Core Values, Chapter Three. Louis Shalako.

 

Barnes, looking at all them deadlines...

 

Chapter Three

 

Meanwhile, back in the newsroom…

 

 

 

Mr. Fred Barnes

The Lennox Guardian-Standard

140 S. Blount St.

Lennox, Ont.

Z8C 1F3

 

Charles H. Brubaker

853 Knight St.

Lennox, Ont.

Z7B 9N4

 

Dear sir,

 

Scow has announced they are closing the Lennox site. The big news is lost jobs. Some goofy politician hopes a few white-collar sales jobs can be saved. The impact to the tax base is one concern.

Have you ever considered what it takes to shut down a chemical plant? The land down there is riddled with thousands of miles of buried pipes and cables.

The ground, in my own personal experience, is soaked with chemicals. I worked there one summer and spent fourteen weeks on the end of a shovel. We had to hand-dig around all the pipes and cables. They didn’t want to hit them with a backhoe.

I am intimately familiar with that soil. We had to literally saw two-inch slices off with our shovels. It stuck to the end, which made it hard to dig. It oozed with chemicals.

Trying to fling it off the end of a shovel was unbelievable. It stuck like glue.

Read their closure plan very carefully.

Dioxin breaks down in the environment into fairly stable long-chain compounds.

These molecules persist in the environment. They resemble female hormones in their chemical structure and effects on living organisms.

A lake in Louisiana had a dramatic increase in the number of female alligators born. Normally, a degree or two of higher temperature determines the number of females, but the lake was at its normal temperature.

It turned out to be dioxin derivatives in the environment. Some very highly-paid flunky is conducting a study or assessment of the problem on the reserve even as we speak. The results will be inconclusive, but indicate the need for further study. This tosses all responsibility onto some other level of government. There has to be some reason for the anomalous birthrate on the Rez.

Nothing happens for no reason.

Scow makes products like the ones in question. Off the record, in the eighties, Scow had a mouthwash. It was called Nepatol. If kids under 16 used it, their teeth were permanently stained green. Scow was aware of the problem.

Scow resorted to advanced media training, for its executives in order to cope with media inquiries of this and other like matters. Don’t believe everything they tell you.

O.K?

If I was Scow Chemical, and if I suspected a link between our onsite activities and the abnormal birthrate on the reserve, I would get out of town and re-brand the company.

The least suspicious way to do it is a hostile takeover, where all the executives, the very same ones who wrote the deal, get paid off when the new guys take over. Then they get to become lobbyists in Washington and Ottawa for the petrochemical industry.

Not everyone has a memory like an elevator and a mind like a lead trap-door.

Thank Gawd we have Mayor Hope Pedlar to stand up for the little people.

On Friday, I observed about two hundred or so blobs of oil, at the foot of Vimy Ridge Road. They ranged in size from about a dime to a dinner plate. Most were bluish-greenish and one was shiny, golden, and all shimmery, just like hydrocarbons.

The week before, I observed a slick of dark, oily matter emanating from what is clearly an outfall. Same location. This went out twenty-five metres, then went left, (south,) and petered out. It was ten metres wide, and three hundred metres long.

I was thinking of taking a photo, but I’m afraid of being shot by the police.

 

— Chuck

 

“When he refers to some goofy politician, presumably he means Hope Pedlar.” Ryebaum tittered. “Striving for accuracy, I guess.”

Mackenzie Schwartz, Food & Beverage Editor.

“…holy crap, how paranoid is this guy?” Murmured Mackenzie Schwartz, Food and Beverage Editor of the paper. “He makes a lot of sense one minute, then he’s just nutzo by the end of the piece.”

Schwartzie’s were feet killing her again.

Gawd help us.

“I don’t know, but he raises some interesting points.” Their sports-photographer-type-guy, a tall skinny reporter by the name of Ryebaum.

That name fits, she thought to herself.

Rick Ryebaum eyed the long sexy legs, clad in lacy black stockings and high-heeled stilettos rather speculatively, but kept his mouth shut. Schwartzie had learned to live with it. When he appeared not to be looking, Schwartzie tugged at the hem of her skirt. No joy. Hell.

“Okay, here’s the next one.” Thus quoth Barnes, editor and commander-in-chief of all these disparate, (or, as some said, desperate,) characters.

 

Dear sir,

 

Regarding the story about anomalous birth rates on the reserve.

The ratio of girl babies compared to boy babies is skewed in favor of the girls.

Human beings have 23 pairs of chromosomes.

If the mother has blue eyes, and contributes a chromosome for blue eyes, and the father contributes one for brown eyes, the child will have brown eyes. Yet a brown-eyes man could contribute a recessive, i.e. blue-eyed gene from up the family tree.

Then a blue-eyed child would ensue. Brown eyes dominate blue eyes.

There are chromosomes which determine the gender of the baby. The mom contributes one, and the dad contributes one. Now if the mom contributes a chromosome which says, ‘I want to be a little girl baby,’ and the dad contributes one which says, ‘I don’t know what I want to be,’ then that might result in a female baby, due to the absence of the so-called dominant male gene.

