April Fool Read online

  No one is around–Margaret is at one of her interminable Save Gwendolyn meetings–so he’s unembarrassed to rasp, to no recognizable tune, the song of Autolycus: “April, the sweet o’ the year, when the merry daffodils appear.” He mangles the verse. His memory has begun to wear at the edges, like his coveralls. There was a time when he could trumpet, even when in his cups, in that former wasted life, the entire madrigal.

  He lays down his trowel, straightens, his back creaking like a rusting gate. Is it the somnolent country life that brings on this decay? Yet he is only sixty-eight. Doc Dooley, who holds the secret of Arthur’s high cholesterol and balky heart, is eighty-five and runs in the Garibaldi Island marathon. Run, jog, walk, he orders, and if you can do little else, wobble.

  He closes the garden gate, washes his hands by the tap behind his country house–two storeys, 1920s gingerbread–and contemplates playing hooky with rod and reel. Below the house, where mown grass gives way to white-scrubbed drift logs and the rippled wash of Blunder Bay, his outboard beckons from his sagging dock.

  But no, he must hike, must stay faithful to Doc Dooley’s regimen, a mile and a quarter up Potter’s Road and down Centre Road to Hopeless Bay, to load his rucksack with mail, skim milk, olive oil, and…what else was on Margaret’s list? Three tomatoes and two lemons. No need to write everything down.

  She is keeping him on a strict diet. She blames herself for the minor stroke he suffered two years ago, attributing it to her over-bounteous table. “Eat light, Beauchamp, and avoid fats,” said Doc Dooley.

  He skirts the upper pasture to look for holes in the cedar fence. Occasionally, and by no evident means, the goats escape under, over, or through it–wise locals drive carefully along Potter’s Road. Some thirty kids are expected at Blunder Bay Farm–Margaret has a way of knowing these things–so it will be a busy month. Other residents include chickens, geese, a horse called Barney, Slappy the dog, and a pair of cats named Shiftless and Underfoot.

  The path descends to an alder bottom, then rises to a dry fir forest before joining the road. He is puffing a little, his nostrils filled with the soft scents of a pleasant spring day.

  Avoid stress. Another of Doc Dooley’s prescriptions. Isn’t that why he fled to Garibaldi Island? To escape the city’s ferment, the law’s wounding duels? He was fat and foundering, lonely and ill, about to be divorced by a faithless wife. Arthur is a farmer now, he hasn’t seen the inside of a courtroom for half a dozen years. Life has taken on a rosier hue since he fell in love with Garibaldi Island, then, just as quickly, with his neighbour, Margaret Blake, organic farmer, environmental activist.

  She gave him eyes to see nature’s artistry after six decades of city blindness, when gazing at concrete, not conifers, at shop windows, not still ponds, seemed the natural way of humankind. Arthur’s milieu was more conservative than conservationist. “Let’s save this environment,” a fellow member of the Confederation Club once chortled.

  But rural life comes with its cracks and stains. For one, he didn’t anticipate living with Margaret would be so hectic. For three of their five years together, she served as Garibaldi’s elected trustee, volatile, disputatious, scaring people with her gingery tongue. Now her ire is focused on the proposed development at Gwendolyn Bay, its threatened deforestation. On that issue, this is an island divided. Friendships have been broken in heated debate at permit hearings. Locals driving by still wave, but many no longer smile.

  Arthur’s annual pursuit of tomatoes, carrots, and cabbage has kindled in him a love of green and growing things, refreshed each spring with the new life about him. He supposes he’s an environmentalist, but sees it as a lost cause, the earth warming, overpopulating, racing toward one of those messy epochal crossroads, maybe another mass extinction. Arthur would rather not think about this. He imagines there’s not much one can do about it. There’s no one to take to court. The whole thing lacks the sweet simplicity of a murder trial, a clean verdict at the end, freedom or punishment.

  He sees two more houses being framed on Centre Road, view sites snapped up by weekenders from the city, the island changing too quickly, its population doubling in six years. The loudest supporters of the Gwendolyn development are these new people, who want “progress” and “conveniences,” who lug to the country as much of the city as they can, SUVs and gas barbecues and lawn mowers. Arthur has to forgive them. He too was a newcomer, he didn’t understand rural things–though he had a sense there was more to life than starting off the day in a crowded elevator at parking level five.

