| "TAKING BACK THE HILL" CONTINUED |
"I'm sorry, I've forgotten your name..." I said to Earl as he stood on the cement beside his tow truck
in front of my barn.
"Earl," he said happily.
"Right. Earl. Of course. Tell me again, what kind of arrangement do you have to rent this barn?"
"I pay rent to Michael Brown. Two hundred month. He doesn't give me receipts because I pay
him cash. I was only able to give him a hundred dollars this month to cover the electricity."
Two hundred a month seemed fair to me. "Michael Brown isn't the owner here, he's not the
landlord, I am," I said. "And it looks like he's going to be leaving here soon. I caught him and his
dad cutting down trees on my driveway for firewood the other day. I'm the owner of this property.
I'll be collecting the rent from now on."
Earl nodded his head in agreement.
"Now, you say you haven't paid rent for May, did I hear you right?" I asked.
"Not for May, just one hundred dollars," he said.
"And you pay on the first of the month?" I asked.
"Yep," he said.
"So you haven't paid for May?" I asked.
"No," he answered.
"Okay, here's how we'll do it. Don't worry about rent for the month of May, I'll start collecting rent
on June 1st. Okay? Sound good?"
"Sure does," Earl said with a smile, happy to comply.
"All right, excellent." I extended my hand. We shook on our agreement heartily.
"You don't have to worry about me as a tenant," Earl assured me. "I try to keep the place clean and
I keep the noise down for the neighbours."
"I'm not worried at all. I've watched you for a few months now. You seem just fine, just fine.
Take care." I left Earl to putter in his garage and I went for my walk to the sheep farm at Pine Tree
Place. I was quite pleased with Earl's easygoing attitude. There'd be no problem with him. He was
okay.
For the next three weeks I would often see Earl working on a car wreck at the barn when I went for
my daily walk or drove by. I'd wave and smile cordially and he'd wave back. Finally June 1st
appeared. Time to collect the rent. Expecting no problems, I walked up the driveway and knocked
on the barn door and told Earl I was there to collect his payment. It seemed Earl had a very serious
change of heart since we shook on our agreement.
Earl emerged from the darkness of the barn like he was some basement-dwelling circus freak, a
spook coming out of his cave into sunlight. He stood framed in the triangular opening of the sliding
front entrance.
"Hey Earl," I said. "I'm here to pick up the rent like we talked about."
"I talked to Tom on the phone," Earl said tensely, teeth gritted. "He says I don't have to pay
nothing to you, I can still pay rent to Michael Brown and that's what I'm going to do."
Citing Tom as an excuse to mess with me won't win you any points, Earl, I thought, a flare of anger
igniting in me. It was just like Tom and my sister to give Earl permission to use the property, with
payment going not to an owner but to a tenant, just to go against me. They'll say the sky is green if
I say it's red.
"Michael Brown is on the way out, he's leaving here soon," I replied, quite prepared to debate Earl
over the issue.
"That's not what I hear," Earl said shortly.
"Well, yes he is leaving," I repeated. "And anyway, Michael Brown can't collect rent, he isn't the
landlord here. I am."
"I'm not paying anything to you," Earl said, walking out of the barn directly toward me. I was
seeing the flip side of the easygoing personality of Earl Graham. Earl reached under his crotch,
grabbed his balls, lifted his nutsack and said, "Suck me. Your trespassing, get off my land, I pay
rent."
Earl had transformed into a gargoyle.
"Do you realize you're asking me to get off my own land?" I asked Earl.
Earl didn't want to hear it. "Suck my cock, asshole! I pay rent, get the fuck off my place!" he said,
his voice raised. "Get out of here! Get the fuck off my land!"
So you're an animal, I thought. An animal having some kind of anxiety attack and not able to
control yourself, an animal who could very likely end up assaulting me. He was almost on top of
me. I sensed an imminent shot to the head coming if I didn't leave. I turned around and began
walking off the cement driveway. Earl shadowed me like a basketball player, his body rubbing up
against mine.
