Water in the Wilderness

excerpt

“Morley, what are we going to do? They may be out there somewhere with no shelter. They could be lost on the prairie some place.” Her voice began to rise again, and she realized she was close to hysteria.
“Easy, sweetheart. Right now I’m going to contact everyone I can think of between here and Emblem. I’m also going to alert the central office to put a call out on the party lines.”
The central office could alert every party line simply by ringing one long ring on the line, indicating an emergency. Tyne knew that everyone on that exchange would rush to their telephone to hear the message which the operator would relay.
“What about the police?” she asked. “Have they been notified?”
“The Harrisons are doing that. When I suggested it, they seemed reluctant, said it was too early. I couldn’t believe it. But I convinced them, so I’m sure they will. I’d rather call the police myself, but it’s their responsibility.” Morley paused for breath. “I have to hang up, honey, and start making calls. Tell me you won’t try to get to Emblem.”
“I won’t, I promise.”
“Good. And Tyne?”
“Yes?”
“Pray – harder than you ever have. Good bye, hon. I love you.”
As she hung up the phone, she whispered, “Yes, I’ll pray. I already am, with every breath.”
And she knew that Morley, too, would be praying non-stop.
Rachael didn’t know how long or how far they had walked. Somewhere, between the time Ronnie had left them and the hour the snow began to fall, she had lost all sense of time and direction. She had almost panicked once, but Bobby’s plaintiff whimpers had made her realize that she had to do something to take their mind off their situation. She started to play a word game with him, and for a while he went along with it, even laughing at times. But the cold and the weariness took over and brought their distracting game to an end.

https://draft2digital.com/book/3562884

https://www.amazon.com/dp/192676319X

The Circle

excerpt

you’re the one who needs to talk, remember? So what’s in your mind? Are you
having one of those days?”
Bevan gives him the latest news about Matthew Roberts.
“Oh, no, my friend. That is as bad as it gets.”
“I know. When my people cannot handle the misery anymore and end up
doing things like that, it tells me it’s time to give up or make some changes. And
when I say changes, I mean a serious turnaround.”
“No, you don’t give up; you just look ahead and question whether you want
to stay on the same path, that’s all,” Jerry responds.
“Alright now, tell me which path one takes when he sees that the one he’s on
is no longer worth travelling?”
“Perhaps you don’t have to change your path as much as you need to try to
change the way you carry yourself on that path.”
Bevan takes a deep breath, audible to Jerry on the other end of the line,
“You must be very troubled, my friend. What’s eating you?”
“Oh, Jerry, you got out. You don’t deal with the killer anymore. I don’t feel
right burdening you with all this crap, with all this misery we put out there for
people to deal with. You know what I’m saying? We put the misery out there and
the unfortunate ones deal with it every day of their lives; that pisses me off.
Enough Jerry, enough of that. It’s unbearable sometimes, and truly it has
become unbearable in the last little while.”
“I understand, pal. It’s bad, I know it’s bad; yet it’s all in the name of something.
What is it again that we do all this for? Remind me once more.My dearest Bevan, my
good friend, you’ve grown soft, the same as I. How old are you, by the way?”
“I’m sixty-two, Jerry.”
“Have you considered retirement? Do you think you could handle life
without the army, without the black book, without the regulation that puts this
world in order, as we know it? No, my friend, it’s tough to live in peace. It’s tough
to be away from the commitment of the order. I don’t know whether you could
handle it. So, what do you do, if you want to effect change, and it seems next to
impossible? You know the system cannot be changed just like that because you
and I want it to be changed.”
“Then, what does one do when we come to this point in life when the order is
the reason thousands of people die, and the next day we try to find a new reason
for the disorder, and so on with no end anywhere on the horizon?”
“Remember, my friend, the only way things change is when something
dramatic or spectacular happens. On September 11 the life of this nation
changed in a morning. Never expect change just because you want it or
because you think it’s time for change.”