  He suspects it’s unfair to deny others the right to live here, to pull up the drawbridge. He doesn’t know how anyway, it’s beyond him, it’s politics. Arthur is not a political person, not a joiner. Alcoholics Anonymous on Tuesdays, Tai Chi irregularly on Thursdays, bit roles with the Garibaldi Players, that’s his limited social docket. He leaves high matters of state to Margaret, who is a member of some twenty groups, Farmers’ Institute, Garibaldi Protection Society, Library Board, Parks Commission, Field Naturalists…When does she stop?

  Across the road, just past the ferry turnoff, a pixie is hitchhiking–it’s the third time he’s seen her in the last several days–olive-skinned, big mischievous eyes, wide mouth, a classic beauty. A different kind of newcomer, a hippie, the kind you see at demonstrations. Spiked hair. Denim jacket with peace symbols and a Cuban flag. A smile and a wave, which he tentatively answers, a tip of his hand to his John Deere cap.

  As he chuffs up the rise below Breadloaf Hill, he sees about thirty vehicles parked by the community hall. The Save Gwendolyn Society. He thinks he hears Margaret’s voice exhorting action. Yes, there is her aging spaniel, Slappy, listening at the door, ears perked. Arthur hopes no one will see him slip past, he doesn’t want to be dragged in there. He doesn’t even want to think about Gwendolyn Valley. There’s nothing these people can do about saving it.

  Todd Clearihue, the boyish ever-smiling developer, speeds by in his Audi convertible, honks, waves. Beside him is the pixie. She waves too. Clearihue is the president of Garibaldi Lands Inc., which has title to Gwendolyn Valley. Margaret calls him a sociopath.

  Coming into view, where the road descends to the docks of Hopeless Bay, is the General Store, circa 1904, paint peeling from the boards of its high-windowed false front. A flatbed pulls away, three men in the cab with takeout coffees, and as they pass by, Arthur reads the logo: Gulf Sustainable Logging. They are strangers and do not wave. Maybe they were offended by the notice posted by the door: “Chainsaws must be left in your truck. We are not responsible.”

  The store (Abraham Makepeace, proprietor) connects to a warehouse on piles, and groans within of groceries, tools, and the various odds and sods that support civilization on this cranky island. It also serves as post office (Abraham Makepeace, postmaster), coffee lounge, and, ever since the Brig Tavern burned down, illegal source of spirits (Abraham Makepeace, bootlegger).

  Staring out the windows of the enclosed porch are several local idlers in their tractor caps, work shirts, and patched jeans. The porch serves as a lounge, chairs in haphazard array around a wood-fired Jøtul, coffee in the pot, an honour jar heavy with dollar coins. Arthur exchanges greetings, obligatory remarks on the weather, and steps up to the mail counter.

  Makepeace, tall, skeletal, the face of a depressive bloodhound, is slow to hand him the mail, a final possessive inspection of letters and magazines. “Your subscription to this here London Review of Books is due. Bill from the vet. An offer from a phone company, they want to give us the Internet on local calls. They say we can’t live without it.”

  “Who says?”

  “Well, practically everyone.”

  “I have lived sixty-eight years without it.”

  Makepeace too has been slow to catch up to the electronic revolution, last year buying his first fax machine, a dollar a page to send or receive. But he’s debt-ridden from tabs unpaid. He is fatalistic about the Gwendolyn development, which will include an efficient store, with chrome and fluo
rescent lighting and grocery buggies. A beer-and-wine outlet, a restaurant and bar, a real-estate office.

  Makepeace pulls the island weekly, The Bleat, from Arthur’s mail slot and folds it open to the letters page. “Guess you want to read Margaret’s latest.” Arthur pats his pockets for his reading glasses, he remembered to bring them.

  “‘Pirates,’ she calls them.” This is Baldy Johansson, the terminally unemployed electrician, who has got up for a refill. “That ain’t so bad, but ‘ecological Nazis’–ain’t that carrying it too far? Can’t they charge her for slander, Arthur?”

  Arthur must regularly parry such elusive questions of law, has found ways to divert them. “There’s no law against hyperbole.” Arthur can tell no one quite understands that word.

