Harry liked to watch the big ships, tied up at the Western Forest Products dock, loading lumber. If one of them was in the harbour, he’d sometimes switch destinations for his morning coffee run to the 49th Parallel General Store. “Ah,” they would greet him. “Your ship’s come in.”
If it was sunny and warm, he would order coffee to go then carry on to the parking lot behind the 49th, where he’d watch the cranes hoist lumber off the wharf and lower it into the ship’s hold; if it was blustery or raining, he’d first watch for a while under the shelter of his scooter’s canopy, then head for the coffee shop.
He never tired watching the ships load, their cranes working like gigantic insects. And when he wasn’t transfixed by that, Harry would look up at the bridge, wondering what the captain and crew must have seen over the bow, plowing through the vast Pacific en route to Chemainus from their last port of call. As a bonus he enjoyed watching the Thetis and Penelakut islands ferry gliding into its slip at the foot of Oak Street, the passengers trudging and driving off, heading who-knows-where.
If I hadn’t been a logging truck driver, I would have been a sea captain, Harry thought. So it made sense the next mural he chose to look at was Number Two, The 33 Metre Collage. The first panel of that colossal work depicts an early 20th Century sailing ship being loaded back in 1901. The stevedores were posed for the photographer, sitting or leaning against the waiting stacks of lumber at the bow of the ship. They looked a surly lot, Harry recollected, pointing his scooter up Oak Street, hanging a left on Willow.
Parking himself next to a brick planter at Willow and Legion, Harry scanned the length of the mural. The stevedore panel was nearest to him, the men looking grim and defiant as ever. Beyond, a boom man danced on a rolling log in what was then the Victoria Lumber & Manufacturing Co. sort. Not the kind of jig I’d like to be doing, Harry thought. And beyond that VL&M’s Engine 21 dumped another load of logs into the water. If I wasn’t a log truck driver, or a sea captain, I wouldn’t mind running one of them locomotives up Copper Canyon and back.
Harry smiled, imagining what Bernice would have said about that. Loco and motives were two words she could fashion into a taunt, he figured, smiling. And she might be right. Usually was.
So what now? Harry stared at the mural; nothing happened. That first time hadn’t been planned. He’d been looking at Mural #1, Steam Donkey at Work, and whoosh, he was suddenly teleported inside the scene. Couldn’t for the life of him figure out how, or how he could make it happen again.
Concentrate man! He continued staring until his eyes were sore; stared until it felt like the image was being tattooed onto the inside of his skull; until… he looked into the intense, angry eyes of the wharfie at the bottom right corner of the scene. The man’s eyes were hooded under what might have been a Yankee soldier’s cap, staring back at Harry… Suddenly, as if he’d been been zapped by some kind of infernal ray, Harry felt himself float free, into the space between him and the mural – like Captain Kirk getting beamed from the Starship Enterprise onto the surface of a foreign planet…
~
Man’s got to button on his pride with his shirt every morning.
The thought wasn’t his own, Harry realized. It was something private he was overhearing as he awakened to his new environment, the unfamiliar setting coming into focus. He found himself looking into a mirror; but it wasn’t his own face reflected back at him, slathered with shaving cream. He was eyeball to eyeball with the tough looking stevedore in the Yankee cap he’d seen in the The 33 Metre Collage.
No matter what, Angus, you’ve got to walk with your back straight and your head held high. Got it?
Harry stifled any thoughts he might have had about that. You’re a flea on the back of a frightened mouse, hid in a hole in a great big house. Your mouse wants some cheese, but he won’t say please, won’t even sneeze cause the cat’s hereabouts.
Well, Bernice would have teased him mercilessly over that bit of doggerel, or catteral, or whatever you wanted to call it. You’re about as full of poetry as a beggar’s pot, she’d once mocked. But I’ll listen gladly if that’s all you’ve got. They’d had a good chuckle over her own rhyme, and from then on Harry plagued her with his impromptu poems whenever he felt so inspired…
Oops!
The face in the mirror had scrunched itself into a puzzled frown. He’s heard me, Harry realized, holding his breath. For a second or two the fellow named Angus stood stock still, his razor poised mid-stroke over his throat. He must think he’s going crazy! Harry guessed, silently praying for the moment to pass.