"You're not walking fast enough," he said into my ear. I increased my pace, said nothing,
nonplussed, and quickly walked up the hill. "Go ahead and call the police, I pay rent!" he yelled as I
walked away from my land, not provoked by me in any way other than my request for a rent
payment he had previously agreed to make.
I concluded that Earl probably didn't pay rent to Michael Brown like he'd claimed and was
threatened at having to suddenly cough up some money. He was comfortably settled into the
location, and with no owners or landlord around (Dad's health left him unable to deal with the
renters) he must have felt as though it was his own. Something had to be done about Earl Graham.
I went for my walk, said hello to the sheep at a nearby sheep farm and walked home. When I
drove up the driveway later that day Earl Graham was leaning up against a flatbed truck. He leered
at me and cackled like a mad loon as I went past.
"Go screw yourself!" Earl laughed madly.
Go screw yourself? Yes, something had to be done about Earl.
I wrote up an account of Earl's behaviour and mailed it to the local police detachment. A copy was
sent to my sister and brother-in-law. At this time Dad was in the hospital in Vancouver for what I
was told was routine surgery. Noon on Saturday, June 3rd I drove into town. I didn't see Earl in
the barn when I passed. In town I visited the library and checked an email message from my
mother. Dad had died the previous day of a heart attack while recovering in the hospital. Dazed
from the shock of this unexpected news, I left the library, got in my car and drove home.
I drove down McLean Road to return to my residence. The front barn door was open and a
motorbike I'd seen Earl polishing on another day was parked on the cement. This meant Earl was in
the barn. My barn. As the sole resident owner, and with Dad deceased, I now possessed all
authority necessary to take action on the property. I turned onto the cement driveway leading into
the barn's main sliding entrance and brought my car to a complete stop, the nose of my Mazda
almost touching the motorbike. I felt like ramming the bike down and smashing it into the barn with
my car. I suppressed my rage. With the engine still running, I pulled up the emergency hand brake
and pushed the gear shift into neutral. I couldn't see him but I knew he was in there. I honked the
horn to get his attention.
"YOU'RE TRESPASSING ON PRIVATE PROPERTY!" I yelled out the open car window. "GET
THE FUCK OFF MY PROPERTY IMMEDIATELY!"
Just then Earl appeared around the corner from the side door on the south side of the barn. He
swiftly marched straight for my car and sat himself on the hood, above the left tire. He placed
himself on my vehicle like he was seating himself down on his favorite chair in his living room to
watch an episode of The Simpsons. Faster than you can blink your eye I rolled up my window and
locked the door. Earl crossed his arms and sat there on the hood in front of me and glared at me
through the windshield like a fool.
"Get off my car right now! Get off my car!" I shouted.
Earl refused to move. "I'm not leaving," he said calmly with his slow, simple sounding drawl.
There was a hint of ambivalence in his tone, like he knew he was crossing a line. He just sat there
and started fingering my windshield wipers, pulling them up off the windshield.
Anybody, even a fool, will jump off a moving vehicle, right? Not this fool unfortunately. I released
the hand brake, struggling slightly to put the gear shift into reverse. I slowly backed out of my barn
driveway, expecting Earl to hop off the hood of the car - the logical thing to do when a car starts
moving. Yet instead of getting off my car, Earl grabbed hold of the ridge of the hood at the
windshield and held on for the quick ride. Having pulled away from the barn driveway, I stopped
the car on McLean Road with the vehicle facing north towards the highway.
"Get off the car, Earl!" I said.
"I'm not getting off the car and I'm not leaving my workshop," Earl spat at me.
Earl wouldn't budge. He continued sitting there on the hood of my Mazda directly in front of my
face, blocking my view of the road. I shifted out of reverse into first gear and slowly began moving
the car again, driving up McLean Road towards Highway 101 which was about fifty feet away.
"You've got your eviction notice," I said to Earl through the windshield. "It's time for you to clean
up my barn and leave my property for good."
"I haven't gotten any notice," Earl replied, holding tight, taking my comment literally. "I'm not going
anywhere."