Is gene damage causing the problem on the reserve?

They’re surrounded by plants like Buncor, Polyox Corp., what used to be called Union-Carter Tech in Schmedleyville, and of course Scow. Then there is the abandoned Unity Chemical site. What chemical causes chromosomal damage?

What about social factors, like methamphetamines, marijuana, or even the prevalence of diabetes among the natives?

One more thing. Variation in the number of chromosomes can be induced artificially, especially in plants. Multiples of the normal number of chromosomes may be produced by treatment with colchicine. Scow produces farm products. Pesticides, herbicides, fungicides, or at least the constituent feed-stocks that go into the making of them.

Spray a weed with sudden-growth hormone, it shoots up faster than the root can grow.

All of a sudden you’ve got a dead weed. That’s how that stuff works.

The deer, the waterfowl, and the fish eat the plants. The Nassagewaya eat them in their turn.

Just think of the liability. Not just to Scow Chemical, but all the various levels of government, perhaps even this newspaper. Your editorials are always in favor of the petrochemical industry, right?

When the lid popped off one of them units down there, we’d vacuum it up, and take it to the company landfill. I worked at Scheist Water-Blasting on a sucker-truck. I was an industrial vacuum technician. On Friday nights, when everyone else was drunk and wouldn’t answer the phone, I would get called in on high-pressure water-blasting. At nine bucks an hour, that’s a hard life. Most of them guys simply couldn’t get employment anywhere else. No education, criminal records, or substance abuse issues. No one else would hire them, or they burned all possible bridges long previously.

They don’t ask too many questions.

Neither does Scheist.

It might go to Krystal Waters and be burned as solid toxic waste, and the residue goes up the smokestack. Right out into the environment. Solid ash goes into the company landfill. That Krystal Waters plant is way out there in the boonies. We used to go in, blast out the flues, and suck up the stuff, and then take it over to their landfill. All them guys have a landfill site.

The guidelines for product safety are different than the guidelines for disposal.

You ever wonder why that plant is twenty kilometres east of town? It’s downwind.

Nothing out there but soybeans, corn and pasture, dairying operations, poultry and such. There’s really nothing to worry about, right?

So much of our diet these days comes from soybeans, eh? You have a lot of grocery ads in your paper, right? You know all about that sort of thing.

Human beings are a bell-weather species. We’re at the top of the food chain. We prey on everything else. And we’re omnivorous, like pigs. Humans and pigs resemble each other in physiological terms. That’s why pigs are used extensively in medical research. The only major difference between the pig and a human being is the opposable thumb—we can strike a light and they can’t.

When a spill occurs, questions are asked.

Why did it take four hours to report the spill?

They were waiting to see if it would sink. If it sinks, no one sees it. No one complains, and there is no problem.

Ryebaum.

No problem, means nothing to report.

In western society, 51% of all babies born are female. I don’t know why. Ask Doctor David Suzuki. When did the rise in the female birthrate first become apparent?

It’s not enough to study the humans. Animals should be included in the exact same study, in the exact same areas. Animals don’t have social problems. They’re a control group. An objectively-constituted control group has been left out of every major study so far. (Since the dawn of time.) When a scientist accepts funding for a study, and comes up with results that are inconclusive, there’s at least one thing they didn’t tell you—they never could have gotten a conclusive, objective result.

Pollutants, including heavy metals, dioxins, etc, are found in the high arctic. Where are you going to find an uncontaminated human control group? Pull some bones out of a drawer in a museum someplace and look for pollutants in the Neanderthals or Cro-Magnons? Check the bones of the first peoples, native remains from five hundred years ago?

In terms of chromosomal damage specifically, the first thing that comes to mind is radioactivity. Nuclear waste is trucked along Highway 449 and across the Clearwater Bridge. Then there’s heavy metals, and the third? What if the chromosomes are not damaged? We’re back to hormones and chemistry again.

As for the speculative theory that Scow might cut and run, Buncor is in the midst of a huge shutdown. They’re spending hundreds of millions of dollars. But maybe they’re fixing a problem, eh?

If I was on the internet, I would look up endocrine disruptors. You guys are on the internet, right?

My advice to you sir, is not to drink the water. Because fish fuck in there.

 

— Chuck

 

“Do you believe that guy?” Bill O’Keefe was the Lennox Guardian-Standard’s crime and environmental reporter.

A quizzical smile tugged at the corners of baggy blue eyes and his fleshy, petulant mouth. His lumpy head and thick glasses belied a brain that must have taken a wrong turn someplace.

“I just thought you might like to have a look at it.” Barnes grinned. “Your eyebrows were climbing as you read it.”

“Is he an Indian?” Ken Noble, senior story editor.

No one knew, but Ryebaum doubted it.

“Brubaker isn’t a common name on the local reserve.” As he quite reasonably pointed out.

