TWENTY-ONE.

Gerald Dove was now forty. He was thin as a string, with large, haunted eyes and the white skin that complements red hair.

I knew Leo's Machiavellian mind believed Dove was just the man to prove these allegations against his mill false, even if he had to twist a fact or two. Gerald had come home hoping to be able to help his mentor in his time of need.

For a while the study went in Leo's favour; they had cleaned up, they had taken the barrels away. But Gerald had left his mentor's house ages ago, and had taken a small room in a motel. He had complained to the police that his phone had been bugged, and his room broken into, and that he was sure he was being followed.

A rumour surfaced that he had broken into his own motel room and destroyed his own files because they went in McVicer's favour, and that he only came back to ruin McVicer because McVicer had broken up his relationship with Gladys. (I am sure McVicer spread these rumours himself.) I went to the schoolhouse and saw the letters PCDD and TCDD with arrows and circles attending them, and molecules drawn on the old blackboard, framed like stop signs and yield signs. Gerald talked to us about the reaction of toxins on menstruating women, and herbicides and pesticides on the respiratory faculties of northern children.

I felt unusually sorry for us all. Men with heavy beards and the huge hands of pulpcutters, their hands cut and gouged by years of work, with grade seven education, now saw for the first time a world far beyond tractor grease in minus-thirty weather, a world far removed from taking the hide from deer in November.

Now Dove drew his molecules on the blackboard, his thin hands covered in chalk dust, the eraser emitting the clouds of chalk dust.

It made those tired, kindly, heavy-handed men aware that the world had gone beyond them into another century. And really, here, on this black night, we were straddling three centuries. Woodcutters sat with university students who listened patiently to an explanation of toxic waste and the computer printout done at M.I.T.

So I smelled McVicer's nineteenth-century blood on Gerald Dove's thin twenty-first-century hands. I was sure McVicer would crumble. We all were sure.

The government quickly allied itself with the people, with the scientists, with Gerald Dove; and McVicer - whom it had championed for years - was alone. Many nights that winter, McVicer's house was locked.

I wanted him condemned. I laughed in the cold air under the sparkling stars with all my heart. Yet I still admired him. I don't know who else did. Maybe no one else, maybe everyone.

I was attracted to McVicer, to his solitude; an old man at the end of his life facing what his life had been without help, without explanation, and better yet, without apology. He slept with a shotgun beside his bed.

I waited and I watched, and I went to the meetings nodding my head at what others said. McVicer claimed he was now a scapegoat for a frightened uncaring government. He had not used these chemical scythes any more than anyone else, and he declared that he had protested his innocence in front of a governmental watchdog committee years before - about the time of the robbery. He was prepared to make some restitution if the government would issue a statement clarifying certain relevant points. The government was silent.

His daughter, Gladys, watched the snow fall over the ground, over the bitter tar black wharf and under the distant highway lights, believing in her father's goodness and her own worthlessness. Every day Leo blamed her. Every day he told her Gerald Dove had come home just to cause them pain because of her. She took an overdose of muscle relaxants and tried to sleep. Rudy found her and got her to the hospital; Leo tried to keep it quiet. It was here Rudy realized his wife had always loved someone else. And some part of him was heartbroken.

In the next few weeks those on Dove's side made Penny Porier believe that all of this was being done exclusively for her. They took her away from her father, moved her into her own apartment in town, with a nurse. Her life in the northern part of the province, once so insignificant, now shone with tragedy, and she was interviewed and photographed and spoken about on national T.V.

I smelled McVicer's blood and waited, I suppose with the unconscionable human glee felt at others' disaster. No one spoke to McVicer coming and going from church after Penny Porier's interview, even though he released a statement about the money he was giving for the new stained-glass project there.

For years the provincial government had funded Gerald Dove, and paid for the lawyers who represented the five families who had launched the lawsuit. Doing this amounted to coercion. The government was determined to get to the bottom of this case, and to be on the right side of the litigation. Yet the government also didn't wish to be investigated.

On March 19, Leo McVicer called a press conference. He said that not only had he used these herbicides but the government had reimbursed him throughout the sixties to the tune of thousands of dollars and had encouraged McVicer's Works and other mills, in letters and phone calls, to use these dangerous sprays. And why? Well, McVicer said, they had obligations to chemical companies in the States who supplied the herbicides and pesticides. And why? Well, said McVicer, so they could find buyers for the province's wood products, in competition with British Columbia and the northern states. And did the premier, who spoke increasingly about his awareness of the sacredness of our environment and the legacy left to us by the First Nations, know this? Why, of course, said McVicer. Can this be proven? Most definitely, said McVicer. He had the government's letters about subsidization to prove it. Where were they?

"Ah," said Mr. Leopold McVicer, shaking his head sadly. "They are locked away in my safe."

TWENTY-TWO.

