The Vanishing Track (3 page)

“Got everything I need,” said Overcoat Man, pushing his cart toward the gate for the park.

“You staying here tonight?”

“None of your business.”

“I could bring you a blanket.”

“Don't need one. Got a sleeping bag in here.”

Sean felt his pulse quicken. This was harder than he had expected. “Okay, well,” he finally said. “I guess I'll be seeing you.”

Sean turned to go, then looked back to watch Overcoat Man make his way toward the set of bleachers that flanked the park's ball diamond. The park was vacant except for a man throwing a ball for a dog at the far side. After the man left with his dog, Overcoat Man set himself up under the bleachers, preparing for the possibility of rain. He looked as though he was eating something from a tin can. Sean walked directly up to him.

“I told you I don't need anything,” he said when Sean approached.

“Look, friend,” said Sean, hands wide at his sides. “I've been told to give you a hand. My boss at the Society will be pissed if I don't report back that I gave you the money for food that I was supposed to.”

“Since when did the Community Society start handing out money?”

“We got a new donor. Money for meals.” Sean hunched down in front of the man and slipped his backpack off. He could smell the sour stench of dog food in the enclosed space beneath the bleachers.

Overcoat Man seemed to pause in his hostility a moment, waiting to see what Sean would produce from inside his bag. “I got it right here,” said Sean. He made a show of rummaging in his bag. He pulled on the white smock coat that he had liberated from a butcher shop, its arms and chest dotted with dark red splotches.

“What the fuck is that for?” the man asked. Sean didn't answer him.

From the bottom of the bag he drew a foot-and-a-half-long iron tool called a come-along. Often found at logging sites, the hand winch helped pry vehicles from the mud or trees from entanglement. This one wasn't functional, though; it was decorative. Nickel plated, it was hard and heavy. The hooks on both ends had been broken off, so that only the winch and handle remained. It weighed about nine pounds in Sean's hand.

“What the fuck you got there?” Overcoat Man said, pushing himself back, dropping the can of dog food.

Sean smiled, lifting the heavy tool, then swung it at Overcoat Man's head. The blow caught him on the left side of his face, crushing bone and splitting the skin between his left eye and his mouth. A wet spray of blood splattered across the underside of the bleachers. Sean struck the man again as he fell, connecting with the top of his skull. The gratification was akin to sexual release. Overcoat Man lay on his side, his eyes still open with the amazement of his final moment.

“We got to get you off the street, partner,” said Sean, his hand still wrapped around the heavy tool.

COLE BLACKWATER COULD SMELL HORSES
. He could smell the sticky sweet aroma of their bodies pressed together in the blackness of the stables beneath the barn. He could smell hay; for Cole that was the scent of green spring afternoons when the sun burnt down on the Porcupine Hills that surrounded his childhood home.

“Open your eyes, goddamnit,” said a voice, shattering the nostalgic darkness. Cole shook his head, and beads of sweat sprayed from his face onto the canvas mat below his feet.

“Goddamnit, boy, when I say open your eyes, I mean it.” The glove connected with Cole's nose and he felt his head snap backward, but he couldn't fall. He was suspended above the canvas mat, dangling there like meat on a hook.

“That's all you ever were to me, boy. That's all you'll ever be: a fucking punching bag. You are worthless.” Cole braced himself for the next blow. It caught him in the chin and snapped his head back, a spray of blood coming from a cut that the strike reopened.

“Look at me, boy,” and this time Cole opened his eyes. The sweat and blood stung them. He blinked to try and focus on the barn.

The shape of his father swayed before him. “You think you're
so
great. You're nothing but a worthless drunk who can't take care of his own daughter, who fucks up everything he touches!”

“Just like you,” spat Cole.

“Why don't you just get it over with?” asked Henry Blackwater, pacing around Cole like a caged animal, his face shadowed in the faint light seeping through the boards of the barn. “Why don't you just do it?”

“You first,” said Cole, clenching his teeth.