Whew!
With a shake of his head, Angus went back to shaving, scraping away at his neck, then his cheeks, the sharp edge of the straight razor finally rasping over his chin, up to his bottom lip. From now on, Harry vowed I’ll have to do my best to shut up and lay low – remain invisible.
“Heck no!” Angus disagreed, interrupting his shave again to stare at himself hard in the mirror, as if he might be able to see the source of these strange, troubling thoughts that were suddenly afflicting him. “Phil had no right to deceive me, then play holier-than-thou. Friends don’t do that sort of thing!” he said angrily. “And I’ll tell him so.”
He knew his rant was all bluster, though, and wasn’t looking forward to meeting Phil during that day’s shift, not after the set-to they’d had the night before. Angus wondered if he’d be able to look the younger man in the eye.
What the hell does he know? The kid’s still wet behind the ears. Why he’s never even been out of Chemainus as far as I’m aware; certainly hasn’t been off Vancouver Island.
It had been a mistake to approach Phil. How could a man hardly twenty possibly understand what it was like to be on the far side of 35, holed-up in Mrs. Wilmot’s boarding house where there was nobody to share your stories with, or your future, the only option – and a poor one at that – being the other bachelors who congregated at the Horseshoe Saloon most evenings.
Phil was too young to foresee his own chances slipping by and a future of nothing but more of the same – unless maybe, between the two of them, they could muster some gumption. That’s what Angus convinced himself he’d had in mind, getting to know Phil. “I was trying to wake the lad up.”
Their acquaintance got off to a sporadic start on the wharf – snippets of conversation here and there, while rolling stacks of lumber into the holds of waiting ships. You couldn’t really get to know someone in those snatches of time, though. And Angus liked the younger man, so he’d invited him for a beer at the Horseshoe. Inevitably, their conversation touched on work.
“Never thought I’d end up lugging lumber into the belly of a ship to earn a living,” Angus had said, easing into the conversation over that first beer.
“What did you think you were going to be?”
“Ha! When I was youngster I sometimes thought the best way to make a living would be like Jessie James and Butch Cassidy – rob banks, stagecoaches, trains, but be smarter about it. Get enough capital to start something legit, then set up shop and start making respectable money.”
“So?” Phil said, eyebrows raised. “What plugged your barrel?”
Harry couldn’t repress a chuckle, because that was just the kind of comment Bernice might have made.
Angus wasn’t sure he liked the kid’s quip. “Something better came up – or at least something I thought would be better. The Klondike.”
“You were there?”
“Yep. Skagway to Dawson City over the Chilkoot pass, all five-hundred miles of it, lugging and rafting close to a ton of supplies and equipment the whole way, cause your North-West Mounted Police wouldn’t let anyone through unless they had enough grub to last ’em a year.”
“Wow!” Phil said, wide-eyed. “Did you strike it rich?”
Truth was Angus and his partner never even earned a reputation as sourdoughs. Every square inch of gold bearing ground was already claimed and being worked by the time they arrived at the confluence of the Yukon and Klondike rivers. They prospected a bit, but – like most – ran out of hope and money before they ever struck pay dirt. They ended up working a season, gouging ore from another miner’s claim, then selling whatever equipment and supplies they could and retreating back to the south Coast.
“We dug up some gold and made some money,” Angus told Phil. “But not enough to keep up with the bartenders, and dancing girls, and gamblers. In the end, the whole thing was a wash.”
Except Angus had spent all the money he’d saved up over the years as a carpenter and brick layer in the venture. He landed on ‘square one’, near broke in Victoria just as the odometer ticked over into the shiny, new 20th Century. He had just enough cash to buy a train ticket to Chemainus after he saw the VL&M Company advertisement recruiting stevedores.
“Not that I regret any of it,” he said. “You can’t bank experiences, my man, but they’re treasures just the same, worth more than their weight in gold.”
He remembered with satisfaction that first conversation, the hope he’d gleaned from it; remembered, at one point, tapping his temple with his index finger as if the gesture would bring them good fortune; remembered Phil nodding admiringly, tipping his glass Angus’ way in acknowledgement.