  The Bleat, renamed from The Echo as a salute to the island’s many sheep farmers, causes Arthur anxiety when it appears, usually about midweek. Its editor seems not to have heard of the laws of libel, and makes no effort to restrain his most regular correspondent. This latest letter of Margaret’s seems inflammatory to excess, “environmental wrecking crew” being the epithet most softly put. She has already been warned by Garibaldi Lands Inc. (locally known as Garlinc) that “remedial” action might be taken. The horrors of a defamation trial.

  “That there wife of yours is pissing in the wind,” says Ernie Priposki, the alcoholic farmhand. “They own the land, they can do what they want with it, ain’t that the law, Arthur?”

  “People have rights in this fair and democratic land. Trees do not.”

  “Can’t stop progress.”

  Arthur pours himself a coffee, turns to the front page, the main story, under the byline of Nelson Forbish, publisher, editor, and entire workforce. “It is rumoured that logging of Gwendolyn Bay is to begin this week, which has caused foment on our beautiful island.”

  A smiling photograph of Todd Clearihue (lately seen zooming by with the hitching pixie) in close embrace with Island Trustee Kurt Zoller, who is brandishing a cheque. “Garlinc boss donates $300,000 for new fire truck.”

  “You got to look on the good side,” Priposki says. “It means jobs, there’s a lot of guys out of work on this rock. Garlinc ain’t doing a clear-cut, they’re going to leave some trees, people want their lots to be nice. I’ll have another little hit.”

  Makepeace brings out a bagged bottle, pours a dollop of rum into Priposki’s coffee. “Not you, Arthur, I suppose.”

  “Thank you, no.” He catches a whiff of alcohol and tenses.

  “Blame the government,” says Jeff “Gomer” Goulet, the crab fisher. “They could’ve made it a park.”

  Garlinc paid $8 million for Gwendolyn Valley, an estate sale, the land sold too quickly, before anyone could object. Margaret organized petitions, besieged Ottawa to add Gwendolyn Valley to the scatter of lands composing the Gulf Islands National Park. All to nought.

  “No government’s got no business seizing nobody’s private land.” A heroic triple negative from Baldy Johansson. “We got rights, don’t we, Arthur?”

  “I didn’t know you owned land, Baldy.”

  “Well, if I did.”

  Arthur buys a two-day-old Vancouver Sun, sits down with his coffee, spreads the front page open. Immediately a story catches his eye: “CROWN SEEKS PSYCH HEARING FOR RAPE-MURDER SUSPECT.” Below that, a related article: “FRIENDS MOURN DEATH OF DR. WINTERS.” Her photograph, blond, smiling, attractive. But it’s another photo that holds him, a forlorn face in a police cruiser.

  Nick the Owl Faloon. How could this be? Arthur dares not count the times he defended this mannerly rascal, and a deep sadness comes. He doesn’t want to read further, not now, so he quickly finishes his coffee and makes his purchases.

  He decides to return home by the Gwendolyn Bluffs, though that means a long detour, at least another hour. But it might be the last time he will see this valley clothed in green. They plan a hundred and fifty lots with, according to the glossy handout, “driveways, power, cable, sewer, and water in.” There will be a resort, shoreline condos. To attract city commuters, a hovercraft service.

  Though the trail to Gwendolyn Bay crosses private land, the owners, the Sproules, are well-regarded old-timers who resist the blandishments of the fly-by-night loggers who infest these islands. They allow Garibaldians to use it, but the secret is kept from uncountrified visitors who tend to leave gates open or tramp on the chocolate lilies. The path also provides clandestine entry into upper Gwendolyn Valley, its lovely pond.

  Arthur feels winded but in no distress as he climbs from sheep pastures into dense cedar forest, to a mossy mesa with thick-waisted Douglas firs, a swirling ballet of green-leafed arbutus, groves of Garry oaks, twisted and fat of bud. Below, through gaps, can be seen the rocky beach and the strait, and beyond, the perilously close shores of vast, busy Vancouver Island.

  As he nears the Garlinc property–ill-protected by rusting fence wire–he hears a distant hammering, and wonders if a crew is already working on the road access. The valley is guarded on either side by high rock faces, and the only opening, known as Gwendolyn Gap, or just the Gap, is too narrow for a road. But the developers have been given a blasting permit. Arthur shudders, recoils from the ugliness of it, of man and his machines and his explosive devices.

