The Cardinal Divide Read online

  The CARDINAL DIVIDE

  The CARDINAL DIVIDE

  STEPHEN LEGAULT

  Copyright © 2008 STEPHEN LEGAULT

  All rights reserved. The use of any part of this publication reproduced, transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, recording or otherwise, or stored in a retrieval system, without the prior consent of the publisher is an infringement of the copyright law. In the case of photocopying or other reprographic copying of the material, a licence must be obtained from Access Copyright before proceeding.

  Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in

  Publication

  Legault, Stephen, 1971-

  The Cardinal Divide/Stephen Legault.

  (Nunatak fiction)

  ISBN 978-1-897126-32-5

  I. Title. II. Series.

  PS8623.E46633C37 2008

  C813’.6

  C2008-902313-7

  Editor for the Board: Don Kerr

  Cover and interior design: Natalie Olsen

  Cover image: Stephen Legault

  Author photo: Dan Anthon

  NeWest Press acknowledges the support of the Canada Council for the Arts, the Alberta Foundation for the Arts, and the Edmonton Arts Council for our publishing program. We also acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program (BPIDP).

  #201 8540–109 Street

  Edmonton, Alberta T6G 1E6

  780.432.9427

  newestpress.com

  No bison were harmed in the making of this book. We are committed to protecting the environment and to the responsible use of natural resources. This book is printed on 100% recycled, ancient forest-friendly paper.

  1 2 3 4 5 11 10 09 08

  printed and bound in Canada

  This book is for the future:

  for Rio Bergen and Silas Morgen Legault for Jenn

  The Cardinal Divide is a work of fiction. While the Cardinal Divide is a real place, the Buffalo Anthracite Mine, the town of Oracle, and the characters who populate it are fictional, and any resemblance to actual localities and people is purely coincidental.

  Prologue

  Mike Barnes stood at the window of his fourth-floor office and looked out at the sweep of emerald forest stretching beyond the Buffalo Anthracite Mine’s fenced compound. The last fingertips of daylight tipped the dark spruce and fir forests with light the colour of smouldering embers and then were eclipsed by darkness. Barnes watched for another five minutes as the colour was sucked from the scene before him by the encroaching night. He looked at his watch: it was after nine. He was weary. The day had started early and was ending late, and he still had to drive the long, winding dirt road back to Oracle to his rental house on a hill overlooking town. It would be midnight before he crawled into bed. Alone.

  He craned his neck and looked south into the darkness, beyond the existing mine, toward the Cardinal Divide’s jagged back. In his mind’s eye he saw the reef of stone rising abruptly from the rolling foothills that broke against the implacable wall of the Rocky Mountains. Though the Divide was beyond his line of sight, Mike Barnes knew it was there. Could not forget it was there. So much angst over a hill.

  He stretched and turned from the window, the woods now completely dark, the mountains beyond pale shapes in the darkening sky. Barnes sat down at his desk and tidied up a few papers he had shown to his last guest. He filed them neatly in the hanging files in his desk drawer and cleared away his pens. Except for a portrait of his family, and his Day-Timer, the surface was pleasingly empty. His secretary, Tracey, urged him to track his appointments in Outlook, so she could have easy access to them from her own computer. But while Barnes was not opposed to technology, in fact embraced it, he preferred the old-fashioned full-sized calendar book that could be spread open each morning for a panoramic view of the day. It appealed to his sense of aesthetics and to his nostalgia. Barnes recalled his father’s Day-Timer, how each January he had given Mike the previous year’s to play with. Barnes had spent hours with those Day-Timers, colouring in his father’s doodling that adorned the margins of the book and carrying it around in a worn satchel that he pretended was a briefcase.

  And now, with his computer sitting at Oracle’s only PC repair shop, Mike Barnes was glad for this outdated method.

