The Last of the Lumbermen by Brian Fawcett Page A

never comes looking for you the way it does in the East.
    â€œPretty out there,” Gord says, gesturing at the snow. “It might give you some problems getting up the hill.”
    â€œI always seem to make it up somehow,” I answe r. “See you around noon.”
    â€œHave a fine evening,” he says.
    I squeeze out a laugh I don’t much feel. “I should be so lucky.”
    Gord glances at me, sees that I don’t want to explain why, and lets it go. He opens the door, waves at me without looking, and wanders off into the snow to the rear of the Coliseum and his t ruck. As I watch him go it occurs to me that he’s off to do the autopsy on that kid who was killed last night.
    I’m already late, but I pause for a moment by the case that holds the team photo of the 1972 Chilliwack Christian Lions. There’s Mikey’s handsome, dark face smiling through the veil of lime green, and Neil with his more serious expression. For a brief second I can’t find Billy Menzies, but no, there I am, second row centre, with one hand on the Mantua Cup, and a wide grin on my face.
    I’D PARKED THE LINCOLN in the VIP spot next to the front door, so I don’t have as far to walk as Gord. I park the car illegally all the time, actually. Not just here, but all over town. The police and metermen tolerate it because the car still has the old City Hall Limousine sticker on the windshield — and I keep telling them I bought the privilege with the ca r. They know better, but what the hell.
    I make my own exit from the building, and by the time I’ve reached the car my shoulders are spotting with white. As I’m dusting off the car with my elbows, I spot Wendel’s wallet lying on the passenger seat. Dumb. I left the car unlocked.
    At least it’s still there. Another of the advantages of small town life, although this particular advantage isn’t quite so automatic in Mantua as it once was. I’m lucky, really. Not a fabulous piece of luck, but I’ll take it.
    While the Lincoln warms up, I turn on the dash light and flip open the wallet to inspect its contents. It contains the usual: the driver ’s licence in the window pocket, and behind that two bank cards, one of them a Visa. In the pocket across from those, hidden, is a plastic-cove red birth certificate, and a couple of business cards from Wendel’s suppliers. Inside the billfold is twenty-nine dollars — a twenty, a five, and two twos — all fairly crisp. Behind them, folded several times and half-concealed by a flap, is a piece of paper.
    I pull the piece of paper out — what the hell, I’ve gotten this far — and unfold it beneath the dash light. It’s another birth certificate, and from the look of it, the original: name, Wendel Alan Simons, born, Mantua, December 13, date of registration, February 17 the following year. I r efold the document and put it back where it was, open the glove compartment, and push the wallet inside.
    I’m a couple of blocks away from the Coliseum when it hits me: The dates on Wendel’s birth certificate make him twenty-one, not twenty. He’s a year older than he’s supposed to be. I slam on the brakes, pull the Lincoln over to the curb, and reopen the glove compartment. I check the birth certificate again: same data. Then, on a hunch, I check it against the plasticized one. That one reads December 13 too, but a year later. Wendel was born nine months after the last Mantua tournament.
    By the time I pull up in front of the Lotus Inn, my heart feels like it’s trying to crawl out of my thr oat. Who am I kidding? Now I understand the Freudian Slip: possible, hell. It’s probable, and from there the complications stick out like quills from a porcupine’s backside. Every time I try to get my mind around the probability, I get a muzzleful. They sting, each one, and the more I paw at them, the more certain it