“Oh, I will. I will. But I'm taking you with me this time, son. You're coming with me.” His father steadied Cole's swinging body. “Got to work on my combinations,” the old man slurred. Cole closed his eyes.

Soon it would be over. He waited for the punches to stop, eyes pressed shut.

What happened next always surprised Cole. No matter how hard he tried to keep his eyes closed, he could not help but watch. His father took the shotgun leaning against the ropes of the boxing ring and turned it so the barrel was under his chin. Then he took up a branding iron and put the crook of it in the trigger guard.

Cole shouted, “Wait—!” But his father pulled the trigger.

It was the blast that always woke him.

Cole's eyes snapped open and he felt his body tremble, his hands gripping the damp sheets. It was five o'clock. His ears rang from the final deafening sound of his nightmare.

It was a Sunday. He knew from experience there would be no return to sleep, so he headed for the shower in the faint light of dawn. Sarah was asleep in her tiny room next to the kitchen. At ten years of age, she was all bright smiles and sunny days. He longed to keep it that way. Sarah had witnessed the collapse of her parents' marriage thanks to Cole's philandering ways. She was only four when Cole had been outed in the worst-kept secret in the nation's capital—his affair with Nancy Webber, the
Globe and Mail'
s star parliamentary correspondent. When Jennifer Polson kicked him out of the house they had lived in together, it was almost a relief. Then she announced that she was leaving Ottawa to move to Vancouver, and was taking Sarah with her. Cole left Ottawa and drove west, following his daughter. He faltered in Alberta and visited the place he hadn't set foot on for nearly twenty years: the Blackwater Ranch, tucked into the Porcupine Hills, two hours south of Calgary. And there, bore witness to the vicious end of a man who was not just his father but his tormentor. His nightmares relived the incident.

That was four and a half years ago, thought Cole, standing in the shower, his left hand pressed against the wall, his right hand limp at his side, the hot water pulsing on the back of his neck. He thought he had buried that tragedy. But then, a year and a half ago, Cole had gone back to Alberta in a desperate attempt to help save the Cardinal Divide, and the unearthing began.

The water began to run cold, and Cole realized he'd drained the tank. He turned it off and stepped from the shower. He dressed quickly, then padded barefoot to the kitchen to brew the morning coffee.

Cole took up the weekend edition of the
Vancouver Sun
. His tiny Eastside apartment offered one large living room–kitchen area that he had tastefully furnished with ware from the local thrift store. Pushing aside some files and books on his tattered couch, Cole sat down and leafed through the paper, sipping his coffee.

On page three he found a story by Nancy Webber with the headline, “City Hall and Homelessness.” He flipped the page.

Nancy had moved to Vancouver from Edmonton in June. After the debacle in the Broughton Archipelago last spring, she had accepted a position as one of the paper's political reporters. She could pretty much write her own ticket, she had told Cole, after winning a National Newspaper Award for the series she produced on the murder of Mike Barnes in Oracle, Alberta. She had chosen Vancouver, she said, because it was a bigger market, and because it
wasn't
Edmonton, with its biting winters complete with freezing rain and ice fog. And though she hadn't said so, she had been none too subtle in letting it be known that her choice of Lotusland had more than a little to do with one Cole Blackwater.

Cole sipped his coffee. He didn't want to think about Nancy Webber that morning. Since she had moved to Vancouver late in the spring, Cole had seen her only infrequently. In July, several months after the tragedy in Port Lostcoast, Cole, Nancy, Denman, and Sarah had returned for a few days on Grace Ravenwing's boat,
Inlet Dancer
, celebrating the life of their lost friend and Grace's father, Archie.

The nightmares had begun in August, and Cole found that Nancy always seemed to be on his mind when he woke from them. He wanted to believe that this was simply because she was always on his mind, but he couldn't help but associate her role in the unearthing of his past with his reliving of it every few nights.

Nancy's professional life was now converging with his once again. Nancy had taken to the story of homelessness in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside like a feisty dog to a piece of meat. In the few months that she had been reporting on the politics of homelessness in Vancouver, many at City Hall had come to fear her, and advocates for the homeless to celebrate her. She could be just as hard on the advocates, though, pigeon-holing the more radical elements of the movement, such as the End Poverty Now Coalition, as zealots and anarchists.

