The Vanishing Track (6 page)

He knew
what
his mission was. Now he knew
where
his mission would be carried out.

All that remained was
how
and
when
.

SEAN EVENTUALLY MADE
a phone call.

“He won't see you,” said Adelaide.

“But he's my father,” said Sean. He was on a pay phone, the howl of rush-hour traffic in his ears.

“He's left very clear instructions,” said Adelaide.

“I need to see him. I have to explain things to him,” said Sean, looking across the street at two uniformed police officers busting up a drug deal.

“Sean, he won't see you.”

“Can I come by and get a few things? I need some stuff for where I'm living now.” Adelaide was silent. “Adelaide, please,” he said, his voice slow and sad. His face betrayed no emotion.

Finally, she said, “Come by tomorrow morning. After your father has left for work.”

“Is my mother there?”

“She's sick.”

“Is it bad?”

“I don't know. She's in hospital again.”

“Okay, thanks, Adelaide. I'll see you tomorrow.”

The next day Sean rode the bus across the city to his parents' Kerrisdale home. It took him two hours, and he still had to walk a dozen blocks to reach the hundred-year-old stone house set far back from the road, protected by a high wall overgrown with ivy. He stepped through the gates and walked up the drive, around the back of the house, and to the kitchen door. It opened and he saw the familiar happy face and broad girth of Adelaide, who gave him a hug.

“Look at you, you're so skinny.”

He smiled. “Student life,” he lied.

“Well, sit down. I'll fix you a nice brunch.”

Sean sat at the table by the window while Adelaide busied herself preparing him coffee, eggs, sausage, toast, and home-fried potatoes. He told her about his time at the college, and how he hoped to use it to springboard into a business program at Simon Fraser University.

“I think Simon Fraser has a better program than
UBC
,” he said, accepting the cup of coffee she offered. “They don't have their heads up their butts. It's less snooty, you know? I'm going to apply in September. For now, I'm just going to concentrate on learning what I can from these college types and get a job for the summer.”

She turned to him with his plate of food. “Eat up.”

“Thanks, this is great.” He tucked into the food.

“I'm going to move out to Burnaby in the fall,” he said. “Live on campus. Simon Fraser has a great view of the city, when it's not in the clouds.” He shoveled eggs and sausage into his mouth.

“That's great, Sean. I'm proud of you.”

“I wish my father was,” he said, looking down.

“He's just upset right now.”

“Did he tell you why?”

“Oh no, he doesn't discuss family matters with me.”

“He's not happy with my marks. He's peeved that things didn't work out for me at
UBC
. You know how he is—‘good enough for the old man, good enough for you, Sean.'” He mocked his father's voice, tucking in his chin and feigning a slight English accent.

“He just wants what's best for you.”

“Well, I think he wants what's best for him, but he won't talk with me about it, so I guess we'll never know.” Sean stood and cleared his plate away, and when he was done he gave Adelaide a hug.

“What was that for?”

“For being so kind to me. I really appreciate it.”

Adelaide blushed. “It's no problem, Sean. You go ahead and get what you need from your room. I'll tidy up here and pack you a lunch.”

“Thanks, Adelaide,” he said, smiling broadly, and went into the hall to the main stairs. At the top of the stairs, he headed directly to his father's study. He knew exactly what he wanted. When he'd been a child, he had always admired it. The times when he'd been allowed to step into his father's study, the times when he had felt the white-hot wrath of his father's scorn, he had seen it high on a shelf, wedged between legal texts. He never dared ask his father about it.

At the door, he tried the knob. It was locked. He knelt down and felt under the edge of the carpet for the key. He let himself into the darkened study. The wood-paneled walls, the heavy mahogany desk, the rows of bookshelves, the club chairs, and the high-backed leather chair with brass fittings behind the desk gave the room an oppressive feeling. Sean flipped on the light switch, and the dim pot lights along the walls did nothing to alleviate the pall over the room. He closed the door behind him and walked directly to the bookshelf. The object of his desire was still there. He reached up. It was heavier than he imagined it would be. Nearly a foot and a half long, the nickel-plated come-along was mounted on a heavy piece of hardwood, complete with a metal plate and an engraving.