Fuck. How do I peel this jackass off my car? I wondered. I could buck him off by cranking the
steering wheel hard left and hard right. Yes that might work, assuming the four-cylinder engine in
my Mazda MX-3 has enough power and guts to shake him off, which it probably doesn't. But what
if he falls to the ground and gets injured? Then I'm the one who'll get blamed and then the shit'll
really hit the fan.
McLean Road has two sections which are intersected by Highway 101. My property, including my
barn, is located at the southern section of the road. Instead of trying to buck Earl off the car, I
didn't swerve the car or attempt to shake him off the hood or do anything abrupt to try to make him
let go, I just continued to slowly drive the car up the road.
When I came to the stop sign where the southern section of McLean Road hits the highway, I
stopped the car again.
"Will you please get off my car, Earl," I implored.
Earl still wouldn't hop off my small sports car. With a crazed look of madness in his eyes, Earl
shook his head and held onto the hood and continued to sit comfortably in front of me like he didn't
have a care in the whole entire world. I scanned Highway 101 left for moving vehicles. Nothing.
Then I scanned right. There were no cars to the right side either. The highway was completely
deserted. The only vehicle was my Mazda MX-3 with this human gargoyle clamped to the hood.
I took my foot off the brake and I moved the car slowly out onto the highway, still not sure how I
should handle this twisted incident. I'd never dealt with something like this before, I'd never been
attacked by anyone in this manner before. I'd never had a crazy squatter clamp himself onto the
hood of my vehicle and refuse to remove himself from my car in this way. I was dumbfounded and
I didn't quite know what to do.
I gradually drove out onto and across the narrow two-lane rural highway, making a quick mental
rundown of what action I could take to separate myself from Earl Graham. Do I go blasting down
Highway 101 at a hundred miles an hour to remove this guy? But what if he falls off and breaks his
wrist or, worse, cracks his skull open, blood and hobo brains splattered all over the pavement? That
happens it's a guarantee I'll wind up going straight to jail in this small backwards rundown old mill
town. No way, I decided. Must play clean, well within the bounds of the law. Can't take a risk of
this nutter getting injured. Even though I might feel I have the right to defend myself in any way I
choose against this strange attack by Earl Graham, the law in Canada probably won't see it the same
way as I do if he sustains an injury. Part of my responsibility to protect myself in this situation is to
make sure this feral animal doesn't get hurt.
So, instead of rocketing down Highway 101 like a fireball comet to make Earl fall off the hood of
my car, I watched Earl grip the hood tightly as I slowly turned the wheel counterclockwise and did a
wide arc on the blacktop and pulled a U-turn and turned around to drive back down the hill in the
direction of the barn.
After the June 1st confrontation when Earl chased me away from my barn it seemed to me I was
well within my rights to report Earl as a trespasser to the police, as an illegal squatter, to have him
removed from the property. Hell, I felt as though I was in my rights to hunt the man down
safari-style with a scope and rifle. After all, he wasn't subject to a legal rental agreement with the
owners, he didn't pay rent, he was making a terrible mess junking his abandoned auto wrecks in and
around our barn and on our field, he was running some kind of low grade commercial operation
illegally out of property designated only for farm use, and he had threatened me with physical
violence on June 1st. I had arbitrated I would wait until I saw him in the barn again in plain sight
and, when he was there, his head under the hood of a car changing an oil filter or something, I
would call the police and report him as a trespasser. I was confident the police would assist me in
evicting this vagrant squatter from my private property. I went out and bought a cell phone from
the local Walmart store for this very purpose.
Earl Graham the hood ornament, seated on his left hip, legs curled up on the hood, steadfastly
gripped the hood of my Mazda as I turned around on the highway. While completing the one-eighty
shift of direction, I took my right hand off the steering wheel and reached over to the passenger side
seat and opened the glove box and fished out the Rogers cell phone I'd just purchased. It wasn't
activated but that didn't matter. Then, as I proceeded to drive in the other direction across the
highway, I held the phone up to the windshield in Earl's face like it was a handgun and I rolled down
the window a crack.
"Get off my car. I am going to call the police," I said firmly to Earl. "Get off my car. I'm going to
call the police."
