Foreigners (35 page)

“Billy,” Darryl says, his tone confidential, “you don't still have any of that stuff you salvaged from the old quarry depot, do you?”

Finnegan, hands on his hips and wide smile stretching his lips, says, “You know I do.”

“Good,” Darryl says, then turns to Bull. “You wouldn't mind if Pop and I borrowed a little something, would you?”

“Not one bit,” Finnegan says, stepping back from the door. “Come on in. What's mine is yours.”

It hadn't taken long for the complaints to start. At first they came by phone to Janeane Pryor at the Municipal Building. She wrote them all down, word for word, on small yellow Post-its and stuck them to Bull's desk. First just to the top, but when that was covered, she started sticking them to the edge, and before long the desk was ringed with a yellow fringe.

Standing in the doorway to Bull's office two weeks after Morrow and his coterie had arrived, Janeane smiled and said, “I like it. Looks a bit like a valance. Martha Stewart-ish.”

Bull, in the midst of another bout of gastric discomfort, couldn't appreciate the humour. He'd started receiving phone calls at home, some coming late in the night, from constituents who demanded that he do something about the rabble out in the woods. Others had even come to the house and cornered him in the vegetable patch. He'd tried to convince them that what Morrow was doing was legal, that there was nothing that could be done. He'd been told as much by the sergeant at the OPP detachment in Brockton, who, after sending an officer out to check on things, told Bull that the police had better things to do with their time than harass campers.

Marlene was, of course, furious. She'd accused Bull of sitting idly by simply out of spite.

“You just want to embarrass me, don't you,” she shouted at him the night before. “What have I done? Have I done something horrible to you? If you loved me you wouldn't put me through this kind of humiliation.”

“Sweetheart,” Bull said as soothingly as he could, “you have to understand. There's nothing I can do about it. I've tried.”

“Well, you haven't tried hard enough.”

“There really isn't anything —”

“What about Darlene?” Marlene interrupted, her voice gone cold. “Do you not even care about your own daughter?”

“What are you talking about?” Bull asked. “What about Darlene?”

“My God, Bull,” Marlene said to him. “Are you blind as well as stupid? She goes out with them. Out there with those hippies.”

“What do you mean? When?”

“At night. After we're in bed.”

Bull felt like he'd been punched square in the middle of his burning belly. “How?” he wheezed. “How do you know?”

Marlene gave a contemptuous smirk and turned away from him. Over her shoulder she said, “I'm her mother. She
talks
to me.”

The interior of Billy Finnegan's trailer home is impeccably tidy and Bull has trouble equating it with the slovenly man standing over the hot plate waiting for the water to boil. He half-expected fly-swarmed cases of empty beer bottles, even though he has never known Finnegan to be a drinker. He has his breath back and his chest has loosened but he still cannot get comfortable. The bench he's sitting on is narrow and his belly is pushed up tight against the table, but that's not it. It's the pressed wildflowers in picture frames that hang on the walls that have him feeling slightly off balance. He wants to ask Darryl about them.

“You take sugar d'you, Bull?” Finnegan asks, a spoonful hovering over the cup of instant coffee.

“No, Billy. Just milk is fine.”

Bull notices as Finnegan adds two spoonfuls to Darryl's coffee without asking. He accepts his own cup with a smile, and after a sip, which feels like acid in his stomach, he gestures to the picture frames on the wall across from him.

“Those are nice,” Bull says, trying to sound casual.

“Aren't they just,” Finnegan says, looking proudly at the wall. “Darryl made them.”

Bull looks at his son, who shyly lowers his head, but not quickly enough to hide his own satisfied grin.

“They're good, son,” Bull says awkwardly, feeling immediately guilty for his artlessness.

“I been telling him that he should try to sell them at the craft shop in town.” Finnegan smiles, handing Darryl his coffee. “But he don't listen to me.”

Bull wants to say something else, but can't find the words. He wants to tell Darryl yes, Finnegan is right, he should try to sell his flowers, but he knows if he does, it won't come out right. Instead, he takes another sip of the corrosive coffee. He feels out of place here. Not unwelcome, just unprepared. Darryl rescues him with a clap on the back.

“How about we show Pop here the box, Billy.”

“Sure thing,” Finnegan says, setting his own cup on the table. “Got it right over here.”

Finnegan goes to the far end of the trailer and pulls back the thin curtain that conceals the bed. Pushing the covers back, he grabs hold of the edge of the mattress and folds it over. He then lifts the lid of the storage well beneath and reaches in, taking out a small wooden crate, which he sets on the floor. After he's rearranged the bed, tucking the covers neatly under the mattress, he lifts the crate and places it gently on top.

“Well,” he says brightly, “don't just sit there. C'mon over and have a peek.”

Bull was sitting in his office peeling Post-its from his lamp when Janeane came in. She didn't knock, which was unusual. Even though Bull kept his door open, Janeane would always give a knock and wait for him to give her permission to enter.

Her just walking in and the strained look on her face told Bull that something was very wrong.

“What's up, Janeane?” Bull asked, hoping, though he felt guilty for doing so, that it was some Pryor family trauma.

“TV people,” she said, her complexion blanched. “From the news. And that scientist fella.”

“Oh, God. Where?”

