Jericho (20 page)

Theresa and I were jostled off our mailbags at daybreak by Bishop stripping the gears and lurching us forward in the next stage of our getaway to wherever we were going. The project called Jericho, I guessed, which Bishop, when he spoke of it at all, talked about like it was some great solution to the problems of the world. I began to sense that it was more than a hideout but I didn’t know what.

Entry. Mythomania of Object becomes more apparent as he ignores the impacts and eventualities of his actions. The protocol of his dementia would appear to reside in an underlying cycle of depression marked by pathetic bouts of rogue masculinity and self-destructive behaviour. Delusions of adequacy alternating with meaningless secrecy, the latter a serious impediment to any normal human interaction. Apparently Object has no clinical history whatever. Stunning indictment of rest of health care profession? but also opportunity to observe action in field—no control.

The rain beating down on the half-blue half-green roof made a sound like pebbles thrown against a window and drove Bishop into the back of the van with us. He snored again and would start up just when you thought that he’d
stopped. Like before, I thought I knew what to do and would gently roll him on his side. And like before, he’d stop for a while but then flop onto his back with his mouth open and wake us up one more time. Every time we got woken up like this, every hour or so, the rain seemed to be coming down harder. By itself the rain would have been relaxing and made us sleepy. Alternating with the noise Bishop made, it was just another thing to keep us up. I’d look over at Theresa next to me in the dark and could make out this small dark shape tossing and turning, left side to right side, right side to left, sometimes making a noise that sounded like an angry sigh. That’s what the night was like.

In the morning, Bishop was refreshed and putting out energy, repeating another of his grandfather’s phrases the way he liked doing: “Great sleepin weather. Makes you feel chipper.” Later he added what had to be one of his own: “The kind of morning that makes you want to steal a car and take a joyride!” Theresa said that considering our situation the remark revealed a lot and was—what did she call it?—“imbecilistic”? Or maybe “imbecilistical.”

All three of us sneaked looks at the paint job. In a few places—the areas we’d done first, when we were still putting the paint on pretty thick—the rainstorm had made an even uglier mess of it, leaving overlapping circles that made it look like we were driving a hippie wagon.

Getting underway that morning was an experience. We made Bishop stop a little ways up the road. Just leaving the truck to go to the washroom got us soaked right through. Brushing our teeth was easy, though. You held out the brush for a couple of seconds and it was wet, and when you were done you held it out again for a few more and it came
back clean. We ate breakfast in the truck as he barrelled along. A can of devilled ham split three ways on three slices of bread.

T and I both offered to take over some of the driving but Bishop refused. A masculine ego thing, I guess. We got tired of being thrown around in the back and took a big pile of mailbags up to the front, and he didn’t seem to mind the company—the “audience” maybe.

“Bring up some of the A-
7
s too. They’re more comfortable.”

We didn’t know what he meant.

“The normal ones are called A
-3
s in the trade,” he said. “The giant-size ones are A-
7
s. More comfortable.”

“How do you know that?” Theresa sounded like she was accusing him of knowing something he wasn’t allowed to know, so he didn’t answer her but just started talking, going straight into his act. But I knew what he meant. Every now and then he’d slip words into the conversation that made you think he’d researched everything to a T. Just when you felt this way, he’d do something to prove that he hadn’t given much thought to what he was doing at all.

In an hour or so the rain let up but certainly didn’t stop. Bishop was the kind of driver who drove too fast and made it seem as if he wasn’t in control. Now it really looked that way. He had a tight grip on both sides of the wheel, a big black thing, much bigger than the one in a car, and was staring through the windshield with his forehead scrunched. I knew he was concentrating hard but a person who didn’t know him might think he was very near-sighted. I thought: This is how I must have looked driving one of Steenrod’s coaches. Bishop had this strange effect on me. I saw right
through him, thanks partly to Theresa, but every once in a while I’d feel my old affection for him, the kind that comes when you think you understand a person. Sometimes even more than just affection. [In the beginning, the police were calling me an accomplice, which I didn’t much like. Once they even called me a “known associate,” which sounded even worse.]

“Here’s the situation.” These were unusual words to hear from Bishop. I figured that he’d been injured in childhood back east so that he didn’t understand normal privacy but just secrecy. “We can’t avoid going through the interchange at Williams Lake. That’s where the Mounties will be waiting if they’re waiting. The Four Mounties of the Apocalypse will all be there. Pestilence and the other ones. If we can get through without being made, we’ll be fine. They expect us to go north on the big highway to Quesnel and all the way up to Prince George maybe or even Fort St. John.”

