The Moneybox
Non-Fiction by Hilary Peach
As you slow from highway speed and round the wide curve into downtown Chetwynd, BC, one of the first things that you see is a gigantic monument declaring the town the chainsaw sculpture capital of the world. It is a controversial claim, with the town of hope boasting the title of chainsaw carving capitol of the world with equal vigor. I’m not sure if Chetwynd is claiming to be more artistically discriminating by choosing to be the sculptural capital while hope is merely a world-class carving enclave, but establishing a position as a player on the global stage seems to be important to this art form. Hayward, Wisconsin hosts the lumberjack carving World championships, and Ridgway, Pennsylvania’s annual chainsaw carving rendezvous brags that it is the largest chainsaw carving gathering in the World. Mulda, Germany, holds the husky World cup, and Toei, Japan, has established the World chainsaw art competition. clearly, the nationals just don’t cut it.
The annual Chetwynd international chainsaw carving championship transpires over four days each June. For the past ten years the event has been growing, with artists from around the globe descending on the northern village of 3,000 residents. In 2014, competition happened to be taking place on the last weekend of the maintenance shutdown at the gas plant. This meant that the town, which had been inundated for weeks with boilermakers, pipefitters, and bricklayers, was now also accommodating a couple of dozen chainsaw wielding artisans from all over the world. I was working night shift and sleeping during the day, the distant buzz of multiple Husqvarnas penetrating my daytime dreams. Each afternoon when I awoke, the landscape would have changed slightly, with a new larger-than-life sculpture appearing on Main street.
Aside from this one claim to fame, Chetwynd is an ordinary town. One of those northern towns full of working class folks and young families determined to make a life, to create a community, and if any conveniences are lacking, they will be invented. There is a new, and underused, recreation centre- with a gym and a pool. There is a trail network that branches off at the top of nob hill, just before you get to the water tower, but it’s a little hard to navigate in winter because it’s so steep the trail turns to a slick of ice. There’s a schoolyard down by the river, and a light aircraft runway, and a walking path that extends the entire length of town, parallel to the highway.
The walking path is paved to accommodate baby strollers, wheelchairs, and bikes, and is flanked on either side by wide swaths of well-tended grass, keeping users clear of the highway. Over time, these wide swaths of boulevard have become the in situ gallery for completed chainsaw carvings. This three-kilometre strip of enormous art pieces is a little surprising to the transient workers, like me, who have come to work in the gas plant.
The gas plant is outside of the actual village, and it takes a little over an hour each way on the company bus to get there. We were working ten-and-a-half-hour shifts, which, with the bus, made for a long day. Add an hour to get ready in the morning, an hour to scrub up and wind down at night, and that left about nine hours a day to cook or go out to eat, prepare lunch for the next day, and sleep. When you factor in things like laundry, banking, shopping for lunch groceries, exercising, and other odd errands like buying auto insurance or gas for the car or seeing a doctor, there really isn’t enough time. Most of us were averaging five or six hours sleep per 24-hour cycle, and often it was poor quality because we were trying to get our rest in the daytime. We weren’t getting any days off, and after three weeks I would see colleagues wandering around town in a kind of daze. so everything was exactly as we expected.
Driving was dreamlike, and I would hear myself telling the grocery clerk or bank teller, “I’m sorry, I’m on nightshift. What was that?” Adding to the surreal dreaminess was the concrete fact that the town was permanently populated by more than 150 enormous varnished chainsaw sculptures of incredibly unlikely subjects. At an average height of eight feet, the results of the annual competition were too big to go home with their visiting creators, so the town of Chetwynd had decided to install the pieces along the streets and boulevards. The carvings are all over town, gracing the sidewalks and adorning the broad, grassy expanses that flank the walking paths. We sleepwalked through the streets among carvings of enormous serpents, Japanese warriors, cowboys, and sports icons. But a person can get used to anything, and soon I started to think of them merely as land-marks.
At the end of my third week in town I finally was about to have a night off, and was drifting around in my car, running errands. I turned right at the moose and the rearing Pegasus and drove up the hill, then left at the life-sized horse and cartoon cowboy, into the IGA. I bought my groceries, looped around the giant octopus embattling a sailing schooner on the way to the ATM, and made a quick stop at the drug store for vitamins, parking in front of two enormous copulating humpback whales. On my way to buy a cold six-pack of Stella at BJ’s liquor emporium, I passed the nine-foot pumpkin-headed monster scarecrow, and the two battling (or copulating) griffins outside the tourist office. I planned to celebrate my night off with sweet, salty, high calorie food, and bad detective shows on tv, so had phoned in an order of take-out ribs from the local steakhouse. It was my last stop. I rounded the corner next to the giant Buddha, and turned onto the highway, noticing as I did so that there was money all over the road.
