He asked, “How did it go with the old farts on Saltspring?” She’d been at a glad-handing session, the Pioneers Club.
“Arthur, I don’t think it suits you, of all people, to use that expression. Old-timers are respected. They deliver votes.”
“Is it fair to campaign when you’re not yet nominated? What if someone decides at the last minute to contest?”
“I don’t think it’s in the cards.”
“Not a healthy sign for your political party, this lack of choice. Undemocratic somehow. Odd there isn’t some young crackerjack willing to test himself against the old guard.”
“Old guard!” A scoffing laugh.
“My dear, your Green Party has an establishment. You are part of it.”
“Oh, sure, the Green machine.” She was enjoying politics, knew she excelled at it, her grin gave proof she was even vain about it. Had the infection begun? The creeping corruption? Sadly, her party still barely showed in the polls, a mere sixteen per cent.
Underfoot, the fat tabby, was on his lap, chewing his belt, some kind of rare leather deficiency. He pushed him off. “I hope we’re to have a quiet evening together finally.”
“I’m not going out, if that’s what you mean. I’ll be on the phone a lot.” Somehow, Arthur didn’t like the sound of that. “Wash up so we can watch the six o’clock news.” He didn’t like the sound of that either.
After showering, he transferred Nick’s baggie into his fresh pants. The prospect of disciplining the boy repelled him, but there must be consequences. Confiscate the iPod. Cut off access to the Internet. Force him to read Dickens. Arthur ought not to delay the matter, he’d tackle him this evening. It was hard being a grandparent.
Rejoining Margaret, Arthur lowered himself into his club chair, face to face with the cyclopean monster. He’d resigned himself to it, a new thirty-inch TV, apparently an essential tool for the aspiring politician. Complete with the mysterious usages and workings of a DVD recorder.
He grumped loudly through the six o’clock commercials. A diabolical intrusion, this machine. Mind-numbing pap for the docile masses. He’d come to Garibaldi for peace and quiet.
“Then be quiet.”
Underfoot was back on his lap, and his brother, Shiftless, was going up his pant leg. They may have sensed he needed love.
“Good evening. There’ll be a by-election in Cowichan and the Islands on Tuesday, February 26. That word came down today from…”
That’s all Arthur bothered to listen to. He looked up at Margaret, standing beside his chair, looking very intense and white in the television’s glow. This is the news she wanted them to share, the starting pistol has fired. Arthur had visions of mindless sign-wavers covered in badges, staged photo ops, babies thrust at candidates. Worst would be the innuendos, the mudslinging, private lives stripped bare. But he shook off the cats, moved behind her, and encircled his arms about her waist. “In case there are lingering doubts, I’m behind you. All the way.”
The phone was ringing. “Don’t answer.” She squeezed his hands and pressed him back into his chair. “Look.”
A political analyst. “Well, Jim, all three major parties now have candidates in the field, and the Green Party, with its typically late start, is expected to go with former island trustee Margaret Blake-”
“Who is credited with bringing about a new national park in that riding.”
“Yes, Jim, with her standoff against developers.”
Fifteen seconds of free advertising for Margaret Blake. The other candidates didn’t fare so well, a sentence each.
Both cats were on his lap, licking, getting his slacks wet with their saliva. But a graver matter was at hand: Nick had come in and was searching through his day pack, frowning. “Anyone seen the catnip I got for Underfoot and Shitless?”
“Shiftless, dear,” Margaret said. “I suspect it’s in Arthur’s right pants pocket.”
Arthur fished it out, tossed it over, wordless in his embarrassment-he had no idea what to say without seeming even more foolish. Margaret laughed quietly as she got up to a ringing phone.
On a hazy, rainless morning a few days later, Arthur found himself at the terminus of his health walk, the general store, getting the usual silent reception in the lounge-the latest tactic of the Cud Brown Defence Coalition.
That organization had started off as a small local body, but somehow it had taken a leap over the Salish Sea to the Mainland. Now there were chapters. Literary groups, artists, workers. Cud’s old union, the Steelworkers. Bloggers (whatever they were) had taken up his cause, conspiracy theories were floating around the brave new world of the Internet. There was a sense that this working-class poet had been railroaded by the rich.
At least Cud had stopped pestering-he was on a reading tour of hinterland libraries.
Arthur strode guiltily past the school where he’d missed too many of AA’s bi-weekly Tuesdays, past the turnoff to Breadloaf Hill, where lay the ashes of the community hall. Only fifty thousand pledged to date, the rebuilding drive was going slowly. Here was the Shewfelts’ roof, still tenanted by Santa and his reindeer two weeks into the New Year. Rudolph had weathered last week’s storm poorly, had buckled to his knees, his nose hanging by a wire.
Arthur had trained islanders not to offer him rides during his daily hike, and for a split second he wasn’t bothered that Stoney drove out of his driveway and past him, eyes fixed ahead, as if deliberately not seeing him. It struck him there was something wrong with this picture, and he waved and hollered.
Stoney must have been watching his rear-view because he braked with a seemingly grudging effort and pulled over to the shoulder. The Fargo had been repainted a garish yellow as if in a clumsy effort to disguise it. Arthur took a minute to catch up-too long, time enough for the culprit to come up with a story.
“Hey, I was gonna call to say your truck is ready, but I been away. Pretty late for your daily walk, ain’t it? You change your schedule? Yeah, I was just breaking in your new trannie. Not part of my regular service, but for my best customers, I go the extra mile.”
“You have gone your last mile behind the wheel of this truck. Slide over.”
Arthur pushed his way in, removed the view-blocking sign from the inner windshield. “Rent me,” with the Loco Motion phone number. “How long has this truck been in service?”
“Just a brief little while, honest.”
Arthur reached over to the glove compartment, fished out some recent ferry receipts. The Fargo had been on the Mainland for a week.
Confronted with the evidence, Stoney said, “I was gonna surprise you with it, but I may as well tell you the astounding news. This here pickup is going to be in a big Hollywood production they were doing in Vancouver, kind of set in the 1970s, a period piece. They put zero point three miles on it. I’m gonna give you your cut as soon as the cheque clears.”
Stoney knew he could keep Arthur from erupting by rattling on, and did so until they pulled up at the general store. “Maybe I could take it out in trade. Dog and me, what do you say we come by and pour a base for that statue you got, Icterus.”
“Icarus.”
“Only charge you for materials. A bit of cement. Otherwise it’s our thank-you for all you’ve done for our community. By the way, ain’t gonna see me joining them braying hyenas who think you let Cud down. That’s your entire own decision. I’d be suspicious too if my wife was up in a treehouse with a guy like him, though I don’t got a wife.”
Arthur pocketed the ignition key before entering the store. The gang in the lounge greeted him with loud silence. Makepeace didn’t look at him, handed over his letters without deigning to enlighten him as to their contents.
It seemed hypocritical of these locals to accord the status of persecuted hero to a reckless loudmouth who’d caused marriages to break up, who’d bedded a host of the island’s wives and its every willing maiden. Felicity Jones was his main squeeze these days, the greeting card poet. Her mother, the only islander encouraging him not to represent Cud, was enraged that Felicity had joined him on his reading tour. According to oft-repeated rumour, Tabatha had had her own fling with Cud.