Good Grief

By Jim Sutherland

A comic crime caper in the tradition of Elmore Leonard or Donald E. Westlake's Dortmunder series. A more serious story in which mirth and message intermingle, more reminiscent of Carl Hiassen or Evelyn Waugh. That's Good Grief, which happens to be a real honest-to-goodness hamlet on Idaho's northern tip, but also what you'll be saying to yourself while turning the pages of this novel, where the characters are as complex and original as the plot.
It’s 2016, and all seems quiet between Idaho and British Columbia. To the north, pot growers and pot smugglers. On the south side, preppers and pastors, and never the twain shall meet—except, that is, at the border-straddling Good Grief Golf Resort, every Sunday morning when the men’s club plays.
Sometimes, in fact, they play for keeps. The vulgar and dirty ex-cop who founded Idaho’s biggest prepper depot and currently serves as local point man for Donald Trump’s presidential campaign rats out a trio of polite and well-educated smugglers. Vowing revenge and recompense, they devise a convoluted plan to trick him into funding a reality-television show, starring, of course, himself. Enlisted for the cause are an enterprising ex, recently returned from Los Angeles because her porn studio is floundering, and a hacker daughter who dawns braces to pose as a teen-age Valley Girl. Oh, and fourteen unemployed porn stars masquerading as a film crew.
Panhandle pandemonium is the result, out of which a TV show surprisingly emerges—as does an understanding of certain character traits shared by the prepper king and his beloved candidate. You’ll laugh, all right. Until you cry.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jim Sutherland
• Release date: Apr 22, 2020
• ISBN: 9780463746905

Book preview

Good Grief, by Jim Sutherland

GOOD GRIEF

Copyright © 2020 by Jim Sutherland

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

Printed in the United States of America

First Printing, 2020

ISBN 978-0-9919366-4-9

Collingwood Books

www.collingwoodbooks.com

Cover design by Tom Brown, TMBRWN.co

Author photo by Paul Joseph, pauljosephphoto.com

Layout by 52 Novels, 52novels.com

This book is a work of fiction. Reference is made to numerous real life places, people and news events, but all characters and their actions are products of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to persons living or dead is purely a coincidence.

Collingwood Books

CONTENTS

Dedication

Foreword

ONE

The Good Grief Golf Resort (And Spa)

TWO

One of the Great American Themes, Maybe Even The Greatest

THREE

Doubt and Redoubt

FOUR

A Fly in the Oatmeal

FIVE

Up Here In Turdberg

SIX

The Spoils

SEVEN

Election Night!

EIGHT

One Month Later

About the Author

For my family.

And for the billions of people whose lives are currently upended.

FOREWORD

Sorry!

I offer this as the universal Canadian greeting, but also because apologies are due.

First and most importantly, to residents of Good Grief and Yahk (and Creston and Bonners Ferry, for that matter). I recognize the portrait drawn of your communities is far from accurate. There is no golf course in Good Grief, no Krav Maga studio in Creston, no prepper depot in Bonnners Ferry, and on and on. These are examples of what Chance Hogarth (guess you’ll have to read the book) might call prosaic license. But why are your communities even in here, you wonder? Because you had the bad luck to be real, honest-to-goodness hamlets named Good Grief and Yahk, and to be situated directly across the border from each other in, respectively, the Idaho panhandle and British Columbia’s Kootenay region.

Next, to residents of the Idaho panhandle and British Columbia’s Kootenay region, where prosaic licensing is also at play. Now, it’s completely true that in 2016 Boundary County gave almost three-quarters of its presidential vote to Donald Trump and also true that in recent years the panhandle has welcomed thousands of retired cops, military personnel and others seeking new lives and safer pastures, a mini-flood of migrants who often self-describe as preppers. Similarly, directly across the border in B.C., a councillor in Nelson really did estimate that the illegal marijuana industry constituted thirty percent of her town’s economy, and the area has in most recent provincial and federal elections supported leftish New Democratic Party candidates. Still, it would have been nice to paint a more nuanced picture, and I might well have done so were this novel not an example of the rare comic crime caper/political satire sub-genre, where subtlety goes to die.

(A side note: given that it’s set in 2016, is Good Grief also a historical novel? If so, would that make it the first in a brand new sub-sub-genre? Incredibly, I think it might, so for its courage and vision I thank my publisher, Collingwood Books, which operates out of the trunk of my car.)

