A PICNIC
AS HE DOES every Friday when the weather is fair, Harris escapes his office at noon and has Feeney drive him to a greengrocer, where they purchase fruit along with some French cheese and bread. Next, they drive to a secluded beach that overlooks the inlet, where they lay out on a blanket for the afternoon. These recreations are much needed. After Harris trounced John D. Rockefeller in their arm wrestling contest (a life spent chopping wood had never proven a more valuable asset), they finalized the purchase agreement for the Port Alberni parcel. At Harris’s insistence, the deal included the small, nameless island that he’d set on fire after discovering log poachers there, and even before he officially secured the title, Harris ordered the construction of a cabin retreat on the island, as a surprise for Feeney.
In a rush to fulfill the Japanese order, Greenwood Timber’s crews have been cutting in triple shifts, and though the autumn rains have begun, Harris has ordered them to fell trees seven days a week, in blowing winds and storms. Two of his experienced high-lead fallers have already perished, one by lightning, the other hung in his rigging. Despite these tragedies—or, more accurately, because of them—thousands of eighteen-foot spars bearing the G of Greenwood Timber’s imprint are being tugboated daily down to his Vancouver booming grounds, where they’re gang-sawed into sleepers, creosoted, and stickered to await shipment across the Pacific.
The ten per cent fronted by the Imperial Railway Purchasing Group and the London firm’s financing are long spent, so to pay for the labour overages Harris has liquidated his margin accounts and major holdings, including his stocks: Home Oil, Okalta, and even General Electric, which had only just recovered after dumping 500 points in the Crash. But Rockefeller’s timber is fine and easily accessed, and given their currently roaring output, Harris is on track to fill the Japanese order on schedule.
There on the beach Feeney reads Harris an entire gazette in his lilting, musical voice. When a cool wind rises off the water, it provides them a good excuse for a blanket draped over their bodies—one can’t be too careful—allowing them some discreet contact. After a while they arrange their lunch upon a giant fir stump, rumoured to have been felled by Captain Cook himself to replace the snapped mast of one of his ships. While they eat, Harris drags his fingers along the stump’s ridges, and over the course of their meal, he assesses the tree’s age to be 748 years, a span of time that included ten distinct periods of drought—indicated by thinner, denser rings—and he realizes with delight that he’s read the tree’s history as one would Braille. It may be the tender-heartedness that often afflicts him in Feeney’s company, but he almost finds himself pitying the tree, as one might a human being whose life was cut unnecessarily short. But he shakes his head and drives the silly notion from his mind.
Following lunch, he and Feeney indulge in a nap beside the stump, until a deep voice wakes him: “My apologies for troubling you again during your recreations, Mr. Greenwood.”
Harris feels Feeney tense beside him, while he inventories his body to ensure that none of his limbs were improperly draped over his companion.
“You have disturbed Mr. Greenwood, sir,” Feeney says protectively. “And if you’d like to make a proper appointment, I suggest you speak with his secretary.”
“I went by your offices this afternoon,” the man says politely, and now Harris places the voice: the con man who approached him at the soirée. “And your associate, Mr. Baumgartner, indicated I could find you here.”
So he’s finally betrayed me, Harris thinks. Everyone he’s ever trusted has, eventually. Mort just took a bit longer than the rest.
“It won’t take a minute, sir,” the man persists. “I’ve got your military discharge photograph here, Mr. Greenwood.” Harris feels a piece of thick paper pressed into his hand.
“You’ll forgive me if I can’t confirm this as fact,” he says coolly, standing up to face the voice.
The big man chuckles. “You’ll have to take my word for it. But I regret to inform you that the dark-haired infantryman pictured here looks nothing like you.”
“If you’re here to show me an unbecoming photograph, sir, I’m afraid that you’ve wasted your gasoline.”
“What did you do during the War, Mr. Greenwood?”
Harris has yet to correct Feeney’s false belief in the popular rumour that he was blinded while serving overseas, and since this huckster seems harmless enough, Harris can stomach a few uncomfortable moments alone with him if it means saving himself the embarrassment.
“Why don’t you go fetch some water from the automobile, Mr. Feeney?” Harris says.
“Are you sure, Mr. Greenwood?” Feeney replies hesitantly.
Harris nods, then listens to the crunch of pebbles as Feeney works his way down the beach to the parking lot. “Is he gone?” Harris says.
“He is,” the man replies.
“Actually, I didn’t serve in the War, Mr.…?”
“Lomax, sir. Harvey Lomax.”
“It was a common misunderstanding during those frantic times,” Harris says. “I was blind as a bat when my brother enlisted, and he was errantly entered under my name.”
“Well, sir, I’m pleased to tell you that I stood before your brother, the man pictured in this photograph, four months ago in a rooming house in Toronto.”
“That may be so, Mr. Lomax,” Harris says, struggling to perform neutrality, though his heart kicks against his breastbone. “But he and I went our separate ways long ago. And you’ll understand that I’m not exactly the sentimental sort. So this miraculous resurrection holds no interest for me. Good day to you, Mr. Lomax.”
“You know,” Lomax persists, as though he hasn’t heard a thing Harris has said, “I intended to speak with you further at your party. Unfortunately, you and your assistant were off in the bathroom for much of the festivities.”
There’s a long, searing silence, during which Harris has trouble breathing. It’s as though he’s sucked in an entire lungful of sawdust, and now lacks the air to expel it. “I wasn’t feeling well,” he says after forcing his lungs into motion. “I ate a bad clam.” He gropes for the stump and sits himself down upon it as casually as he can manage.
“Of course, of course,” Lomax says. “But what happened in the lavatory at your soirée doesn’t concern me nearly as much as your brother’s whereabouts, Mr. Greenwood, I can assure you of that. Has he contacted you recently?” Lomax sits on the stump beside him, and up close he has an odd, exotic smell, and a deep, resonant voice that seems to be angling down from a great height, even while sitting.
“No, he has not,” Harris says. “And I don’t expect he will.”
“The thing is, sir,” Lomax says, “I’ve secured records confirming that you’ve accepted medals and a pension for your distinguished military service with the 116th Battalion of the Canadian infantry.”
“I’ve accepted nothing, Mr. Lomax. They sent me my brother’s medals and pension in error, both of which I’ve held for him in trust.”
“So he could come to claim them?”