Fiction 1, Chapters 3 & 4
"Canadian Shield" Copyright © 1993
Chapter 3
"Why wilt thou rush to certain death and rage
In rash attempts, beyond thy tender age,
Betray'd by pious love?"
Aeneid, Virgil
GRAND RAPIDS, MANITOBA:
There was a telephone number on my answering machine in New Jersey, with a (204) area code. That would be Uncle John, checking in. I dialed it and got Mickey on the other end.
"Dad's in the shower, Uncle." -I guess I'm getting old enough for a courtesy title, myself-
"That's all right, Mickey, you can pass this along to him and Jack. Do me a favor and write it down, O.K.?"
"O.K.."
"This Father Dupont visits somebody in Elphingstoke. That's about thirty five miles up the Battersby-Lascoux road from Battersby. Did you get that?"
"Right!" he confirmed. "What else?"
"I checked around a couple of places in the area, but couldn't pick up any info on this contact of his __one Emil Orlando__ or exactly where his place is supposed to be. It's definitely dangerous to ask too many questions about him. He's got a spider web around the area and some tough guys on the payroll. Now this part is mainly for you, Mickey. Here's what I want you to do."
There had been some fishing camp posters at the convenience store in Elphingstoke and some cards on the bulletin board from some of the local guides. Uncle was an enthusiastic fisherman, so that this should be right up his alley. Fishing would be their cover and it would give young Mickey a chance __in between outings__ to get acquainted with the girl who clerked the store there. I told them to pick up some second-hand tackle before they showed up there. By that time, Uncle John was out of the shower and back in the motel room.
"What do you take us for, Richard," he barked, "stupid or something?"
He wasn't really mad. Actually he was pleased that I wasn't as dumb as he had thought. That's his version of a family pleasantry.
The girl had been attractive and young Mickey was a heartbreaker __without even trying__ from what I've heard. Jack could keep an eye on his back. The place should be buzzing about the recent events there and they'd certainly have a better opportunity to check into Orlando than I had. Uncle John would be better at picking out his own assignments. He was equally adept at scamming church groups for a missionary stake and winning sucker bets in saloons. Nothing big, just what they call "short-con" in the trade.
Irish Travellers are accustomed to posing as Newfoundlanders when in Canada. The Irish lilt of that region's accent comes naturally, and generations of Newfie jokes cover almost any social error or unexpected ignorance of local custom. The Canadian Travellers are all of the Scottish clan and don't care for competition; so we didn't make our presence known to them.
The three would likely need at least a couple of days to find out anything worth reporting. It was back to the computer for me.
I'm Richard Quirk, by the way. That's not the name I was born with. It's my mother's maiden name and I prefer to use it in my travels. But for the next step, I was going to be Eric Lindner __Pennsylvania State Police Sergeant__ a virtual entity that had no existence outside of several nationwide law-enforcement computer networks.
I transmitted a few e-mail rockets to various agencies, including the National Crime Information Center, in the U.S.. Through them, I could reach the Mounties' and Interpol's data bases __the Foreign Fugitive File__ inquiring about Dupont and Orlando.
Several days had to pass before any results would show up at the non-existent barracks at South Indian Town Gap, Pa. Think of it as a portable mailbox, constantly picked up and replanted somewhere else by a computer virus. Anybody can put something in it, but only I can find it to get anything out.
I tried doodling some poetry for a day, but couldn't really get into it.
My system was just coming down from an adrenalin high, and my minuscule conscience was bothering me for having enjoyed myself. Once, I had a run-in with a bear myself in Portage, Alaska and I've been an excitement junkie ever since. There's no explaining it, or the echo of a conscience either. I have no heart or soul anymore, nor any idea where that little bit of retroactive scruple makes its home.
It turned out that Rene Dupont might as well have been a newborn babe for all the record he had, and Emil Orlando wasn't a real person either. But I had added a few variations on the names that occurred to me when I submitted them__ and one of them did ring a bell. Orlando is the Italian version of Roland, a hero of the Charlemagne Cycle.
Sure enough, Miles Roland was an alias used by a felon who had escaped capture in Lebanon, when that was still a country with a legal code.
Mr. Roland was thought to be a gangster named Roland Lime, on the run from the Marseilles police as well as his buddies in the Union Corse, the French Mafia.
Roland Lime was thought to be an informer named Mansur Fishbein, fathered by a French Jew (dec.) and an native woman (dec.) in Algeria, who left there hastily when the French did.
Mansur Fishbein? In Algeria?
No wonder he had loved his first alias too much to abandon it altogether.
Dozer __the owner of the campground that I was staying in__ had an aerial photography business on the side. He said that he probably cleared more from that than he did from the campground, actually. I had only known him three days but so far there was never a moment that he was not surrounded by the smell of boiled cabbage. We were in Grand Rapids, a small town about a hundred and seventy-five miles north of Winnipeg.
"How much to get in a little sightseeing while I'm up here, Mr. Dozer?"
"That's just Dozer, mister. A hundred an hour, Canadian, or eighty-five an hour, U.S., if it's cash. Whatever the weather, we fly when you book; payment in advance." The old man's eyes were almost buried between brows and wrinkled cheeks. His complexion looked like it had been eaten away by a lifetime's exposure to sun and acid rain: giant pores joined to each other by deep creases criss-crossing the pebbled surface.
