The Geomancer's Compass (19 page)

Elijah gazed at it raptly, like it was the keys to the kingdom or something. “Hey, man, thanks.”

“Don't mention it,” said Brian. “Get something to eat. Get Lois a nice bone.”

“I will, man. I will.” Elijah stood and tugged on the improvised leash. Lois wobbled to her feet.

“Better yet, why don't you go back to the rez?” Brian suggested. “Go home. Get straight. You've got no reason to be ashamed. You kept the grave of one of your ancestors from being desecrated, even though it cost you big time. In my books, that makes you a hero.”

Elijah shook his head. “I don't know, man. I don't know if I can. Get straight, I mean. It's been a long time. Maybe in another lifetime.”

“Just think about it. OK?”

“Sure, man,” Elijah mumbled. “Can't thank you enough. C'mon, Lois.” Together they shuffled from the room and made their way down the hall. A moment later, the elevator bell dinged.

“How much did you give him, anyway?”

“Three hundred,” replied Brian. He pushed his fingers through his hair, spiking it.

“Brian! He'll just use it to buy alcohol or drugs.”

“Let him,” said Brian. “The way I look at it, Uncle Qianfu's grave – if it
is
Uncle Qianfu's grave – may have cost the poor guy the best part of what was shaping up to be a decent life. And for what? For what could turn out to be someone else's ancestor's bones.”

“Still.” I hated the thought of Elijah Otter blowing that three hundred dollars. I much preferred the thought of me hoarding it.

“Look at it this way, Scrooge McDuck. If Elijah Otter hadn't blown the whistle on that grave, whoever's buried there would have ended up in some landfill somewhere. And if that somebody was Qianfu, then good luck finding him EVER. The way I figure it, we owe Elijah big time. In any case, I wish we could do more for him.” He studied the floor
for a moment, his brow furrowed. I had never seen him like this – so serious.

“You gave him money,” I pointed out. “What more can you do? You can't help people who won't help themselves.”

He shook his head. “It's not that simple, Randi. Sometimes people need someone to believe in them.” He sat down on the chair Elijah had just vacated and, placing his elbows on his knees, cupped his forehead in his hands.

“Get up! Get up!” I cried.

“What?”

“That chair! You don't want to sit there. It might be infested.”

“Infested with what?”

“I don't know. Bedbugs? Fleas? Head lice? Cooties?”

“Because Elijah sat here? Wow.” The look on Brian's face was … well, it didn't do much for my self-esteem. “You certainly could never be described as a bleeding heart. Anybody ever tell you that?”

I felt both irritated and really bad – irritated because I was itching to get to work, but Brian was going all sensitivo hobophile on me; bad because, well, it's pretty clear I'm a jerk. “Look, Brian,” I said, “I'm sorry I'm not a more sympathetic person. I'll try to be better. But we have a job to do. Let's do it, OK?”

“Yeah, sure.” He roused himself as a dog will, shaking itself awake. “Let's do it. What's first?”

“Well, for starters, there's no way we can know for certain that it's Qianfu buried there and not some random person. Right?”

“We could run a DNA test on the bones once we've dug them up,” replied Brian. “Apart from that, no. We just have to chance it. The circumstantial evidence is pretty compelling though. I'd say it's worth a shot.”

“I'd say it's not only our best shot, it's our
only
shot,” I agreed. “So how about starting with the Land Registry? Since all of this happened during the homesteading period – between 1872 and 1930 – I'm going to try the Saskatchewan Homestead Index first.” I entered the name “Rawlins” and up popped a file number: 1212130. “Yes!” I clicked on the file number, then whistled through my teeth. “Double score. Look at this.” Without taking my eyes off the Zypad's screen, I patted the bed beside me. Brian sat down and peered at the screen. I refrained from pointing out that whatever critters had made the journey with him from chair to bed were now on
this
bed. Instead, I made a mental note to sleep in the
other
bed. “See?” I pointed to the screen. “Where Highway 363 makes that ninety-degree turn, that's the farm, all ninety-four acres of it. See the change in ownership that happened back in 2001 – a single title transfer from Peter W. Rawlins to Big Sky Golf Course Development?”

“So far, so good.”

“All Native land claims and related locks were geo-coded
into the Geological Survey years ago, and from there they were incorporated into the Geographic Web layer of Google Earth. Even if the claims are resolved, they stay in the database. All we need are the coordinates of the Rawlins property and we should be able to pinpoint the location of the grave to within a few yards.”

“And how do we do that?”

I smiled. “Observe the master.” Switching apps to Google Earth, I typed in the address, zoomed in to street level, and enabled the Labels layer. I clicked on the Native Land Claims icon – a single red feather. Up it came, right where it should be. I pulled open the drawer in the bedside table, extracted a piece of aged yellow hotel stationery, copied down the numbers, and showed them to Brian. “
Ta-da
.”

“
Ta-da
what?”

“
Ta-da!
Here we have the grave's latitude, ladies and gentlemen: fifty degrees, twenty-two minutes, and thirty-six seconds north; and the longitude: one hundred and five degrees, forty-one minutes, and four seconds west.”

“That's cool in theory, but how do we go about finding this location in the real world?”

“Through the magic of GPS,” I replied. “We dial the coordinates into our I-spex and let them lead us straight to where we have to dig.”

Brian snapped his fingers. “I just remembered something.”

“What?”

“Base maps.”

“Excuse me?”

“Base maps,” he repeated. “Every golf course has one. It's a data file containing information specific to that particular course – data like tree canopies, bodies of water, watercourses, roads, property lines, utilities, toilets, the distance between tees … that sort of thing.”

