Early Sunday afternoon I unlocked my front door and stepped into the living room. The television was on, but muted - frantic game show contestants were cheering in blessed silence. A pizza box sprawled greasily on the low coffee table, guarded by beer bottles standing like sentinels at the grave. A couple of houseflies crawled on the remains - two cold, varnished-looking triangles pocked with olives and a pile of crusts. The hair on my neck stood up. Thank God there were only two. Discarded newspapers lay scattered on the scarred wooden floor.
My brother lay on the couch. Zachary had covered himself with an ancient and ugly crocheted afghan and was raucously sleeping – loud snores and snorts emitted from his wide-open mouth. One arm was flung over his head, revealing a hole in the armpit of his once white T-shirt.
"Zach,” I said. “Hey, Zach, I’m home.” I dropped my gear in the narrow hallway made by the back of the couch and the wall of the living room, then leaned over and shook his shoulder. I said loudly, “Zachary Brandt, get up and clean my house.”
He gave out an especially violent snort, opened his eyes and pulled himself up onto his elbows. “Jeez, June, what’s your problem?”
I smiled grimly. “Get your ass off that couch and clean up this mess. I’m gone a couple of days and you forget to tidy up after yourself?”
Zach swung his feet to the floor and dug the heels of his hands into his eye sockets. “Get off my back.”
“I’m going to have a shower. Get a move on.”
Stepping under the heated spray was utterly sensuous. I lathered, rinsed and scrubbed until the exertions and privations of the last few days gurgled down the drain.
I twisted off the taps and slid the shower curtain aside on its rattling hooks. The small bathroom was filled with warm mist, and I had to rub the mirror clean before I could see into it. Bending at the waist, I wrapped my long hair in a towel, then briskly dried my body, slipped into a terry cloth bathrobe, and went to see how Zach was doing.
The pizza box and beer bottles had disappeared, but a corner of the comic page peeked out from where it had been scrunched under the couch. A door slammed, and I followed the sound into the kitchen. Bowls towered precariously in the sink, bolstered by glasses stacked in awkward looking columns.
Zach came in through the back door and noticed my gaze. “I know, I know,” he said sullenly. “I’ll get to it.”
“Now,” I said.
“Yeah, whatever.”
I sighed and left him. In my own room, I dressed quickly in denim shorts and red T-shirt, then spent a few minutes unpacking my rucksack.
When I returned to the kitchen, Zach was up to his elbows in suds. “I’m heading out,” I said. “I’ve got a meeting.”
He grunted. I left.
“June!” A tall woman with a rope of braided red hair stood up and waved as I stepped through the doorway. “Come, sit over here!”
About a dozen men and women were scattered around the room. One lanky young man wearing a Sherpa-style toque was pinning an anti-poaching poster to the bulletin board. On the blackboard in front of the room the title “RiverForce” headed a list of agenda items. A slightly pudgy young man, fussily dressed in collar and tie and khaki walking shorts, was fidgeting with some papers on the podium. Weaving my way through the ranks of chairs, I sat down next to the red headed woman. She leaned over confidentially. “I’m so glad you came,” she said softly. “Now you’re here we can poke fun at Thomas.”
The man behind the podium smoothed back his fine, blonde hair awkwardly, using his wrists instead of his palms. “We will not poke fun at anyone,” I said. “Thomas is doing his best, and we shouldn’t laugh at him.”
“Oh, pooh.” Tabitha Scala waved off that sentiment with one long-fingered, be-ringed hand.
“I thought Richard was coming.”
“Of course he is,” replied Tabitha. “Why else would I be here? But Thomas said he called to warn he might be late, and said to start without him. So we’re stuck with Tubby Tom, at least for a bit.”
Tabitha Scala was dressed in her usual costume of long, flowing caftan and open-toed canvas sandals, with a colourful headscarf tied at the nape of her neck. Multitudinous beaded necklaces twined around her slender neck and dozens of thin silver bracelets clinked and tinkled on her thin wrists.“Thank God,” she said, nodding at the podium, “he’s finally quit fidgeting. Let’s get this show on the road.”
Thomas knocked briskly on the rostrum’s wooden surface. “All right, everyone. If you could please take a seat, we’ll get started.”
The others slumped into chairs. It was a sparse crowd tonight, and three times as many chairs had been set out as were needed. It would have been better, I thought, to have put out too few chairs and bring in more only if necessary.
Thomas began by requesting volunteers to make a motion and to second the agenda. Two hands were lackadaisically raised, and he made note of the names. Tabitha whispered caustic comments in my ear as he reviewed the minutes from last meeting. People started fidgeting.
The door flung open, and Richard Fleetham strode into the room.
“Oh, goody,” sighed Tabitha.
“Hello, everyone! Sorry I’m late.” He walked briskly down the centre aisle and slapped Thomas on the shoulder. “So, where are we?”
Everyone sat up straight. You could feel the energy begin to flow. It wasn’t only his vigourous speech that enlivened the group. Everything about Richard Fleetham seemed coiled and ready. He was constantly in motion – snapping his fingers, tapping his feet. Even his thick black hair, tightly curled and springy, seemed infused with vitality. He often scrubbed his fingers through it as though he could comb ideas and thoughts out of his brain. Bushy eyebrows grew forcefully above snapping green eyes, and he sported a luxuriant beard that he kept ruthlessly trimmed into a smart goatee.
