Day Into Night (10 page)

“You’re not one of those animal rights people are you?”

“Not really,” she says. “But why eat them if we don’t have to?”

“Protein. Enzymes.”

“You can get that stuff from plants —”

“Sure, but carrot juice is murder too.”

She laughs. “I suppose so. But one has to draw the line somewhere.”

She gazes out the window, toward the white van. “I don’t understand it.”

“Me neither. I could never give up meat.”

“No, the bombings.” She frowns. “This Lorax thing. What is a Lorax anyway?”

“You should get out more,” I tell her. “Read Dr. Seuss.”

“Dr. Seuss?”

“Yeah.” After all the media coverage, I find it hard to believe anyone doesn’t know who the Lorax is, or what he represents, but I briefly explain. Telson is quiet, listening. It’s therapeutic and I have to stop myself from venturing into personal history. She should be a shrink. “Anyways,” I conclude, “that’s what a Lorax is.”

“A protector of the woods,” she says.

“A cartoon character.”

She nods slowly, nibbles on a French fry. “Sort of a noble crusade, in a way.”

“Not really.” I shift uncomfortably in my seat. This attractive lady may be a raging Green — I should have caught on when she said she was a vegetarian — and I can see the conversation deteriorating.

“Sort of Don Quixote-ish,” she says. “Out to save the forest.”

“Deluded,” I say. “They had that in common.”

She tilts her head, gives me an earnest look. “You think so?”

I stare at my burger. I could leave or just refuse to talk about it, but as a former forest ranger, I have ecology in my blood. And ecology is safe enough. Safer than what I really want to say about the Lorax. “Listen —” I lean forward. Telson does the same, the slightest trace of a smile edged lightly in her features, challenging me. “You have to realize,” I say, “that what you see out there isn’t the way the forest has always been, nor will be for long. It’s a dynamic system and all you ever see is a snap shot. The forest has been replaced over and over again, every century or so, for the past 20,000 years.”

I must be boring her to tears, but if I am, she doesn’t show it. She’s watching me, her chin rested in the palm of her hand, her elbow on the table. Suddenly, I want to talk forestry to her all night. Well, maybe not all night.

“There’s always been a replacement event,” I tell her. “Up until now in North America, it’s been fire. In fact, species like pine and black spruce need fire to reproduce. Their cones are serotinous and won’t open without exposure to extreme heat. They’re shade intolerant and can only grow simultaneously in large stands —”

“Oooh, serotinous,” she says seductively. “You must be a forest ranger.”

I pause, halfway through a deep breath, on the verge of expounding the virtues of various silviculture treatments, how they approximate nature, when I realize she’s gently poking fun at me. My breath sighs out, my momentum deflated. I feel sheepish, but somehow better.

“Anyway,” I say quietly, “the Lorax is off base. He doesn’t accomplish anything.”

“Well he sure has a lot of people stirred up.”

“Maybe, but he’s a coward.”

“You think so? It takes a lot of resolve to do something like that.”

It almost sounds like Telson is defending the Lorax, admiring him in a bizarre way, and my anger boils close to the surface. There’s darkling shadows on the weather map, and although I’m hoping the forecast is wrong I feel thunderheads building.

“Resolve maybe,” I say, “but he’s still a coward, hiding behind a fictional character.”

Telson rakes a hand through her hair so it cascades like a shampoo commercial. Her expression is calm, inquisitive. To her this is an abstract conversation. For me, it’s not so abstract. I’ve lost my appetite; my burger remains untouched. I feel a distant clap of thunder and hope she’ll see the storm brewing before it’s too late.

“He’s certainly raised the issue of logging to new heights,” she says.

“Issue?” I say. “What issue?” Like the fictional Lorax, my dander is up. So is my volume. Telson flinches, glances nervously around. The other patrons have turned to look. “Is that something like the issue of farming?” I say. “How about the issue of fishing? Or carpentry? It’s just a way of living, filling a demand, but people don’t get killed over farming or carpentry.”

Telson sits back, startled. It’s raining and she’s forgotten her umbrella. She raises a hand over the table, like she’s going to reach over, pat me reassuringly, but the hand doesn’t venture that far. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean —”

My head is throbbing. “Forget it. It’s not your fault —”

We’re the centre of attention and I feel like an idiot for overreacting. I don’t want to explain, just want to get the hell out of here. “I’m sorry,” I mumble, make a further spectacle of myself by thumping around while I gather my crutches.

She leans forward. “You don’t have to go.”

I rummage in my pockets, pull out rumpled bills, toss a few on the table.