But sadly, still more apologies are due.

To American readers: The picture that emerges of your country and fellow citizens is unfairly bleak, and I apologize that (clicks over to internet, notes surging Donald Trump approval rating due to expert handling of Coronavirus crisis, decides to move on without further comment).

To Canadian readers: Okay, there’s some sanctimony here, some hypocrisy there, but overall you’ve come out of this looking okay. So-o-o-o, could you maybe see your way to forgiving the American spellings? You see, during its research phase Collingwood Books determined that the huge and ultra-sophisticated American market (clicks over to internet, notes surging Donald Trump approval rating due to expert handling of Coronavirus crisis, decides to move on without further comment).

Of course, no foreword would be complete without a thank you or two.

To Michael Medjuck: A few years back I interviewed Michael on several occasions with the idea of writing a book about his hashish bust, which in 1991 was considered the biggest drug haul ever, with a value of $250 million. Michael subsequently moved to Mexico, and that book is on hold, but the experiences he and his accomplices related to me contributed big doses of colour and plot to the early adventures of Eddie, Forest and Dartz in this one.

And finally, huge thanks to my volunteer readers: Wade Ferley, Bryan Harrison, Terry McAvoy, Jamie Maw, Cathy Moss, Marv Shaffer, Ira Sutherland, and Alvin Wasserman. This thing is so much better as a result of your incisive comments. —Jim Sutherland, Vancouver, April 2020

ONE

The Good Grief Golf Resort (And Spa)

Terry Dartz doesn’t like crossing the border and manages to not do it about 364 days a year, which is not something he advertises because people might wonder. There are only two directions to go from Good Grief: south toward Bonners Ferry, twenty miles away, or north a few seconds to Canada. Whether leaving from the golf course or his little cabin overlooking the eighteenth hole, Dartz can turn right onto Idaho 95 and coast to the border crossing, or left toward the bright lights of Bonners Ferry. In the twenty-four years he’s kept it running, his Mustang ragtop has gotten plenty used to left turns.

Today, however, he cranks the wheel in the other direction, cranks it as only a fella with the looks of a Steve McQueen can. Reaching up to tilt the rear-view, he confirms that the faded Good Grief Golf Resort sign has been further tattered by a recent wind storm. Fortunately, the And Spa addendum posted just below it is still in fine shape, which would be even more fortunate if they’d ever got around to building the spa.

Two more things to probably not be attended to at Idaho’s most northerly golf course, and, to anyone who gives it a thought, the state’s most perplexing. The terrain is not a natural for golf, a boulder-studded incline rising from the Moyie River toward a couple of unimpressive mountainettes. And practically speaking, this isn’t the place for even a great course, let alone a mangy mutt like this one. The sparse population is already well served by clubs in Bonners Ferry and, on the British Columbia side, Creston, and tourists, scant to begin with, blaze by without a glance. All of which helps to explain some of the suspicions that surround it.

The fact is, no-one knows who owns the Good Grief Golf Resort, putatively even Dartz. When people occasionally ask, he tells them that back in 1992 he responded to an ad, went for an interview at a Seattle law office, and was hired to supervise the construction and opening of the course. He fell in love with Good Grief because, good grief, who wouldn’t, and decided to stay on as manager. Now, here he is, almost a quarter century later and trundling toward sixty, still sending in his budgets and requisitions to the law office, and the only thing he can say for sure is that nobody is getting rich, except maybe the lawyers.

Six-one and a trim 180, Dartz is widely assumed to be a golf pro, but even as a young guy working summer golf course jobs, he was never more than a casual player. On this midsummer morning his occupational status happens to be germane, because at the Kingsgate border crossing, the officer at Canadian customs feels it necessary to ask what he does in Good Grief, which is visible from the crossing and not exactly populous.

I manage the golf course, Dartz replies.

Golf pro.

Just the manager.

And what is the purpose of your trip? In truth the officer cares not at all about the purpose of his trip, but simply wants a few more seconds to gaze at this incredible specimen of a man.

Dartz wishes he had given some thought to the purpose of his trip. I’m going to Yahk. For a meeting.

Canadian border control agents are instructed to conceal their incredulity and generally accomplish the feat, but not on this occasion. On one hand, Good Grief and Yahk are only a few minutes apart. On the other, has anyone ever gone to Yahk for a meeting? And if so, what are the odds a meeting in Yahk, population not much more than a hundred, would be attended by someone from Good Grief, population a dozen or two, and that, further, this person would look like Dartz?

