Smoke River (22 page)

She senses these dark birds gathering around her, waiting for the barricade fires to burn down; for the young boys to slump forward; for the older men and women to lean back with their eyes closed and mouths open; for the Warriors who have hung around the margins for two weeks but now moved in with their serious tents, their nylon revolution, to go quiet too. The crows are silent on the subject of whom to trust.

Forty minutes later, Las abandons Gordo’s truck midway between the highway and the development entrance. There is still time to keep the plan in play. Gordo will be pissed, but not enough to bail entirely. It’s an easy hike on foot from where Las left him on Ninth Line.

A hundred metres in the distance there are dying fires, figures bending, sitting, curling up, everyone fighting sleep except Las, who feels awake, more awake with his growing sense of outrage. His parents’ property … his property. He crawls through the dark, drops low to his haunches, and tries to locate Gordo among the shadows.

Is he imagining movement, a brief, glinting conspiracy, within the low, dark cloud south of the development? He feels a thrill but can’t trust his night vision, so he unfolds himself, stands, and refocuses his eyes. Suddenly there’s a tightness around his calf, a sharp thumb pressing into his skin, and then something sharp hitting the back of his other knee, making him topple sideways over the shoulders and back of a crouched, sweaty body. Gordo. The vaguely unwashed reek of cigarettes and kerosene gives him away.

Las lands heavily on his elbow, and his chin bounces off the hard dirt. “Fuck!”

“No standing up, remember?” Gordo punches into the darkness, but excitement has sharpened Las’s intuition and reflexes. He rolls easily out of his friend’s swinging range.

“That was a shithead move, taking my truck,” Gordo says, lighting a cigarette. “Leaving me with my pants down. You parked it like a girl, by the way. Hope you got what you wanted, fuckface.”

Las chuckles. He feels as cruel as, even crueller than his friend. He wonders if Gordo smells it the way an animal does, this recalibration of fearlessness. “So, is that it in the distance? A line of cop cars, vans?” he asks.

“Yeah, they’re waiting,” says Gordo. He takes a long drag. “I have it on good authority that by now some politician has been pulled out in his jammies. Once the cops get the legal green light,
bam!
Let the good times roll.”

“So what’re we doing, man? Moving in closer to watch the show?”

“No, you thickhead,” Gordo says, as if Las’s transgression earlier in the evening is forgotten, as if the plan was never threatened. “Once the cops pounce, there’ll be a dozen empty squad cars. We’re just going to trot past the raid to that parking lot down there. Think how much fun we could have in one of those babies! And who do you think is going to catch shit for it?”

He pulls out two camouflage kerchiefs, shoves one towards his friend, then wraps the other around his nose and mouth.

“Shit,” says Las. He ties on his kerchief and raises a closed fist into the night.

Gordo hands him a black baseball cap emblazoned with a gold sun, inside of which is the profile of an Iroquois Warrior. “Now cover up that blond hair, asshole.”

Helen wears her tiredness like a heavy coat. She cannot sleep, so she walks around the makeshift camp, collecting empty coffee cups and tossing them into the barrel fire, its cooling embers purring back at her with each offering. Suddenly the porch lights of houses beyond the river go off, then come on, go off again, like fireflies.
Ga’hai
, she thinks at first, witch lights. At the edge of the barricade encampment she focuses her old eyes to see what witching is before her, and it is then that she hears the soft crunch of feet dropping in unison on dry earth.

When there are a few metres between her and the line of advancing dark-clothed bodies, she catches the dull glint of eyes, the cream of young skin washed in the pink of excitement and fear. Shoulders moving in front of the distant lights and out of the way again. Out of the shadows come dozens and dozens of cops, marching close together. They reach the edge of firelight, and the line breaks up. Helen sees another wave of them following behind.

“Wake up! Wake up! Raid!” Helen’s old voice wobbles and pitches into the dark.

Las and Gordo watch the south horizon and it begins to move forward, a long, deep blur hurrying towards the barricade, silent as spilling ink. A single thin cry sounds from near the protest site. And just then the blur pixelates over the barricade, churning up a panic of wails and shrieks. Las wants to move closer, to see it in all its ruthless glory. Dark figures, their many shadows crossing the barrel-fire’s light, fall sharply on the sleeping protestors like obsidian chess pieces.