  He exerts himself over one last rise, takes in a soul-shuddering view of valley, sea, and distant snow-coned mountains, and realizes he has forgotten to buy lemons. What causes this Lethean forgetfulness? Maybe it’s the bizarre murder charge against Nick Faloon, churning darkly in his mind.

  He sits on the grass against a boulder, a cautious twenty feet from the lip of the precipice above the Gap. He pulls out the newspaper and his glasses and his old Peterson bent, and as he stuffs it with tobacco, he looks down upon Gwendolyn Pond at the buffleheads and mallards gliding among the water lilies. He is overcome by a feeling of helplessness.

  Living in the country, living with Margaret, has connected him with the earth in ways that remain elusive, made him aware that an ancient, more beautiful time is gone. Forever, he fears. He can’t see the Save Gwendolyn Society preserving even this tiny speck of the planet.

  “Don’t get yourself tangled in politics on this crazy island, Beauchamp,” Doc Dooley counselled. “It’s an invitation to the grave.”

  Arthur lights up, reads a précis of events in a sleepy outport four days ago–dubbed by the press the April Fool’s Day murder. Several sports fishers robbed, Dr. Winters raped, choked to death on her own underwear. He had heard nothing on the radio, but it is regularly tuned to classical music. He won’t have a television set.

  The victim of this slaying is “a well-known psychologist and relationship therapist” whom he vaguely remembers smiling at him from the newspapers, a syndicated column, Doctor Eve. Indeed, he admits to having furtively read her advice. She was no pseudo-expert in the manner of Ann Landers, held a Ph.D. in counselling psychology.

  “Nicholas Faloon, 54, proprietor of a local inn, was arrested while attempting to flee the area dressed as a woman.” This seems a Faloonish touch. He insisted, on being arraigned, that his name was Gertrude Heeredam, and demanded a Dutch interpreter. Thus the psychiatric assessment.

  It is inconceivable that Faloon will pull this off. Has he not got a lawyer? Arthur wonders if he should urge a friend to take on his case, someone competent, experienced.

  He looks away from the newspaper, listens again to the sound of hammering. Probably a woodpecker. Clouds, wet and gloomy, are rolling in. A kingfisher chatters by the pond. Two bald eagles make lazy loops above him, then one sails toward a perch on a Douglas fir. He makes out a clump of twigs there: an old nest.

  He returns to his newspaper. “Sources say Faloon is known to the police.” That seems an understatement. Faloon is a kleptomaniac who, in brave acceptance of his disability, put his compulsion to profitable use from an early age. Arthur first acted for him in a juvenile case involving a missing box of rare comic books.

  Faloon’s last trial, the rape, still
causes acid to burn in Arthur’s gut, the low point of his courtroom career, the only wrongful conviction to besmirch his forty-year record. Ten years for a sexual assault Faloon did not commit. Arthur invariably rejected consent rape defences, the defendant often a brute, the woman twice victimized. But this mild-mannered thief would be as likely to attack a woman as a pumpkin to sprout wings and fly.

  Arthur still takes on the burden of the failed defence, excoriates himself. He didn’t penetrate the armour of the complainant, Adeline Angella, an attention-seeking magazine writer who tearfully described to a jury how an interview with a celebrated jewel thief evolved into a rape extorted by a knife to her throat.

  Angella sent out a plea to Women Against Violence to fill the court. Who in that hostile arena was going to believe that Nick Faloon succumbed to Angella’s lure? Arthur wasn’t able to put a firm finger on her motive for making a false complaint. Publicity? Profit? After the trial and appeal, her blunt account of her courtroom ordeal appeared in a major women’s monthly.

  The article in the Sun quotes Staff Sergeant Jasper Flynn: “The theory we’re working on is the victim met her fate after resisting an intruder intent on robbing her.” “Met her fate”–a shy euphemism from a veteran cop. He declined to say whether anything was stolen from her. How absurd to think Faloon would engineer a lucrative robbery of hotel rooms, then compromise his success by targeting, in the dead of night, a visiting psychologist. But that seems the official view.

  Surely, he’s again a victim of circumstances, of coincidence, a man in the wrong place at the worst of possible times, an obvious target. The police zeroed in on him, ignoring other possibilities. An act of rape is alleged, so there is likely to be DNA from the attacker’s semen–the test results surely will exonerate poor Nick.