The grizzled pilot gave me an appraising look, as well, and perhaps it was just as critical.
In return, I tried to look solvent but prudent. "Well, Dozer, I'm on a tight budget, but I'd like to take a look at the lake country up by Elphingstoke. You know where I mean?"
He clucked like the old geezer he was. "That's touchy country up there, friend. A lot of private property in the hands of nasty people. And the Indian situation off in the bush would curl your hair. Even a perfect emergency landing up there usually winds up with a wrecked plane __if you know what I mean. They ain't too careful how they haul it off, and they ain't willing to wait for mechanics __get me?"
I nodded. Maybe I could learn something right here on the ground. It's easy to forget just how well pilots can know their customers over a range of thousands of square miles in a sparsely populated wilderness area. Dozer was a gregarious old codger, curious as hell about anybody and everything that passed through his backwater universe. He looked to be pretty spry, but he talked like an old man with no teeth, kind of slushy; as though the twenty or so he had left didn't count for much.
"It ain't safe to fly too low either," he went on __ominously. "There's blasting alerts posted at all the local bars. Around here, that's like a legal notice to stay over five hundred meters altitude. Even if you paid me cash for the plane, I wouldn't fly any lower than that anywhere near the Farm."
"The Farm?" I asked, innocently.
"That's the Farm down there."
It was a pleasant surprise that I could actually make out Dozer's slushy words over the engine noise. His cameras were recording the landscape as we flew over: one was loaded with 70mm. black and white; the other with 70mm. infra-red color positive, to spot heat sources and detect camouflage.
The Farm looked like Hitler's Victory Garden.
The first thing that struck the eye was the way they kept out the garden variety pests, with mixed helices of barbed and razor wire gleaming in the sunlight.
The place was probably smaller than the King Ranch in Texas, but Emil Orlando wasn't just any piss-pot truck-farmer. Anybody with that much property would be bound to be thick as thieves with the local law. All of the local people would depend on Squire Orlando for part of their income, directly or indirectly. He'd be unreachable.
Let's see____ First, we free-fall ten thousand feet, cradling our silenced Uzi's____
Yeah, sure we do.
Dozer and I flew directly to Winnipeg to get the 70mm. stock developed, and then back to his small landing strip in Grand Rapids. We were on the ground by 4PM.
"How about dinner with me and the family, Mister Quirk?"
The casual hospitality of Canadians, especially in the North, is something I've always appreciated and reciprocated. So I was happy to say, "Sure, Dozer. Thanks. And call me Dick, will you. What time?"
"Six sharp. Bring your own bottle."
"O.K.." I figured he'd bring the cabbage.
What a goddamn surprise, I thought. Not about the film; that was still on the reels.
And there was no great shock concerning Dozer's cabin or furnishings. It was big and airy, the screened windows open wide to breezes even in the nearly-autumn chill. The air under the totally wooded areas of the Canadian taiga tends to be still and moist, even though the ground itself may be dry. Without the constant heat required in the winter, interiors in the North Woods tend toward dampness without heroic ventilation.
The furniture was utilitarian, mismatched, hand-me-down and Salvation Army. Patched, but scrupulously clean. And the bear-skin hanging on the far wall must have been a twelve-footer, heel to outstretched paw.
The surprise was a woman, "Mrs. Dozer."
A Levanter of some kind, I guessed; her name was Amina and she was beautiful. Small and shapely, only about forty_____tops.
That lovely face was the most expressive that I can ever remember staring at. Dark, magnificent eyes caught and kept my attention; tawny skin glowed with a welcome for Dozer's return that also included his guest of the moment; high cheekbones and a falcon's nose proclaimed the innate assurance of a queen.
Amina Carrington __that was Dozer's real name__ disappeared into the kitchen for a time to supervise her children in the preparation of the evening's supper. And when she did, my eyes followed her all the way to the kitchen door before turning back to catch Dozer's amusement at my fascination.
"Dozer, you sly old dog, you! Where did you latch onto such a beautiful woman?" That was rude of me but I couldn't help it.
He was unfazed. It must have been old hat to him. "Cyprus, twenty years back; during their civil war. We met. I helped her out of a bad patch with the Greeks there and brought her back home with me. We've been together ever since."
"What were you doing in Cyprus?"
"Smuggling antibiotics. Real ones, not Harry Lime stuff."
"I'll be damned! How many kids?"
"Three home, three who've gone away and a couple in the hospital," he said __with a bit of awkwardness.
Just then, supper was announced and the entire kitchen crew trooped in bearing nature's bounty dressed up Canadian style. My mouth had just begun to water for kabobs and pilaf but it handled the transition smoothly to slavering over roast duck with pan-roasted potatoes and steamed asparagus.
Oh yes! Dozer's favorite, a huge bowl of boiled cabbage. You should have seen his eyes light up when the youngest child brought in that staple.
Their kids belonged to three different races, none of them the mother or father's. All three were adolescents and two had Down Syndrome. The third, one of the girls, looked to have a severe spinal defect __perhaps spina bifida. Now I understood what Dozer meant by "gone away."
These kids, two girls and a boy, were terrific, wonderful teenagers and the whole family managed to cope gracefully with my fumbling attempts to be nonchalant without being patronizing.
"Could you pass the potatoes, please, Becca?" Rebecca __Becca__ had the malformed spine.
"Sorry, it's too heavy," she said with perfect poise. "How about a roll?"