What is the purpose of your meeting?

Some members of our men’s club. Peering through those blue eyes at the agent, he sees that something more needs to be said. Tournament planning. Still more, apparently. And that sort of thing.

What are the names of the members?

Dartz remembers all over again why he holds crossing the border in the same regard as crawling up a steep hill while farm trucks fly by, a function of the long-ago decision to outfit the damn Mustang with the sub-100-horsepower four-cylinder. He should have flattered the agent by saying he wants to pick up some Tim Hortons coffee, an inexplicable object of Canadian national pride. That opportunity foregone, another possibility might be to come up with fake names. Eddie Marshall and Forest Streit, he says.

Y’er good to go, says the officer, handing back his passport and pressing a button to lift the barrier. Tell them hi from Jeannie.

~ ~ ~

Marsha, Marsha, Marsha. This is what Marsha Marshall repeats to herself when she’s on the verge of impatience or pique. It works because she’s a twenty-two-year-old invoking the idiom of her parents’ generation; because in the television show the girl was named Marcia, not Marsha; and because Marcia was the cause of the irritation, not the carrier. So, in addition to being a threadbare cliche, the expression is clumsily inapt. Yet, she is thinking it, and what does that say about her? Well, that she’s not so smart or important, and that her life will be better if she shrugs away whatever is threatening to bother her.

This morning, for example, woken up at eight by her dad and told to make herself scarce! As if she doesn’t know about the family business and needs to be sheltered from whatever aspect has just blown up or needs to be realigned.

But Marsha, Marsha, Marsha. So she has driven the few minutes from Yahk to Creston, where she has hastily planned a full morning. First, a rare bacon and eggs-fest with an old high school pal who, like her, is back home for the summer. Then, a visit to the martial arts studio she’s been habituating for fifteen years, even fairly frequently during her four years away at university in Vancouver. It’s the only self-defence school in town, of course, and the owner is pretty much a head case, so she’s had to employ the 3M tactic frequently, but the result is an unexpected proficiency at smashing faces and tossing bodies—handy if she solves her current career confusion by deciding to become a professional bodyguard.

Then, lunch with her mom, who is also spending the summer up here, to the surprise of most of the universe, and especially her dad, who inquired if everything was okay with the ex. Mar isn’t completely certain, because ordinarily mother and daughter would be travelling the world together, as her mom vowed to do every summer after she left to make her fortune in Los Angeles. A typical routine would have involved a phone call in spring inquiring where she wanted to go this summer, followed by an elaborate itinerary. This year the phone call began with a question about where Mar was headed when school was out, then the response that maybe she’d land there too. And, sure enough, here her mom is, staying in a cottage roughly four and a half stars inferior to her usual accommodation.

Well, great! That’s two carbon footprints shrinking as thoroughly as her briefly enflamed passion for the art and architecture of the Baroque era, and it’s not like British Columbia’s mountainous interior is vastly inferior to any of those other bucket list destinations. Mar can completely take it upon herself to turn the tables by showing her mom the good time, because heck, it’s beautiful here, even if, on the flip side, nothing ever happens.

~ ~ ~

When for the third time in an hour her phone goes off with that suddenly grating Adele tune, Nicolette Drouin debates whether it’s time to summon something other than resolute cheerfulness. Hi, Randi, she says, deciding against a tactic that would floor her 2IC and lead to a flurry of chats and phone calls spreading wonder and worry.

Crazy, she says, when Randi relays news of yet another business setback. You’re kidding, she adds, as her eyes wander around the cottage she’s landed in, and her brain considers what minor adjustments could transform it from dingy and decrepit to rundown yet charming.

Spying a blank wall as more words arrive, Nicolette wonders what kind of soulful thing could go there, simultaneously adding interest and hiding some nasty and even suspicious stains. Really? she hears herself saying. A strike? Who’s talking about that? It’s not like there’s a union and strike pay. What will everyone do for money?

Well, I guess, she says when Randi responds with an answer. It’s true we have incredible expertise. But most of us would prefer to, you know, share it among ourselves.

Moments later Nicolette finds a way to end the conversation, freeing her to remember soulful and potentially stain-obscuring things done with pine cones as a twelve-year-old. Wow, though, who could have imagined she’d be back in the boonies, worrying about money? She has friends who complain about the way their professions are being rendered obsolete. Journalists, travel agents, computer operators. Well, those people should try owning a porn studio.

