“Looks like Brubaker is in hot water,” Les Purvis told O’Keefe.
Bill was tapping away at his keyboard, and he looked over with a blank expression.
His lumpy head, with the exception of a swipe of long black hair combed sideways over the top, and the coke-bottle glasses as well, gleamed in the overhead fluorescent lights.
“What?” asked O’Keefe.
He blinked, suddenly disoriented by the switch of thought and direction.
“We’re not supposed to release his name, at least not for a while yet,” said Purvis.
Proud of his relationship with the police, he expected to take over as the number one crime and environmental reporter any day now.
“So what did he do?” asked O’Keefe more alertly.
He glanced at the wall clock, then at his watch, and then at the clock on the desk. He sat up in the chair. He was working on a simple little story. There was an hour to deadline; and no major emergencies. It was a slow news day. From the onset, this day looked like a real chore. There had been a few of those lately.
“It seems he went looking for a cougar.”
Deliciously; Purvis had received a few letters of criticism from Brubaker. It was like Brubaker worked them over one at a time, or so the general consensus of opinion around the office had it.
O’Keefe was smart enough not to read them. But Les did.
“No way!” gaped O’Keefe, then he cracked a big grin. “Ha! Ha! Ha!”
He just couldn’t help himself.
“Yeah, that sounds like Brubaker,” he nodded.
“Tell me more…please!” he gasped, in between small convulsions of chuckles and giggles. “If it wasn’t for bad luck; that guy wouldn’t have no luck at all.”
Purvis nodded.
“Yeah. Well. It would seem he found a spoor or something.”
“A what?” gasped O’Keefe.
Purvis reddened. Perhaps he misunderstood the word? But he had full confidence in his vocabulary. He was an award-winning writer, for Christ’s sakes.
“He’s not talking to the cops. He’s protecting someone else! He found a big lump of bones and stuff that the cat shit out. Like, ah; maybe a hairball? Brubaker says it’s too big to come out of its ass.”
The story gushed out. Unbelievable. Too good to be true!
Brubaker was, ‘protecting his sources,’ bleedin’ hilarious!
Purvis, as much as he disliked Brubaker, couldn’t help but laugh too.
“He’s telling the Aronka OPP stuff like, ‘I scooped them bastards.’ I mean, he’s nuts…”
Ignoring the basic contradiction—if Brubaker wasn’t cooperating, how did Purvis know all this? But O’Keefe sat chewing on the story. Les laid it all out. Apparently, according to Sergeant Oberon over at the Lennox municipal police station; a motorist driving by on a certain bridge saw two men unloading a canoe from a minivan roof.
One of them had a bow and a quiver full of arrows. Putting two and two together, he phoned the police. The OPP drove by and got the license number. But, busy with higher priority calls, they simply couldn’t sit and wait it out.
When they received an anonymous call, and found a package in a phone booth, the provincial cops started putting two and two together.
“So; he’s not cooperating with the coppers?” Bill asked. “And we haven’t seen any letters, or any of those half-baked stories from him in some time?”
Purvis just shook his head.
“Be happy,” he advised.
But Bill shook his head as well.
“What the hell is he up to?” he murmured. “Don’t forget this is the guy who tried to overthrow the mayor…by post. Remember?”
Purvis just grunted.
“And strange as it may sound, we’ve gotten a lot of story ideas,” O’Keefe noted with emphasis. “From crazy old Brubaker.”
Brubaker raised a lot of issues in the course of a typical day. At least when he was talking to you. There were one or two long gaps, as he recalled.
“Crazy enough, it just might have worked,” joshed Schwartzie from her cubicle.
The two men chuckled.
“What are you working on?” asked Purvis, slipping back into the deferential mode he affected to the older, more mature members of the editorial staff.
“I’m just finishing up Scow’s closure plan,” he said.
Bill considered another cup of cold, rancid and bitter coffee. But no; better to finish this up and get out of the building, and go somewhere the stuff was half decent. Purvis sat staring at Schwartzie’s ass as she leaned forward in the chair to make a note on her calendar, hanging on the cubicle wall. O’Keefe noticed without really thinking about it.
Purvis was licking his lips and couldn’t seem to tear his eyes away from Schwartzie. You learned to accept it after a while. After seven months here at the Guardian-Standard, Les still hadn’t gotten over it.
