Based on a True Story copyright 2008

         Sound. Click, click, click. Echo, Echo. There, it happened again. Where was that last echo? What was it that was nagging at the back of his thoughts, all a whirlwind. It all came back to sound. Harry rose from the kitchen table, walked to the east windows of the great room and searched the trees for movement. Both dogs were outside and he reconciled that grievance by checking the thermometer and noting that the early spring weather was unusually warm and neither dog, though spending most of their nights in front of the fire, would be uncomfortable. This was the third week he had spent his nights listening.
         “Pricks!” he muttered. At the kitchen desk he picked up the receiver. Click, click, click. Echo, Echo. Turning back towards the windows, he was startled to hear the dogs barking. Finally! Before he had the shotgun in his hand, Joan was up, running towards the basement, careful to keep to the wall as they had practiced. The thing about a spring prairie night is that it is a conduit. For smell, for movement, for sound. Only two dogs were out this night northeast of town where the land rises up to the hill that the radio tower is perched on, and where it drops sharply away to the ravine that keeps the gold that everyone is after. And sound on a prairie night travels so fast that Ben, just a mile down the road heard the barking no sooner than Hank. No sooner than Arnie almost two miles away. All three were out of their farmyards before Joan hit the bottom step in the basement, before she made it to the tunnel that would take her to the barn. Harry placed the shells in the barrel, not in a hurry as the events unfolding might have dictated; but patiently; he had been waiting for three weeks, restless, but he knew they were coming. 'They' were that missing echo that finally joined the game and when you're playing a game, Harry didn't want anyone hurt, or at least he didn't want to see them dead.  Dead was the end of the game and water had no end.  
          He went to the front door, away from the grid and the laneway that brought visitors to his home.  Calling for the dogs,  he let the barrel hang, not yet ready to bring it into place, ready for a night's work.  A minute or so passed before he called again, this time enjoining his call with a dull whistle, flat to the air that rose from the soil saturated with water.  He heard them coming down the laneway long before they arrived at the doorstep, wet, supported by the mud from the fields where they were chasing mice, crows, where their hairs picked up the vibrations from the wheels on the gravel almost simultaneously as their ears gathered  the vibrations that started it all.  The truck was still miles away but everything is given up on a spring prairie night when you are waiting.
           Harry put the dogs in the front entrance and opened the back stairwell that led directly to the tunnel.   Flicking a switch on the wall, he heard Joan's soft whistle calling the dogs to safety.  He left the house, locking the door, the shotgun still hanging in his arms.  His boots looked one size too big for his feet, and though they were always tied, they were always only half tied.  He was unconcerned about the way his pant legs gathered in huddles around his ankles, that he rarely showed up at the cafe in town without three days growth on his face with no intention of ever growing a beard.  That his best coat was full of holes, the kind of holes that resemble the meal of mice and moths and hems let loose at various passages along its way. 
           He actually had to travel away from the grid where he knew they were coming from, to make his way around the house and then north towards the lane and back east towards his gate post.  Some six months ago, after this whole thing had started, he had deliberately erected a gate across the laneway some hundred feet into his drive, locked with a chain that would easily enough be cut with the proper tool.  He looked south through the bush that surrounds the yard, and found the lights as they turned onto the municipal road.  He was timing his walk to leave him in the shadows as they turned onto the laneway and drove up to the gate to the chain that he knew they would cut.  He waited until they were inside the gate, waited until they had stopped, turning off the ignition but leaving the headlights on.
         They were rodents that loved the cover of darkness, scurrying, stealing.  They knew that Harry was away most of the winter and spring, working on pipelines mostly, half a days drive from his home.  They knew that he had left almost three weeks ago and would not be home for another three nights.  They knew that the small plane that moved the workers through their lives in and out of the camps was grounded by Transport and Safety.  Tonight the phones in these camps, were down.  They knew all of this, intimately. They had travelled miles out of their way in several different vehicles to make it to this grid road unseen.  All the way from Regina.  This was visit number seven for three of them and the first time for two of them.  Two of them had on new hiking boots, hunting jackets, new goatskin gloves because when they put the cowhide gloves on,  they scratched their hands, felt lumpy leather between their fingers.  Two of them had a ball shopping for their costumes.  They had even thought to find a dollar store that sold those black halloween masks, “just in case,” they laughed.  Of course they hadn't purchased any of this in Regina.  They went on a day trip to Medicine Hat.  Just to be safe.  They got out of the truck and stretched their legs, two of them giddy with the covertness of it all.
           “There's somebody on the lane,” they heard someone say.   Small panic raced through them but it was muddied with the thrill of the unknown that was playing out in front of their eyes. 
            “Holy shit,” they whispered to each other.  “This is it,” and the excitement they felt was palpable. 
            “This should be fun,” grunted one of the locals.  “We're here for a pee boys, unzip your pants.”  They had actually rehearsed this.  It was unlikely, they had been told, but just in case, there always had to be a backup plan and pissing on a country road was gophers in a hole in Saskatchewan.  Someone threw a couple of beer bottles into the ditch of the laneway.   Harry was watching, saw the toss and putting his gun together, fired off a shot into the night sky.  All five men emptied their bladders easier than anticipated.  Harry continued up the lane, out of the shadows.  He was still some three hundred feet away.