I could sell the chalice to no one. I had nowhere to put it except in the wall where I had once hidden Dad's clothes. There was a reward from the Knights of Columbus. Twice I had to hide from the Sheppards on the way home from the Bowie school, and threw up on the lane.

Finally, Mathew Pit took an interest. I was told to go and see him. I went to him with a great deal of trepidation. He had the power to save or destroy me depending on what he thought of me. It was he alone who could make it right with the Sheppards. So all my toughness had diminished.

Earlier that winter my trap lines ran parallel to his, and he had left me alone; so when I had some blond hash on me (given to me by Cheryl Voteur) I gave him a chunk.

He tolerated my presence on the trap line that ran above his. When I shot a coyote that had been robbing his beaver trap, I pelted it out for him and left it near his connabear trap.

Then I had started to lift weights. I went to the old gym at the school at six every second morning. And to my surprise Mat Pit was there. At first we never spoke. He lifted free weights and I worked the Universal, but one morning he was lifting heavy and needed a spotter. He lifted three hundred pounds for ten reps. Against my own best intentions, I suddenly felt obligated to help him out.

The Sheppards had gone to him first, asking him to help them. Instead, he met Autumn on the highway one afternoon and asked to see me. I went to his house and met him in the back room.

I sat and faced him. If he was prepared to do this favour it would be the most important thing he could do for me. It would free me from the Sheppards, who would have killed me. It indebted me to him and I would have to repay him sometime, or somewhere. I knew this.

I sat before him. He looked up from what he was doing and told me calmly not to trust anyone, especially the Sheppards.

"I don't trust them," I said. I was about to say "Nor do I trust you," but I checked myself.

"But how will we get rid of that chalice?" he said sadly. "It was a bad trick that - you should've known better - didn't your mom teach you to respect nothin' about religion?"

He said I had done it because of my ignorance and youth. But he knew nothing of the Christmas box years before.

"We don't touch the church here," he said, "and you have to be reasonable - leave the older people alone - leave kids alone - that's very important!" I fell under his gaze because of Trenton. No matter what I said, my father's guilt was still possible.

Then he placed a line of cocaine down for us to sniff, and bent over it with his huge forearms. I had never tried cocaine before and told him I didn't want it. He just handed me the twenty-dollar bill and nodded his head, so I did a line.

I told him I had no idea why I took the chalice. I also said I was sorry.

"Never be sorry - that's just what the Sheppards want from you - if they think you are sorry or scared you won't be able to behave like a man," he said calmly, looking down at the mirror and then rubbing some coke off his nose. "I never say sorry, never say please - I never say either to any man. Do you think McVicer is guilty?"

"Depends of what," I said.

He looked up and smirked.

"Of course he is - but will they get him?"

"I don't know."

"They won't get him - and that little girl - Porier - she will the broke - but my lawsuit will get him." He smiled self-indulgently, and a little crudely. He sniffed another line and looked at me carefully.

Then he said that taking the chalice was a daring thing to do. I said I did not feel daring and the best way to fence it might be to sell it to one of the Catholic sailors on one of the paper boats. He reached out and slapped my face.

"That's shit! That's the way to go to jail," he said, pointing a finger at me. "You listen to me, because I care for you, and don't go near the fuckin' Sheppards!"

I hesitated. Then I said, "You tell me how to fence this and I'll owe you." I did not rub my cheek though it stung like hell. Never once had my father hit me.

He grinned. There were specks of dirt in his straw-blond hair, and his eyes were red from drinking.

"Give it to me," he said, "and I'll get five hundred dollars for you."

That was half the reward the Knights of Columbus had offered.

That night I brought it over to him wrapped in the best blanket I could find, Percy's security blanket. It was a gold chalice, and when I had stolen it there were still some blessed hosts in it. They were still there when I handed it to him. He looked at it, took a few hosts to chew, dumped the rest on the ground, into the snow now soft with spring rain, poured some Napoleon wine in it and drank and handed it to me, and I drank. Then he took the cloth and wiped it out clean, and wiped the fingerprints off it, much like a priest might do after mass.

"Go home and wait. I'll call you," he said merrily.

Two days later he called. I went to see him, and he handed me five hundred dollars. He had taken the chalice to Rudy Bellanger, who took it to the Knights of Columbus, and they had cut the cheque for him without question. Mat could have kept all the money. I would have been in no position to challenge him if he had.

That long-ago night the bells rang out for the blessed event of the gold chalice being returned. The priest said the theft was a mystery that only God knew, but the return of the chalice was a miracle.

My mother came to me and asked me if I had heard the news.

"What news is that?" I asked.

"A miracle has happened today," she said timidly.

"Another miracle - what miracle?"

"Our chalice has been returned to Father Porier." Percy laughed and clapped. I said to myself I would not get into any more trouble. With the five hundred dollars I bought Mom and Percy and Autumn a new colour T.V.

I was disgusted with myself. I had relied on others to take care of me. I was unable to protect Cheryl. And I remembered how Jay Beard protected my father while his own house was under assault.