With the greed of a born glutton, I had already buttered two of the freshly baked rolls and they were sitting on the side of my plate as accompaniment, while I made ready to gobble the rest of the food.
Gluttony and courtesy both agreed. "Yes. Thank you."
She started to smile and then to giggle. Then we were all laughing, especially the other girl who only understood that everybody was happy. Her adopted brother told an innocent Newfie joke that didn't quite come off, but we all laughed anyway.
"Have you ever been there," I asked, but of course they hadn't.
"No! No! Tell us about it, please. Please?"
Today, with satellite dishes abounding, there's no real need to entertain the traveling stranger in order to expand your horizons. But old habits die hard up there, thankfully.
So I told them of the fishermen living in little settlements around the edges of the island, whose only outside contact was a mail boat once every week or two. And of the surprisingly cosmopolitan city of St. John's, on the beautiful Avalon peninsula.
Becca wanted to know if I liked the rolls in Newfoundland as much as I did in Grand Rapids. I assured her that nobody made rolls as good as her family did.
"But Becca, once out there I had to live for a week on boiled cod cheeks and screech while I outlasted a bad storm. The trailer was fastened down with steel strapping and earth anchors to keep it from blowing away."
"Oooh! Cod cheeks? Yucky! And what's 'screech'?"
"Never you mind!" Amina interrupted. "It's something grown-ups drink even though they shouldn't and the name comes from what they do the morning after, young lady."
Dozer changed the subject. "Now let's not pester Mr. Quirk, children. Would you like a little of that sauerkraut juice you brought, Dick."
"Thank you, Dozer. On the rocks if you please."
The kids left a little while later and returned in their PJ's when Amina agreed to let them stay up for a little while longer in honor of their guest. They had obviously voted for one topic on which to inquire.
"Icebergs." Plenty of ice here on the lakes, but no real icebergs of course.
I tried to describe the feeling of stepping out of a whaleboat __one momentarily pinned to the side of a berg by weather-beaten men with ice axes__ to adopt an orphaned big-eyed seal pup. "Her eyes were as big as yours, Sandra; yes they were." I surrounded my eyes with thumbs and fore-fingers, trying to imitate a big-eyed seal pup, complete with a plaintive bleat. She laughed and laughed, and so did I.
The boy, Brian, couldn't even imagine a real iceberg. So I described them for him, the incredible sculptures of the wind and sea.
"There's a place up on the tip of the Northern Peninsula, near St. Anthony, kids. You can easily see across the straights most days to the coast of northeastern Quebec and southeastern Labrador. And as soon as the morning fog clears, the parade starts. Most come down from Greenland and the rest break off from the mainland. But they all come down there, while I'm drinking my morning coffee, just for the chance to get a prize from me, you know. And also to party with the narwhals. It's like the Mardi Gras. They don't stop parading and partying either, even after the sun sets."
Time, then, to talk of narwhals and, later, about the Mardi Gras.
The innate tendency I have toward prying and analyzing was suspended for that evening. These were people to simply appreciate, to love for a time. Unspoken tragedies lurked in their past and more tragedies awaited in their future, but there was nothing I could do for them except to treasure their momentary presence in my life.
For a little while, an evening, I lived again. Through them.
If I seemed a little sad later, when I said "Goodnight" __and if they noticed__ they might have thought that I was sorry for them. The Carringtons would have been wrong.
Enough! Back to work.
Nature abhors a vacuum. Nature also abhors a straight line and a circle. I was now back in the mini-motorhome, running the images culled from the more promising shots through the computer to spot anomalous patterns. The hardware part uses video technology to develop an analog electronic image of the negatives, and then digitalizes it. Given enough computer memory and speed, a well-written program __the software part__ can filter out everything but those parts of the image that betray the hand of man, within a normal life expectancy.
If you're into hi-tech buzz words, fractal geometry and chaos mathematics contribute a significant portion of the algorythyms that comprise the program. I wrote it, and I'd say it's about halfway between an expert system and an artificial intelligence. One of the nice things about computer science is that you can create an entity smarter than yourself, rather like a homely artist painting a beautiful woman.
Where does this get me, I thought.
Well, let's see: They have a barracks and a firing range; there's the anti-social fencing; the faint gleam of trip wires through the fields; a landing strip with a camouflage net at one end____and the stub of a wing barely detectable through it.
Bingo! If my unnatural child wasn't guilty of wishful thinking, the analysis of the wing fragment in false-color infra-red showed a match for the last two characters of the good Father's Air Regulation ID. The program asked me for the ground temperature and the material composition of the objects under study, then technical info from the film's data sheet. I punched in my best estimates and, after a bit of hemming and hawing, the probable true color of the wing was duly displayed.
Forest green? In an evergreen wilderness? I wondered. Summer, or even in winter, he'd be unlocatable if he went down. The priest must really be running from something God-awful, to be that fixated on privacy. But Dupont had picked a good place to hole up for a while__ even a totally paranoid schizophrenic would have to be satisfied with the fortress around him at the moment.
Still, if the spatial pattern of his activities gave me no hope of reaching him, the temporal one did.
Judging from the past, Father Dupont would have to tear himself away from that strong point soon, and scurry off in his inconspicuous plane to carry on the work of the Lord. At that point, I was asking myself, "Which Lord?"
I hoped that he would still be there for a day or two.
