The Governor of the Northern Province (19 page)

With this latest one, fall, came slippery walking at first light when he had opening shift, and also a taut empty air, the warmth gone out of it, leaving him with tingling ears and a chill deadness dangling against his thighs while he was waiting for the bus. And also all this random sniffling and phlegmy bolus—like one of his old orphan recruits wandering around camp in between raids or some other such pointless weakness.

Not that she noticed this suffering of his, he thought, enjoying the wounded feeling this gave him as he looked at Jennifer's billboard blank of a face. Because as they walked together along the path they were scouting for the next day's event, she was ignoring his suggestions for the speech she was to give. And she had already dismissed his offers to make remarks to the gathered on her behalf, having forgotten, apparently, her earlier promise to let him back onstage when the opportunity presented.

Instead, Jennifer was entirely focused on the murky thick of the leaf-strewn creek beside them, nervous that there weren't going to be enough coffee cups and night-crawler cartons and distended shopping bags to keep people sloshing around for an entire afternoon's cleanup effort, and, more to the point, that this would undermine the combination re-memorial, increased awareness and pre-election rally she had planned. Bokarie's business of the right words for the right moment just wasn't a priority, even if he kept at her with missionary zeal.

“Do you even know Exodus? Do you know that it would make such good sense in this place right now, as a way to make you the great leader of these people?” he asked, even spat at her, feeling tired and proprietary from the weeks he had been working on her campaign. This had included not just the door-to-doors but also the strategizing while restocking potato chips and the damage control when Faye Gallagher showily traded in her champagne import for a more patriotic and practical domestic model off Hollerwatty's lot, at which point Glenn suddenly became impossible for Jennifer to reach. There was also the straw polling Bokarie conducted in line at the grocery store, though this was no terrible chore. Actually, he had liked asking his new compatriots to open up about their political leanings for the pending election while they queued up in checkout lines. He did this with the vacant enthusiasm of an incontinent department store greeter and elicited a muddle of guilt and pity and horror in response, the spillover of which blotted out the shared indignity of such breaches and also squeezed out an answer. He had perfected his method: first draw their attention away from the celebrity smut rags and
Eat lighter, live righter this holiday
recipe guides garishly dangling from the magazine racks; then exclaim how wonderful it was to be part of a country, finally, where turkey, not the ballot box, was stuffed. This cheap cuteness, like a terrier barking in time with a Christmas carol, was well received as innocent cleverness, especially in the time around Thanksgiving.

Having softened them up this way, Bokarie would then ask how they were planning to vote in the coming election—
whether for the Libel Party's candidate or for the Independent and Little Caitlin?
He was rarely corrected for his new-immigrant stumble on the ruling party's name, which Jennifer had helped him to, and so Bokarie had little trouble extracting the desired information before reminding his interlocutor of the pending rally down at the creek where, so tragically, months ago, Little Caitlin had first gone to her death and into our hearts. Vigorous nods and promises of attendance, and maybe a little suspicion about just getting gamed by the town African—who was known to associate with the Thickson girl—but he didn't know any better and she'd never had any friends anyway so that was an understandable match. Poor things. And so the shoppers exited feeling inspired about their participation in a little clump of grassroots politics, their arms crooked and straining and creasing and crinkling their paper or plastic shopping bags. Then Bokarie, taking his time packing up his weekly cache of dried noodle cups at the end of the adjacent conveyor, turned to the next in line and worked up his words and gobble-gobbled them all over again.

He liked the immediate gratification of it, like the chocolate bars he tore through at work, feeding on their stares and nods and admissions and then, having swallowed them all down, politely casting off for more. In time he would follow them into the windy parking lot and, before going off to the bus stop, watch their bright seasonal jackets blow and tumble around the cars like discarded wrappers and unraked leaves while they tried to remember where they parked. He duly reported the findings from his grocery store polling to Jennifer. She was even with her opponent going into the final weekend.

