Mind Games (35 page)

The bearded lady returned with a furry outfit with paws. “I was gonna give this to Clyde, but he already passed out.” He handed me a mask, as well: Snoopy with a Snidely Whiplash moustache and in leather headgear.

Another joint was produced, lit, passed around. I couldn’t simply pretend to inhale, and felt obliged to take a puff. Then I stepped out of the truck, zipped myself into the costume. It smelled of long-dead bear, but at least I was warm.

Louis then drove me a ways up a rural road. I thought I might be hallucinating when the name “Clinton W. Huff” flashed by. An illuminated mailbox, his house lit up too, behind some trees. Was the mayor receiving tiny guests, handing out FreedomFirstForever pamphlets to their parents?

Louie made a loop up a rise, and I was deposited by a wooden gate, where a jack-o’-lantern beckoned with a crooked smile. I had to be reminded to retrieve my bicycle. “See you at the dance, Dub.”

The mailbox was designed as an imitation birdhouse, a roof that opens to receive mail, a name carved into the wood:
Walker
.

As Louie drove off, a couple of small ghosts flitted into view, hastening up the walkway to the Walker house. I stood there awhile, recording my impressions: a hand-built look, cedar logs and shingles, a turret with stained glass.

A woman’s voice behind me: “Don’t run!”

The two children slowed, gained the porch, knocked on the door. Their mother waited by the gate, and I wheeled my bike
to her. She found my costume a source of humour. “What are you, Snoopy the bear?”

“It’ll have to do. I just rode into town.” She was as confused as I about that, and I wasn’t able to assemble an explanation. “Do you know Mr. Walker?”

“Oh, yes. Very nice man. They say his son, Dubbin, is a rotten egg.” Her hand went to her mouth. “Oh, I’m sorry, are you related?”

“Maybe.”

Now comes my first glimpse of Walker. But his face is in the dark, the light behind him. A tall man, but hunched over. He shuffles forward, and the children shy away nervously: now I see why – he’s a two-headed monster … no, not quite, there’s a human form over his shoulder, a head hidden by falling hair, gloved hands dangling: a stuffed corpse.

“Trick or treat,” a little voice pipes.

“What do you want first, the trick or the treat? “A gruff voice.

“Really, Mr. Walker,” the mother loudly chides.

The children back off farther. “Now, now, boys, it’s just me.” Walker stands to his full height, extends bags of sweets, but the boys seem unwilling to come closer.

Their mother walks into the yard to offer courage. “Todd, It’s just Mr. Walker getting all dressed up. See, Freddy, that’s a big pillow with arms sewn on it.”

I followed her, and was now able to make him out more clearly: a white bathing cap over his head to simulate baldness, tufts of beard glued to chin and jowls – he resembled someone I know too well. The dummy over his shoulder was a replica of a woman with long hair. An imitation chain of office around his neck completed the picture.

“Who
are
you?” said the woman. “The hunchback of Notre Dame?”

“He’s the mayor of Jackson Cove,” I explained.

“Exactly right.” He seemed startled. “And who the hell are
you
?”

Walker was a few inches over six feet, a big handsome man, probably in his late fifties – I felt I could see the family resemblance behind the Huff-like disguise. Brown eyes, not blue like mine.

The boys had accepted his offerings by now and scampered off, their mother in tow. From behind the house came a loud quacking, as if from a duck in its death throes.

“Must have got one of them,” Walker said. “I let some weasels loose.” I could make no sense of this. He peered at me, trying to penetrate the Snoopy mask. “I say – do I know you?”

This was the moment of truth, the moment to which my yearning-scrambled life had been dedicated. I took off the mask. My voice quavered. “Hello, Peter. I’m your son.”

“I’ll be buggered, Dubbin, is that you?”

“Your other son.”

“I don’t have another son, thank God for that.”

“The one you conceived in 1967. In a sleeping bag in the outfield of a ballpark in Nelson. During a rock concert.” I can’t remember everything I said, words were pouring from me, a disjointed history that provoked only a frown. “Am I bringing it back, Peter? Her name is Victoria. She gave birth to your other son on June 7, 1968.”

I waited for the shocked face of revelation. But he said, “Peter? I’m not a Peter, though I’ve been called worse. It’s Alexander. In 1967, I was in bloody England. Looks like you could use a drink, old fellow.”

I don’t know why I hadn’t picked up the English accent right from the start. As he led me in, I took in a rear view of the dummy on his back, a long dress, nylons, beat-up runners. The house was cluttered, a cedar table bearing the tools of recent efforts – cloth, scissors, swatches of fur, foam padding. A bottle, half-f, of vodka.

“Came over in seventy-five with my wife and son. She left me, and I raised my son to be a bit of an asshole.” He examined
me under a naked light bulb. “Well, if you aren’t a carbon copy of Dubbin. But no, the ears are wrong, no scar. Good thing too, or I’d have run you out.”

I was in a stew of incredulity, embarrassment, and relief. As I piece together this jigsaw night, I realize that I ended up in the slammer because I began foolishly celebrating my unDoobieness.

Walker seemed eager to prove we weren’t kin. His full name was Alexander Myerscough Walker – old passports were produced in proof of that, along with a marriage notice in an Uxbridge weekly, a diploma from an agricultural college, June, 1968, the month of my birth. For my part, I could only offer a confusing explanation of who I was, my bastard state, the clues that led me here.