The next day Dozer rented me three of the radio-telephones his campground employees use to keep in contact with him during the hunting season. They really had some range and tied directly into the regular telephone lines. Jack came down from Elphingstoke to pick them up and bring my plan of action back to his father.
The reels of film were packaged and sent to a research counselor I know in Elkhart, Indiana, called the Middle-Man. Aside from the active and passive defenses, the Farm was raising crops __and they were the only crops growing within a hundred miles. This was deep in the North Woods and I wanted to know more about what kind of jealous husbandry needed that kind of security.
The Middle-Man just brokers information, by the way. He doesn't know anything more about farming or aerial photography than I do, but he knows who does know, if you catch my drift. He'd drop an abstract of the report into my private file on the CompuServ network as soon as the films were analyzed, and then follow up with the full packet by courier. It's a good thing that I've got a couple of bucks in the bank.
The next morning, Jack, Mickey and Uncle John surrounded the Farm.
They didn't exactly frighten them to death; that wasn't the idea. They just waited____and waited. Another day of waiting until the quarry flew the coop. Then, four words only.
"He's up, headed east."
And so were Dozer and I, in hot pursuit.
Chapter 4
"Priest, beware your beard; I mean to tug it,
and to cuff you soundly;..."
First Henry VI, Shakespeare
LAKE WINNIPEG, MANITOBA:
Dozer swore that he could follow any float-plane with his Otter __equipped as it was now with regular landing gear__ even a green one overflying a forest.
But we were lucky that the good Father was flying east and Dozer didn't have to live up to his brag right away. Come to think of it, he hadn't said that he could find a green plane to begin with, just that he could follow it. Not to worry.
"There he is, it's got to be him." That was Dozer shouting over the engines again. It's funny, his breath didn't smell much of cabbage, it was mostly his clothes. Maybe Mrs. Dozer knows something about doing laundry that nobody else does, or more likely everybody else knows something that she doesn't. Well, nobody's perfect. Except for her, I thought. Stop it, I told myself; unrequited love stinks.
"He's so slow, Dozer. Do you think he's going to land on the lake?"
"Nah, it just looks this way from up here because we're flying a little faster right now. He could stay at that speed and altitude all day. Matter of fact, he probably can't go much faster. Don't forget, he's doing about a hundred and fifty klicks, ground-speed. That's almost as fast as he can cruise with floats."
Dupont's Super Cub was now silhouetted beneath us at about two hundred feet over the gray waters of Lake Winnipeg. The Cub is a great little plane, but the Super wing that allows you to land and take off practically at a walk, blocks off the whole sky. The visibility beneath __especially on the sides__ is terrific, and that's the important thing for the bush.
We could be in real trouble over the forest. Dozer figured Dupont's plane would be invisible from above, and we would have to follow him from behind and below, to catch his outline against the sky. This early in the morning, we were flying almost into the sun. Even without that factor, keeping below the Cub was liable to be a hairy proposition. And leave us open to discovery at the same time.
I put my hands around my mouth to make a kind of bullhorn and yelled, "What do you want me to do when we get over land? How can I help you?"
"Just keep your eyes on any lakes you see to the right, to make sure he ain't snuck off and landed. He'll stand out sharp as a knife on the water. I can't keep him against the sky when I'm cresting a ridge, say, and he's following the terrain in a valley, so I'm going to lose him every once in a while. We just got to keep a sharp eye out for him then."
"O.K.. Wilco," I acknowledged.
Dozer just smiled at my "Wilco." A slightly pitying smile for the lubber. It's a good thing I hadn't shown up in a brown leather jacket and long white silk scarf that morning or he'd have laughed himself too silly to take off.
It only took us two hours to lose him somewhere over a ridge-line.
"Where the hell is he, Dozer?"
"I don't know. Give me a couple of minutes till we get down into the valley, but keep your eyes peeled to the right."
I peeled them as closely as I could, but the Flying Father had either set down while we were hugging the last ridge or he'd just disappeared on us. The Otter's undercarriage was close enough to the treetops now for me to pick fruit __had there been any__ and we still couldn't pick up Dupont's silhouette against the sky.
Dozer cursed a little under his breath as we banked to the right in a wide circle, while he attempted to catch sight of the Cub through his side window.
"It's no use," he said grudgingly. "He's either landed or doubled back into the sun, Dick. It's your money. What do you want to do?"
"How big is this valley we're in?"
"About thirty kilometers across and forty-five long. It's a big'un."
"Maybe a dozen lakes big enough to land a Super Cub, would you say?"
"Twice that, at least."
"Goddamn it, Dozer! I don't want to lose him. We've still got ten minutes to spot him on the horizon if he's heading up or down-valley. How much gas in the tanks?"
"Maybe two, three hours; depending on conditions. We're about an hour out of Norway House. That's the closest place we can get a fill-up. In a real pinch, I can pick up a can of gas at a fishing lodge, as long as I strain it real good. But I wouldn't like to do that, unless it was a real emergency."
"O.K., Dozer. You're right: He's either landed by now or headed straight into the sun, laughing his ass off at us."
"What do you want to do?"
"Maybe spend an hour looking on the west side of the valley and do a recon run north to south. When we start getting low on gas, we'll head for Norway House and come back until we find him. I've got to find a way to talk to him." I had given Dozer just enough information about my mission to enlist his sympathy for our quest. Money talks, all right, but it doesn't rally decent men to a cause. I needed Dozer __a far more decent man than I__ committed to this chase.