This closeness, Bokarie thought, made more vital his suggestions for how to end the campaign with maximum success. Which required more than some zealous group cleanup effort and a grander notion than a drowned little girl behind it to secure victory, especially against such driven competition. There was, of course, always a cheap willingness in people to work on. To make them drudge through a creek, or machete through a village, or carve up a brother's back, or vote against a fresh widow in a new Ford. Any of this could be had, provided their ears could be pricked, which, in the present case, meant leading them to feel that their deed—their vote for Jennifer and Little Caitlin and drainage security—would sound down through the ages, from the Red Sea to the old crick behind RR #2. And Bokarie was absolutely convicted about how to bring this about. The words, recalled from when they first went unused, in the final days of the National Restitution Campaign, when the General had become impossible to reach and then his blood men tried to carve him up, were massing along the ridge of his tongue. After so much waiting and wanting, the readiness was all, and he had it. But again, denied.

“Yes, Bokarie, I know something about Exodus. I've seen that long show about it with Ben-Hur from
Planet of the Apes
. But the problem is, where it's coming from isn't exactly the movies. The polls are close, as you know from your self-starter work in the grocery store, and this is our final opportunity to get a hearing for my proposals, and I have to tell you”—here her tone lost its immediate strain for the more comforting sound she generally adopted with him, the mellifluous drone of an automated customer care attendant—“that as always I appreciate your support, and your time and input is invaluable to us.”

But she was too tired to keep it up and turned a little harsher. “But still, you're on thin ice with this idea of yours”—and, more than sick of having to keep Bokarie at bay like this, harsher still—“because, yeah, I know, I know.” She held her hand up to batten him down. She had spoken to Bokarie enough by now to recognize him preparing a volley of poor suffering this and a fillip of long hurting that.

“I know that back in your old place they did ancient rituals and all, and probably something like the old religion fired people up, but, well”—finally Jennifer gave in and went Daddy's girl on him—“over here it only gets you two minutes in the sin bin for mentioning it unless it's a funeral song and then a campaign slogan, and, well, it's too late in the third period to go down short-handed for a hot dog move like quoting the Bible at a political rally.

“Listen, that explanation might have been a little culturally exclusive for you, so let me try again. Between you and me, I lost the first race I ever ran in, to None of the Above. And that was a lesson I learned early in this game—that less is more around here, because everyday Canadians don't ever want to get too excited or too offended or too frightened or too inspired, which was what I was trying to do back then, and I think you're suggesting more of the same. And I had to pull out of the second race I ever ran in because my opponent had a campaign manager who made the town see me for a monster before I could even open my mouth. So I'm not going to let
my
campaign manager put words in my mouth now that will make me into another kind of monster. You're asking me to come off as a Christian politician. God, that's even worse than a chocolate-addicted pet abuser. Do you get my meaning?”

Bokarie was a little confused but more unimpressed by her low ambitions, by her commitment to mediocrity as the sure way to victory. This was why he was being denied the opportunity to speak at her final rally. His very talent was becoming something of a liability for the campaign. There was consolation in this, but more than that, something else, which was harder to admit.

It was, unexpectedly, respect. Respect for how hard-bore she was about getting to Ottawa herself. In the past he had wrongly, stupidly, near-fatally underestimated the hunger of others. No more. He even felt sheepish, now, for how he'd felt when watching Jennifer go up into the barn two months earlier with that casserole hog right behind her shoving his nose and rubbing his goatee at steep incline. Bokarie felt sheepish about how this had made him pause and wonder whether he had hitched up to the wrong horse. Not from jealousy, of course, certainly not, there were always standards; Bokarie had declined advances from the smiley Vietnamese girl walking beside him after dinner at the Thickson place, even while she was giving him crescent-moon eyes and looked ready to be thrown down among the cornstalks and husked and shucked while the barnyard animals rolled around in their oats. But having learned his lesson long ago, Bokarie had rejected this chance at a little defanged fur and instead gone worried that Jennifer would emerge from the hay a few minutes later and invite him to put his driver's cap on again and make sure there were enough ribbons tied to her own wedding-night getaway car. And not even care if they were pink.