That’s quite a story, Harry agreed. And you’re right, my friend: what some call failure, others call learning. When I look at things that way, I might even wish I’d had a few more failures of my own! Never tell Bernice that, though; she figures I’ve had enough screw-ups to fill an encyclopedia!
When can you say you’ve become someone’s friend? There’s no sign, like you’d find on at railway station, no bridge, no crossing that says you’ve entered friendly territory, a place where you can rely on each other, try things out, not be embarrassed to say who and what you really are and believe. So Angus and Phil drank quite a few beers and played a lot of snooker before they realized, without ever saying it, that they might be friends.
Harry sensed it would have been wrong to accuse Angus of having purely ulterior motives, cultivating his friendship with Phil. From what he could gather as a ghostly interloper, it seemed the friendship was real. The worst you could say was that it had been distorted – perhaps grotesquely – by the older man’s fears and ambitions; that Angus’ scheme for boosting the two of them onto a higher financial plane took shape simultaneously with their camaraderie, which gave even his best intentions a suspicious tinge.
In any case, as their friendship grew so did Angus’ urgent need to put it to the test.
So he decided the day before the stevedore’s group photo was to be taken to nudge things along. Two men didn’t constitute a consortium, of course, but by Angus’ reckoning it was twice as close as one, so he thought getting Phil on board would be a significant achievement and hoped his future partner would be interested in a proposal.
“The west is still pretty new territory,” he said, leaning over the Horseshoe’s billiard table. He tapped a red into the corner pocket, banking the cue ball perfectly for his next shot – the brown – which he figured he could put into the other corner. “There’s lots of opportunity here for a young fella with a grubstake, eh?”
“What to you mean by ‘grubstake’?” Phil asked.
“A bit of cash to invest.”
Angus sunk the brown, leaving the cue ball nicely lined up for the next red, which he intended to put in the opposite side pocket. He retrieved the brown and placed it on its spot. Smiled, enjoying his display of skill and Phil’s admiring patience.
“You got any cash tucked away?” he asked, offhandedly. “Any desire for parlaying it into something bigger.”
“A little,” Phil said. “Cash that is,”
Angus chalked up, then jabbed low on the cue ball, the backspin sucking it toward him after the red had been knocked into the side pocket. “Not bad, if I do say so myself.” He made a show of sizing up the distribution of balls on the table. “Didn’t leave myself sitting pretty, though.”
Phil agreed with a nod.
Should have asked about his plans then, Angus thought in retrospect. But he’d decided against it. Why fill a man’s head with his own notions when you’ve got ideas of your own you want to him to think on, was the way he’d read the situation.
Angus blushed to think how he’d set things up on the billiard table, suspecting now that Phil had seen through his game from the get-go. He could easily have positioned the cue ball better, but the last thing he wanted was to run the table. What he needed was a missed shot, which would leave Phil with some shape on a red.
“Damn!” he protested when things worked out just like he’d planned.
After surveying the table, Phil squinted down the length of his cue, setting up his shot. It was a casual match, so Angus didn’t hesitate to float a few thoughts about the future as they played. “New as this west is, Phil, it’s filling up fast. Won’t be long before the best opportunities are all taken up. If a fella wants to make his move, now’s the time, eh?”
Phil poked the cue ball and it rolled across the table, potting a red sitting on the rim of the side pocket. But he didn’t have any viable options coming off the cushion. All he’d get out of his turn was the single point. The lad couldn’t put a run together if his life depended on it, Angus sighed. Skill, concentration, strategy – he lacked everything that made a winner.
“The thing a man needs now is capital, Phil. And fast. If you haven’t got it in the bank or hidden under a matress, you have to borrow it; and if you don’t qualify for a loan, well, you’ve got to think of some other way to scrape together a stake, eh?”
“What other way, Angus?” Phil asked, distractedly, looking for a line on his next shot. His situation was beyond hopeless as far as Angus could see.
“Well, maybe a fellow has to look for a way that isn’t conventional, that’s not clogged with thousands of sharps all scrambling for the same prize, if you know what I mean.”
“Not sure I do, Angus… Blue, top right.”
“Blue! Top right? There’s no shot there!”
“Isn’t a shot anywhere. Might as well make life a bit difficult for you, eh?”
Sounded reasonable. Angus laughed encouragingly.