“What about it?”

“It's geo-coded data, genius. We download it from the International Golf Course Database, then layer it over our coordinates using Google Earth and,
voilà
, we know exactly where the grave is in relation to Weeping Birches' other features.”

“What do you mean?” I asked. “We already know where the grave is.”

“We know its latitude and longitude, but we don't know what hole it's near, or sand trap, or water feature. For that we need the I-spex, and no golf course lets you use any kind of HMD unit because of all the injuries from registration errors. You remember. People kept hitting other people in the head with balls.”

I stared at him. “How do you know this stuff?”

“I don't only torture trees. I'm a landscaper too.”

“Well, hey, I guess it's worth a shot.” I typed the address into Google's search field and soon located the Weeping Birches base map, imported it into Google Earth, and layered it over the grave's coordinates. I zoomed in.

“There it is,” said Brian. “Do you see? Right there. Just beyond the fourth hole. So how are we going to handle the logistics?”

I looked at him. “What do you mean by ‘logistics'?”

“Like the fact that the grave is in a working golf course full of people playing golf – hello! As far as the law is concerned, this matter has been well and truly settled.”

“I don't know. We notify the authorities, I guess.”

He laughed. “You think two sixteen-year-olds from out of town can just waltz in to whoever and explain that Elijah and his tribal elders might have been mistaken and the bones might belong to one of
our
relations who, incidentally, has been haunting our family for over a century so, if you don't mind, we'll just dig him up and try and scrape a little DNA off of him to see whether our hunch is right? Is that what you're thinking?”

I scowled at him. In fact, that had been my plan – to the extent that I actually had a plan. When he put it that way, however, I realized how lame and undoable it was. “Did anyone ever tell you that you are a total buzzkill?”

“Just being practical,” said Brian. “Sorry, cuz. I know that's your gig, but we gotta suss out the situation, know what I mean? Get the lay of the land. Reconnoiter.” He smiled broadly, which made him look like the Cheshire cat. “I hate to be the one to break it to you, but we're going to have to play golf.”

I stared at him. “Golf? No, no. We don't do golf, Brian. You know that.” Since Dad had been struck by lightning on
the golf course all those years ago, the Lius had sworn off golf – to my great relief, I might add. I had never seen the point of golf and, besides, I sucked at it. Nobody had said anything about a ban on golf. It was a tacit agreement, but no less understood for not being official. No Liu had picked up a golf club in years. At least, that was what I had always thought.

“Confession time,” Brian admitted. “Every so often, I've been known to hit the greens for a few rounds.”

“Brian!”

“Haven't been struck by lightning once.”

“It only takes once. You know that. Dad's like a vegetable on two legs. Do you want that to happen to you?”

He laughed. “Hey, I've already got my curse – dyslexia – remember? Why would I get struck by lightning?”

“That's fine for you. But I haven't been eaten by the shark yet.”

“Eaten by a shark, struck by lightning. Either way you end up dead … or as good as dead. Besides, how else are we going to get on the course?”

“We show up and start walking.”

“But you can't do that,” Brian protested. “People don't walk on golf courses.”

“Of course they do. That's what the trails are for.”

“Those aren't trails, they're
cart
paths. And what happens when we get to the grave site at the fourth hole? We have to have some excuse for going into that berry patch. You know
how golfers feel about civilians off-roading? They
yell
at them. That's before they bean them. Do you know how many people are seriously injured by flying golf balls every year? Close to half a million. And that's just North America.”

I threw my hands up in the air. “OK, you win. I'll do it. I'll play golf.”

He beamed. “No,
I'll
play golf,” he corrected me. “As I recall, you totally suck at golf. I, on the other hand, have a pretty decent swing.” He was right, of course; he had always had a good swing. In fact, he was a sort of natural athlete all round, quickly mastering physical skills that I had found daunting or impossible – skiing and snowboarding, diving and surfing, skateboarding.… It was very annoying.

“Whatever.”

“So first thing tomorrow morning, I'll call for a tee time and we'll head over to the course. Deal?”

“Deal,” I muttered.

Brian stood and stretched. Dropping his chin to his chest, he surveyed his stomach. “Hmmm. You know, it's starting to feel a whole lot like dinnertime.”

I checked my watch. “Nine-twenty.”

“Care to join me for a bite to eat?”

“Nah.” I changed beds and lay down, closing my eyes. The headache that always seemed to be lurking there, waiting behind my eyes, flared. “Could you just pick something up for me? I'm nursing a headache.”

“Doggy bag for one. Got it.”

“And could you shut off the lights when you leave?” I rolled into a fetal position, knees pulled in close to my body and arms folded, hugging myself. The room seemed suddenly drafty. I felt cold in my bones, and shivered. “It's frigging freezing.”

“The Prairies,” said Brian. “Not exactly the tropics. Want a blanket?”

“Please. All of a sudden I'm really chilly. Don't know why.”

He retrieved a shaggy beige blanket from the top shelf of the closet and draped it over me. I huddled beneath it, trying hard not to think of the bedbugs it might be home to. He turned off the lights. I heard the door latch click into place, and then the lock.

Later, I woke with a start, my head pulsating with a firmly established headache, to hear once more the plaintive wail of the bathroom pipes. It was hard to believe that such a mournful, tormented sound came from anything other than a human being … or something that had once been a human being. I grabbed a pillow from the other bed, planted it firmly over my ear to blot out the wail, and fell asleep once more, my dreams tangled up like garter snakes in one of those creepy breeding balls.

“N
o, you look good,” Brian assured me in a whisper.