When Is a Man Page 13
Paul stood in the kitchen, confronted by a whole chicken in a roasting pan, a red kuri squash he’d split in half and seasoned with olive oil and thyme. He rubbed rock salt and cracked pepper on the chicken, cut two small slits along the skin of the breasts, one more above each leg, and slid sprigs of rosemary and slivers of garlic between the fat and flesh. Gina’s recipe, her favourite comfort food. She arrived holding a bottle of wine, Shane clinging to her leg and sporting a Spider-Man backpack overflowing with toys.
“I know you don’t drink much.” She wore light denim overalls with flower patterns on the straps, and her hair was tied back, an oddly girlish look. Her face betrayed uncertainty, and she fidgeted with the bottle.
“How about a small glass,” he said cheerfully. “I’m slowly getting back to my old self. Could use a bit more exercise, though.”
“I’ll wrestle you,” Shane said hopefully. He crouched, wild-haired, poised to tackle Paul’s leg. His eyes were blue, not his mother’s colour, and rather sharp and intense. He had scabs on his elbows and beneath his chin. Gina gave Paul a quick shake of the head.
“Some other time,” Paul said. “Thanks, though.”
“How about you play in the living room,” Gina said. Paul had laid out different vegetables for a salad that he clumsily diced as Gina opened the bottle and poured two glasses.
“I don’t want him to get too wound up.” He was a smart boy, she told him, didn’t mind playing alone for a time, but he got riled easily and was too sensitive around the other kids at school.
Gina grabbed another knife and helped Paul with the rest of the vegetables, slicing a pepper with quick and efficient cuts. “Hey,” she said. “I was thinking. I know a good doctor in town, if you need one.”
He paused, then resumed cutting. “Actually I will need to see doctor soon, so thank you.”
“I know it’s not my business . . .”
“No big deal. I’m due for a blood draw in a few months.”
“Oh. I thought you meant—well, that’s good.”
He caught the hint and blushed. “It’s probably too soon,” he said. “Recovery-wise, I mean.”
“Yes. Like I said, not my business.” She threw her hands up in such a comically exaggerated way, he laughed despite himself.
“Can I ask what you’ll do with your research?”
He shrugged, struggling to imagine a finished project. “Publish, I suppose.”
“No, I mean what do you use it for? Do you go after them?”
“After who?”
“The people who made the dam. The ones who cheated folks out of their property and burned their homes down.”
“It’s not about going after people.”
She frowned. “Then what’s the point? Doesn’t your work have to do something to be useful?”
He flushed. “It is—useful. Not like that. Ethnography, it paints a picture of a community. A narrative. Can’t start out being biased or political.”
“Ah.” A pause, and then she said he should interview Billy, which, he realized, was a subtle dig, like let’s see you avoid taking a side around him.
“Not sure I feel okay doing that,” he said.
“Why not?”
“I noticed you didn’t park outside.”
“One block over.” She leaned over the table and craned her neck to look for her son. “You okay in there, buddy?”
Farty-lipped truck sounds emerged from the living room. “Yes.”
“Why did you park so far away?” he asked. She said nothing. “That’s why I’m afraid. Unless you’re keen to introduce me to him.”
“Not really, no.”
He stood up and opened the stove, poked at the squash with a fork. “I don’t like that,” he said. “The bad feeling I’m getting.”
“From the squash? It looks ready.” Jokes between them always fell flat.
“Whatever you have with him. It feels dangerous.”
“I’m sorry,” she said.
“I was more worried about you and Shane.”
“I know. Let’s have a drink? Please?”
“All right.” From the cautious way she held it, the bottle looked pricier than what she’d normally buy. An Argentinean malbec, a dark ruby colour when held to the light. She brought her glass to her mouth and then, for a moment, looked hesitant, even strangely defiant, as though daring herself not to drink. The rim of the glass pressed against her closed lips, pulled away, then returned, like a hummingbird at a feeder. She looked at him expectantly. He held his nose above the rim and smelled a jumble of scents he couldn’t quite identify but would have called smoky. Moody? He took a small sip, unsure of what she wanted him to taste, and lowered the glass. His thumb left a perfect, greased print. Belatedly, they clinked their glasses together, and she gave him an impish grin. “To the bush,” she said. “Where losers meet.”
In the archives with Elmer, mugs of tea, a map, and a ledger between them. A faint glimmer of streetlight outside the small square windows, the white paint on the concrete walls reflecting the overhead fluorescents, a slight sheen of light on Elmer’s bald head. On the map, a grid of pale blue lines showed the division of lots in Lambert. Paul was glancing back and forth between the map and the faded lines of the ledger. He had the beginnings of a headache.
Already he’d worked harder on this project than on anything in his career. Maybe that wasn’t saying much. His bedroom wall was covered in maps and flowcharts as he tried to make sense of his data and look for patterns and direction. Part of him would have moved half the archives into his bedroom, just to have the maps and ledgers close at hand. Mostly, though, he was glad for any respite from his small room and cramped desk, and the tedium of transcribing the mumbling voices from his digital recorder, the hours of listening and typing, rewinding and listening again.
