Read Online Speak to the Earth by William Bell - Free Book Online Page A

the river’s edge. Doors flew open and cops walked toward the bridge, accompanied by a bald man in a trench coat. On the other side of the bridge, a lumber truck appeared at the top of the hill, laden with four mammoth trees, and on each side of the truck was a column of people, walking silently.
    There were men, women and children in the columns. Each of them waved a yellow ribbon. Most wore yellow or red hardhats. A few signs bobbed up and down:
We Want to Work
and
Obey the Law
.
    As the truck and its silent escort slowly approached the bridge, the bald man raised a megaphone. He sounded impersonal, even a little bored. He told the protesters that they were in violation of a court injunction that forbade such actions. “If you are not off the bridge before that truck stops moving, you will be put under arrest.” The megaphone dropped out of sight. The man walkedback to his car as if he didn’t care whether the people had heard him or not.
    Bryan’s fear grew with every metre covered by the big yellow logging truck. The crowd around him took up the chant again: “Save Orca Sound!” And now the counter-protest gave voice: “Let us work!”
    The truck was on the bridge now, inching toward Bryan’s mother, its diesel engine barely audible above the chanting war. Cops marched purposefully onto the bridge. The truck came on, its huge grille towering over the silent, seated protesters.
    “Mom! Mom! I have to talk to you! Dammit, get out of there!” Bryan screamed, pushing toward the bridge.
    It was no use. The eighteen-wheeler came to a halt inches from the backs of the protesters. The counterprotesters formed a wall, waving their ribbons and rhythmically demanding to be allowed to work. Shoving two or three people out of the way, Bryan stepped onto the bridge.
    “Mom! Uncle Jimmy —”
    A burly cop pushed him back. “Take one more step on this bridge and I’ll have to arrest you. Now get away.”
    “But I have to —”
    The cop pushed again. Bryan fell backward. He scrambled to his feet, looking around frantically for Walter. The police were carrying protesters away and dumping them in the back of the blue van.
    And then Bryan saw Zeke Wilson and another cop lugging his mother, like a drenched pink bag of sand, off the bridge.

THREE
    B rian stood helplessly at the side of the road, watching the strange convoy. Two police cruisers drove slowly up the hill, their revolving lights flickering through the fog to the green wall of forest. Behind them, the yellow school bus with a few faces showing in the windows, then the van full of prisoners. And last, the huge eighteen-wheeler snorting along, hauling four trees out of the bush, flanked by people waving yellow ribbons.
    When the truck had ground past him, Bryan saw Walter standing at the side of the road. His arms were crossed and, to Bryan’s surprise, he looked angry. He looked, in fact, as though he’d been saving up a few decades’ worth of anger and now it was forcing its way out. When Bryan reached him he turned and began to walk to his truck.
    Bryan tramped along, head down in the rain, furtively searching for faces he knew — so he could avoid them. He did not want to be recognized, not where his motherhad been picked up — literally, he thought without humour — for making fools of her whole family.
    He climbed into Walter’s truck and they moved off, creeping along the road crowded with activists. She should be at her brother’s side, he thought, not playing politics out here in the bush. Rain beat on the roof of the truck, the wipers flapped, streaking the windshield, the old motor strained and grumbled, pushing the truck past the café and through the Wasteland. Not since his dad had been killed had Bryan felt so depressed and empty. His mother was on her way to jail, his uncle on his way to hospital.
    Walter drove straight to Nootka Harbour’s small hospital and pulled up at the Emergency entrance. Bryan jumped down and ran through the automatic