            “Little far from home for a midnight pee aren't ya’ boys?”  Harry called out.  “Better put 'em away  before they get a taste for buckshot.”  This was unexpected; the easy tone of his voice, the sharp cut of his tongue through the air turning letters into words that bit into the night, thought out days ahead; a man's voice.   That in particular was unexpected. 

            “The gate was open.  Just stopped - ” one started.

            “Bullshit!” Harry said.  He was still some hundred and fifty feet away.  “Bullshit!”  He pushed the shotgun up past his reach and fired off another shot.

            Joan was in the barn with the dogs under the floor boards of the horse stall in the room Harry had dugout 13 months ago.  When the first shot sounded, she quieted the dogs quickly, commanding both of them to lie down.  She pulled the cell phone from the charger hanging from an extension cord that ran under the floor boards of the barn.  She dialed a number, area code 204, and let it ring twice then hung up.  She counted to fifty and dialed the number again allowing it to ring only once and then she disconnected and placed the phone back on the charger.

            Three sets of lights from half-ton trucks were approaching Harry's from two different directions; one from the north, two from the south.  Just now, after the second shot, their motors became discernable in the now quiet air.  Not one of the five tresspassers dared take their eyes off of Harry.   Even the two from Regina knew his reputation; it had been part of the excitement that brought them here.  But hearing a story about some nut two hundred miles away is not quite the same as looking at him with your pants unzipped and buckshot in your hair.  The half-tons reached the lane at the same time, turning in and moving forward abreast, the outside trucks crawling along the ditches of the lane.  They stopped short of the gate and shut their engines and lights off.  And nobody moved.  Except  Harry.  He once again began his walk up the drive, chuckling out loud.

            “Wha'dya  think you were going ta do tonight, boys?”  Harry was a hundred feet away and he knew three of his guests now, though not the truck they were driving.  “Wha'dya  think you were going ta do?”  he asked again.   He calked the shot gun and placed a single shell in place.  Harry brought the barrel parallel to the road, took aim at the grill and fired.

            “Are you frigging nuts!!”

            “Shut up!” said one of the five

            “F__off!  This asshole is going to kill us!”

            “No he's not.”

            Harry started laughing.  A coping mechanism developed and sharpened in his early twenties, he could summon a sincere laugh whenever he was otherwise forced to ring someone's ruddy neck.   His language skills developed in concert with this sense of humor and, if he wasn't so damn unpredictable, you could find some comfort when his face broke into a broad grin, his hand coming to his forehead, combing his hair with his fingers; he was all bark and no bite.  Except for about a half  dozen times when your ass wasn't safe anywhere.