It’s been an eye opener the way technology disrupts things, as they delight to say back in California. The buddy who used to run his company’s big computers is no longer needed because everyone runs their own, or the computer’s run by another computer, or something. The travel agent is out of a job because who wouldn’t prefer to read a few reviews and click a button rather than have her pal book them into a crappy hotel because it’s paying a higher commission than the nice one across the street. Maybe disruption really is the good thing they claim, and never mind journalism with the mostly lower quality and general loss of trust.

Could you see your way to putting porn into even the neutral camp, she wonders before deciding, no, definitely not as a business case and probably not even from a broader, societal point of view. The free videos she checks out online cover the waterfront in a way she and her competitors never came close to. All of those hopeful people, patiently waiting for their erotic catalog order to be fulfilled, and none of the studios had the imagination or could make the numbers work. Maybe you could argue production values have suffered, but the truth is, the new gear allows a webcam girl or swinger couple to approximate what she was producing as recently as three or four years ago.

Realistically, that part of her life is over. It’s been a long time since the business was fun anyway. Sure, she was younger then, but it’s not like she’s the only one nostalgic for the era when the Valley was vibrant, the days of fluffers and waiting for wood. Viagra put an end to those rituals, just as the internet put an end to DVDs, slashing her revenues and rendering her inventory all but worthless, and soon enough her business too.

Well, better to look ahead. For two decades she’s made it an unbendable rule that summers are spent with her daughter, travelling the world, seeing the sights. With travel no longer in the budget, this summer is going to be a little different. Well, a lot different, she thinks, noting the blocks of wood standing in for the fourth leg of the torn and dirty sofa. If Mar wants to spend the summer here, she’ll spend the summer here. And beyond any pinecone magic, she’s got a project in mind, one that might make this a year to remember rather than one to forget.

~ ~ ~

Chance Hogarth reminds himself all over again how much he loves a plane trip. Sure, it’s partly that sense of being a somebody—as if anyone would dispute it now! But more than anything, getting from here to anywhere, and anywhere to here, takes endless hours, which is an opportunity for reflection—and wouldn’t we all be happier if we had more time to think about ourselves?

Personally, he’s reached the age when a man begins to mellow, to view his existence in terms of life journeys, so he does not elbow the fatso snoring in the seat beside him, but instead focuses his mind in an effort to pinpoint the genesis of his exodus to the Idaho panhandle. And how can there be any doubt. It was the seventh day of the seventh month, way the fuck back in 1981.

He was just a young harbour cop then. Maybe not what they call idealistic, but fresh and ambitious, eager to see what lay around the next bend. On that evening in 1981 he walked around the bend and found a coke deal going down. Everyone started shooting everyone else, and when it was over, his dipshit partner and the bad guys were all dead. It wasn’t the biggest drug bust ever. Not after he grabbed a couple of bricks and stashed them in a dark corner. But it was big enough, and he got his tires pumped as a courageous hero who was headed for the stars.

Of course, all that talk from the higher-ups was too good to be true, and the lying fucks turned on him later with demotions and suspensions. Then he ran into some trouble with a bad hombre too dense to understand his explanation for a couple hundred grand that happened to go missing. Between the toxic work environment and the death threats, he came up with the idea he might want to live somewhere a long way from San Diego.

During the summer of 1992 the TV newscasts were full of a place called Ruby Ridge, Idaho, which looked really pretty. It was hard to know what to believe about a situation as fucked up as that, but the one thing completely clear was the people there were yokels who were either really religious or really conservative, or both. He had no beef with any of those kinds, but that wasn’t the point. The point was, none of the lowlifes who wanted to kill him was anything close to a yokel and they’d be spotted from a mile away if ever they landed in Idaho.

With twelve years of service under his belt, he had a nice little pension coming eventually, but the operative words were little and eventually. Also, northern Idaho was turning out to be boring as hell. He bought a place on the edge of a river valley just north of Bonners Ferry, ten acres with an orchard and shit, but if there’s anything more pathetic than looking after fruit trees, he had yet to be introduced.

There was dick all to do, so he decided to look for a job, and there was dick all of those too. About the only thing going was a contractor working on a golf course up by the Canadian border, and the guy needed machinery operators. Well, an ex-cop is an ex-cop,