“Porter, please —”

A few good swings and I’m out of the restaurant. An old lady coming in holds the door for me, gives me a concerned look. On the sidewalk, the wind lifts the back of my jacket. There’s a storm coming out here too, splatters of rain blossoming on the cement.

I make it a block and a half before the Bug catches up with me.

“Porter —”

I lurch a bit farther. The Bug whines after me, the driver-side window open.

“Porter, please just stop for a minute.”

This is humiliating, so I stop. Telson is looking up at me like a concerned mother. I look away, at the sidewalk. She must think I’m some sort of weirdo.

“I apologize for my behaviour,” I say mechanically. “I’ve had a rough day.”

“Let me give you a ride.”

“I’m fine. I don’t have much farther to go.”

“It’s raining. You’ll get sick.”

I lean on my crutches, look at the slate sky. It’s just a local storm cell, without much water but with a lot of energy. The wind will only get worse when the storm hits and I glance over at Telson. Her expression is worried. She holds up a white Styrofoam box, opens it a bit so I can see inside. It’s the burger I abandoned. “I salvaged your supper.”

A man can only take so much. I get into the Bug.

7

THE NEXT DAY I’m on a bus, headed north to Edmonton. Berton called. Representatives from the forest industry are going nuts and the premier has ordered a task force investigation into the arsons. The big boys are taking over and I’m to help Berton and Malostic brief the new team. Because my Land Rover is unserviceable, I get to spend a few quality hours next to a travelling salesman.

“You got kids?” he asks. He’s pudgy, has coffee breath. When I admit to being childless, he brings out his wallet, shows me pictures — seven children with three wives: an occupational hazard. He offers me a chew of tobacco — the damn buses won’t let him smoke any more — which I decline, tells me the story of his life. The radio tells another story. Nurses to go on strike again. Landslides in Honduras. More unusually hot spring weather. But I’m not really listening to either story. I’m thinking about Telson.

After she picked me up in her Bug, we went to a little park next to the river, listened to the blues — Leadbelly, Muddy Waters — watched the water flow past as I ate my burger. She told me about her old job as a data entry clerk: mind-numbing hours in front of a computer punching in an endless string of numbers. Like working in a salt mine. It offered bad eyesight, left her ergonomically challenged, paid just enough to cover the basics.

“What about you,” she said. “What made you become a forest ranger?”

“Wide open space,” I told her. “And free polyester shirts.”

“Sounds romantic. How long have you been doing that?”

“I’m just sort of part time right now.”

“A travelling twig pig?”

“Something like that.”

“And when you’re not twig-pigging?”

“I take the winters off, visit my folks down south —”

I kept the conversation light, but not without some difficulty. She was so close, so inviting. So damn attractive. But things didn’t work out so good the last time and I’m not taking any chances — at least until the Lorax is no longer hanging over me, jinxing everything I touch. When she laid her warm hand over mine, B.B. King was singing “The Thrill is Gone” — one of my personal favourites — and I was starting to feel good enough I might have disagreed with him. But images of Nina intruded and I asked her to drive me to Carl’s. The ride was short and quiet, the wind rocking the Volkswagen. Bobby Bland was singing “Stormy Monday” and the blues were bluer than before. She gave me her phone number, on a scrap of paper.

“Call me,” she said. “When you need a fix of slide guitar.”

The scrap of paper is in my hand this morning, getting soft and frayed like a note you’d pass around in school. I put it in my pocket, sigh and look outside. Double highway surrounded by flat, open farmland. No relief outside, or inside either; nothing to do but listen to the radio — more country music — and to what Travis, the salesman, is saying. I should have brought a book.

I escape as quickly as possible at the bus depot. Berton is waiting and we walk to his car. I’m sure Berton knows why I was down south — the latest Lorax attack is all over the news — but he doesn’t press, an endearing trait. We get into his car, an old Volvo station wagon littered with Lego, and head down 104th Ave. for the government core.

“So how are the kids?” Berton has two in university, one in playschool.

“Great.” He adjusts his glasses, pushes them up on his nose. “Sarah and Colin are getting good grades. Little Casper is starting hockey this winter.” He grins. “You should see him go on his little skates. They’re so much fun at that age.”

We’re surrounded by monoliths of concrete and mirrored glass, reflecting each other like unfriendly neighbours. This is where you’re promoted to if you’re not careful — the pinnacle of a civil service career — to wither away in some cubicle on the eighth floor, the field only a distant memory.

We park near the Legislature, hunt in pockets for change to feed the ticket dispenser.

“I’m dry,” says Berton. “What about you?”