“We were just going to begin discussing the government’s new hunting regulations,” said Thomas, stepping away from the podium as Richard leaned in towards him.
“Excellent, excellent,” Richard said, rubbing his hands together delightedly.
RiverForce Environmental Group consisted mostly of students like myself – Natural Resource undergrads at the University of Northern British Columbia – and a few concerned residents such as Tabitha. I had joined a couple of years ago, and it hadn’t taken me long to see that the group suffered from good intentions without a guiding focus. Our main goal – if we could be said to have one – was to alert residents to the signs of poaching, and to let them know what to do if they discovered such evidence. Most of my time had been spent along with the others at various trade shows and exhibitions, manning information booths. But all that seemed to be changing, now Richard Fleetham, a new instructor at the university, had become our Faculty Advisor.
Fleetham had a way of using just the right tone and words to inspire his listeners, without appearing arrogant or condescending. And while he preached strongly against poaching and other, more controversial issues, he never appeared militant or fanatical. He was always willing to hear the other side of the story, and usually found a way to diffuse any contentious situation. He was no more than average height and his head was slightly larger in proportion to his body. Even though he’d only been in Prince George a few months, he was already a known face due to his appearances on local talk shows. RiverForce had received more publicity since Richard came along than in all the years before.
“Well, thanks very much for handling things until I could get here,” Richard said, patting Thomas on the back. The younger man preened. “Why don't you have a seat and I'll carry on.”
With Richard at the helm, the meeting began to zap along. Even dry government red tape had redeeming points of interest when Richard was presenting it. Tabitha actually paid attention and made some reasonable suggestions, instead of loudly whispering sarcastic comments. In little more than an hour we had finished all the business necessary, and people were beginning to straggle out in ones and twos.
“Come with me,” Tabitha said, grabbing my wrist and making it impossible for me to do anything but. “I want to talk to Richard.”
“Of course you do,” I muttered under my breath. If everyone else had been energized by Richard's leadership, Tabitha had been absolutely galvanized. And it wasn't only because of his dedication to the cause.
“June! Tabitha! How are you?” Richard greeted us with a smile.
Tabitha put her hand on his arm. “We just wanted to say how much we enjoyed tonight's meeting.”
We? I thought.
“Glad to hear it.” He started gathering up loose pages he'd scattered on the top of the podium. “It's great to work with a group of people devoted to the same goal.”
“We missed you at the Natural Resources Expo Friday.” Tabitha pouted slightly. “I thought you said you'd be there.”
“Well, yes, sorry about that, but I got called out of town unexpectedly. Had to meet with some of my colleagues down in Vancouver.” He turned to the blackboard, grabbed an eraser and began wiping away his notes. “Were you there?”
“Yes, Rachelle and I. Even June bailed on us.”
“I did not bail on you,” I exclaimed. “I never once said I could help out that day. You know I'd been planning to go to Longworth then.”
“Longworth?” he said absently. “What were you doing there?”
“I just took a few days to hike around. Actually, it turned out to be kind of interesting. I met a warden from Fish and Wildlife and helped him find the carcass of a poached grizzly.”
“No!” said Tabitha, her attention finally distracted from Richard. “What happened?”
I told them about our adventures. Tabitha's eyes grew wide when I mentioned the shots we'd heard. Richard accidentally banged his knuckles on the chalk shelf of the blackboard and dropped the eraser.
“I have to say, chasing after someone with a rifle is certainly...intrepid,” he said slowly, “but, really, June, I can't encourage a repeat of it. You know we are mainly a public relations organization. You should leave the catching of criminals to the experts.”
“Don't worry,” I said cheerfully. “I don't intend to make it a habit. Some good did come out of it, though. Alex invited me to come by his office and look around. Maybe I'll have a foot in the door when it comes time to find work after graduation.”
“You just take care of yourself, sweetie,” said Tabitha. “We wouldn't want anything to happen to you.”
“No,” said Richard as he bent to pick up the blackboard eraser, “we wouldn't want that at all.”
Tabitha and I left the university complex where the meeting had been held and headed to the parking lot, the setting sun stretching our shadows to impossible lengths in front of us. We stopped first at Tabitha's car.
“Have a good night,” I said. She waved and started up her ancient VW bug.
My own, equally ancient, little red pick up was parked all by itself three rows away. When I had arrived the parking lot had been about two-thirds full, but at this time on a Sunday evening only those suffering from a surfeit of desperation or dedication were still here, and vehicles were now few and far between.
As I walked briskly over the asphalt, I began digging in the capacious bag I used as a purse, conducting the usual frustrating search for my keys. It wasn't until the motorcycle was within striking distance that I looked up to realize the danger. Moments later, the outstretched arm of the black visaged rider struck me fiercely on the side of the head and knocked me spinning to the rough pavement. I felt the vibrations of the machine as my cheek pressed to the ground, and the sun blazed blindingly in my eyes, silhouetting the geometric outlines of the buildings before me.
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