“What I mean, Phil, is sometimes we have to maybe step outside what people think of as normal in order to get where we need to go. Maybe even do something that’s not considered cricket by most.”
Phil stopped chalking his cue, glanced up at Angus, studying him the way you might a prospective employee. “You’re suggesting we should break the law?” he said. He didn’t sound shocked by the proposition, or curious, just matter-of-fact.
“I didn’t say that,” Angus backpedaled. “At least not in a way so’s anyone would get hurt.”
“People always get hurt when you break the law, Angus. It’s just a question of who.” Phil went back to chalking his stick. “Then again, lots of people get hurt when they obey the law too, and when sharps of one kind or another bend it to their purposes or get folks in Victoria or Ottawa to make the kinds of laws that suit them.”
“You’re sounding like some kind of agitator, Phil. You a communist or something?”
“Just a coal miner’s son. I’d call myself a humanist. What about you, Angus? Are you a political animal, a business type, a religious man?”
“Any of the above, when occasion warrants. Why?”
“I mean, do you believe there’s things that can’t be boiled down to an equation, or a theory, or a ledger entry?”
“Of course! But that doesn’t mean equations, theories and ledgers aren’t important.”
“I’m a doubting man myself,” Phil mused. “But I know for sure there’s something about this world that isn’t accounted for in the theories and methods of the profiteers. If I do break the law someday, and I might, it won’t be for any reasons they and their associates could understand.”
With that he crouched and shot, rebounding the cue ball off the top cushion back down table on a trajectory that kissed the blue, knocking it into the top right pocket, where it landed with a quiet, confident click.
“So you’re lumping me in with your so called ‘profiteers’, and climbing onto your high horse?” Angus griped. “Well, I think I’ve had enough for tonight!” He put his cue up on the table and walked out, taking his sudden, inexplicable fury with him.
Walking back to Mrs. Wilmot’s, he thought his anger would subside, that he’d be able to put the incident out of mind. But his outrage only intensified and, worse, turned on him like a magnifying glass that could actually see through to the molecular structure of his soul, down to the finest filaments of ambition.
Why am I so angry? The question dogged him as he slouched up the hill toward his lonely room.
Because he called you out! Harry couldn’t restrain himself.
Angus sighed like a doused fire. By the time he got to Mrs. Wilmot’s his rage had burned down, nothing left of it but smouldering embers of shame and self-loathing.
~
Next morning Angus woke up convinced that Phil was as much to blame for their misunderstanding as he. But that didn’t make things any easier. They avoided each other throughout the day, and positioned themselves as far apart as possible when everyone gathered on the wharf for the company photo. Angus stood at the front, a little way from his mates, to the right in the frame; Phil, off to the left, leaning against a stack of boards, arms folded and legs crossed, trying to look casual.
Just before the photographer directed them to look into the camera, Angus glanced at Phil, who looked quickly away.
The photo taken, Angus slumped a little and turned to leave. That’s me, recorded for posterity, he thought miserably. Thirty-five and nothing to show for my life. A ghost in somebody else’s picture on somebody else’s wall. He thought of going to the Horseshoe and consoling himself with a couple of pints. Just a couple, he said firmly.
“Angus!” Phil called out from behind. “Angus wait!”
How like an ox Angus felt, swinging his head round to confront his young friend, trotting to catch up.
“I’m sorry,” Phil said, slightly out of breath. “Really, I’m sorry for what I said last night – or at least how I said it.” He stuck out his hand for Angus to shake.
“You shouldn’t be sorry,” Angus corrected, the immensity of his sadness suddenly becoming more real, almost insupportable. “But I’m sorry you had to say what I deserved to hear. You’re a fine young man, Phil. I respect you for it.”
“Take my hand,” Phil insisted. “Please! Take it!”
The atmosphere between them had congealed. Angus pushed through, struggling to breathe, to twist his body round, face the youth, reach across the divide and clamp Phil’s hand in his own.
“Can I join you?” Phil asked. “Have a pint and a game?”
Angus wanted to agree, but couldn’t force the words up his throat and out. Instead he nodded. Once, as if he was shaking rain water off his cap and out of his hair. “Sure you want to?”
Phil nodded and they walked on in silence because nothing needed saying and both of them had become wary of the danger that often lurks in words.