Both hands on the steering wheel, all fingers reasonably intact, I drove north along Dolphin Inlet.
Past the hatchery turnoff, past the last of the subdivisions, past the pavement and on to the rocky gravel—all the way to the end, to Hidden Cove.
Hidden Cove was the original Witka village. Back in the pre-contact days, the Witka had moved their camp to the open strait only for a few weeks when the sockeye were running. Then they moved back to their main village, which afforded them protection not only from the heavy weather but also from the northern tribes who raided the south for slaves and women.
A core of about two-dozen Witka families still lived at Hidden Cove, and I knew one of the matriarchs, Esther Henry, from my days at the Star. Esther had written to me a few years back with a hard luck story about her grandson. Norman was a commercial fisherman who had gone to Vancouver to find his two-year-old son. He found the boy but couldn’t get custody, even though the mother had become a crack-addicted prostitute. The young man blew his savings on legal fees, hit a brick wall in the system and eventually wound up on the skids himself. Esther had lost touch with him.
I located Norman Henry, helped get him into an aboriginal-run detox program, then, once he was cleaned up, drew public attention to his cause and the plight of his toddler, who was living in one of the worst fleabag hotels on East Hastings Street. Within a week, the boy had been turned over to his dad, and the two of them were back in Hidden Cove, eating at Esther’s table. Esther later wrote me a beautiful thank-you letter, and since moving to the Coast, I had driven up there a couple times and visited the family, accepting gifts of free fish, because I can’t say no to free fish.
A woman in her twenties answered the door, giving me the concentrated deadpan reserved for strangers in these parts. She smiled quickly when I told her who I was; she’d heard about me. Her name was Louise, and she was Norman’s girlfriend. I told her Norman was doing even better than I thought. I wasn’t kidding either. Louise had some size, but she wore it well. Her apparent shyness about showing her nice teeth made her lovely face even prettier. Norman, she said, was out on the boat, and Esther had taken the little boy to check on the crab traps. The two of them should be back any minute.
I should have accepted her offer to wait inside, but I wanted to look at some new houses that were going up, and I always enjoyed walking along the plank sidewalk past the older homes on the water; they looked kind of rundown but also somehow extremely vibrant. As well, I wanted to have a smoke.
I was leaning on a white wooden fence between houses, enjoying my cigarette, when I saw them coming down the boardwalk. Three figures heading my way with “unbending intent”—like models for a Carlos Castaneda pocketbook cover. It was Superman and the Justice League, and they had spotted One Brain back in their domain, without a paddle.
I could have run, but my leg was still giving me quite a bit of trouble from yesterday’s wind-up kick, so I wouldn’t have made it far. Times like these are when you envy Americans for carrying guns.
Superman was shaking his head as they stopped a couple of feet in front of me. He was about to say something inordinately clever when a woman’s sharp voice sounded out. “Get away from him, you sons of bees!”
It was Esther Henry, and she was hurrying along the boardwalk towards us. The three goons all turned their backs on me, and it was tempting to tear a loose plank off the fence and start whaling on them. But I took another drag on the cigarette instead and let Esther handle matters.
“You troublemakers have been told to keep away from this village. You’re always looking for more, aren’t you?” She looked at my face. “Did they do that to you?” I sucked in my mouth and nodded gravely.
Her expression was gold. “You little bastards,” she told them. “Pat Ross has done more for our people than you bums will ever do in your lifetimes, if you live to be a hundred. Get the hell out of this village, and don’t come back!”
Without a word, the goon squad took a hike.
“Pretty good,” I said, “for a gal pushing seventy.”
Actually, I’d shaved off a decade. Esther was pushing eighty, but her tiny frame, defiant grey head and smart mouth seemed to ward off the push of time.
“Why did those jokers beat you up like that?”
“I was spying on the hatchery.”
“That place doesn’t need spying. It needs dynamite.”
My kind of woman.