            “I know these three assholes,” Harry said, wildly swing the shotgun in their general direction.  But who the hell are you two?”  Nobody said anything so Harry persisted. "Throw your wallets over here.”  The two from Regina had been instructed not to bring any identification and Harry knew this but threw the command out anyways.  “What's a matter?”  Harry goaded.  “Were you expecting a tea party?  Stupid sons-a-bitches think you were going to keep it up till one of us backed down?”  Harry moved closer getting a good look at the two from Regina who never took their eyes off of his gun.  “You tell your asshole bosses back in stinkville that next time you guys come out here, one of you will be floating face down in a goddamn lagoon.”  When Harry gets really riled, he leans his head back on his neck and shoves his free hand into his pants pocket.  “Get the f__ off of my property,” he said and turned away and back towards his home.

            The five piled back into their pickup and waited.  “What the Christ are we sitting here for, move this f__ing truck!”

            “We can't.”

            “Why the Christ not?”

            “Those pickups behind us are not going to move and there is only one other way out of here and that's straight ahead and I'm not moving this f__ing truck until he's off the road.

            “So much for getting in the friggin house,” someone said.  “Now what?”

            “He's got to go back to work sometime.”

            “You seem to have misread him once already.”

            Harry reached the end of the drive and headed for the house as the pickup engine turned over. 

            “We might be in a bit of trouble,” someone local said.

            “I was already thinking that” said another local

            “What kind of trouble?” asked one of the men from Regina. 

            “This road out takes us north and ---.”

            “Who the shit cares what direction it takes us, get us the frig out of here!”

            “It's not going to be that easy.   These roads are full of water and if water doesn't stop us, I will bet you that there will be all kinds of traffic on the roads tonight.”

            “What are talking about?”

            “I'm talking about walking out of here if you don't want your face seen by everyone out here that would just as soon see you on the end of Harry's shotgun as anywhere.”

            They drove down the lane and onto a dirt road that led northwest  from Harry's yard and eventually back onto the grid.  Problem was, it put them on the north side of a crick that wound back and forth on the grid only a quarter of a mile apart and the second set of culverts had been washed out with the spring melt.  Off in the distance, when one decided to look, the night was dotted with lights heaving and sighing to the frost in the road, all making their way north of Harry's.

            “If we keep driving we're just going to have further to walk,” said the driver. 

            “What the f--  are you talking about?”  Men from Regina don't walk.  They drive or fly or are driven even short blocks to a coffee shop, the bank.  Panic seemed to be the response they were reaching for as the conversation from the other three conceded that the truck would have to be abandoned and they would have to set out on foot.  “Leave my frigging truck out here in pisshole centre and what, come back for it in daylight?”

            “You can try if you want but I doubt that those trucks in the yard will have moved.”

            He was becoming frantic as the truck stopped and the three began to climb out.  “You're not leaving my f--ing forty thousand dollar truck in this f--ing field!” he screamed.

            One of them turned to him, to them both.  “Look, there is no way back to town on this road the direction we are traveling.  You see those lights over there?” he asked, gesturing north.  “Those are the rest of the 'Harrys' is this neck of your pisshole and every turn to get us back to town will be blocked.  If we keep driving this forty thousand dollar truck it will end up in a little lake north of here and we will have twice as far to walk back to town.

            He pulled out his cell phone.  “What are doing?”

            “Calling the f--ing cops!”

            The older one of the two touched his friend’s arm lightly, but firmly, “No you're not.”

            “Are you nuts?  That's my frigging truck.  I'm not leaving it here.”  

            “Put the cell phone away.  We are not bringing the RCMP into this.”  He took the phone and snapped it shut.     
            “Look Brian, this isn't all kid’s play.  There's a lot more at stake than your frigging truck; alot more.”

            Brian stood stunned as the reality of it all sank in.  “They'll trace the truck back to me; the plates, the registration number.”

            “No they won't.”

            “You think they're just going to steal my truck and get away with it?” 

            “They won't steal it.   It will be here, same place next year.  The motor will likely be sitting in the box but Harry won't move this truck an inch.  That's the thing about Harry.  He's frigging nuts!”  The other two locals started to laugh and soon all three were laughing. 