Sean read it aloud: “For Charles Stanley Livingstone,
ESQ
, for your meritorious service to the Forest Products Association of
BC
. Our thanks for breaking the log jam, and getting us out of the mud.”

He smiled, put the come-along on the floor and stomped on it has hard as he could, snapping the tool from its wooden base. He scooped up the wood and hid it behind a set of legal texts on the shelf. He hefted the tool by its handle. It was perfect.

Next, Sean went to his parents' bedroom. It smelled close, like a room where someone had lain dying for many years. His mother was back in the hospital; Sean imaged that she was in the grips of a spell of raving lunacy once again. He went to her dressing room and opened her jewelry box. All of her most precious items were locked in a strong box, but he knew he could pawn a handful of these lesser items for enough money to allow him to sleep indoors for another month or two. He also found a wad of cash in his father's sock drawer. Next he went to Adelaide's room, where he quickly searched through her things, finding two pairs of earrings worth taking and a small white envelope of cash that was labeled “for Christmas gifts” in a drawer in her writing table. He slipped it all into his pocket. Finally, he went to his own room, grabbed a sweater and a jacket and a couple of pairs of socks and underwear, wrapped the come-along in them, and pushed everything into a blue backpack he hadn't used since high school. He stepped back into the hall and listened. The house was quiet.

He was about to head back downstairs when he felt the urge to use the toilet. He smiled, stepped to his father's study, went to the corner farthest from the door, unzipped his pants, and relieved himself on the heavy carpet. He re-zipped his trousers and locked the door behind himself.

Adelaide was waiting for him in the kitchen. When he entered, she looked up from cleaning the counter.

“I've prepared some lunch and dinner for you, Sean,” she said.

“Wow, that's really great!” he said, finding the right inflection to seem genuine.

She handed him a large paper sack. “Did you get your things?”

“I did,” he took the bag and put it into his backpack. “Look, I should get going. I don't want to have a run-in with the old man.”

Adelaide stepped to him and embraced him warmly. He put his arms around her and studied the far wall of the kitchen, wondering what time the next bus would arrive.

What
,
where
, and
how
had now been determined. All that remained was the
when
.

SEAN FINALLY REACHED
the front of the queue at the Carnegie Centre kitchen. A large woman heaped rice, vegetables, and chicken onto his plate. He smiled, paying the dollar seventy-five to the cashier.

Sean looked around the crowded room for a place to sit and eat, but his stomach twisted with the thought of being cramped together with all these people. He took his food and found his way back outside, taking a place on the steps. He ate the meal, eyeing a ragged-looking man with a greasy ball cap who studied him intently. Still sitting, Sean finished and put his face down onto his folded arms, supported on his knees, and let himself drift. He must have fallen asleep, because he woke with a start.

“I'm sorry,” said a young woman's voice.

He cleared his eyes and looked around. She was hunched down on the steps next to him. She was older than he was, maybe early thirties, and wore a plain gray hooded sweatshirt that zipped up the front, and had a bright orange backpack on her back. He had seen her just a few days ago when he had been following Overcoat Man. She had given the vagrant a package of first-aid supplies. Sean remembered that same package was now in
his
backpack.

“I'm sorry to have woken you,” the woman said again. Sean focused on her, his flat eyes scanning her face. “My name is Juliet. I work for the Health Authority. I'm a nurse. I wanted to check in with you and make sure everything was alright.”

Sean set his composure. “Thanks,” he said, blinking the sleep from his eyes. “I'm okay. I just ate for the first time in a couple of days. I guess I drifted off.”

“What's your name?”

“Sean.”

“How long have you been on the street, Sean?”

Sean paused a moment to give the appearance of calculation. “I think about six months. Maybe a little longer.”

“Are you from Vancouver?”