I didn't drive very far, just a few feet, before I stopped once more. I brought the car to a complete
stop just up the road a bit from the lawn of the house closest to the highway on McLean Road.
Then I rammed the gear shift into neutral and pulled up the emergency brake handle. There was a
big rock, a boulder, on the lawn as an ornament and the two residents of the home were standing in
their yard watching the whole unsettling scene unfold.
"Do you hear me, Earl?" I said to him while I held the cellular phone up against the glass of the
windshield. "The police are going to be called. Do as I say and get off the car now."
Something clicked in Earl Graham. It was as though he just then became aware of his strange
behaviour and realized how it would look if I reported to the police how he refused to get off the
hood of my car when asked to and had instead continued to sit on the vehicle like a complete idiot
when it began moving. He looked at the phone and he heard my message and the expression on his
face changed from defiance to one of great fear. I'd made some kind of solid contact in the feeble,
ignorant mind of this deranged man. I could see it scared him to death to hear that I was going to
report his abnormal behavior to the cops. The notion of getting reported to the cops for refusing to
get off the hood of my car had freaked him out. He clued in that his deviant actions were unlawful
and wrong and substantial grounds for a criminal complaint to the police. He knew he'd been caught
breaking the law.
Earl Graham hopped off the hood of my red Mazda and landed easily on his two feet. He stood
there, his shoes glued to the road, frozen and paralyzed like a complete fool. I then drove off down
the hill towards the driveway of my home and as I drove I watched Earl in my rear view mirror as
he walked the remaining twenty feet down McLean Road to my barn to return to his workshop. I
noted four or five residents on the other side of the street from the barn standing in their driveways
and on their lawns watching the whole pitiful, sordid display. I left the scene and drove home to
mourn the death of my father.
Because the incident was so weird, so unusual, and because no one was hurt, because both Earl and
I walked away unscathed, I chose not to report it to the cops in Powell River. It didn't really seem
to me like a criminal incident. To me, the criminality was Earl's presence on my property without
any legal justification. That trumped everything. He simply had no right to be there.
Yes, something had to be done about Earl.
in front of my barn.
"Earl," he said happily.
"Right. Earl. Of course. Tell me again, what kind of arrangement do you have to rent this barn?"
"I pay rent to Michael Brown. Two hundred month. He doesn't give me receipts because I pay
him cash. I was only able to give him a hundred dollars this month to cover the electricity."
Two hundred a month seemed fair to me. "Michael Brown isn't the owner here, he's not the
landlord, I am," I said. "And it looks like he's going to be leaving here soon. I caught him and his
dad cutting down trees on my driveway for firewood the other day. I'm the owner of this property.
I'll be collecting the rent from now on."
Earl nodded his head in agreement.
"Now, you say you haven't paid rent for May, did I hear you right?" I asked.
"Not for May, just one hundred dollars," he said.
"And you pay on the first of the month?" I asked.
"Yep," he said.
"So you haven't paid for May?" I asked.
"No," he answered.
"Okay, here's how we'll do it. Don't worry about rent for the month of May, I'll start collecting rent
on June 1st. Okay? Sound good?"
"Sure does," Earl said with a smile, happy to comply.
"All right, excellent." I extended my hand. We shook on our agreement heartily.
"You don't have to worry about me as a tenant," Earl assured me. "I try to keep the place clean and
I keep the noise down for the neighbours."
"I'm not worried at all. I've watched you for a few months now. You seem just fine, just fine.
Take care." I left Earl to putter in his garage and I went for my walk to the sheep farm at Pine Tree
Place. I was quite pleased with Earl's easygoing attitude. There'd be no problem with him. He was
okay.
For the next three weeks I would often see Earl working on a car wreck at the barn when I went for
my daily walk or drove by. I'd wave and smile cordially and he'd wave back. Finally June 1st
appeared. Time to collect the rent. Expecting no problems, I walked up the driveway and knocked
on the barn door and told Earl I was there to collect his payment. It seemed Earl had a very serious
change of heart since we shook on our agreement.