  Barnes took a deep breath, closed the calendar, and stood to clear away the glasses and water pitcher that sat on the low, round table at the centre of his spacious office. He collected two of the dirty glasses along with the pitcher and placed them on Tracey’s desk. She’d take care of them in the morning.

  Mike Barnes’ final appointment of that long day hadn’t been interested in the glass of water he’d put out for him, though it might have cooled the flames of their heated discussion. Barnes had managed to keep his composure. His final guest had descended into red-faced shouting and livid finger pointing by the end of their two-hour meeting.

  All this over a mine. All this over a chunk of stone called the Cardinal Divide. Barnes shook his head.

  As he passed her desk again, Barnes thought about Tracey. She had taken it hard when he’d called it off between them, but that was necessary. In a week his wife and two children would arrive in Oracle to live with him for the summer. If he wasn’t done this job by the fall they would head back to Toronto on their own. If he finished, the family could head back together.

  It was fun while it lasted with Tracey, and he didn’t relish sleeping alone, but all good things must come to an end.

  He felt the water he’d consumed over the course of the last two-hour marathon meeting sluice in his gut. Time to tap a kidney, then retrieve his things and head for home.

  He made his way down the corridor to the washroom at the far end of the hall, passing now empty offices as he went. When he had arrived six months before, most of these offices had been occupied, but slowly he was seeing to that. The operation was top heavy and he had a job to do. And while it wasn’t unusual for mining operations to lay off administrative staff, after a steady six months of cutbacks, some people inside and outside the operation were obviously getting wise to what Mike Barnes’ true purpose was in Oracle.

  He opened the door to the bathroom and stepped in, flipping on the light as he did. He glanced at himself in the mirror, pushed a hand through his wavy blonde hair, pinched his nose where his wire-rimmed glasses rested, and then stood at a urinal to relieve himself.

  His last two meetings of the night played out in his mind. He was surprised to find that he had actually enjoyed the meeting with Cole Blackwater. It was entertaining to see through Blackwater’s sketchy attempt at covering his environmentalist tracks by pretending to be a reporter. Wonders never cease, he thought. But his last meeting? That left a bad taste in his mouth.

  But what did he expect? The cat was out of the bag.

  He finished and stepped to the sink to wash his hands. Then he turned the water off and pulled a few paper towels from the dispenser to dry his hands. Mike Barnes heard footsteps in the hall. JP, the night watchman, had just made his rounds. Did he forget something? The footsteps stopped outside the door. Mike suddenly felt a chill rush through his body. He stood still, watching the door, and without knowing why, held his breath. When the door to the washroom opened, Barnes let his breath out through his teeth with a hissing sound. He turned back to the mirror and regarded himself as he spoke. “I told you there is nothing more to say on the subject,” he said as he removed a piece of dry skin from the bridge of his nose, stepping back from the mirror. Alberta is dryer than the desert, he thought.

  The blow caught him entirely by surprise. The back of his head exploded with bone-crushing force, sending a thick rope of blood splashing against the bathro
om’s tiled walls. Barnes pitched forward, his forehead connecting with the edge of the wash basin, blood spraying in a fine mist beneath the counter and across the walls. He collapsed in a heap on the floor, his eyes blank and staring into nothing, into a darkness as black as the hole in the earth called the Buffalo Anthracite Mine.

  1

  Cole Blackwater heard the phone ring as he locked the door to his eighth-floor office in Vancouver’s Dominion Building. He stood with his hand on the chrome doorknob worn smooth and glossy with decades of use. The key was still inserted in the door as he listened to one ring, then a second, and a third. He looked at his watch. It was nearly 6:30 PM. Friday.

  He let his head fall forward heavily in a gesture of weariness and stared blankly at his scuffed and dirty black boots.

  The phone rang a fourth time and then stopped. His voicemail would pick up and the caller would hear Mary’s voice ask if they wanted to leave a message. Until two hours ago Mary had been his assistant and sole employee. Now Mary no longer worked for him. He’d had to let her go.

