"Did I Say It Was a Small World?"

DID I SAY IT WAS A SMALL WORLD

I should have known better.

I knew it was only a dream, but the panic stayed wedged in my chest. Even as I write this, I have to draw air just to finish a sentence. The fear of being buried alive felt completely real.

The dream came the night before a meeting arranged by a guy named Terry, a Native I jokingly called Buck when I didn't think he could hear me. That became his nickname between us, a private joke. I'd met him in Victoria in a strange set of circumstances talked about elsewhere in this book.

He had two friends from the Queen Charlotte Islands who'd happened across a few keys of pot washed up on shore. I had a pretty good idea where that pot came from. That's in here too—the converted minesweeper MV MARYSVILLE, busted at sea by HMCS Mackenzie after they chucked their load over the side to dodge possession.

Years later, I often wondered if Lewis Rex Cauble—the same guy I'd met in Guaymas and later again in Hawaii—had anything to do with that load. His father was the Texas rancher later tied to what newspapers called the “Cowboy Mafia,” financing marijuana-smuggling operations up and down the Pacific coast. Maybe coincidence. Maybe not.

Out there in those days, the line between fishermen, cowboys, smugglers, and drifters wasn't nearly as clear as people liked to pretend.

Terry's buddies were named Kenny and Wesley. Spud rode shotgun. If anything went sideways, he was the guy you'd want with you. He was also planning to help with distribution.

Spud picked me up in his old Chevy just after dark, and we headed north for the Charlottes. We packed light: a thermos of coffee between the seats, a pack of smokes on the dash, a couple of changes of clothes, and a shaving kit.

On the phone I'd only told him there was an opportunity we should look into. I filled him in on the drive. Naturally, he was jacked.

The Island Highway was mostly empty. The Chevy wasn't much to look at, but it ran like a top.

I told Spud how I met Terry and how he'd set this whole thing in motion. Two weeks earlier, Terry had told me about “two brothers up in the Charlottes” who'd found a few keys of pot on the beach like driftwood. He said they were straight. He said they were nervous. They didn't know what to do with what they'd found, but they knew Terry would. He figured we could all help each other out and score this for pennies on the dollar. Terry said he had commitments in the south that couldn't be delayed.

“They're good guys,” Terry had said. “Fishermen, not gangsters. They just want it gone.”

Spud liked the sound of that. Easy money. Clean pickup. We'd meet them in a coastal town up in the Queen Charlottes, sit down for breakfast, talk it out, do the exchange—Bob's your uncle.

I'd only seen the Queen Charlotte Islands from the sea, not realizing the trip in by road and ferry was such an operation.

The farther north we drove, the more the Island emptied out. Campbell River came and went, then the highway turned mean—narrower, rougher, no lights but ours. Logging trucks came at us like freight trains, wind pushing at the Chevy as they passed. In the dark, the forest pressed right up to the road: fir and cedar and black rock slick with moisture. We stopped when we had to—for gas, coffee, a piss—and then kept going. By the time we rolled into the ferry terminal, I felt like we'd already left the world we knew.

The ferry rides blurred into one long crossing. I'd seen this coastline from the Mac, but it blew Spud away.

We parked the Chevy on the car deck and walked the decks like tourists, smoking joints and taking in the view. The coast unrolled beside us—truckers, families, the odd backpacker drifting around us while we watched the silhouettes of islands, black shapes on black water, and the white churn of wake trailing off into nothing. When the horn sounded and the ramp dropped at the far end, it felt like waking up in someone else's country.

The last ferry spit us out onto Haida Gwaii. We arrived late. We drove the short stretch to Daajing Giids with the radio tuned to CBC, the kind of reception that comes and goes with the hills. The town appeared out of the mist—houses, a couple of lit windows, everything leaning toward the water.

We checked into the Sea Raven Motel and ate downstairs in the little restaurant that looked straight out over Skidegate Inlet. The room smelled like the sea, but it was clean. Two beds, a small table, a TV that might or might not work. Through the curtains, I could see the outline of the jetty.

We settled in and agreed we should have bought a bottle.

“Tomorrow'll be easy,” Spud said. “We meet 'em, do the deal, and get the fuck out of here.”

He believed it. I wanted to.

I stretched out on my bed with my boots still on. I was exhausted. We both climbed under the blankets and killed the lights.