“We’re okay if it’ll take lint.”

Berton pilfers his ashtray for quarters, peers under the seats.

“So what’s the name of this new task force?” I ask.

“Red Flag,” he says, reaching blindly under a seat.

A fitting name. A Red Flag Day in the Forest Service is a day when weather and forest moisture conditions have combined to make for unusually extreme fire behaviour. These are the days when you know a fire will give you problems. The days the arsonist seems to prefer. “So are we still in the loop?”

“Oh, I think so.” He pulls out a handful of Lego, half-eaten suckers and gum wrappers. And 16 cents. “They still need people with fire experience to do the dirty work,” he says, frowning. “That guy over there might have some change.”

A few rows over, a guy is fiddling with a car door. I don’t usually have much luck when it comes to asking for money in parking lots but he ambles over when I holler at him. He’s tall and slim, his jacket worn and loose, and it occurs to me that the car he was fiddling with might not have been his own. If he’s planning on mugging us he won’t have much more luck than the ticket dispenser. But as he draws nearer, he rummages in his jeans and pulls out a fist full of loonies and quarters like he’s knocked off a vending machine.

“I never remember,” I say in way of apology.

He shrugs. “This time of day, you don’t have to worry. They only check at 8:30.”

“Really?” Berton is mentally counting the money he can save.

“Yeah. The tickets aren’t time stamped, just sequential.”

“Thanks for the tip,” says Berton.

We buy one ticket anyway, just to be sure, walk to a black-glass and steel building a block away. This late in the morning, the streets are as peaceful as a manicured graveyard, all the workers inside — peasants under glass — but you don’t want to be anywhere near here at rush hour. Or lunch break. The dead can come back to life. A hexagonal sticker on the door is covered with pictograms of people having fun — running, bicycling, rollerblading and skateboarding — over which is superimposed a bright red slash. No cavorting permitted at the Ministry of Indecision. Today it’ll be easy to conform to these restrictions. The people in the elevator give me a wide berth as I swing in on my crutches. Upstairs, in the conference room, I’m in for a surprise. Bill Star is seated at a conference table, sipping coffee and eating doughnuts set aside for a later break. He looks up, gives me a beefy smile. “The later they come,” he says, “the worse they get.”

I grin, shake his hand. “Good to see you Bill.”

“You too. What’d you do to yourself?”

“Long story. I thought you were retired.”

He chuckles. “If you’re tired more than once, you’re retired.”

“You’re back on the case?”

“No.” He gives me a good-natured frown. “Just here to fill in the gaps.”

The provincial Director of Forest Protection, a squat grey-haired fellow, is standing at the head of the table, waiting for us to come to order. He’s the only one wearing a tie and it’s too tight, making his face blotchy like he’s holding his breath. Or maybe it’s just stress; he’s the guy with a $30 million budget and $100 million job. Either way, it’s a good thing everyone in the room knows first aid. I get a cup of industrial strength coffee — firefighter java — and take a seat between Berton and Star. Malostic is on the far side of the wide conference table, talking earnestly with a cop in uniform. I think Malostic wanted to be a Mountie but couldn’t make the height requirement. Star leans over, whispers. “I heard you came up from Curtain River.”

I nod.

He looks grim. “Nasty business down south.”

“Tell me about it.”

“I heard there was a fatality.”

“Yeah, guy who worked for the company.”

“Any idea how it happened?”

I shake my head. “No, but I helped the cops with the evidence search.”

“That must have been a big job. They making any headway?”

“If they are, they’re not letting on.”

The Director stands up. His expression is dark, his brow furrowed. He reaches into a brown paper bag, pulls out a blackened cake pan, tosses it onto the table where it clatters, alarmingly loud, scattering fine particles of charcoal. He has everyone’s attention.

“Good morning,” he says. “I’m Gil Patton, and for those of you that don’t know me, I’m the provincial Director of Forest Protection. That means I’m responsible for making sure the fires get put out quickly and that as few of them as possible are man-caused.” He points a stubby finger at the cake pan. “Right now, it doesn’t look like I’m doing a very good job. We’ve got some firebug out there, lighting fires when the hazard is at its most extreme. Not only is my budget for the entire summer already drained, the forest industry is screaming bloody murder. With every stick of timber allocated, we’re allowed only one half of one percent loss due to fire every year. Which isn’t a hell of a lot. More than that and mills go hungry. People are laid off. And my blood pressure goes up. And believe me — it’s up. Over the past two years, this firebug has wiped out a half-million acres of timber. This can’t go on any longer, and that’s why you’re here. I expect you to stop this bastard.”