Elmer refilled their mugs, the small man moving delicately as he poured from the brown pot. The tea was black, strong, and had a faint hint of chocolate. Keemun Yi Hong, which Elmer ordered online from a shop in San Francisco. He was explaining how compensation for resettlement had worked. “If you signed the papers early in the process, that usually meant you had the means to buy somewhere more expensive. They gave you a compensation cheque, you usually moved to Shellycoat or the Okanagan or wherever.”
But most people didn’t actually sell prior to the flood, Elmer told him. “If they held out until the end, they were given a line of credit from the bank, which went toward the lot they were given in Bishop, with maybe some left over to build a house.”
“So they never saw a compensation cheque.”
“Not unless there was money left over from the line of credit.”
“According to the ledger, all the lots Hardy mentioned in his letter belong to either the Wallace family or the Wentzes.”
“Worth something, those ones,” Elmer said. “Fruit trees, timber, waterfront.”
“What about this little piece? Right beside the Wallace ranch.” Paul tapped a spot on the map that he’d marked. “Who owned that?”
“Should be in the ledger.”
“I’m going cross-eyed.” Paul squeezed the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger.
Elmer took the book from him and flipped some pages. “Soules, Marcus.”
“I’ve heard that name. Worked for Wallace, an arborist?”
“The head arborist. Wallace’s foreman during the fruit industry boom, which employed most of the valley.”
Paul brushed a finger across the map. “When did the papers get signed?”
“1965. The Columbia River Treaty was ratified in ’64, which gave the McCulloch Dam project the go-ahead.”
“So this wasn’t expropriated. Marcus Soules sold it, voluntarily. And really early. Almost before property acquisitions had officially begun.”
“Probably one of the first in the valley.”
“Donald Wallace must have been furious.” Paul looked at the map again. “Strange. You have any materials that mention Wall
ace? I have the Woodbury interview, but . . .”
Elmer frowned. “Easy enough. He’s referenced everywhere.” He led Paul back to a room where a handful of books and spiral-bound reports were buried under a haphazard stack of topographical maps. Elmer fluttered his hands at the mess. “That’s supposed to be . . . the shelves must have fallen . . . damn it all.”
Paul helped him right the top layer of maps. Elmer put on a pair of thin gloves and sorted through the materials, flipping through a few pages and setting them aside. Finally he nodded and handed Paul a small book protected by a hard plastic jacket. “Here’s a starter.”
“Dixon’s Gold,” Paul said, surprised. “Forgot about this.” They sat back down at the table and he skimmed through the last chapters, where the pages of Tanner’s copy in the trailer had been stuck together. As the chapters detailed the mining era coming to a close, smelter by smelter, town by town, Paul finally ran across Wallace’s name in a few rather brusque paragraphs.
Donald Wallace had inherited some of his land from his father, a retired military officer in London who’d purchased the acreage, sight unseen, in 1889. The elder Wallace never set foot on his property: illness kept him at home until his death in 1925. A veteran and decorated officer of the First World War, Donald was awarded fifty additional acres as part of the Soldier Settlement Act in 1919. Served as president of the valley’s Fruit Growers’ Association, ran Lambert’s fruit-packing sheds and box factory, and wrote horticultural advice for the Immitoin Valley newspaper. It was difficult to picture Hardy the hermit as this man’s son.
Elmer smiled slyly. “What does all this have to do with your research?”
“Nothing,” Paul admitted. “Just background, I guess.”
“I’d say you were trying to solve a mystery.”
He smiled ruefully. “I suppose I am. The case of the thing beneath the water that makes everyone angry.”
Elmer chuckled, a sibilant sound with his lips perched at the mug’s edge. “Reservoir noir.”
Now Paul laughed. “Sounds like a bad mystery genre.”
“Technically a sub-genre: Drowning Day, On Beulah Height, Walking the Shadows,” Elmer recited cheerfully. “Dozens more. The formula’s pretty standard: a reservoir is drained and a body, or some terrible secret, is discovered.”
“Wonder what you’d find if you drained this reservoir.”
“Lambert, for one thing,” Elmer said. “But it’s no secret what they did to that place.”
He’d never enjoyed weightlifting. Found it monotonous and uninspiring. The equipment always carried the grime of sweat and dust, the air damp and acrid. At least this gym, on the top floor of the recreation centre, had natural light and a view toward the Immitoin that distracted from the dullness. Above the exercise bikes and treadmills, small televisions silently played sports highlights. It was mid-morning, and the weight room was empty except for a few seniors and middle-aged women on the step machines and treadmills. Later, at the end of his workout, the junior hockey team would jostle around the free weights and benches near the mirrored walls.
He began with fifteen minutes on the bike, working himself rather too easily into a sweating, hyperventilating mass. Which was depressing, not the best recipe for motivation. But then, nothing had ever motivated him for the gym except the promise of sex. Sex, not health, drove you to shape your body. He struggled through an hour of weights and stretches, bored and discouraged. The best part of the workout was the end, when he stood in front of the change room mirror with his muscles engorged, his body vaguely and temporarily resembling what it used to be.