“No, Toronto.”

“How did you come to be in Vancouver?”

“I came out to go to school, but my father cut me off when I didn't get all A's after my first term. I couldn't afford to go it on my own.”

“How old are you, Sean?”

“Twenty-two.”

Juliet regarded his face. She knew that living on the street aged people beyond their years. “Sean, can I ask you a few personal questions?”

“Sure, I guess.”

“Do you use any drugs?”

“Oh no,” he said. “Even if I could afford them, I wouldn't do that sort of thing. It really messes you up. I still really just want to get back into university. I was studying physics and chemistry. I want to be a scientist some day.”

“I have an even more personal question, Sean. I hope you'll understand it's just my job. Have you had any unprotected sex while on the street?”

“What do you mean?” Sean asked, tilting his head innocently to one side.

“Have you had sex without a condom?”

Sean looked down at his hands. “No,” he said.

“That's good, Sean. That's good.”

“I'm not like
these
people,” Sean said, looking back up at Juliet, his eyes meeting hers. “I'm not a vagrant. I'm not a bum. I come from a good family. It's just that my father was really hard on me as a kid. My mother died when I was little. I just want to get my feet back under me so I can go to school. I'm smart. I know I can do well,” he said.

Juliet looked into Sean's eyes. In her years working on the street she had become adept at reading people's intent and their sincerity. Sean was hard to read. He seemed to be genuinely in distress, but she just couldn't see anything in his eyes. His voice, his words, his body language all cried out for help, but his eyes betrayed nothing.

“Can
you
help me?” he said, mimicking the emotion he had seen so many homeless people employ as they pleaded for assistance.

She regarded him. “I think I can, Sean.”

With that sentence, Sean felt his purpose shift. Felt his purpose deepen and expand, giving new scope to his arrangements.

ON TUESDAY MORNING DENMAN SCOTT
woke at six, and as was his custom, went immediately to the small sunroom on the back of his Mount Pleasant home and meditated for half an hour. He sat in the lotus position on a low cushion centered on a bamboo mat, clearing his mind of thoughts. It had taken him ten years to reach the point where he could sit for thirty minutes each morning without fantasies or stories or to-do lists cluttering his mind.

When the tiny bell on his meditation timer chimed, he opened his eyes. He rose, stretched, then stepped from the sunroom into his kitchen to brew a strong cup of tea. As the kettle boiled, he retrieved the
Vancouver Sun
from the front stoop, and standing at the counter, opened it and read the headlines.

One caught his eye: “Violence Expected at Today's Anti-Poverty Protests.” He ate his breakfast at the counter, the paper spread in front of him.

The Vancouver Police Department is warning anti-poverty activists not to use today's planned rally, to be held in the Downtown Eastside, to advance a radical and violent agenda. The
VPD
says it has received information that the End Poverty Now Coalition will use the event to further its own narrow aims, so the
VPD
will be posting additional officers along the route of the march. John Andrews, Division 2 Commander for the
VPD
, says: “We've learned that members of the End Poverty Now Coalition plan on turning today's event into some sort of venting exercise and that we should expect violence and hooliganism. That sort of behavior is not acceptable in the fair City of Vancouver.”

The rally, originally organized by the Downtown Eastside Community Advocacy Society to highlight the plight of the homeless and those living in poverty, is to start at 1:00
PM
at Pigeon Park, and will include a parade through some of the city's poorest neighborhoods. “The purpose of today's rally is to demonstrate to the people of the City of Vancouver first and foremost that the Downtown Eastside is a community in crisis,” says Beatta Nowak, Executive Director of the Community Advocacy Society.

Advocates for the homeless say that the City of Vancouver must build up to two thousand units of community supported housing a year for the next three years in order to house all of the city's homeless.

Andrews says that the
VPD
is sympathetic to the needs of the homeless, but violence will not be tolerated. “The
VPD
will make a proportional response.”

Nobody from the End Poverty Now Coalition could be reached for a comment.