“I thought we
were
going that way.” Theresa speaking.

“That’s what we’d let them guess we’re doing. They expect us to keep heading north because that makes sense if you’re looking to get lost. Less people, more bush—vast. We’ll go west if we don’t hit a trap. The road that ends at Bella and salt water.” My heart jumped a little at the thought of Bella Coola the way I thought maybe it always would do a little bit, but even by then it was already jumping less than it used to. “Eventually the road turns to gravel, but before that happens there’s a turnoff that goes north. That’s where we’re going. That’s where Jericho is. You won’t find it on the map.” He tossed over the ragged old service station map,
British Columbia Road Map and Parks Guide.
It was as if he was finally letting us in on something.

I opened the map. It was out of date and had been folded and unfolded so much that the creases were becoming tears. Somebody long ago had an accident on it with ink from a fountain pen. The thing had been refolded with smears of ink still wet. On two of the folds there were long pale blue stains that looked like the tall spruce that we could see on every horizon, through the drizzle. They—the stains and the trees—had pointed edges all round like sharp little teeth.

T and I kept studying the map, which wasn’t easy with all the bouncing and jerking going on. We had certainly left the south and not just the coast. We were way up beyond where all the cities and towns were clustered. Down there the thick red lines were in a crazy tangle. Further up there were only two red lines forming a jagged cross: one going north from Williams Lake all the way to the Yukon, where it disappeared off the paper, the other coming over the Rockies from Jasper a world away (sweet Alberta) and pointing straight across B.C. to Prince Rupert and the ocean. Once the east-to-west part got past Prince George there were lots of lakes but not many towns on the top side. On the other side, down below, you could see only a couple of small lakes but lots of streams and no towns at all, at least not that I could make out, nothing in big print. The Interior for sure. The Inside you might call it. The Inside was more or less empty, though of course not as empty as the real north. On the worn-out map it looked hollow. I was beginning to get Bishop’s idea. Or I thought I was anyway.

Theresa kept on looking at the map with a leery expression on her face. Then she refolded it slowly and pursed her lips in what looked to me a sort of prim way.

Entry. I feel a sense that danger is near, the result of being in such proximity to someone this insecure. Object’s motives still appear unfixed. This is my premier experience of such actuality. Down through the ages, all the great social scientists have put themselves at risk for the sake of knowledge.

N
OTHING BAD HAPPENED AT FIRST
. What we saw of Williams Lake from the interchange made it look big, but maybe because the highway is big and the valley is wide there and the sky enormous just like back home. I could see the lake and the rail line coming into town and smell the pulp mill. Oil company names in big red letters on high poles looking down at their service stations, large yellow fast-food signs towering over parking lots. Motels, and truckers and their rigs, in a long line either side of the highway, and other places to stay built up on the hill. That’s the way I remember it.

By some miracle, no siren started screaming and Bishop found the turnoff to Highway
20
, which was well kept up for forty or fifty kilometres. Theresa and I were in the back again, trying to get comfortable and stay that way. She was telling me about being Catholic. I had to prod her—I’m always interested in other people’s beliefs and how they
grew up and what the origin of their name is, things like that. She said some weird stuff. Her mother, she told me, said out loud once: “I always remember the terrible day President Kennedy was shot, because it was the Feast of St. Cecilia.” Catholics were from some other continent than this one.

Bishop stopped for gas at a place called Riske Creek. He said it was pronounced Risky. There were just a few buildings scattered around. While he pumped the gas, Theresa and I went into the combination store/café with a shiny metal roof and a lot of small trucks parked out front, all of them kind of new-looking. I guess, what with the big argument about the credit card, he figured he couldn’t trust her, thought I’d keep an eye on her while we were in there, so she wouldn’t send a signal to somebody or write H
ELP
with lipstick on the bathroom mirror. (She didn’t wear lipstick, but he wouldn’t have noticed that.) I wasn’t at all comfortable in this role but it didn’t matter because the situation didn’t come up. I couldn’t figure her out. Looking back, I can’t even figure myself out. I mean I thought at the time I knew why I was there: there
was
something about Bishop, I would have said if you’d asked me. Now I can only guess that I was discovering a side I didn’t know I had (and haven’t had since). I was looking for romance, sure, but maybe for danger too. Also I wanted to see how the whole mess would turn out. I was scared but I was sure it would be okay, because I’m an optimist like Mother. But T? She didn’t seem frightened in the least. Nothing scared her as far as I could see. She barged through life with her bony little elbows sticking out, demanding to see the supervisor.