https://draft2digital.com/book/3562817

https://www.amazon.com/dp/0978186524

He Rode Tall

excerpt

Joel hopped in the truck and started the engine, Harry scrambled
to open the gate then jumped in the truck with him, and
they raced into the hills. The ride into the hills was bumpy on a
good day at the slowest of speed. And today was neither a good
day nor was the ride at a slow speed. It wasn’t often that Joel, or
anyone, drove the truck into the pasture lately because the grass
was especially fragile this time of year, and with the weather
being so dry and all, it was even more so. Joel spied where the
Smith cattle had knocked down the fence, steered toward the
opening, and drove right through it.
“Where do they have water back here?” Joel asked Harry.
“Just one dugout on this piece of Smith land,” answered Harry.
“Head up to those trees. It is on the far side of that knoll.”
It may have been on the far side of the trees once, but it certainly
wasn’t anymore. What had been a dugout that was fed by a
natural spring was now empty. Bone dry. Looked like it had been
without any water for quite a few days. It was exactly as Joel had
suspected and was no surprise to him.
By the time Joel and Harry had made it back to the ranch,
Tyler was pulling up in a big truck hauling a trailer. And he
brought company: his cow dog Blue sat beside him.
Joel was madder than heck but he knew that now was not the
time to show it. Maybe together they could let these cattle finish
quenching their thirst and then herd them back into Smith’s pasture
before they devoured all of his grass. When it came to size,
the half-section of land that the Circle H stood on was just a little
parcel lost in an ocean of grass. This kind of situation could be
especially devastating to Joel. It wasn’t as if he had sections and
sections of land to fall back on for grazing his horses. On the Circle
H, each blade of grass counted.
“Real sorry about this, Mr. Hooper” were the first words Tyler
spoke as he jumped down from the truck. Moving swiftly to the
back of the trailer, Tyler led his horse out, tied it to the side of the
trailer, and saddled up—this kid meant business. The talking
could wait.

https://draft2digital.com/book/3562862

https://www.amazon.com/dp/0980897955

Ken Kirkby, A Painter’s Quest for Canada

excerpt

While Salvador filled his eyes,
Ken fetched a couple of glasses and poured wine. He handed a glass to
Salvador and they sat, gazing at the canvases and talking about the Arctic.
Although Salvador had explored that vast land mostly from the air, he had
also touched down in remote settlements enough times to have formed an
opinion, of the way the Inuit lived and were treated. He agreed with Ken
that they were being brutalized. He also agreed that trying to get people to
pay attention to things so far distant was a near impossible task.
The Reichmanns were a good choice of patron, Salvador said. “I like
the way you think and I like the way you do things. You’re exactly what
this town needs – this constipated town needs an artist with balls to shake
the joint up. Leave it with me – I’m going to talk to Mr. Albert.”
Ken painted day and night, sometimes fainting from exhaustion. With
the exception of Diane, everyone made demands on his time. She was
doing well with the framing shop but her real fascination was with Ken
and his stories, and she became his willing assistant, always happy to do
more for him. So, just before he had to fly to Vancouver again, he suggested
that while he was gone she should blow up all the articles from the
newspapers to poster size, frame them, and cover the walls of the shop
with them.
Ehor Boyanowski picked him up at the airport and brought him to
his home in Deep Cove. There, he crawled into bed and slept for twenty
hours. When he woke, Ehor brought him up to date on the Steelhead
Society’s battle with the mining company. They had turned the issue over
to the fledgling Sierra Legal Defence Fund, which was pressing the government,
and the company, to undertake the expensive remedial work of
restoring the river they had polluted.
Other environmental issues were equally pressing. At James Bay, the
Quebec Government planned to build an enormous hydroelectric project,
called Big Whale, that was drawing loud protests from both the Inuit
and the Cree population. The proposed dam would flood a vast area of
land, destroying the several million caribou that migrated through it each
year – the largest herd in the world. The damming of such an immense
amount of water would also cause a concentration of mercury as well as
a significant climatic change. On the West Coast, the British Columbia
government proposed to allow Alcan to extend its hydroelectric power
generating facility at Kitimat, another important wilderness area.
The leadership of the Steelhead Society asked the membership to
spearhead a coalition of groups that would bring media attention to the
fact that these massive projects were intended to generate many billions
of dollars by selling electricity to the United States. The membership approved
the project, and Ken began work on a painting that would be the
centrepiece of posters and pamphlets.

https://draft2digital.com/book/3562830

https://www.amazon.com/dp/0981073573