Earl emerged from the darkness of the barn like he was some basement-dwelling circus freak, a
spook coming out of his cave into sunlight. He stood framed in the triangular opening of the sliding
front entrance.
"Hey Earl," I said. "I'm here to pick up the rent like we talked about."
"I talked to Tom on the phone," Earl said tensely, teeth gritted. "He says I don't have to pay
nothing to you, I can still pay rent to Michael Brown and that's what I'm going to do."
Citing Tom as an excuse to mess with me won't win you any points, Earl, I thought, a flare of anger
igniting in me. It was just like Tom and my sister to give Earl permission to use the property, with
payment going not to an owner but to a tenant, just to go against me. They'll say the sky is green if
I say it's red.
"Michael Brown is on the way out, he's leaving here soon," I replied, quite prepared to debate Earl
over the issue.
"That's not what I hear," Earl said shortly.
"Well, yes he is leaving," I repeated. "And anyway, Michael Brown can't collect rent, he isn't the
landlord here. I am."
"I'm not paying anything to you," Earl said, walking out of the barn directly toward me. I was
seeing the flip side of the easygoing personality of Earl Graham. Earl reached under his crotch,
grabbed his balls, lifted his nutsack and said, "Suck me. Your trespassing, get off my land, I pay
rent."
Earl had transformed into a gargoyle.
"Do you realize you're asking me to get off my own land?" I asked Earl.
Earl didn't want to hear it. "Suck my cock, asshole! I pay rent, get the fuck off my place!" he said,
his voice raised. "Get out of here! Get the fuck off my land!"
So you're an animal, I thought. An animal having some kind of anxiety attack and not able to
control yourself, an animal who could very likely end up assaulting me. He was almost on top of
me. I sensed an imminent shot to the head coming if I didn't leave. I turned around and began
walking off the cement driveway. Earl shadowed me like a basketball player, his body rubbing up
against mine.
"You're not walking fast enough," he said into my ear. I increased my pace, said nothing,
nonplussed, and quickly walked up the hill. "Go ahead and call the police, I pay rent!" he yelled as I
walked away from my land, not provoked by me in any way other than my request for a rent
payment he had previously agreed to make.
I concluded that Earl probably didn't pay rent to Michael Brown like he'd claimed and was
threatened at having to suddenly cough up some money. He was comfortably settled into the
location, and with no owners or landlord around (Dad's health left him unable to deal with the
renters) he must have felt as though it was his own. Something had to be done about Earl Graham.
I went for my walk, said hello to the sheep at a nearby sheep farm and walked home. When I
drove up the driveway later that day Earl Graham was leaning up against a flatbed truck. He leered
at me and cackled like a mad loon as I went past.
"Go screw yourself!" Earl laughed madly.
Go screw yourself? Yes, something had to be done about Earl.
I wrote up an account of Earl's behaviour and mailed it to the local police detachment. A copy was
sent to my sister and brother-in-law. At this time Dad was in the hospital in Vancouver for what I
was told was routine surgery. Noon on Saturday, June 3rd I drove into town. I didn't see Earl in
the barn when I passed. In town I visited the library and checked an email message from my
mother. Dad had died the previous day of a heart attack while recovering in the hospital. Dazed
from the shock of this unexpected news, I left the library, got in my car and drove home.
I drove down McLean Road to return to my residence. The front barn door was open and a
motorbike I'd seen Earl polishing on another day was parked on the cement. This meant Earl was in
the barn. My barn. As the sole resident owner, and with Dad deceased, I now possessed all
authority necessary to take action on the property. I turned onto the cement driveway leading into
the barn's main sliding entrance and brought my car to a complete stop, the nose of my Mazda
almost touching the motorbike. I felt like ramming the bike down and smashing it into the barn with
my car. I suppressed my rage. With the engine still running, I pulled up the emergency hand brake
and pushed the gear shift into neutral. I couldn't see him but I knew he was in there. I honked the
horn to get his attention.
"YOU'RE TRESPASSING ON PRIVATE PROPERTY!" I yelled out the open car window. "GET
THE FUCK OFF MY PROPERTY IMMEDIATELY!"