Only she hadn't; the stud her father brought in must have been limp or been shot down, Bokarie had assumed, watching him stomp down the barn stairs and scoop up the Vietnamese and drive off. Emerging a little crumpled, Jennifer had gone back to the house in haste, calling out that they would talk about the flyers for the Gallagher funeral the next day. The father then came to the screen door and gave him shotgun eyes. Bokarie didn't bother asking for a ride back to town. But a long walk was fine. Because at least he left knowing that her ears, like his, were stuffed against sweet nothings and that all that mattered for her was to get from here to wherever was better.

“Bokarie? You must be thinking about the rivers back in your home again, and I understand, but not right now, okay? Try to stay in the here and now with me. Are we clear about how we're operating? Can I trust that you're going to follow through with your responsibilities?”

He nodded, but the familiarity of this question was too much. Because the General had asked the same in one of their last conversations. Just before he'd decided Bokarie had achieved enough restitution in the Upriver and that his services were no longer required. Had become a liability, in fact.

But what was the worst she could do, if
she
wanted to get rid of him? Because obviously Jennifer wasn't about to arrange for his assassination through intermediaries. There were no nights with long knives over here. And even if she wanted to, his pack of Judases were already long dead and bloated along the banks of the Upriver and she, well, she didn't seem to have anyone else in this town but a dead little girl and him. So really, what was it, the worst that could be done?

Would she ship him back east for further training at new Canadian living? That would be just more pamphlets to read and videos to watch and songs to sing from the Department of Immigration on the ADJUST ME to My New Country program. He remembered this as his first smack of Canada, remembered how, with a musky toothy Turk Cypriot as his partner back at the St. John's holding pen and much encouragement from a Haitian woman in a bright confident pantsuit who wasn't just session leader but session graduate, he had patty-caked the acrostic until it was down rote.
A
l-ways SMACK
D
emand
J
us-tice CLAP
U
ntil
S
ociety SMACK
T
reats
M
e CLAP with
E
quality CRACK SMACK CLAP CLAP
encore s'il vous plaît
. He had been presented with a pencil engraved with this magical thinking in a mini-graduation ceremony to landed immigrant status before being shipped northwest of Ottawa. But thinking about how to fit into his new scene in his apartment at night, Bokarie had chewed through the letters soon after arriving. And so now he was wondering, what punishment could there be? More about how vital and welcome and fundable it was for him to bring his old traditions and recipes to his new country?

Thicking up the accent to make it seem to her as if she misheard him, he had a little extra fun with the fungible fantasy of this Canadian life, and so he continued, in a manner of speaking, from where he'd earlier left off.

“As you suggest,
mon Jenniferal
, I will continue the campaign as you wish and leave the higher planning to you.”

“Okay, good—glad to know you're fully on board. So let's drop the Bible stuff and concentrate on what we're finding in the creek—is there enough garbage here to keep people busy? What do you think? And was that French you just did a little? That's interesting, doing a little FSL alongside your ESL. It might help if you did some
parlezvous
with some of the older RC voters, that is, if you wouldn't mind doing a walk around that new subdivision, Bethlehem Meadows, which we haven't gone to yet. Maybe tomorrow afternoon, during the rally? It's a good time to go, I think, in case there's any stragglers, holdouts, resistance to the program over there. I won't need you here then, but I'll send your best to everyone, I promise.”

She didn't want him there, he thought, in case he got up onstage and did a better job of frothing them up than she ever could. Then maybe they'd cross her out and put him into the ballot box and carry him down to the capital. So she was cutting him off from them, after he'd brought them to her. He realized that this was how the Jennifers and the Generals of his northern provinces worked him. Only he would be a step ahead this time. He could oblige Jennifer's request and slouch off to the last neighbourhood the next day with his demotic French and his brimstone wonders and leave her to spin gold from garbage. But he'd be coming back.