Inside his home, Harry opened the door to the basement, flicked the switch on the wall and continued to the kitchen where he fixed himself a cup of coffee.  He sat for the longest time, staring.  His gaze fell somewhere farther than his gate post and short of a bluff half way across the quarter to Hank's place.  What was he studying?   At the sound of footsteps in the hall he turned his head from the window and found Joan, always three steps ahead of him, busying herself with bread and beef and butter, turning midnight harassment into midnight lunch.

            “Did the cell work?' he asked.

            “It did,” she replied.  “Did we know them?”

            “Same assholes as always.  They've got to get themselves a job so they can quit playing with their peckers.”

            “Harry!” she admonished, but he was back staring out the window.  She placed the sandwich in front of him and refilled his coffee and sat down for her own cup.  When did it become routine to make lunch at midnight because you were guarding your property from vandals, harassing phone calls, police harassment that wasn't really harassment because even the cops had finally decided that the anonymous tips they were getting about Harry were bogus and now they came out to make sure things were o.k., have a cup of coffee.  Mostly they stopped by Harry and Joan's because Harry was a good talker. Informed.  He knew things.  He hypothesized.

            Slowly the lights on the grids began making their way home and Harry could guess at some of them.  Joan came over to his side and reached for a hand that he offered gruffly, always.  “Can we go back to bed now?” she asked.  A year ago they would have picked up the phone and got the details of the night from everybody but they had been forced to take bigger precautions and speaking on the phone blatantly wasn't advisable anymore.  Two years ago you could not have convinced Joan that she lived a life worth listening in on.  Hell they weren't on anybody's radar map about anything until water.  Harry knew everything there was to know about water but what made him really dangerous was ability to hypothesize about water.   It isn't such a big deal to tap phone lines, or so Joan had learned, in the last two years. 

            “You go on to bed,” he said. “I've got a few phone calls to make.”  If you knew they were listening, having your phone lines tapped wasn't such a bad thing.

                                *****************************************************

             Pat was growing impatient.  They were supposed to be meeting for breakfast right now and she was the only one waiting, sitting on her second cup of coffee.  And she had to be somewhere else in, she checked her blackberry, forty minutes.  She wasn't one to wait for others.  Punching a speed dial on her cell, she pretty much barked at whoever it was that answered.  It wasn't Brian. 

            “Wherever the hell he is, he has three minutes to be sitting across the table from me.”  She snapped the cell shut and got up from the conference table and left.  Halfway to her office she ran into them. 

            “Leave any coffee for us?” Gordon asked. 

            “The meeting's over boys.  Get an alarm clock.”  Before she reached here office door, she turned back towards them.  “Get your shit together.”

                                        ************************************************

Wayne wasn’t expecting a call.  Finding their bedside digital he wondered for only a moment about who would be calling at this hour.  He reached to the other side of the bed, touching Jill lightly.

            “We got a call,” he said, lifting the receiver.

            “Yeah,” he said into the phone.

            “The trap you sold me finally paid off.  I got me five big rats and a horse,” Harry said.

            “Rats, I expected.  Horse?  Awful hard to hang onto a horse in the middle of night,” Wayne replied softly.

            “Shit, I’m not keeping the horse, you need a horse?” he asked, knowing very well that Wayne did not need a horse.

            Wayne said, “Then I’d have to get a saddle, learn to ride,…” By now they couldn’t contain their amusement and it fell into each other’s ear as soft belly laughs.

            “Oh, just a minute,” Wayne cut in, “Jill here, says she knows how to ride a horse.”  And then back to his laughter as Jill threw him a soft punch to his arm.

            “Well,” says Harry, “you put the word out, you just never know who has a saddle collecting dust.”

                                                                 Chapter II

Keffer closed the door behind him, took in the people in the room and locked the door.  Several faces looked up, maybe more annoyed than concerned.

“Sure we need the door locked?” asked Tason Blue.

“Who invited you?” Keffer shot back.

“It’s o.k., he’s with me,” the senior minister said.