Afterwards, he went to his favourite coffee shop, the Mexican-themed one, to look over articles and write up his field notes. The walls of the café were mock adobe, the wooden tables old and unvarnished, grey as a grandfather’s sweater. He hadn’t fallen for any of the girls working behind the counter, further proof that his impotence went deeper than damaged nerve bundles. In Vancouver, coffee shop girls were often the only ones worth falling for, because nothing ever came of it. You frequented the same cafés until the baristas became friendly, approachable—the pleasure lay in sustaining the fantasy.
Coffee shop girls, the men lusting after them. The same scenes were unfolding as they had for years, in every place. Nothing had changed except for himself, orbiting further from the heartsick centre of daily life. What was he doing here, more ghostly than a tourist, in danger of having no identity and nothing to do, no role to play? He clung desperately to his notebooks and transcriptions, and was comforted by those rare times when Gina or a participant met him for coffee. They grounded him, gave him ballast as he started from scratch, nothing in hand but a few tools and skills, this kernel of a new life, a new mind.
Elsie Hubert (b. 1943, 66 yrs old)
Interviewed at her home in Shellycoat, November 20, 2009. Gina (b. 1976, 33 yrs old) is also present.
Initially, Elsie was extremely reluctant to be interviewed, so I’m not sure how to explain her sudden change of heart. Maybe it was only a matter of Gina wearing her down, or maybe she has some particular reason she’s not telling us.
Elsie lives in a small ground-floor suite of an aging apartment complex. A small den serves as an office, the walls covered in various posters: SAVE JUMBO PASS WILDERNESS, SAVE THE FLATHEAD VALLEY, STOP THE SHANKER’S BEND PROJECT, and so on. This is the third home she’s lived in since her family was relocated. Once the administrator of both a women’s shelter and the town’s advocacy centre, she’s now partly retired. Obviously still active with local environmental groups.
On the mantle above the gas fireplace sits a framed black-and-white photo of their homestead on the lake before the dam. Near the house, a barn, chicken coops, and a woodshed. A glimpse of the fields where cattle and horses would have grazed, and a garden with several rows of raspberry canes and fruit trees. In the background you can faintly see Lambert’s wharf on the opposite shore. A rope swing dangles from the branch of a willow over a pool. There’s nobody in the photo: it is the homestead itself that is commemorated.
Paul: You were born in that house.
Elsie: Yes.
P: And your mother or father as well?
E: My father. My grandfather was the original pre-emptor in 1898.
P: Your father died in the war, I understand?
E: Afterwards. A long illness from his wounds. And my grandfather died in the war before that. Gina comes from a long line of widows. That happened to many families in the valley. Widows and their children kept the orchards and farms going. My grandmother hired help for the spring labour and the harvest in fall, usually the Doukhobors and Mennonites, who were quite industrious, and since most were pacifists . . .
P: I’ve heard about the Doukhobors . . .
E: They came up from Grand Forks and Brilliant and Thrums to work, but they never formed a community here. Gina said you weren’t really interested in the past before the dam.
P: I suppose not. Curious about the fruit industry, though. As background.
E: The orchards were nearly finished by the time I was born. We raised livestock, grew produce and wheat, and harvested timber on our land. But fruit crops were still a big part of life. Making jam in the summer, juicing the fall. My mother worked for Donald Wallace at the fruit-packing shed in Lambert until it shut down.
Gina: I loved all her old pictures, you know, women smiling at the camera while they stack jars in crates—like Rosie the Riveter.
E: My mother and I never spoke against Wallace when he and the others started cutting lumber and poles and such for Monashee. Maybe we thought it would help our case.
P: Your case?
E: You know, maybe we’d get a good deal if we were in cozy with Monashee. My mother stayed friends with Donald Wallace, even after the local Fruit Growers’ Association disbanded and his wife, Belinda, died.
P: And did your family get a good deal?
E: We bet on the wrong horse.
P: Wallace must have had some influe
nce with Monashee.
E: No.
P: They didn’t show him any favouritism?
E:
P: Well, yes. No. Just—the changes themselves, your quality of life.
E: The government was very optimistic. Bishop would be a booming mill town, it would draw vacationers and American cottagers interested in a wilderness setting and so on. It was all bunk. The first two years after the flood, there was so much debris no one could go in the water. And during drawdown the wind kicked up an incredible dust. Old people and children in Bishop had lung problems.
P: The boom never happened?
E: You should have seen it during the seventies. The government did help move some houses on trailers, but most people started with nothing. Outside investors and developers tended to get the waterfront lots—without entering the lottery. Hence the summer cottages.
Bishop families were treated like pariahs in Shellycoat. We were squatters and hippies leaching off government handouts, backwoods hicks.
P: Do people still think that?
E: Well, even I think that anyone still living in Bishop these days is definitely a hick.
P: You’ve been involved in environmental groups for a long time.
E: Grassroots organizations, mostly focusing on the protection of local watersheds and old-growth forests. My husband was embarrassed by all that, my petitions and signs. Part of the reason he left.
G: No, Mom.
E: Well, that and chronic unemployment. He went looking for work and never came back.
P:
E: Absolutely. Protecting watersheds became my way of staying attached to the valley—my new roots, you could say.