The first recon run was a complete bust.
Then, on the way to Norway House, it happened. There was a golden cross that lasered its way up from the terrain below, to scratch at my eyes. We were headed north again and I had been shading my eyes from the morning sun, when I saw it through the side window, just below my obscuring hand.
There was no doubt in me. I just knew. "Dozer! Circle that X-shaped lake on the right. Get around to the east, so we can check it out."
And there he was; standing out sharp as a knife on the water, just like good old Dozer had promised.
How would you like to land __in a crosswind__ on a bumpy dirt strip no wider than a two-lane highway with shoulders, at eighty miles an hour? In the middle of nowhere, naturally. No matter how much you don't like it, you don't like it half as much as I don't like it. Count on it! The crosswind __a strong one__ required the nose to be pointed into it until the very last minute. That doesn't sound so bad, except that the nose is also aimed at the trees on the side of the strip instead of in the direction of the runway, until the very moment of touchdown.
I shrugged off the shakes a few minutes after we landed. Then it was time to pull my gear out of the back while I looked carefully at Dozer, trying to estimate his life expectancy. "The next three days __noontime__ Dozer. You can be late but don't be early. Watch for the red panel. But if you see yellow, run like hell and call those numbers, O.K.?"
"All right, Dick, I ain't forgotten it in the last five minutes. I'll be here, you bet on it." He clapped me on the shoulder by way of reassurance.
I was betting on it __a lot.
"When I get back, Dozer, I'd like to invite you and the family out to dinner."
"You wouldn't like it in town. Limited menu."
I know, Dozer. No cabbage. But I didn't say it. I just clapped his shoulder back and walked away. The Otter turned more or less on its left wheel and took off about two-thirds down the runway, leaving behind somebody who had thought that he couldn't feel any more lonely, until now.
No help for it, it was exercise time. The lake Dupont had landed on and its village were about four miles away.
A surveyor's bench mark was imbedded at the other end of the strip, and I made a note of the source and serial number. It should be on file somewhere; the Middle-Man would know. The strip had been laid fairly recently and was just cleared land, salted with weed-killer and over-laid with crushed limestone. It would be dependably hard in wet weather; a convenience, but I had to wonder what it was doing there in the middle of nowhere.
Halfway down the trail, I took a detour at a lightning-scarred tree and headed north. My compass gave the direction, and counting trees gave the distance. That's a lot more dependable than counting steps in that kind of country. It took about half an hour to go about two hundred yards and I was damned glad that was far enough. Of course, I was trying not to leave any trace of my passage near the trail and that took time, but it was still tough going.
Long before one Overlord or another logged almost all of Ireland __carving out their plantations__ military woodcraft was a most significant requirement for Celtic knighthood. Red Indians had nothing to teach either the Fenians or the Knights of the Red Branch about fighting and surviving in the woods. Nor Travellers.
At the bivouac area, it took another hour to stick special tacks into every fifth tree in a twenty foot circle around the site of my camp. The reflective tacks, which are damn near invisible except to a flashlight, faced outward around the circle. It's not that I lack self-confidence. I just knew from experience how easy it would be to walk off into the woods and never be seen again. Without distant landmarks to aim for, the compass can deceive you into thinking you're getting somewhere when you are actually going nowhere.
A G.P.S. __Global Positioning System__ receiver is also available to pinpoint locations by satellite within fifty to eighty feet, or so. I hear that the Military can refine that precision down to a foot or two. The smallest units weigh less than two hundred dollars now and cost a few ounces, which is the way you tend to think of it when you're back-packing. But there hadn't been time to get one for this expedition, unfortunately.
I love gadgets.
I set up camp and left for the village. Perhaps superstitiously, the bed was made according to the ancient Fenian tradition, in three layers; green boughs, green moss, and green rushes. There's no shortage of bogs to provide the latter two items in the North Woods. The food was freeze-dried and sealed so there was no need to hang it from a high limb. A schpritz of skunk aroma from a spray can, non-polluting, added an extra whiff of security.
"Father Dupont, I presume."
He stared at me in disbelief. I was probably the only other white man within fifty miles, a man who had just sauntered into the almost empty village and up to a small log church at one end __and into his life. In the Fall, the families out that far usually disperse to remote hunting and fishing camps, except for the very old.
There was a lean-to against the south side of the building, and the priest was inside, busy putting a few supplies into a cupboard. It was just one room, barely that. Next to the plank door was an old dresser, and a jug of water stood in a basin on top of it. A rope bed with a sack mattress edged along one short wall and two crude stools squatted within the room. But __aside from some open shelves, a bureau, and the cupboard__ that was about it.
Oh yes, a pot-bellied stove stood in the center with its chimney poking through the slanted roof.
The only light in the gloomy dump came from a window next to the cupboard. There was no dining table. He probably ate with the village families in turn, or sitting on one stool and eating off the other. A water-pail and the out-house in back took care of his other needs.
A million dust motes swirled among the dappled sunbeams that angled in, but I could see him well enough. The mid-day's southern exposure sculpted his angular face with charcoal shadows, bringing it into bold relief. It was the smell that was bothering me. The little room had wrestled my nose to the ground with an ungodly mix of wood-smoke, generations of human sweat and the aromatic spruce tips in the mattress. I consider myself good at sniffing pheromones, but there wasn't any sense in even trying that under the circumstances.