TWENTY-THREE.

Gerald Dove sat with his lawyers the very night the bells rang for the return of the chalice. The lawyers for the five families wanted to sue the government and use the tape of McVicer's press conference to fuel the possibility of fresh litigation.

Dove himself did not know why he thought this was a trap if the lawyers did not. But everything he knew about McVicer pointed to one. He had cornered the one man he never wanted to fight against. The man who had come to the orphanage about something years ago, and saw him, a red-headed child, sitting in the middle of a crib-lined room. McVicer had picked the child up, asked about his parents - the father had died on one of McVicer's saws before the child was born, and the mother had died just a few months before. McVicer, in the grand way McVicer had, became his mentor.

Dove was exhausted. That night they were sitting in Penny Porier's small, freshly decorated apartment. There was light classical music playing from the radio beside her. Penny would listen to nothing else even though classical music troubled her quiet, beautiful face.

She turned this troubled face on her lawyers. She had a blanket over her and drank apple juice from a straw.

Dove knew that he had used her. Worse, he didn't know how much he had used her until that very moment. He told her that with those letters from McVicer's safe it might be proven that our government knew exactly what was going on. That Canadian companies were hand in glove with government funding; a government needing the approval of larger companies in the States; and that not only she but hundreds and hundreds of people were harmed. Yet she was their main client. He asked her if they should proceed. She felt a tickle in her throat from the apple juice - and blushed because she had a crush on Dove, and had learned in a month to say the things that would please him.

"Of course," she said.

In fact she did it only to please him - for nothing else mattered much.

The next day her lawyers filed suit against the very government that had been funding their research, alleging complicity and gross negligence. Within three days they realized their mistake. Their research funding was immediately withdrawn.

Dove could no longer travel to investigate other cases on behalf of the lawyers or get corroborating testimony from stateside companies. To go to court was impossible, because the government and McVicer and the chemical companies in the States were willing to stall for years. Penny Porier might be dead in a matter of months.

On March 28 Dove tried to phone McVicer, but McVicer, when he heard Dove's name, broke a fly rod over his knee and would not take the call.

It became apparent Dove's lawyers could no longer fight the case on behalf of the families unless they did it out of their own pockets. An argument erupted in Penny's apartment, on the morning of April 1, while she lay on the couch.

"Oh," Penny said to them suddenly, lifting her head. "This is Bach - I think - yes."

By the next weekend only Gerald Dove and Griffin stood beside Penny, who was now seen as ridiculous and greedy and filled with schemes of betrayal.

Dove tried to keep her in an apartment and have the nurse.

But he was finding it impossible to pay the bills. In desperation he wrote to Gladys McVicer, Penny's godmother. But Gladys, in terror of her father's rages against Dove, was helpless.

Finally Griffin, the only member of her family to speak to her, drove her back home.

The one remaining lawyer, as a favour to Dove, tried to subpoena the letters, but McVicer now asserted they were misplaced long ago, and the court, in the infuriating conceit of courts, smelling a blind weakness in Dove's case, refused a warrant for lack of probable cause.

In late April it was decided, for Penny Porier's sake (whom everyone from the government to McVicer himself said they loved), to settle out of court. The government offered Penny what it offered the other families in a gesture of good will: three thousand dollars.

McVicer also assured Abby that he was still the foreman, even though he had not called him in weeks. Abby had no pension, not a chance to be hired anywhere else. He was over fifty. He hung about the store, nervous and with a hopeful face. His wife made McVicer a pan of her famous date squares. It was rumoured Leo had thrown them to his horses.

People began to gossip about Penny, saying that her disease was from a condition of modern promiscuity and she had set everything up to blame McVicer because she didn't want it to reflect poorly on her strict Catholic family, her uncle being a modest and pious priest. Some men drove by in an old convertible and yelled insults at her house. Griffin ran outside and grabbed a rock, flung it impotently at the sky as the men taunted him and laughed.

After gossip about Penny travelled on the wires, McVicer published a statement refuting the rumours and pleaded with the public not to listen to hearsay.

Penny Porier, still with braces on her bottom teeth, died in the last week of April, at the age of eighteen. I did not go to her funeral.

TWENTY-FOUR.

Three days later I was walking the old asphalt lane that led to McVicer's general store. I was happy the chalice scrape was over. The wind was soft and the night was sweet. I had my coat opened and my hands in my pockets. Lights were on in the houses and the snow was melting down in the dooryards.

I knew someone was in the woods hiding from me. I kept walking and then spun around. I saw someone running to the far side of the road, then cutting across the field toward the highway.

I went above him, through the woods, and met him as he came out just below the back field of the community centre. It was Griffin Porier.

"What's goin' on?" I said. "You following me? You want another punch in the fuckin' head?"

"No," he said. He was shaking like a leaf. He was carrying a canister of gas.

"What the hell are you doing, then?"