Just then Earl appeared around the corner from the side door on the south side of the barn. He
swiftly marched straight for my car and sat himself on the hood, above the left tire. He placed
himself on my vehicle like he was seating himself down on his favorite chair in his living room to
watch an episode of The Simpsons. Faster than you can blink your eye I rolled up my window and
locked the door. Earl crossed his arms and sat there on the hood in front of me and glared at me
through the windshield like a fool.
"Get off my car right now! Get off my car!" I shouted.
Earl refused to move. "I'm not leaving," he said calmly with his slow, simple sounding drawl.
There was a hint of ambivalence in his tone, like he knew he was crossing a line. He just sat there
and started fingering my windshield wipers, pulling them up off the windshield.
Anybody, even a fool, will jump off a moving vehicle, right? Not this fool unfortunately. I released
the hand brake, struggling slightly to put the gear shift into reverse. I slowly backed out of my barn
driveway, expecting Earl to hop off the hood of the car - the logical thing to do when a car starts
moving. Yet instead of getting off my car, Earl grabbed hold of the ridge of the hood at the
windshield and held on for the quick ride. Having pulled away from the barn driveway, I stopped
the car on McLean Road with the vehicle facing north towards the highway.
"Get off the car, Earl!" I said.
"I'm not getting off the car and I'm not leaving my workshop," Earl spat at me.
Earl wouldn't budge. He continued sitting there on the hood of my Mazda directly in front of my
face, blocking my view of the road. I shifted out of reverse into first gear and slowly began moving
the car again, driving up McLean Road towards Highway 101 which was about fifty feet away.
"You've got your eviction notice," I said to Earl through the windshield. "It's time for you to clean
up my barn and leave my property for good."
"I haven't gotten any notice," Earl replied, holding tight, taking my comment literally. "I'm not going
anywhere."
Fuck. How do I peel this jackass off my car? I wondered. I could buck him off by cranking the
steering wheel hard left and hard right. Yes that might work, assuming the four-cylinder engine in
my Mazda MX-3 has enough power and guts to shake him off, which it probably doesn't. But what
if he falls to the ground and gets injured? Then I'm the one who'll get blamed and then the shit'll
really hit the fan.
McLean Road has two sections which are intersected by Highway 101. My property, including my
barn, is located at the southern section of the road. Instead of trying to buck Earl off the car, I
didn't swerve the car or attempt to shake him off the hood or do anything abrupt to try to make him
let go, I just continued to slowly drive the car up the road.
When I came to the stop sign where the southern section of McLean Road hits the highway, I
stopped the car again.
"Will you please get off my car, Earl," I implored.
Earl still wouldn't hop off my small sports car. With a crazed look of madness in his eyes, Earl
shook his head and held onto the hood and continued to sit comfortably in front of me like he didn't
have a care in the whole entire world. I scanned Highway 101 left for moving vehicles. Nothing.
Then I scanned right. There were no cars to the right side either. The highway was completely
deserted. The only vehicle was my Mazda MX-3 with this human gargoyle clamped to the hood.
I took my foot off the brake and I moved the car slowly out onto the highway, still not sure how I
should handle this twisted incident. I'd never dealt with something like this before, I'd never been
attacked by anyone in this manner before. I'd never had a crazy squatter clamp himself onto the
hood of my vehicle and refuse to remove himself from my car in this way. I was dumbfounded and
I didn't quite know what to do.
I gradually drove out onto and across the narrow two-lane rural highway, making a quick mental
rundown of what action I could take to separate myself from Earl Graham. Do I go blasting down
Highway 101 at a hundred miles an hour to remove this guy? But what if he falls off and breaks his
wrist or, worse, cracks his skull open, blood and hobo brains splattered all over the pavement? That
happens it's a guarantee I'll wind up going straight to jail in this small backwards rundown old mill
town. No way, I decided. Must play clean, well within the bounds of the law. Can't take a risk of
this nutter getting injured. Even though I might feel I have the right to defend myself in any way I
choose against this strange attack by Earl Graham, the law in Canada probably won't see it the same
way as I do if he sustains an injury. Part of my responsibility to protect myself in this situation is to
make sure this feral animal doesn't get hurt.