“Most people understand the need for brevity, but this guy’s just a loon.” O’Keefe shook his head glumly. “Yet I understand the basic concern. People see Chemical Alley, they get all paranoid, and they assume the worst.”

Mackenzie Schwartz sat reading, and shaking her head too.

“Well, something must explain the problem on the Reserve.” Barnes, muttering, already back to work.

Another day, another deadline, or rather a series of looming deadlines.

There was the Spring Living Issue, then the Bridal Issue, then the Summer in the City Issue. The Automotive Issue. He sighed. Swartz and O’Keefe noted in amusement his quick glance at a sailboat picture tacked on the wall over his cluttered workstation.

Barnes was totally unconscious of it.

“There’s no doubt that some kind of study is long overdue.” O’Keefe could, with some little prompting, go into quite a spiel vis-à-vis pollution and corporate irresponsibility.

Not that he ever wrote about, it, conceded his boss. For that you needed evidence, and Bill was jaded after thirty-five years of observing municipal politics. His eleven poetry books, none of which had sold more than a hundred copies, kept him going. O’Keefe was more than happy to take calls from friendly public-relations types and write good-news stories.

Although that one a year ago about the big chemical spill on Highway 47 had won him an award. Might do well to remind Bill of that. Barnes looked at the clock. You could only push a man like Bill so hard.

“Okay, next item.” Bill wouldn’t let Brubaker do all the work, he hoped. “He’s really hooked up on the subject.”

That one time when Brubaker made the paper...

 

Dear Fred,

 

You probably think the Scow theory is crazy. Fine, be that way. But what about the native guy who tested positive for 38 out of 68 chemical contaminants? That was in your paper, right? Would I test positive for 38 out of 68 chemicals? What about you, Fred?

Fish eat snails, other fish, organic matter, vegetation.

Rabbits eat vegetation, deer eat vegetation. Grouse, pheasants, and wild turkeys eat insects, nuts, seeds, berries, vegetation. But they all consume air and water.

The Nassagewaya, they’re on city water? Right?

How does this chemical contamination get into the natives? The chemicals enter the bottom end of the food chain, and go on up the food chain. Natives traditionally hunt and fish. Without disrespect, they tend to hunt out of season. You could probably shoot a deer right out of the dining room window on some parts of the reserve.

I’ll bet the average Nassagewaya resident eats a lot more wild game than a city guy living a kilometre away on Clark Street. They have treaty rights, other hunters get out in season. Not twelve months of the year. That’s what I’m saying.

Deer and rabbits don’t drink city water. They get it from a puddle, a ditch, or a stream.

Think about the fish. Literally a few yards downriver from Scow, and Buncor, and Colonial Oil, the Nassagewaya people have traditionally fished in the river. The average Nassagewaya resident has grown up eating fish from the river, far more than you or I. Historically, there were three known Indian villages in Lennox County. The one at Lennox Bay, where the city now stands, one up at the mouth of the Shashawanaga River, fifteen or twenty miles to the northeast, and one downriver at the delta.

What do the three ancient sites have in common? Year-round fishing. Even when the water was frozen solid, the natives could put a line or a net under the ice. I could show you quicker than explain it. Basically, to shove a net under the ice, you need two holes, a long pole, some rope. I guess you need a pretty slow current.

Rivers like the Shashawanaga, you would maybe jig through holes chopped in the ice.

A proper study has to ask the right questions, and it has to identify the greatest at-risk groups. It has to study relevant things.

In terms of genetic factors, the Nassagaweya do represent a separate population.

Fred, even if I was totally wrong about all this, it has the makings of a pretty good novel.

 

— Chuck

 

Barnes put the letter down and went to the door of his office.

“Bill.” He called out into the newsroom.

Fred was reading a letter one minute, and the next minute, the place was deserted.

“Where the heck’s Bill?”

Bill came moseying out of the back room, where their Ryebaum had his own Private Idaho. A real rat’s nest back there, but he had a coffeemaker. He even cleaned it once in a while, more than could be said for the service staff.

“Ryebaum went to school with his cousin. He's only just gotten off the phone.” Bill informed Barnes. “Chuck is never armed.”

“What?” Barnes gasped.

O'Keefe, senior reporter.

“Oh, I know. Let’s see here. He never seems to get in fights. Chuck is a gentleman at heart, although you would never know it by his language. His cousin doesn’t know why he’s on disability. Something about a bad back, but there may be other issues. Wants to be a reporter. Studied in college, worked on the school paper. Worked as a baby photographer…”

By the thickly written steno pad, Barnes could tell there was more, lots more.

“Other issues?”

O’Keefe nodded, a wry look on his brow.

Barnes enjoyed a single, deeply drawn breath.

“I’ll call Gowan over at the cop shop, see what they got on this Mr. Charles H. Brubaker,” his fellow journalist told him. “But first, I’m almost late for the start of the council meeting.”

See you tomorrow, in other words.

 

 

END

 

Chapter One.

Chapter Two.

 

Images. Louis.

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