“O.K., now my question is why?” Keffer shot back.

Tason got up and walked over to the aide.  “You’re an aide.  Try to remember that.”  He walked past the aide to the door and unlocked it.  Returning to his chair, he nodded to the others at the table, dismissing the charge that Keffer was trying to assert in the room.  “We’re all here right?  Let’s start this meeting.”

Keffer was stuck for a moment and then remembered his instructions.  “We’re not all here.”

“No?” asked Tason.  “Who’s missing?”  He knew damn well who was missing but he also knew that the arrival was meant to impress the rest of those at the table and he wanted to dress that drama down.  Keffer chose to ignore him. 

“Why don’t we grab a cup of coffee while we are waiting and you two could let go of each other’s throat,” the senior minister proposed.  He wasn’t into the dirty of politics.  The exchange taking place while they waited was not beneficial to the meeting and while Keffer was setting up a pecking order for his boss, Tason was using it as a tactic.  Tason wanted Keffer pissed.  He wanted the rest at the table to see that Keffer was pissed so that when the boss walked in, they assumed he too was pissed.  This was to Tason’s advantage and Bob understood this and still thought that all of these games just muddied the puddle.  Of course he was naïve; he knew that.  Tason was here at his invitation so he was part of the mud, but everyone else at the table regarded the senior minister as such a non player, too nice to be at all effective, they would not see the mud stick to the senior minister.  He always had that to his advantage and he used it.  Keffer’s cell buzzed and the senior minister gave his forehead a quick thumb, index finger massage as he waited for the next delay.

“He’s running a little late so we will go over the proposal,” Keffer said to those assembled, snapping the cell phone closed.

Tason rose and headed for the door.  “I have better things to do,” he said to Keffer.  “You be sure to pass that on.”  He left the room and checked his watch for his next meeting.  He was fifteen minutes late so he took a short cut that he would normally avoid to keep suspicions down; he wasn’t suppose to know this building as well as he actually did.  In the meeting room he had just left, he knew that Bob Pinsent would not be surprised about his exit.  Keffer would take credit for Tason’s departure and the rest at the table would wonder what the tension was all about..
                     Robert Pinsent was born in the early 1930s  into a family of seven children.   His mother woke up sweeping and laid her head down when she’d had ten minutes to sit and stare at the night sky with not a noise from the house.  Quite often by then the moon was in the south sky and in less than five and a half hours, she would be up and sweeping again.  Her husband Dolph was a worker but that never seemed to lessen Mrs. Pinsent’s load inside or outside the house.  She was in charge of making sure everything got done, inside or out, his job or hers, so you would imagine that she was a very well organized woman.  Quiet but with a fight that would see a coyote hanging from the barn wall if it got too close to the yard, Mrs. Pinsent was a role model that her children looked up to. But Robert was not interested in being in charge of everything, inside or out, his job or hers, so when he met Kath, he listened.  He wasn’t a passenger on this journey by any measure but Kath bought the map, read it, and changed it as opportunities flew at them.  That he was a senior minister in government spoke more to his abilities than hers, but that he was in politics at all, was Kath.  Robert was raised in a beautiful home.  The house was all wood and Robert made this distinction in many a conversation that was housed in buildings covered in vinyl, wrapped in plastic, capped in metal.  The floors were wood, the mouldings were wood, all wood and not glued and pressed wood, the furniture was wood.   Robert loved wood.  His mother never ever tried to fix a scratch on the floor or a chip from the furniture.  She didn’t encourage the rough housing that left those marks and she didn’t discourage it.  When Robert was older and his own children were leaving their own marks, his mother would point out to her grandchildren, “This is where your father and Uncle Joe dropped their toys from the landing up there, to see which toy was the fastest.”  She would take a minute to reflect, not so that the children would notice but Robert did and when the play had moved to another room, he would find the latest mark and burn it to his memory.  He knew from childhood that he would live the last of his days in this house.  This is where he would die....to be continued.  Please join us in the fall, 2009, for continued chapters; We are taking the summer off.