  He stared at his boots, his hand rested lightly on the door handle. He was dreadfully tired. More tired, he thought, than he’d ever been in his life. Whoever was calling could wait until Monday. If Monday came. Cole failed to see how he would make it through the weekend. He had no intention of throwing himself off Lion’s Gate Bridge or hurling himself in front of the B-Line bus on Broadway. It was simply that he could not imagine going on as he was, his only client almost a year behind on payments, no prospects for new work in sight, and a litany of personal problems that would give an advice columnist work for a year. Something had to give.

  He locked the door and slipped his keys into a crowded pocket. On the etched glass window of the door simple black letters read, “Blackwater Strategies.” He turned and walked to the elevator and pushed the “down” button.

  Three years ago he’d signed a lease on this office in the historic Dominion Building and pledged to take the stairs up to his office every morning and down to street level every night. Daily comings and goings, he imagined, would require the use of the elevator – rushing out to a press conference, or dashing to respond to a client’s urgent need. But at least once each day he planned to walk up and down the spiral stairs that climbed dizzily through the centre of the building. He peered over the railing – too short by modern standards – down the five, six, seven, eight stories to the bottom floor and imagined himself inside an M.C. Escher print.

  But that was three years ago. It had been more than a year since he’d last run up those stairs to work in the morning, and probably six months since he’d jogged down them in the evening. It wasn’t because he’d grown too busy to spare the few minutes required for the trip. It was the exact opposite.

  He stood in front of the elevator as it climbed from street level toward the eighth floor. He tried to see himself through to the other side of the weekend, going on as he was. Now without Mary. He sighed heavily, his shoulders hunched forward, his back slouched.

  Of course, there were options available to him. There were always options. He hadn’t fallen so far that he couldn’t claw and scramble his way back out of the hole. But to take advantage of those options meant defeat to Cole Blackwater. And Blackwater did not take defeat – or even retreat – well at all. He had suffered the humiliation of retreat and defeat in the past, and he had sworn never to suffer their indignity again.

  The elevator chimed to signal that its ancient door would soon slide open.

  Then he heard the phone in his office ring again. He must remember to call-forward his office phone to his cellphone now that Mary was gone.

  The phone rang again. Intuitively he guessed that it must be the same caller that had rung a few minutes ago. He looked at the elevator door open in front of him and his body shifted toward it.

  The phone rang again.

  The elevator waited.

  Blackwater muttered under his breath. He turned away from the elevator and walked quickly toward his office door, his right hand searching in his pocket for his keys.

  He reached the door in time to hear the phone ring a fourth time. He rummaged in his pocket, grumbled under his breath, and finally resorted to pulling the pocket’s entire contents out in his fist. Loose change, receipts, two shopping lists, a to-do list, SkyTrain receipts, gum wrappers, and an alarming amount of pocket lint came forth, along with a heavy ring of keys. Coins and wads of paper fell to the ground – one coin rolled toward the open banister that surrounded the spiral staircase and rolled over the precipice – while Blackwater found the right key and forced it into the lock. The door opened. The phone stopped ringing.

  “Sweet Jesus,” Blackwater grumbled, looking at the phone on Mary’s reception desk, and then chided himself because he’d promised Sarah that he would watch his language.

  The red light blinked, indicating at least one message. He closed the door behind him, ignoring the pocket detritus on the floor, and stepped into the office.

  Immediately he felt sad. For the last three years Cole Black-water had occupied this space, and for nearly two of those years, Mary Patterson had been there with him. Most often she was there when he arrived in the morning, and most evenings she was there when he left. She had been stalwart in her service, and dignified that very afternoon when he had told her that there simply wasn’t any money left to pay for her services, regardless of how underpaid she was, and for how few days of the week she accepted pay.