So, instead of rocketing down Highway 101 like a fireball comet to make Earl fall off the hood of
my car, I watched Earl grip the hood tightly as I slowly turned the wheel counterclockwise and did a
wide arc on the blacktop and pulled a U-turn and turned around to drive back down the hill in the
direction of the barn.
After the June 1st confrontation when Earl chased me away from my barn it seemed to me I was
well within my rights to report Earl as a trespasser to the police, as an illegal squatter, to have him
removed from the property. Hell, I felt as though I was in my rights to hunt the man down
safari-style with a scope and rifle. After all, he wasn't subject to a legal rental agreement with the
owners, he didn't pay rent, he was making a terrible mess junking his abandoned auto wrecks in and
around our barn and on our field, he was running some kind of low grade commercial operation
illegally out of property designated only for farm use, and he had threatened me with physical
violence on June 1st. I had arbitrated I would wait until I saw him in the barn again in plain sight
and, when he was there, his head under the hood of a car changing an oil filter or something, I
would call the police and report him as a trespasser. I was confident the police would assist me in
evicting this vagrant squatter from my private property. I went out and bought a cell phone from
the local Walmart store for this very purpose.
Earl Graham the hood ornament, seated on his left hip, legs curled up on the hood, steadfastly
gripped the hood of my Mazda as I turned around on the highway. While completing the one-eighty
shift of direction, I took my right hand off the steering wheel and reached over to the passenger side
seat and opened the glove box and fished out the Rogers cell phone I'd just purchased. It wasn't
activated but that didn't matter. Then, as I proceeded to drive in the other direction across the
highway, I held the phone up to the windshield in Earl's face like it was a handgun and I rolled down
the window a crack.
"Get off my car. I am going to call the police," I said firmly to Earl. "Get off my car. I'm going to
call the police."
I didn't drive very far, just a few feet, before I stopped once more. I brought the car to a complete
stop just up the road a bit from the lawn of the house closest to the highway on McLean Road.
Then I rammed the gear shift into neutral and pulled up the emergency brake handle. There was a
big rock, a boulder, on the lawn as an ornament and the two residents of the home were standing in
their yard watching the whole unsettling scene unfold.
"Do you hear me, Earl?" I said to him while I held the cellular phone up against the glass of the
windshield. "The police are going to be called. Do as I say and get off the car now."
Something clicked in Earl Graham. It was as though he just then became aware of his strange
behaviour and realized how it would look if I reported to the police how he refused to get off the
hood of my car when asked to and had instead continued to sit on the vehicle like a complete idiot
when it began moving. He looked at the phone and he heard my message and the expression on his
face changed from defiance to one of great fear. I'd made some kind of solid contact in the feeble,
ignorant mind of this deranged man. I could see it scared him to death to hear that I was going to
report his abnormal behavior to the cops. The notion of getting reported to the cops for refusing to
get off the hood of my car had freaked him out. He clued in that his deviant actions were unlawful
and wrong and substantial grounds for a criminal complaint to the police. He knew he'd been caught
breaking the law.
Earl Graham hopped off the hood of my red Mazda and landed easily on his two feet. He stood
there, his shoes glued to the road, frozen and paralyzed like a complete fool. I then drove off down
the hill towards the driveway of my home and as I drove I watched Earl in my rear view mirror as
he walked the remaining twenty feet down McLean Road to my barn to return to his workshop. I
noted four or five residents on the other side of the street from the barn standing in their driveways
and on their lawns watching the whole pitiful, sordid display. I left the scene and drove home to
mourn the death of my father.
Because the incident was so weird, so unusual, and because no one was hurt, because both Earl and
I walked away unscathed, I chose not to report it to the cops in Powell River. It didn't really seem
to me like a criminal incident. To me, the criminality was Earl's presence on my property without
any legal justification. That trumped everything. He simply had no right to be there.
Yes, something had to be done about Earl.
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