“There’s gotta be two hundred of them,” he says. A rock pings him on the cheek and he looks over.

Gordo is standing, his body pointed in the direction the police marched from. “Now,” he says and he sprints past the protest and its cries of betrayal.

Las follows, his eyes focusing on what’s taking shape in the murk: neat rows of squad cars parked on the riverbank at the southern end of the development. “This is fucking crazy,” he whispers under his breath. But fucking crazy helps him forget what he is becoming.

When they descend, a great cloud of shadows and movement, Shayna is surprised at how real they feel. For a moment she hopes she will be taken into flight. Something comes sharp at her side and she is awake, her heart quickening, her sleeping bag ripped so the night’s cool air alerts the surface of her skin. Then comes a superhuman pull. “Get up!”

Not a bird. A man. Shayna struggles to stand but her bare feet
slip on the sleeping bag’s lining, so she can’t get purchase. She is wrenched upwards again. Her shoulder pops. She smells the heat of this man, hears his animal grunting and tastes the ozone burn of his urgency. She scissors her legs wildly, kicks them free; her toes grab the earth, but he pushes and she slides. His strength seems huge as he pulls her away from safety, into the darkness. Shayna hollers. She bends her knees, tucks her legs under to slow him down. He stops. The grip on her shoulders loosens, and with her one strong arm she elbows behind her, hitting the plush of his groin. There is a groan, a hissed “Fuck,” and the offending arm is dropped. Shayna scrambles to a standing position, turns around, and becomes a twister of one-armed scratches and punches. She kicks his shins. Then he catches her free hand again, with a clasp that crunches her wrist, and she starts screaming with the high notes of a bird whose nest is being pillaged.

She expects her cries to cut through the dark, but they don’t, because all around her there is yelling. All her people are screaming, clawing, flailing. Before she takes her knees to her ribs to make herself curl, Shayna peers back at the man who has immobilized her arms. He is dressed entirely in black, the leather of his gun holster and boots gleaming like feathers, his face as pale as new corn.

Helen will not stumble in front of them. She stops. “Move to the road,” the cop chants over and over. “This is private property. Stand on the highway. Comply willingly and you won’t get hurt.” Let them shove an old lady.
Thump
come the boots. A chest pushes up against her back, propels her forward. She keeps her feet steady, walks ahead with her head held high. And then she is among a dozen or more protestors, half stooped with grogginess, standing out in the middle of road in the
tawny rose of sunrise. Six others, handcuffed with their hands behind their backs, are face down in the dirt of the ditch, an officer kneeling into each back as if over a felled buck.

Helen turns to see Nate Bastine jump on the back of a flushed officer with massive arms who has pinned a small figure, spread-eagled under his weight. “Get off her! She’s a woman! She’s our leader.”

Two other officers come running. One grabs Nate’s arms, the other kicks his knees hard, so that he lurches forward.

Helen moves over to them, pushes herself between Nate and the officer now winding up to boot him in the stomach. “That’s not a good idea,” she says, and she points to the half-dozen protesters who have pulled out cellphones, aiming them at the officers. “Let them go. He’s right, she’s our leader. And she’s pregnant.”

The officer subduing Shayna looks up at Helen, and she sees alarm register in his face. “She didn’t comply peacefully,” he says. His voice is unsure.

“Did you hear me? She’s pregnant.”

The cop lifts his knee from Shayna’s back, but she remains lying on the ground, like a swatted bug. Nate is freed with a shove that leaves him sprawling in the dirt; he springs to his feet, his face inflamed. Helen raises her hand. “Thank you for your courage,” she whispers to him, and he brushes the dirt from his chin, his thighs, and backs away.

She turns to the officer who’s pinned her niece. “I hope you didn’t hurt this woman. You better get those handcuffs off.”

Helen squats by Shayna, sees the dirt that rims her niece’s mouth and wipes it with her sleeve. The officer looks sheepish and unlocks the cuffs. Helen helps her to stand, brushes the dust and grit from her clothes.