 |
| Schwartzie. |
Chapter Fourteen
Professor missing…
Professor Geoff Pakenham has been missing for several months. Authorities are asking for the public’s cooperation. He was last seen walking down County Road 17 during spring break, at approximately 6:30 a.m. Police say the professor may have gone on a walkabout, for which the popular yet eccentric teacher of journalism at Lennox College of Applied Arts and Technology was noted. Instructor in such topics as Media and the Law, Writing for the News, and Political Science, Mr. Pakenham was fond of walking tours in such places as Kenya, New Zealand and Mongolia since his wife passed on eight years ago. While foul play cannot be ruled out, police speculate that the professor may have wandered off the beaten path, perhaps suffering a stroke or heart attack. He may have broken a leg in a remote location and perished from exposure.
Landowners in the vicinity of Aronka, Schmedleyville, and along County Road 17 are being asked to check woodlots, ditches and secluded areas of their land. They should call police if they notice anything unusual. While the weather was quite warm at the time of the disappearance, there were a couple of cold snaps before spring arrived. The professor is in his mid-sixties, balding, with a toothbrush mustache and an English accent. He was last seen wearing a white hooded parka, hiking boots and blue jeans. He habitually wore a cap, what the locals call a chirper.
There have been three other missing persons locally in the last two and a half years, according to Inspector Randall Gowan of Lennox Police Services. These include known loner and outdoorsman Harold Hilier, Norma Rice, a patient who wandered away from a private nursing home in Pistrolia, and Josh Hartley, age 14, the only disappearance police consider suspicious.
—Mackenzie Schwartz
“That fuckin’ Gowan.” grunted Brubaker.
His buddy, Slippery McCougall, claimed to have bribed him with $2,200 bucks one time to make some charges go away. In some ways Gowan was just trying to do the right thing.
McCougall did four years in jail for an attempted robbery, (and a previous history.) He got out, and tried to go straight. He got a job at an electrical contracting firm, and started saving up his money. He tried to stop ripping off wallets and stealing credit cards and running them up.
“You were right. Better off to be poor but free.” That’s what he told Bru one day, in all apparent sincerity.
Bru didn’t half believe it.
The only problem was some outstanding charges that had never been taken care of in a court of law. McCougall wanted to buy a house. Brubaker showed up one day at Slip-Sliding-Away McCougall’s place, and Slip met him at the door with the phone in his hand. Bru heard one side of a conversation with Slip’s lawyer. The gist of it was, the charges went away. Slip had bought his house and started tearing it apart, with big plans for renovation. Yeah, and one day he flipped out on someone at work. Slip threatened to smash his head in with a steel pipe or something. Got fired. And Slip being Slip, he came up with the idea of the grow-op.
At some point Bru knew he had to walk away from his old buddy.
“Why are you so paranoid?” Slip asked Chuck, laughing with derision. “What are you afraid of? You’re not involved. The cops won’t do nothing to you.”
“That’s bullshit.”
“What will they do to you?” Slip asked with a grin.
“They’ll say I ratted you off. You’ll be sitting in a fuckin’ jail cell, with too much fuckin’ time to think.”
Last time around, Slip was warned by the judge, Next time it’ll be five years.
In the end McCougall just didn’t get it. The cops were essentially just as bad as the criminals. To get in their way was fraught with peril. Upon reflection, Bru had pegged his buddy as a big threat to his friends, not being able to take responsibility for his own mistakes. Looking back, Slip had never been caught doing anything. He had always blamed someone else, it didn’t much matter who, for ratting him off. Bru almost feared Slip more than he feared the cops, (in some kind of revelation), but that wasn’t it.
He had just walked away on general principles.
For fuck’s sakes.
You could buy all the pot you wanted for a hundred bucks and let some other asshole take all the risks.
McCougall just didn’t get it.
Like a lot of losers, maybe he just needed a hobby. Or maybe he honestly believed that you could live on the proceeds of petty crime indefinitely.
Bru could at least reckon up the odds. And over time, the margin got narrower and narrower.
***
His dad was reading the paper, and then he looked up.
“That professor. You knew him?”
“Fuck. He was a nice old guy. A real good teacher, too. Last time I called him, he just seemed so shaky on the phone. I don’t know. Maybe a touch of emphysema.”
 |
| Oh, yes, Chuck was going to be a journalist... |
Chuck was saddened by the loss. He’d known Pakenham since 1988, the first time he returned to school. When Bru ran out of money after five months of school, Pakenham made some calls and got him an interview. That interview led to another, which led to a job as sports editor of a weekly paper in New Bangor, Ontario. Bru had subsequently screwed the job up pretty badly. That wasn’t Pakenham’s fault, was it? More a case of too many girlfriends in too many towns. Bru learned much from these experiences. For one thing, you couldn’t be everywhere at once. For another, girls have a really good sense of smell, with minds more logical than some would credit.
Bru composed his thoughts.
“Pakenham skewered me real good one day.” The elder Brubaker seemed to be listening.
“He told me to go interview some guy. For the sake of argument, let’s call him Tony Fuck-head.” He began the story in a reminiscent tone. “The guy worked there at the college. I forget which department. Anyhow, I went down the hallway. It was like three doors down. As I walked in, there were three offices in a row, all glass-fronted cubicles. On the wall was a plaque beside each guy’s door, and I could see this guy in there on the phone. The plaque said, Tony Fuck-head. I went in and interviewed the guy, and the story appeared in the college paper. Later that week…”
Bru had never been sure, not positively, but…
“So what happened?”