Janeane walked quickly across the room to the window. With a quick jerk of the cord she pulled up the venetian blinds and pointed down to the front steps of the Municipal Building.

Bull did not want to get out of his chair, felt almost as if he couldn't. His legs like lead weights. But he pushed himself to his feet and went and stood behind Janeane and looked over her shoulder.

The steps below were crowded with Morrow's people, most of them lounging about, a few kicking a beanbag back and forth between them. On the sidewalk a short distance away, a small group of townsfolk were beginning to gather, looking with disgust between the scraggly haired bodies collected on the steps and the battered bus parked against the curb. How could he not have heard it pull up? Bull wondered. Then he noticed the white van from the television station parked behind the bus.

“They want you to go down,” Janeane said, her voice no more than a whisper.

Bull took a deep breath and shrugged.

“Well, I guess I'd better,” he sighed. “Who knows, maybe I'll become a star.”

Janeane did not laugh, but followed him silently out of the office and toward the stairwell. Halfway down to the foyer she stopped him and straightened his collar and smoothed down his hair. Bull felt like a little boy on his way to get his class picture taken.

“Tell me, Janeane,” he said. “What do you make of all this?”

She shook her head. “Fun's fun.” She frowned. “But we don't need this.”

“No, we don't,” Bull agreed.

“And all over some silly fish.”

“Yes,” Bull said, turning back down the stairs. “A silly goddamn fish.”

Morrow met him at the front door, his arms spread wide as if he was going to embrace him. Bull shrank back slightly, then Morrow clapped his hands together and rubbed them vigorously.

“It's wonderful, Mr Mayor. Absolutely wonderful.” He looked quickly out toward the steps. “Of course I would have liked a somewhat larger media presence, but it's early days yet.”

“I really don't know about this, Dr Morrow,” Bull said sheepishly.

“Oh, don't be nervous, Mr Mayor,” the professor chirped. “It'll be a piece of cake. You might even like it. Besides, if you don't mind, I'll do most of the talking. You know, scientific expertise and all that.”

As Bull walked out onto the front steps of the Municipal Building he could feel the eyes settle upon him, especially
those of his constituents, who, he could tell, even from a distance, were anything but pleased.

A woman in a close-fitting red jacket and skirt approached him and he immediately recognized her from the television. She smiled and introduced herself and Bull couldn't help but notice the heaviness of her makeup. Her hair also looked too dark to be natural. Behind her stood a slightly overweight man in a pair of oily jeans and a sweatshirt with the university's logo; he wore a baseball cap turned backward and balanced a large video camera on his shoulder. The reporter, who was still talking, though Bull hadn't heard a word she'd said, took him by the shoulders and shifted him slightly closer to Morrow, then she turned to the cameraman.

“Is that good?”

“Perfect,” he said, holding up a thumb.

“Right,” she said through unusually white teeth, “I'll just ask you two some questions and you just answer them. Don't worry if you stumble, we'll edit it all together when we get back to the studio. Just go with whatever thought you have. And we'll start with the professor, if you don't mind, Mr Mayor?”

Bull shook his head: “No, not at all.”

Then a bright light affixed to the top of the camera came on and Bull shielded his eyes. The reporter gently pulled his hands away from his face.

“Sorry about that,” she said apologetically. “It is a little intense but you'll get used to it.”

“Now,” she continued, holding her microphone at arm's length, “Professor Morrow, can you tell us what this is all about?”

“I can indeed,” Morrow said, bouncing up and down on the balls of his feet. “Oh, yes. I can indeed. What's happened here in Marbleton is, I can safely say, a magnificent scientific marvel. A discovery, or rather a rediscovery, of stunning importance. I would put it on a par with the finding, in 1938, of the long-thought-extinct coelacanth . . .”

Just as Morrow started in on the story of Sir Holyfield Lewis, Bull caught sight of Darlene. He didn't recognize her at first; her usually straight, long blond hair was pulled up into untidy bunches on top of her head. She was standing at the bottom of the steps, partly hidden behind a tall lanky boy in a tie-dyed shirt with a banjo slung across his shoulders. Having been spied by her father, she tried to shield herself from view. Then, with an expression of boldness Bull had never seen before, she forced herself into the open and very obviously took the arm of the scraggly troubadour. Bull could feel himself cringe when Darlene, looking straight at him, stretched onto her tiptoes and sucked on the boy's earlobe. It was as if through a long cardboard tube that he heard the reporter's next question to Dr Morrow.

“And just what exactly is it that you plan to do here, Professor?”

Bull could feel Morrow's spindly arm brush against his own as it shot into the air.

“We're going to fight!” the fishy-scented aquatic biologist squealed.

“What?” Bull said in disbelief.

“Fight how?” the reporter eagerly asked.

“We're going to take a stand in the forest,” Morrow said, his tone verging on rabid. “We'll defend the Jericho trout from
the manic industrialization that's intent on wiping it from the face of the earth. To the last person we'll defend it.”

A loud shout rose from the steps, and looking out Bull could see the Marbletonians standing on the fringe of the crowd begin to slink away, frightened by the scene. Then he heard the reporter.

“Mr Mayor? Mayor Maxim?”

“Yes?” Bull said, still stunned by Morrow's outburst.

“As the authority in the town, what do you plan to do about this incendiary demonstration?”