The Year of Broken Glass Read Online Free Page A

sits high in the mid-section of a massive thousand-year-old Douglas fir near the top of Mount Tremeton, the highest point on Lasqueti. A steep staircase winds up the trunk leading to an octagonal structure enwrapping the tree, its timber floor-system set on massive forty-five-degree braces spanning from the building’s outer perimeter back to the trunk. Long strings of fishing floats hang in threes from each outer point of the octagon, bejewelling the dark tree and Fairwin’s Fort to scale. Svend’s never seen anything like it. He stands beneath, hands jammed in his jean pockets, looking up in awe and perplexity, shaking his head as though to say, Why would anyone bother? And most wouldn’t. But Fairwin’s another sort.
    Farevin Verge spent his working years as a lighthouse keeper up and down the west coast of BC, from the fortress on Triple Island to the estate-like grounds of Cape Scott, to his final posting as the last keeper of the Sisters Island light, a humble light tower and living quarters built on a tiny upsurge of igneous two miles northwest of Lasqueti’s northern tip.
    The feds switched the Sisters station over to unmanned automation in the early ’90s, so after thirty years of isolation on the lights, his only companionship that of the CBC and his books, Farevin took early retirement and settled on this: a life built high in a majestic tree, with materials of scrap and salvage, driftwood and blowdown, fed by the sea, the forest, and a trickling spring of pristine groundwater.
    It wasn’t long before the Lasquetians (all 350 of them) made the reclusive, elusive Farevin one of their many subjects of community gossip, coining him Fairwin’, as in “Fairwind”—tongue-in-cheek for his gruff demeanour and weather-worn, windblown appearance.
    I place my treasured blue float (still packed safely in its tote) at my feet, then reach up on my tiptoes to grab and swing a dangling strand of floats so they knock and clang, announcing our arrival. “Fairwin’,” I call out, my bellow dampened yet carrying through the old trees. There is little understory in the Lasqueti forest, the island overrun by the flock of sheep set feral when the Lasqueti Wool and Dye Company died with my Oma and Opa. With no animals of prey to speak of the sheep population has increased to the point of infestation, so the forest floor is one of sheep-shit-speckled moss and loam, and sapling shoots gnawed of leafage. A massive culling is in order, but the year-round community, ninety percent of whom make at least a portion of their living off the annual marijuana crop, oppose it. The sheep’s understory thinning makes for easy bushwhacking and planting, and although the Lasqueti forest of the future will consequently be devoid of its beautiful fir and cedar, for now it’s the best of both worlds.
    â€œFerris Wishbone, you’ve your father’s timbre,” calls Fairwin’ in response, not down from the tree, but up from the last leg of the goat path Svend and I have just climbed. I turn to watch him—looking much older than when I last saw him—climb toward us, a basket of nettles in one hand and an old urn filled with water in the other. He ascends, puts his load to the ground and, as he has never done before, embraces me. “How long has it been?” Fairwin’ asks, letting me free, and I almost sense a quaver of sadness, an audible tear in his voice. Nine years, I think. Nine years since I was last on Lasqueti. He introduces himself to Svend, who shakes his hand heartily and introduces himself in return. “You’ve brought me something?” Fairwin’ asks, looking down at my tote, the lid duct taped shut. “Let’s take it up,” I nod. And we do, 101 steps up the winding staircase into Fairwin’s fort.
    â€¢
    Â 
    Six hours later we’re driving west through Cathedral Grove, a token highway-side stand of vestigial