Cole had been helping his best friend, Denman Scott, and his street-smart law firm, Priority Legal, figure out ways to leverage decision makers to solve the challenge of homelessness. It had been the first time in his four and a half years as a strategy consultant that Cole could actually donate some of his time. Despite setbacks in the spring, when he almost entirely ignored several high-paying clients due to his entanglement in the fish-farming problems in the Broughton Archipelago, Cole had steady work advising several of the city's growing ethically-based businesses. When Cole noticed that his friend was in need of some strategic advice on dealing with City Hall and the provincial Minister for Housing, Cole was glad to offer his professional assistance.

Cole stood and stretched, wincing. He pressed the ribs on the right side of his body, as if his fingertips could find and finish healing the cracks left by a gang of thugs who had jumped him in Port Lostcoast last spring and nearly beaten him to death. The cracked ribs had kept Cole out of the boxing ring since then. Boxing had been a good way to get back in shape, but being in the ring hadn't done much for Cole's temper. He thought about what Denman, an aikido master, had said to him after they had gotten back from Port Lostcoast.

THEY HAD BEEN
sitting in Oppenheimer Park in late July of that year. They had just returned from the Broughton Archipelago.

“Why are we sitting here?” Cole had said, his back hunched, his eyes narrow, watching suspiciously as the derelicts moved about the park, pushing shopping carts. He eyed the wrapping from several syringes and wondered where the needles were.

“You want to help me with the homeless problem, right?” asked Denman, his legs crossed at the ankle, his brown hands folded together Buddha-style in his lap.

“Yeah, but . . .”

“But nothing,” the lawyer said with conviction. “You can't help fight homelessness if you don't think of the problem from the perspective of these people here. Part of the reason why homelessness is so prevalent in our society is that we don't
see
these people,” he said, motioning to the clusters of men and women around the park. “They are objects to us. Not living, breathing, loving human beings.”

“You've been hanging around the Dalai Lama again, haven't you?” Cole quipped.

“Maybe,” said Denman, looking at Cole sideways from under his flat cap. “But the truth of the matter is that everybody here has a story to tell. Every one of these people has a reason for being here, now, today. You wouldn't believe the stories I've heard.”

“I bet some of them are even true.” Cole started to laugh, then held his side.

Denman nodded. “Everybody has their own take on what reality is.” He looked at his friend. “Speaking of reality, ribs still bugging you?”

“If you could call having a knife stuck into your side every time you laugh, breathe hard, or try to sleep on your side bugging . . .”

“I've got just the thing.”

“You're not going to try and align my chakras again, are you?”

“I've given up on that,” said Denman.

“What now, then?”

“Follow me.”

The two men stood and walked across the park, heading for Cordova. They walked slowly, Cole moving stiffly.

“You had a doc look at that?”

“Oh yeah, but not much they can do for cracked ribs.”

“You'd look good in a body cast.”

Cole suppressed a laugh. “Wouldn't help,” he said.

“Make you easier to wheel around. We could just put you on a dolly. What about a Chinese doctor?”

“Yeah, I thought about that.”

“Thinking about it help much?”

“Look, Denny. I'm from Alberta, okay? We don't lie around with needles in us if we can at all avoid it.”

“It would help.”

“So would a good stiff drink.”

“How's that working for you?”

“Not so good, Dr. Phil,” said Cole.

They found their way to East Pender and walked west.

“Where are you taking me?” asked Cole.

“Live in the mystery, brother Blackwater.”

They walked another two blocks and stopped. Cole found himself in front of a small area of worn grass. It was nearly noon, and the spring sun felt good after a week of rain. They stood on the edge of the green, which was little more than an empty lot surrounded by a chain-link fence. They regarded the ancient building that rose beyond it.

“Did I read in one of Nancy's articles that the Lucky Strike is on the chopping block?”