He pauses, looks at us to see if the message has been received.

“The way it stands today, we’re looking at another hell of a fire season. This’ll be the third one in a row, and our drought codes haven’t recovered. The ground is so dry there was no run-off from the snowmelt this spring. The Athabasca River is low enough the pulp mills are worried about their water supply and the Loon River has gone underground. If this continues, we won’t have a green-up this summer and half the province is already under fire ban. My resources are stretched thin and I have no doubt that whoever is lighting these fires will continue to capitalize on the dry conditions.”

Having set the tone for the meeting, Patton turns the floor over to a uniform seated beside him. The Mountie introduces himself as Sergeant Don Kirby, then goes around the table for further introductions and history. There are two constables — Eugene Purseman and Derrick Trimble — seconded from rural posts up north, and an undercover native detective who introduces himself simply as Frank. Other than that, it’s Berton, Malostic, Star and myself.

“I spent some time as an arson investigator,” Kirby says. “That’s why I was picked to head up this task force.” Kirby is tall, middle-aged, just starting to bulge at the seams. His brown hair is cut to hang across his forehead in what we used to call a bowl cut. “I’ll direct the investigation and make sure everyone has what they need to get the job done.”

“You’ll get whatever you need,” says Patton.

Kirby glances at Patton. “Good to hear that.”He looks at us.“I’d like to start with a history from the forestry fellows, bring us up to speed, particularly in regards to anything that might not be in the files. Let’s start with the previous physical evidence.”

“It’s all in the files,” whispers Star. “At least it was when I left.”

Malostic has caught up on his homework and dives right in. “So far, we’ve had five fires, four last year and one this spring. The perpetrator uses a pan filled with diesel and an igniter which allows ample time to clear the area before the fun begins.”

“The cake pan,” says Kirby. “What do we know about it?”

“Made by Francis Steel,” says Star. “They made a million of them.”

“So we can’t trace it.”

“Well,” says Malostic, staring at the pan on the table, “there might be a way. By analysing the variations in the steel recorded by their quality control —”

“Not a chance,” says Star. “Even if you could somehow determine where the pan was sold, you’d never find out who bought it. It’s not like you need a licence to buy baking utensils.”

“What about the rest of the device?” asks Kirby.

“Haven’t had much luck,” Star says. “All of the other scenes were hopelessly contaminated by the time we arrived; firefighters walking across the origin, dragging hoses across it — that sort of thing. We had one site where a Cat walked right over the pan, turned it into a waffle.”

“Not good,” Kirby says. “We gotta do a better job of protecting the origin.”

Patton glares at me, as if I have some control over the firefighters before I arrive, his face a shade closer to cardiac arrest. I think he just needs to glare at someone who works for him. “I’ll get in touch with the Districts,” he says. “Every initial attack crew is going to receive training on identifying and protecting the origin. Is there an RCMP course we can get in on?”

Kirby nods. “We’ll set something up. What about footprints, tire tracks?”

“Nothing,” I say. “Too contaminated and the ground is generally too dry at those hazard indices to hold much of a print.”

“Any witnesses?” Kirby says. “Anybody report unusual activity in the area?”

“Not the four I looked at,” says Star. “The odd camper, but no one saw a thing.”

“Could the campers be suspects?”

“I checked them out and I doubt it.”

“Strange,” says Kirby. “I’ve been involved in structure fire investigations and in my experience, firebugs like to stick around and watch. They get off at the sight of flames — fulfills some sort of need for them. A lack of personal power. Anonymity. Repressed sexual urges. They like to watch the monster they’ve created and we try to video the crowd that inevitably gathers, record licence plates. Too bad we can’t do that for a forest fire.”

“If he’s using a delay mechanism,” says Berton, “he’s probably long gone.”

“Or watching from a distance,” I say.

“True,” says Berton. “A bush fire is a little different than a structure fire. With a bush fire, you’d have to be a hell of a ways back to watch safely, particularly at the hazard indices at which this guy likes to operate.”

“I keep hearing this reference to hazard indices,” says Kirby. “What is that?”

“It’s our way of measuring the combustibility of the forest,” says Berton. “As you no doubt know, a fire needs fuel, oxygen and heat to burn. Take away any one input and the fire goes out. We rate the fuel availability, which is a measure of how damp the various fuel types are — the drier the fuel, the more fuel available for combustion. It’s a complicated system — based on weather parameters such as temperature, precipitation and relative humidity — which gives us several numbers to rate how quickly and with how much energy a fire will burn. That’s what we mean by hazard indices.”