympathetic.”
There’s a murmur of agreement, interrupted by a guy in the second row.
“Well, I don’t know about that,” he says loudly. He’s about 50, overweight, with a bulbous varicose nose set in a grouchy face. “Maybe them loggers brought it on themselves. They must be doing something wrong or the Lorax wouldn’t have gone after them.”
There’s a mummer of assent I find troubling. Clearly, the group believe the Lorax is in the right.
“They’re probably part of that gene experiment,” someone says.
“Yes,” comes another comment. “And they’re cutting way too many trees.”
“That’s why they’re doing the experiments — they need to grow the trees faster ...”
The meeting continues on a predictable trajectory. The usual myths and misconceptions are aired and the consensus seems to be that logging should be outlawed. You’d think none of them live in wooden houses or use toilet paper. Emotions run high and voices rise in excitement. It’s like watching a talk show without a moderator and finally, I can’t take it anymore.
“If the forest wasn’t logged,” I say, “it would burn.”
Heads turn and there’s a shocked silence. I’ve blasphemed.
“It’s a dynamic system. It isn’t always going to look like you see it today.”
A long moment of silence; they may burn me at the cross. Murtow peers at me over her glasses, her expression demanding an explanation for this insolence. I suppose I could just stop, go to the principal’s office and take my 50 lashes. But of course I don’t. “The forest around here is pine and pine regenerates through fire. So unless you want it to burn off, or allow it to become infested with pests and disease, it’ll have to be cut.” Another silence and for a moment I think I’m getting through, then Murtow looks away, shuffles a few papers and the meeting resumes. I’ve been disregarded and understand why Carl didn’t want to come.
“I see you came to make friends,” whispers Telson.
“Good thing I’m close to the door.”
A discussion ensues on how it might be possible to publicly abhor violence while still drawing attention to the underlying problem of clear-cutting. Sounds a lot like decoupling. From somewhere behind me, a deep voice cuts through the conversation.
“You’ve got it all wrong. Why denounce violence?”
It’s a man in the back row, sitting alone. He’s young, wearing a jean jacket, ball cap and work boots. He looks to be the same size as the man in camo, but the ball cap isn’t crimped in the middle and the boots are brown, not black. But these are superficial differences, easily changed.
“Those bastards should be scared when they head out to the bush,” he says. He’s leaned back, an arm flopped over another chair, relaxed. “They should know someone is watching, that there’s going to be consequences when they screw up.”
I wonder how he thinks Nina Pirelli and Ronald Hess screwed up and stare at him, wanting to make eye contact, to see if there’s a flash of recognition, something that might give me a clue, but Murtow has his attention. “We all know your opinions Reggie, but someone died here. We can’t endorse that kind of violence on either moral or ideological grounds. That’s not what we’re about and the merest suggestion would destroy any community support we might have.”
“What community support!” says Reggie. “Everyone works at the sawmill.”
“All the more reason to be careful how we present ourselves.”
Reggie grumbles a bit, but is quiet. I make a mental note to look him up.
The meeting drags on. Telson doodles unicorns and rainbows. We play tic-tac-toe. Finally, it’s decided the Mountain Guardians will release a comment denouncing the bombing as an unacceptable reaction to a genuine concern. One way or the other, they’re determined to get some mileage out of this tragedy. I’d like to infiltrate the group, but I’m pretty sure I’ve blown my chance. I need help from someone they wouldn’t know, look over at Telson — the gypsy vegetarian doodling smiling flowers on her pad of paper — and dismiss the thought. Perfect as she would be for the job, I have no intention of placing any more women in harm’s way.
The discussion swings toward more mundane concerns — housekeeping and fundraising. Bake sales and raffles to save the world. Telson leaves with me and we stand in the parking lot near her Bug. It’s dusk, cooler but pleasant. Soon the first few stars will come out.
“You have any supper plans?” I ask.
She considers, gives me a sly smile. “Why? Are you asking me out?”
Once again, she makes me feel like a teenager. “Maybe. Yes.”
“Well ... I sort of have plans.”
I must look comically crestfallen because she laughs. “I’m kidding, Porter.”
We agree to meet at a restaurant, where she parks her Bug. I suggest we get take-out, find a spot with a view and watch the stars come out over the mountains. She’s agreeable and with two warm, brown paper bags in hand we climb into Old Faithful, head out of town.
“Don’t you find it strange to have the steering wheel on the wrong side?” she says.
Old Faithful is an English machine. “You get used to it.”
There’s a ridge facing west, overlooking the town, which I spotted on my helicopter trip in from the fire. It takes a while in the dark to find where the trail leaves the main road, Telson stomping an imaginary brake pedal as we round corners, but we clear a line of trees to find a panoramic view of dark mountains, sparkling sky and the Christmas tree sprawl of town lights.
“Wow.” Telson sits up. “This is really something.”
We get out, sit on the dry grass; it smells of sage and juniper. We dig into our paper bags. The food is in little Styrofoam trays and is still hot. Neither of us says much as we eat and I steal a glance at her now and then. There’s a sliver of waning moon and she’s a mysterious figure in the moonlight, long, wavy hair and slender hands. The tiny metal stud in her nose gleams like molten metal. She’s so different from Nina, but in a way that’s comforting.
“You see that really bright light over there,” I say. “That’s Jupiter.”
“Really?”
“And that one to the left and down, that’s Saturn.”
She sets aside her Styrofoam tray. “I always thought those were stars.”
“No, they’re planets. With a good pair of binoculars, you can see their moons.”
She sighs, leans forward and hugs her knees. “People don’t look at the sky enough.”
For a long time neither of us say anything. I want to move closer, put my arm around her, but somehow feel it’s the wrong thing to do right now. Or it’s the right thing and I’m an idiot. Neither possibility is very comforting.
“Porter, are you married?” She says this without looking at me.
“No, I’m not married. Why?”
A long pause. “No reason,” she says.
There’s always a reason for a question like that. Next, she’s going to ask if I’m gay. I make a pre-emptive strike by moving over, sitting closer. She looks at me and smiles.
“You seem married.”
“To a ghost. It’s an awkward arrangement.”
She brushes hair away from her face. “Just my luck.”
“I’ve had a little experience with luck too. The bad type anyway.”
Her hand finds mine. “You want to talk about it?”
“No,” I say. “But this helps. Let’s leave it at that for now.”