  Mary Patterson, of course, knew this. She had known it before Blackwater himself. After all, Mary kept the books for this two-person shop, and had more financial sense in her little toe than Blackwater had in his whole, ever-increasing-in-size torso. Months ago she had presented him with a financial forecast that predicted dark days ahead unless their fortunes should change. Two months ago Blackwater cut his own salary in half, and Mary trimmed her work week to three days. Last month Blackwater didn’t write himself a cheque. Finally, on the last working day of April, he told Mary that he simply could not pay her for May.

  Mary smiled her sweet smile and said that it was OK. Then she said she would call him next week to check in and see how things were progressing. He saw in her eyes no malice or ill will, just the same kindness and resolute confidence she radiated when he interviewed her for the position of Executive Assistant. Like most of the women in Cole’s life, he had done nothing to deserve her kindness or loyalty. And like all the women in his life except one, he’d finally lost her.

  He sat down behind her desk in the high-ceilinged room that formed the reception area and lunch room of his two-room office. The telephone’s red light flashed and Cole decided to wait a minute or two so that the caller, whoever it was, would have time to leave a message before he dialled into the voicemail service to retrieve it.

  He looked around the space. The clear light of April filtered through the tall windows on the western wall. He had chosen the office not just for the lovely staircase, but for the deep sense of history that the Dominion Building radiated. Once the tallest building in the British Empire, its copper roof and irregular shape, along with its central location on the edge of Vancouver’s Gas-town, made it a regional landmark. The social and environmental justice organizations housed in it had dubbed it the Tower of Lost Causes, just as 1 Nicholas Street, his former office in Ottawa, had been known as The Green Building.

  The whitewashed walls of this outer office were tastefully decorated with framed prints and posters of west coast landscapes and environmental campaigns. A large potted fern occupied one corner, and a used but well-maintained loveseat and club chair another. It was all in perfect order, clean and tidy.

  His own office, however, suffered the same lack of order that afflicted his pants’ pockets.

  Blackwater leaned back in the office chair behind Mary’s empty desk, sighed heavily, leaned an elbow on the desk, and looked at the phone. Maybe he should go and she should stay? It almost made sense to lay off the boss. Mary Patterson had lear
ned a lot in the two years they worked together, and more often than not he sought and valued her advice on his few remaining projects. But he hadn’t taken on a new client in months. Blackwater’s one remaining client, a small First Nations band council from the north end of Vancouver Island who looked to him for advice on how to stop the spread of salmon farms, hadn’t paid him in a year. He’d stopped asking. He knew it was bad business, but they were good friends, and so he continued to help where he could. They had their own troubles.

  I wonder if there are any things I do, Blackwater thought cynically, that Mary cannot?

  He picked the phone from its cradle and dialled *98 and then, without listening, punched in his four-digit pass code and pressed 1 for new messages. Two messages waited.

  He listened. “Hi, this is a message for Cole Blackwater. It’s Peggy McSorlie calling. From Oracle, Alberta. I don’t know if you remember me, but we worked together on a Jasper Park issue when you were still in Ottawa. That was a while ago. Anyway, the reason that I’m calling is that the group I’m working with now, we’re called the East Slope Conservation Group, could really use some help with a big issue that’s popped up with the local mine here in Oracle. It’s the Cardinal Divide, Cole. They want to dig a mine right below it and we need help figuring out how to stop them. I understand that you do that sort of work and we’d like to talk with you about it. Could you give me a call tonight? I’m tied up most of the weekend, so please call this evening if you can. Thanks, Cole. Hope to hear from you soon.” Cole jotted down the number that she finished the message with.

  He used the speaker phone so he could jot a few notes on a scrap of paper from Mary’s recycling bin. He was about to hang up and quickly call Peggy McSorlie back, but decided to hear the second message.

  “Hi Cole, it’s Peggy again. Listen, I have to run out to pick up the kids at basketball, and then we’re going to get some dinner in town. Pick up some groceries. I’ll be home around ten Alberta time, I guess that’s nine yours. I hope to talk to you then.” She left her number again.