That's when the caves came back.

I'd had dreams like this before, but never this vivid, never so connected to what was going on in my life.

I was following two Natives through a river cut into a wide-mouthed cave. As we moved deeper, the opening behind us shrank and disappeared. No way out but forward.

At first we walked upright, then ducking beneath the rock, shoulders brushing damp stone. The air felt heavy and wet. I could hear my own breathing echoing off the walls.

Then we were crawling.

The tunnel kept tightening until I found myself on my back, with only inches between my face and the earth above me. Dirt pressed against my cheeks. Every breath felt trapped halfway in my chest. The weight of the earth above me felt alive, pushing down harder with every inch forward.

Then suddenly I was alone, clawing through tight rock and blackness, certain the tunnel was about to close and bury me there forever.

I woke with my heart trying to punch through my ribs.

The room was dark. The red digits on the clock glowed in the corner. I lay there trying to pull air into lungs that didn't want to open. My T-shirt was damp. I could hear Spud snoring in the next bed, steady and careless, while I stared into the darkness trying to shake the feeling that something was wrong. Even knowing it was a dream didn't clear it. The fear stayed. It felt like a warning, not a leftover.

By morning, the sky had started to lighten. Steam rose off the inlet, a low fog rolling across the water and around the pilings of the jetty. We made our way down to the restaurant on the main floor, its glass front looking straight out over the water. Vinyl booths, plain tables, the smell of wet wool, bacon grease, and coffee soaked into the walls. Locals in ball caps and work coats hunched over their plates, talking low.

We took a table by the window where we could see the jetty. We were expecting them to arrive by boat. The waitress brought coffee without asking. My hands were steady enough, but my chest was still tight. I watched the steam lifting off the water and saw the cave walls again, tightening around me. The clink of cutlery and low voices around us sounded far away. I couldn't shake the feeling running through me.

“Spud,” I said finally.

He looked up from his mug. “Yeah?”

“I had a dream last night,” I said. “Caves. Tight ones. I was stuck, couldn't move, couldn't breathe. It felt like being buried alive.”

He half-smiled, waiting for the punch line. There wasn't one.

“I can't shake it,” I said. “It feels wrong. This whole thing. Something in my gut is telling me we should pass. I think we should walk away.”

He snorted and shook his head. “You want to bail on a few keys for what amounts to free because of a dream?”

“It's not just the dream,” I said. “It's the feeling. Like we're walking into a hole we can't back out of.”

He stared past me out the window at the jetty, jaw working. The waitress topped off our cups and drifted away again. Outside, the fog thickened around the wooden pilings.

We sat there with it for a while—the coffee, the fog, the weight of it.

Finally, I looked at him and said, “What do you think? Let's get the fuck out of here.”

Spud didn't argue. He didn't call me crazy or second-guess me. We just paid the bill, went back upstairs, packed our light gear, and pointed the Chevy south. We headed back to Esquimalt and called it a day.

We left Kenny and Wesley where they were: a couple of names belonging to a couple of guys I'd never met, waiting at the end of a road I decided not to take.

Opportunity missed. Maybe. Maybe not.

No regrets.

Years later, I was out in a field with Bruce picking mushrooms. The grass was wet, the sky low and grey. We'd been at it maybe an hour when we spotted two guys working the same field about fifty yards off. Bruce waved them over. They came across the field with their bags, easy and unhurried. We stood there in the middle of that wet Island nowhere and got to talking the way you do—weather, the picking, where the good spots were. One of them pulled out a bottle of Southern Comfort. We passed it around. They told a story about a fishing boat that went down off the west coast. I told one about a run to Tofino that went sideways. Bruce told one about a grow-op in the Cowichan Valley. The bottle made another round. Then one of them said something about the Charlottes. About a motel up in Daajing Giids. About some deal years back that never happened because the buyers never showed. I stopped mid-reach for the bottle. The other one laughed. “Probably for the best. We didn't know what the hell we were doing.” I looked at them. Really looked at them. Same faces. Same easy way of standing. Out of all the fields, all the years, all the miles of coast between then and now. “What are your names?” I said. “Kenny,” said one. “Wesley,” said the other. I took the bottle and had a long pull. Out there on the coast, people, stories, and trouble have a way of washing back ashore. You can't make this shit up. Did I say it was a small world?