The old priest had to be anxious. I'd certainly be anxious if some guy in forest "camo"__ some guy I didn't know from Adam__ with a shotgun pointed in my direction, used my name in vain out in the middle of nowhere. But he said nothing, as if he had been waiting for me, or someone like me.
Maybe he had. Maybe he had been waiting for someone like me for a very long time. I made sure the shotgun didn't stray too far from the good Father's direction __in case he had trusted more to precautions than to Providence.
"Please step away from the cupboard, Father," I warned him, "over there by the church wall."
"Who sent you?" A deep voice, French accent but in English.
I didn't answer him, just looked him over. There was, first and foremost __literally__ a nose. Not just any nose; one with an outline like Gibraltar from the side and so narrow that I could see the sunlight from the window shining through it on the other side. His God had cut him out a mean mouth and a lantern jaw, as well. Then He played a joke on the rest of Dupont's face; the eyes were the softest, warmest looking eyes you'd ever see. Even in the high contrast lighting, they had a golden brown color, reminding me of some breed of dog that people love for their eyes.
-Give me a hand, Grandma-
I had lived with her as a child for a while. A steady stream of country people had come to her for her ability to see the future, for reassurance that there would be one. And not a few Travellers, as well. I guess some of her patter must have rubbed off on me. It's all a fake, of course.
The trouble is it usually works and I don't know why. There's a hint, a bluff, an invitation in my voice; then the smell, the sound, the look of them; whatever. They are the Voices and the Patterns.
"Are you deaf?" he bellowed. "Or, are you dumb? I asked who it was that sent you." His right-hand index finger stabbed at me.
"More than one of them chipped in, Rene Dupont," I said with a knowing smile, "or should I use a different name."
His eyes scorned me. "So, you are nothing but a hired killer, eh? Do it, then, so that I don't have to endure your company any longer."
I smiled again, cruelly. "There may be those who would wish you a quick, clean death, but I'm unacquainted with them. No, 'Priest,' you'll not receive such a death from me, and you'll have to endure far more than my company."
He was frightened as I said those words. I could see it in his eyes. Frightened, but not of me. Frightened of his past, of the fate that he had imagined for so long.
"Think! Think of who hates you so," I prompted him. "Are you so surprised that someone like me would be sent; that no hands but mine would touch your blood?"
"You are not from Hafiz, then." He shook his head emphatically. "A man of honor would have sent his son."
I grunted a little, non-committal, and elaborated. "Only to kill another man of honor. But I seem to remember that he described you as a 'dog.' He couldn't even bring himself to use your name; 'the dog' served his conversation quite well, thank you. Do you have any last message to bark at Hafiz."
"Tell him that I left this world for a better one __like a man, a priest and not a dog. I do not bother to insult him or his children or his ancestors. It would be unnecessary."
"No," I said calmly, regretfully. "I'll have to tell Hafiz, and perhaps even those who would wish you well, that you died like a dog, just as he said you would. That you begged and pleaded that you were innocent. That you cried out for mercy. That you hid behind a woman's skirts and pretended to the last. That you could only whine that you were a simple priest named Rene Dupont, an insignificance, a nothing unworthy of my attention. That you offered to perform unnatural services if I would only let you live. That's what they'll all want to hear, you know."
"NO! You pig," he shouted. "Tell them the truth! That I, Charles Casals, spat in your eye." And he did. He stood taller now, about five foot eight, lean and strong after sixty or so years of deprivation. And he had spit in my eye. That was good, really. There are rules to this kind of thing, I'm afraid, and I wanted to obey them and still intimidate him utterly, right from the start.
The shotgun spun with drill team precision and speed, the stock ramming up past his knees, brushing the insides of his skinny thighs, aimed to crush his testicles with such force that he would be lifted from his feet by the blow and thrown against the cabin wall.
And was held in check.
The priest's face was ashen as he straddled the stock.
With a whirl and a snap, I reversed the gun smartly in a manual-perfect maneuver. The barrel whipped around and came to an abrupt halt under his nose, resting on his upper lip. Pre____SENT____ ARMS! His skin was neither bruised or broken. The shock was not meant to be physical____yet.
The "click" of the safety made him jump, but he did not close his eyes.
I said, "Your courage is amusing, Casals, though damp. May I have the honor of addressing you so? Yes?____No?____No matter. But I'm afraid that I didn't come here to kill you today, or anyone else __unless you force me to in some way. If you lie to me, for example."
So far he was one up on me; afraid, but still defiant. The glare of hostility in his eyes was even more pronounced and the color had returned, at least to his cheeks. Clearly, dazzle was not going to be enough. Too bad for him, really.
Casals snapped out, "I don't need to be patronized by a mercenary, stranger. For what would I need to lie to you, eh? This is my world, this cabin, or another, or another. Shall I tell you that it is a palace and that I am a king?" He gestured at the cupboard, and laughed sardonically. "Here is my last testament: You may take my treasures, my murderer. The rest I leave to the poor."
His laughter did sound like barking. Maybe Hafiz, whoever he is, would have been right. But those eyes looked like a mad dog's now. I let his laughter lay just long enough to disturb him, and then regained the initiative. He could not be allowed to lead for long, unless I required him to provide a rationale for immediate punishment. Then he would be prodded to do so. It's in the book.