“Pakenham told me there was a phone call. Some guy, Mr. Fuck-head, wanted to talk to me. Anyhow, he thanked me for the story, said it was a good story, and he agreed with everything in it. Only trouble was, he didn’t know me from Adam, and didn’t remember saying any of it.”
His father laughed out loud.
“You were set up.”
Bru nodded glumly.
“I’ll never know for sure, but it really did hurt at the time.”
“Will the real Tony Fuck-head, please stand up.” His old man had a passable imitation of Eminem. “Please stand up.”
“And what lesson did you learn from all this?” Big Frank asked.
“Not to make assumptions. That one bit me in the ass.”
His dad was a little taken aback by his next assertion.
“I loved that old guy. I owe him a lot. He used to tell us, check your sources, in that dry, dusty English accent. That Hilier guy, he went missing near Aronka. But everyone who knew him said he was into the survival thing. He may not actually be missing.”
They sat and sipped coffee for a time. Then his old man started up again.
“I had an awful dream last night,” he said.
“What was it this time?” Bru, with a grimace.
 |
| Oh, God, what is it this time? A dream about money? |
“I dreamed I plugged up the toilet, and then, when I went to use the plunger, it wouldn’t go down.”
Frank Brubaker was pretty famous for jamming up the toilet with hard stools.
Bru winced as the story went on.
“So I was plunging and flushing and plunging and flushing. Then the toilet sucked the head off the plunger. I was wondering, oh God, what am I supposed to do now? How am I going to get that out of there? I had visions of calling a plumber and having him rip out the walls, the floor, all the pipes…”
Chuck grinned. Psychologically it was rife. It was the dream of a man who dreaded spending money. Like many of the working class, his greatest nightmare was debt, which of course involved paying bills. Hence the anal retentive streak when it came to money, and dreams.
In a nutshell, the dream wasn’t about poop, but about money.
***
Chuck went and unlocked the garage and his bike. He filled up the water bottle, and then strapped on his pouch. Frank Brubaker was puttering about with paint brushes and a soup can with a little gasoline in it.
“Be careful with that.” Bru admonished the old guy.
Sometimes the old man pissed him off. One of the leading causes of death in elderly people was by silly accidents. Strapping on his helmet, he was ready for a ride. The day was bright and sunny. The morning air was soft, with a touch of fog, but it would burn off quickly. He put a couple of smokes in the drawer of the desk in the garage, where a spare lighter was kept. Brubaker checked to make sure he had his bank-book.
“I shall return.”
“Good for you, MacArthur.”
 |
| "Good for you, MacArthur." |
…details of Scow’s site cleanup plan…
Details of Scow Canada’s decommissioning of the Lennox site will be outlined at city hall by the program leaders tomorrow. Spokesperson Catherine Creeper and Don Phybes, Scow site director, will speak publically about the company’s intentions for the Chemical Alley properties it owns and operates. A latex operation will be shut down this month and only propylene oxide units will operate until April 2011. The chlor-alkali unit was shut down six months ago but site cleanup continues.
A year ago, Scow officials announced the decision to close the Lennox facility, ending the company’s seven-decade history in Lennox.
“Aside from concerns about the work force, the city is anxious to hear about Scow’s plan to clean up this site.” This according to Mayor Hope Pedlar. “Scow has a good record of remediation. We’re working with them to determine what the land can be used for once it’s totally cleared. It’s going to take a long time. Once we’re at the end of the journey, to get the property to where it should be, we are at the nexus of solar energy, and the centre of ethanol development in Ontario.”
The city had absolutely no solar energy. A simple fact, of which she appeared to be unaware, although some preliminary work was being done on a solar farm, noted Brubaker in disbelief. The Mayor had just objected to wind turbines, saying it would spoil the view.
Pedlar is optimistic new uses for the Scow property will be found once the clean-up is complete. By 2011 the company will have no employees on the site, according to data provided. Two landfill sites will be shut down. They will be subject to third-party monitoring. Outlying properties are also being readied for sale by Scow. Once site decommissioning is complete, no structures will remain and trees and grass will be planted. At the time the closure was announced, Scow had 470 employees in Lennox. That number is now 275. The majority of workers are eligible for retirement, according to a chart to be formally presented to council at tomorrow’s meeting. Approximately one-eighth of the Scow workforce has been redeployed, and other segments are still seeking jobs, require re-training or haven’t been released.
Contenders for the one million dollars for charity Scow is pledging as a parting gift to the city have been reduced to a list of five finalists. Company officials plan to announce the decision before Christmas. A committee of employees, management and private community groups is being consulted in this process.—Staff writers.
“My name is not on that list, presumably.” Brubaker was flipping through last night’s paper. “I’ll bet it goes to the Mayor’s Monolithic Monument.”
He sat on a bench by the waterfront, waiting for the bank to open. There were times when he simply couldn’t wait to leave the house. He found himself identifying pretty strongly with street people. They were becoming more and more common, even in this high-average-median-income according to Statistics Canada town. Intuitively Chuck understood, that to sit cooped up in a moldering old flophouse-slash-firetrap was something they couldn’t abide.
To sleep in a dorm was no substitute for freedom.
Fresh air, and peace and quiet. No snoring. No stinky socks inches from your face, no one trying to bum your second last smoke or borrow your toothbrush.
Brubaker was always fascinated by the editorial page. The letters to the editor cut across class boundaries, intellectual capacities, and went from the sublime to the absurd in pretty short order. One guy might write one letter a month on abortion, quoting the Bible at every turn. Some people wrote in to thank the hospital or the doctors for something.
Some other guy wrote in and gave the government a blast of shit.
END
Images. Louis.
Louis has books and stories available from Smashwords.
Thank you for reading.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Please feel free to comment on the blog posts, art or editing.