Schwartzie wasn’t cold or frigid, O’Keefe assumed. She was a pro, and that meant, among other things; not to go out with fellow employees. Bill O’Keefe knew that for a fact. Only a year ago…no, almost two years ago, when he’d been having some problems with the wife; well. The same old problem, really…he tried her out at the Christmas party.
She’d set him down, but fairly gently. But then, Bill could take ‘no’ for an answer—he’d been hearing ‘no’ from Molly for over twenty years now—and they’d become better friends. A shared understanding, or perhaps misunderstanding.
Schwartzie was very moody lately. Maybe something to do with all the doctor’s appointments? They all knew better than to ask. Schwartzie had shared something with Bill, something personal.
‘I know you’re lonely Bill, and I know why. I’m lonely too. But it can never be,’ Schwartzie told him, patting him on the back of the hand.
Deep in his heart, Bill accepted it. He knew it was true; and he also accepted that it was just the booze talking anyhow. A momentary desperation ploy. Bill was pretty grateful to Schwartzie for not making a big thing of it. No puns intended; but thank God Schwartzie hadn’t made a big thing out of it. Bill was in debt up to his eyeballs. He would have to contend with Molly, and his two daughters and four sons for the rest of his life.
It was the price of being a good Catholic.
“What’s with this guy, anyway?” asked Les. “Why does he have to be such an over-achiever? Why can’t he just sleep until noon, drink beer and watch big-screen TV?
There’s all kinds of sports on, all day long.”
“I don’t know. I met him once, you know. He came in and introduced himself, and gave me some crazy story which I can’t remember. Something about Indians, I guess. If Lance Armstrong fell and broke his back, how would he have ended up?”
Schwartzie poked her head up over the partition. “If Donald Trump were a homeless person, he might talk a little bit like Brubaker.”
Les thought for half a moment, and then piped up.
“If Tony Robbins was a street person, he might think and act like Brubaker, who obviously has delusions of grandeur,” figured Purvis.
“So he gave you a story?” Schwartzie broke in again. “But you don’t remember what it was about?”
“The only thing that stands out about him as a writer, is that he’s awfully tall,” Bill was misquoting one of his favourite authors.
Chuckles all around; but it was time to get back to work.
“You just have to accept that Brubaker is Brubaker,” he said inconsequentially to Purvis.
Les wasn’t such a dickhead once you got to know his basic insecurities.
He was a 23-year old kid, a long way from home and with a big student loan to pay off. You had to cut the man a little slack. At least he could write. Eminentl
y pliable, the cops liked him well enough. Bill had seen worse cannon fodder coming down the pipeline.
Scow closure includes demolition, cleanup and landscaping…
Don Phybes, ‘can’t go anywhere’ without being asked about the Scow closure.
He was appointed site director of operations specifically to close the facility.
“Retirees, current employees and members of the public are asking how the company will end its sixty-seven-year history in the community. It’s stressful for the community and stressful for the employees. So; we want to assure safety and responsibility to the environment are at the forefront of everything we do.”
Phybes was addressing members of the Kahunas Klub last Saturday night in the Lennox Hotel Ballroom.
“Employees have personal experiences; and they’re concerned about how the site will be left,” he said. “Each employee has a personal stake in the discussion, and they know what their options are.”
“At one time Scow had nineteen units, our corporate head office, and more than 2,700 employees in the Lennox area. Having decommissioned those units, and now being down to one, we have a great deal of experience,” he added. “We’ve cleaned up as we went along. There are no surprises yet.”
According to Phybes, “Once operations cease, the equipment and buildings will be cleaned and left free of chemical contamination. Demolition of everything above ground then takes place, followed by soil remediation on the main 560-acre site on River Street.”
The company also owns 2,000 acres that straddle Highway 47B in the vicinity of Tonti Road. That land won’t be decommissioned. Home to the company’s hydrocarbon wells, these underground caverns will continue to store butane and propane, according to Phybes.
“Scow hopes to sell them separately from the main waterfront property,” said Phybes.
By 2011, when the main site is completely cleaned up, it will be, ‘naturalized,’ with trees and grasses.
“Tree planting is part of the soil remediation process,” he said. “Scow has a very comprehensive public relations strategy in place to keep the community informed.”
According to public relations officer Bambi Beauderriere, “After all these years, you can’t just pull up stakes and disappear. We have lots of retirees here. Many employees will continue to work here. There are lots of questions and we don’t want any mysteries.”
Meanwhile the company’s Legacy Project committee intends to select a recipient of the $1 million grant in the new year.
— Bill O’Keefe
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Cougar sighting reported…