Our chat was oiled by vodka tonics, and soon we were deep into his bottle, laughing at my gaffe. There was much to like about the man, he was hale and forthright, even confiding he kept a grow op in the basement, the remnants of a thriving business. His worthless son had been stealing the buds, selling them, attracting heat. But Clint Huff had caused even greater damage to his trade.

The aim of Walker’s costume was to get the mayor’s goat. There had been similar taunts over the years – it was Walker who’d stencilled
Wanted
on Huff’s campaign posters. They are the Hatfield and McCoy of Jackson Cove.

I think it was earlier – I haven’t got this account in order – that I explained Huff is suing my mother for libel. He snorted. “What a bloody fool.” (Our shared nemesis brought about a bonding, and now I’m unable to ask the Mounties to drop by to verify my identity: Walker’s house reeks of pot.)

He led me up a narrow wooden staircase to the turret, where a telescope was set on a tripod. “This here is my watch-tower, so I can see the horsemen coming. That’s where the little nuisance lives.” I could see the back of Huff’s tidy frame house, the second floor still lit.

“I used to have an outdoor grow, a wholesale business, respectable customers. Then he got ducks.” They’d torn up his plants. Walker had to move his grow indoors, hasn’t had a decent year since.

I looked through his scope: a second-floor window partly curtained, the headboard of a bed, and above it a smiling portrait of Princess Diana.

“He’s got her plastered all over his walls. I swear he’s got a life-sized blow-up rubber Diana. Likes to pretend he’s Dodi al Fayed.”

I was transported back to the mezzanine of the New Westminster Courthouse.
They betrayed the one great shining light of this world. She died for our sins
.

Huff sauntered into view, dressed for Halloween in what appeared to be ancient Egyptian dress. I watched a while longer, but Huff vanished, and the lights went out.

Walker led me back downstairs, poured more drinks, produced snapshots taken with a telephoto lens. They showed the Diana doll, though no intimate moments were captured.

“Should I report the twit to the Board of Education?”

“Not unless you want to spend the rest of your life in a courtroom.”

I was given several prints, though I was unsure what use to put to them. (The photos – plus my watch and wallet – are in the custody of my jailers, in an envelope that I pray they haven’t opened. Why haven’t they received confirmation that the Dooberman is behind bars? Maybe he
has
escaped jail.)

The vodka bottle emptied, Walker urged me to join him at the dance. He had a few chores first, so I donned my Snoopy mask, zipped up my bear suit, mounted Vesuvio II, and rode back to the Community Hall. Through the open doorway, I could see the musicians (remnants of the Brain Damage of 1967?), bearded, greying, with middle-aged paunches.

Suddenly I halted. The man and woman leaving the hall were dressed in the boots, jackets, and stripes of the Royal
Mounted. The Dooberman heard a quiet voice of warning, pedalled his way back across the uneven lawn to the road.

I lost control momentarily and nearly slid into the
RCMP
van, had to grab the side mirror to steady myself. I looked back – the two officers were on alert. I bolted, swept downhill to the village. Stupidly, I’d aroused suspicions with my clownish flight.

But they didn’t follow me, and I was soon on the main street of Jackson Cove with its charmingly hokey Bavarian façade, the town hall a high-steepled image from my dreams. By the lake was the Warm Springs Hotel, steam curling from its pools. I intended to check in, but first made my way to the general store. The pot and alcohol made its choices bewildering and the transactions complex. When I doffed my Snoopy mask, the saleswomen examined my credit card suspiciously, picking up the phone as I walked out with clothes and swim trunks.

She alerted the local RCMP, of course: the Dooberman was back in town with a credit card stolen from a doctor. That, at least, is what Corporal Netty Krepusch theorized as her underling handcuffed me at the check-in counter of the hotel. My explanations were seen as preposterous, and I worsened matters with my lurid flow of loud complaint.

But now comes Netty herself, jangling keys, looking frazzled and contrite. “I’m
so
sorry, Dr. Dare.”

The next day, nursing a hangover, I phoned Jack Churko from the Warm Springs Hotel. The search for Grundy and Lyall continues to frustrate him, but he had a great gloating laugh over my arrest – it is all through the
VPD
– and he claimed to have had thoughts, when Corporal Krepusch phoned him, of telling her I was wanted on a nationwide warrant. Dubbin Dooberman, by the way, was in the pokey all the time.

Netty Krepusch bought me dinner Sunday, an effort at amends, and was relieved I wasn’t contemplating a suit for false arrest. When I sounded her out about local characters, I learned, to my lack of surprise, the mayor is a “fucking headache” with
his constant advice and interference. His sworn enemy is thus widely tolerated: it’s known Alexander Walker keeps a small grow, but the law is selectively enforced.

On Monday, I took a spin to Nelson, an old and pretty town snuggled into the valley by Kootenay Lake. I strolled about the ballpark, seeking an impossibly distant memory of being. Here was third base, where Peter told Victoria she was the most beautiful creature he’d met since escaping prison. Here in the outfield, they made psychedelic love, and the supposed miracle of me began.

The skies had been darkening all day, and as I was standing lost in left field, the weather turned brusque, a cold front from the north, flurries. The grounds quickly went white, a clean sheet covering the sins of 1967 – so virginal that I didn’t want to disturb the cold peace of it all. By the next morning, as I began my bus journey home, several inches of snow had fallen. I was experiencing ennui, an old familiar sense, fatherless again, the weary search continues.