"You are assuming that it is you that I care about, Casals. That is very arrogant, you know. I wouldn't care anything about you, even if you were the one who played the cello. No, we will talk of the Farm, of the murders __of the plans that you had foolishly made for the future."
I had moved quite close to him, and my voice and six extra inches were pressing him heavily. The contents of the cupboard were also evident now, pitiful souvenirs of a life that once was; Perrier, Gaulois', Blanc de Blanc, couscous, things like that.
Couscous? Could he be Emil Orlando, as well? But Dupont was only at the Farm every month or two, for a couple of days. No! I let him take the lead now.
He pushed his face as close as he could to mine, with the shotgun prodding his solar plexus. Perhaps because he had not been hurt, he did not believe he would be hurt.
He blared, "You slug, you miserable flic, they will swat you like a fly. Get out of my way, you fool!" Just what I needed.
He tried to brush by me, sure now that I wouldn't shoot him.
The good Father was right, I wouldn't shoot him.
I kicked him in the shins. He had two legs, so I did it again. The old man cried out softly __more of an inhalation, really, and a sob. He collapsed onto his back on the dirt floor and tried to hug his shins in a foetal position, but it was too painful for him. Then he opened his mouth to yell, but the barrel of the twelve-gage took up too much room.
Above the barrel of the gun I said, "Orlando buys you cheaply, 'Priest.' Some mineral water, some couscous. Everything you need to play with yourself and dream of Paris, or Marseille____or is it Algiers?"
His eyes kept no secrets about where his fears originated. The last: Algiers.
"I treated you well, Casals, like a man," I told him. "Yet you would have brushed me aside without courtesy. Why shouldn't I treat you the same way. I don't even have to dirty my own hands __a word to Hafiz, in Algeria. Why not?"
The gun-barrel came slowly out of his mouth and dragged its way down to his groin, allowing him speech again.
He protested, "They would protect me. Hafiz could not touch me."
"On this day __of all days__ old man, you can no longer pretend that is true. Who would protect you? Not Orlando surely. Not when he finds out that you betrayed him."
"My friend would never believe that, you pig." Dupont scowled at me.
I gave him no let-up in the lies. "What of the guard schedules, or the location of the barracks, or the trip wires in the fields? What of the secret purposes of the Farm?"
He waved that thought away. "Anyone from the Farm could have told you those. Not me! Not me! Orlando would never believe it was I."
"Orlando might not, but wasn't it you who told me that there is no Orlando, no Roland, no Lime. There is just an old man now who once was an Algerian gutter rat Jew, named Mansur."
Now he was aghast and cried, "Not me! It wasn't me."
"I'm sure it was you, Charles Casals." I made a pointing gesture at him with the gun. "Just as sure as I am of your name and what you are afraid of. They really know how to hate over there, don't they? And so will Mansur Fishbein, when he finds out you are no longer alone in your knowledge. Who else could have betrayed that name? Those little pay-offs of yours won't comfort you while you're being skinned alive. It's going to be pay-back time for your sins in Algeria, Casals."
"I admit nothing," he cried. "You have no right to do this to me. I am a Canadian citizen. Thirty-five years ago I served in Algeria, so what? I did nothing that any French soldier would not have done, if they had the opportunity. They killed my friends. They raped and slaughtered innocent families, and desecrated the dead. Those filth deserved everything I____" He realized what he was spouting and shut it off at the spigot.
"A spot of torture, Legionnaire? With your boy Mansur as the finger man? Do you think they have forgotten? You know how they felt about the death squads and the "Paras." What do you think they'd do to either one of you? Orlando isn't going to be pleased with you, old boy. Think! THINK!____ But no matter how hard you think, there is no escape. You might as well kill yourself, Casals."
He flared up again. "I am a priest. Address me so."
"Excuse me, 'Father'," I said mockingly. "But you are a corrupt liar, a man who tortured his enemies for the sake of vengeance in a former existence, and one who now takes petty bribes to sell out the people he's pretends to be serving." I prodded him with the gun for emphasis.
"I do what I do for their sake. I ask nothing for myself. I am the only one that they trust. They need me. Please! Let me go," he asked. Asked, not begged.
Indeed, what else did he have to sell, but the trust of the Indians he worked among. Somewhere here, there was huge scam going on. If nothing else could be smelled in this stinking room, the rank smell of corruption could. I kicked him again, twice. In the legs again. -Yes, it was the same place where the boys' legs had been broken-
"Then again," I asked him, "why waste any more of my time on you? Most people wait till they die before they go to Hell, Charles, but you're going to get a little taste of it now. Don't bother saying your prayers. You're going to have plenty of time later, laying around here with your legs broken. When I let Orlando know what you already told me and where you are, he'll take care of the rest. He probably expected a little loyalty for that shit you just put away."
I kicked him again, in the legs and in the stomach. Nothing too damaging, just unbearable for a man at the end of his rope. The old soldier, in his funereal uniform, was crying now. But too much rage buttressed his despair, and he was holding on to something; not yet defeated. It would take another betrayal of his mind to break him. They say the Devil is the 'Father of Lies.' Personally, I think it was my grandfather. But I take after him.
The priest denied my lie. "My friend would never believe it. Never!"
I laughed. "He already does, Casals. Who do you think told me what I know? Who you are? Where to find you? When you'd be here? If I know who you both are and I'm after you and not him, it must be him that sent me, right? Who else? WHO ELSE? YOU GODDAM SHIT. WHO ELSE?"
"No____no____no____" His arms covered his face and head.
Softly now, the invitation.
"I can make it stop, Charles," I offered. "I can make it all go away."
The moment came, while he sobbed in pain, curled up and hugging his head to hide from me. Now was that moment, to chisel in with the wedge. "Orlando's half Algerian, you know, and he's just using you. It wasn't you in Algeria, Charles. It was he, using you to get at his enemies. You were only a soldier, like a gun. Orlando was pointing you to suit himself." Finally Dupont was hearing something that he wanted to hear.
"Yes____ Yes____"
"He betrayed his own people then and he'll betray yours now." My gun tapped him under the jutting jaw, raising his eyes to mine along the endless length of the barrel. "He's already turned on you and he's going to destroy your Indians too, just like he planned. I can stop him. You won't have to worry any more. You'd be safe this time, really safe, without him to worry about. I can kill you, Charles, or I can save you. It's your choice." -But my decision-
He sat up a little against the wall. I couldn't make out his facial expression very well there, but I needed a reason to push him around now. It had to be justified under the deal that I had just implied.
Dupont, or Casals, squirmed higher up on the wall, into the shadows. His voice was exhausted, but the tone was oddly pedantic. "These villagers are frightened, simple people. But they are not Indians. It is important that one treats them as their own people. They are Metis'. For years they lived in the hope of justice from the Law of the Land. Now they know it is only the Law of the white man, against the Indian or the Metis'."
"So how can we save your Metis' from the other __the devil Orlando, the Algerian terrorist. He has secret plans to destroy them, you know. He told me so," I assured him with absolute conviction.
He screamed his despair. "NO! That could not be____"
Now! I grabbed his collar, pulling him up, throwing and kicking him to the center of the floor where I could see his face again. He seemed to weigh nothing then.
"You LIE! DON'T LIE TO ME!!" I was shouting in his right ear.
He cried, "NO! NO! IT'S NOT A LIE. It's not a lie. It's not."
I dragged him to one of the stools. He had soiled himself front and back, but I don't think that he even noticed it.
A few quiet minutes and I whispered, "I'm sorry, Charles, that I lost my temper. But I know Orlando's plans, you see. All you know is what he told you. You'll have to tell me everything that he told you, so I can be sure that you're telling the truth. Then you will be safe. You see?"
He nodded, his eyes still shut.
I walked behind him, ignoring the additional stench. "Tell me your plan, Charles. What they promised. What they wanted. Tell me everything, so I'll know if you're telling the truth."
The remains of a man, sitting in his own excrement, slumped on the stool for a moment, and then sat up straight to speak; quite clearly, actually.
"They called it_____something...." Then his words degenerated into a mumble.
"Who are 'they,' Charles?" I pressed him. "This is only a test, to see if what you think you know is true. We already know much more about them than you do. So, prove to me that you and your village deserve to live, Charles. Who did those liars claim to be?"
He was trying. "When there____is no one around, they think____then they name themselves something."
I pushed harder to pry open the first crack. "And that is? Come on, Charles, it's a simple thing. You know it is."
"They call themselves____'Orphans.' That is how they call themselves, no?"
"Yes, Charles, that is very good." I made noises of approval. "And surely you remember the Plan, don't you. How much do you remember?"
"Just the name, that's all, the name. And about the guns."
Guns? What guns? "I know all about the guns, but how could you know? I don't BELIEVE YOU."
I gripped his match stick arms and shook him till his head flopped back and forth. He couldn't speak, but leaned to the side and threw up on the floor next to himself.
The smell of it was overwhelming on top of all the others and I turned about and stood at the window, looking out. Seeing a towel hanging on a peg, I threw it down at him __my back still turned. "Clean yourself, dog. It's not right that your people see you like this when we shoot you all."
He wept. "No____ Please. Let them live. Let them live, please____please. Don't kill them, dear God no!"
There was the thought that I might feel sorry for the venal little priest if I were different than I am. He surprised me. With all his corruption, he could still think of others.
No matter.
"I may give you one chance, Casals, to save them __to prove to me that you know about the guns. But later. Now tell me what they called it, and there had better be no mistake." The shotgun barrel began to prod him in his narrow chest.
Dupont, or Casals, held his hands over his ears __trying and failing to shut me out. "Wait, no, wait, please," he gasped. "They had a name for it __for what they would do in the name of Louis Riel. They did. Give me a moment, please. Don't hurt me any more, please. I'll die."
Time for a different Voice. I steeled myself to place an arm on his shoulder. He flinched at first but then accepted it. "It's all right now, Charles, I know that you want to help. You can say it now. Tell me what they called it."
"It was_____'Shield,'_____the 'Canadian Shield'." He was relieved to give that up; to reach this plateau. But there would be flare-ups of resistance again, and some of them would be surprisingly stubborn, I was sure.
"That's not the real name, Charles, but it's probably the only one that they would tell someone like you. Go on, now," I urged. "These guns: Tell me what you know of them, and leave nothing out if you wish to live or you want me to save your Metis'."
I glanced down at my watch, in the light from the window.
It had taken less than an hour to start. It took two more days to finish.
You are at Fiction 1, Chapters 3 & 4