I was turning the corner slowly, had a good chance to look, and was positive that it was real money. I continued on to the steakhouse,
and parked between the sculpture of the cougar with the treed bear cubs and one of the two monuments to hockey goalies. The steakhouse was in a prime location so some of the best carvings were right outside, including one of my favourites, a huge inverted alligator. I loved the criss-cross texture of his back and his wry, alligator smile. When I paid for my ribs, I asked the server where the RCMP station was, and she told me it was up the hill, just past the sasquatch cuddling the little forest creatures. I found the station, along with a couple of giant frolicking rabbits, but there didn’t appear to be anyone on duty. I pressed the button on the little speaker-phone outside the door, and no one answered. I was tired. I wanted to go back to the hotel room and watch cop shows on tv and eat ribs. Instead, I drove back the way I’d come to see if the money was still there, or if someone else had picked it up.
I drove the car slowly past the larger-than-life crucified Jesus, and pulled into a parking space right at the end of the row, between the Buddha and the other goalie. This was the better of the two goalies, unpainted, with his glove hand extended over his head, about to pluck a slapshot out of the air. The money was still on the road, change mostly, including quite a few one and two dollar coins. A couple of people walked across the cross-walk, but both were texting and didn’t notice the pavement shiny with silver. Why me? I grumbled to the Buddha. He was large and well made, laughing beatifically, and holding an orb high above his head with one hand. A dragon reared up and peered over his shoulder. My ribs were congealing in their little cardboard box.
I climbed out of the car and walked onto the highway. When there was a break in the traffic I started scraping the change together into a pile with my feet, then scooping it up and putting it in the pocket of my hoodie. the story seemed to come together when I found, upside down in the grass at the edge of the road, a metal cashbox. It seemed pretty obvious what had happened: someone had stolen the moneybox from a local business, pocketed the paper money, and thrown the incriminating box and the change out the window as they hit the highway. Thinking I could at least rescue the box and maybe get it back to its owner, I picked it up and turned it over. The little plastic tray was still inside, and a set of keys, as well as a large, disorganized pile of five, ten, twenty, and fifty-dollar bills. This changed things. I shoved everything into the box, including the change, and quickly made a last search, gathering up a few more stray quarters and nickels, and a fifty that had blown up against the Buddha’s stomach. It started to rain. I closed the box and made for the car, and locked myself inside. Sleep deprived, I was sitting in my car in a strange town, surrounded by monsters and gods, with what was most likely a stolen box of money on the seat beside me. I took off my hoodie, threw it over the box, and drove back to the hotel.
As casually as possible I ambled across the lobby, a greasy takeout bag in one hand, and a suspiciously square package wrapped in my damp hoodie in the other. I asked the desk clerk if there was a non-emergency number for the RCMP and she jotted it down on a card for me. Up in my room I locked the door, pulled the blinds, and pondered the box. What is with people? I muttered crabbily. A year ago on the same stretch of highway I had found and returned someone’s wolf, and now this. Why can’t people keep track of their stuff?
I cracked a bottle of beer, using the hotel paper knife as an opener, sat down at the desk and counted the money. There was $987.85. Not bad for a day’s take, but not great for a robbery. There was also a set of keys, and some paper notes from someone named Carrie, that said things like $5 dish soap, Carrie. or $76 4 CC tips, Carrie. Carrie had apparently been taking all kinds of cash out of the box during the course of the day and replacing it with these scraps of explanation. Irrationally, I worried about her. Carrie might be in big trouble for this box finding its way onto the highway, and then into my hotel room. I imagined the note she would write in her loopy, girlish handwriting: Fired for losing moneybox, Carrie. there was also a receipt from a propane company for a 100lb bottle of propane, made out to someone called William Victory, of Wild Bill Enterprises. Scrawled across the receipt were the words Paid Cash. So. It seemed someone had paid the propane bill out of the cash box too, and the propane belonged to Mr. Victory. This was getting interesting, almost as good as a cop show.
The RCMP officer’s name was Brian. He phoned back within five minutes of me leaving the message that I had found a box of money and wanted to return it to it’s owner. He offered to come by and take care of that for me, right away. For some reason, I wanted someone else there when he arrived, so I called the only person I could think of who was staying in the same hotel, on the same shift, my general foreman, Nigel.
“Can you come to my room right away?” I asked.
“Um, why?” He asked.
“Because I’m about to have an encounter with the police and I need a witness,” I said.
“I meant, why me?” He said.
“You were my last resort,” I said, “and I don’t want to be alone in a hotel room with a police officer and a pile of money. Why do I have to explain everything?” I hung up the phone and used the end of my fork to open another bottle of beer.
When Nigel arrived, I was kicking back on the spare bed in my pajamas with a pile of rib bones in the box beside me, drinking a Stella. I introduced him to Brian, a trim, unassuming RCMP officer standing at my desk counting out piles of cash.
“What’s going on?” Nigel asked.
“I found a box of money, and I’m trying to give it back,” I explained. “Do you want a beer?”
“No, thanks,” Nigel said. “Hey, does he know about your record?”
“He hasn’t asked yet,” I said.
“I guess he hasn’t run your name,” Nigel said, thinking he was funny, “or he wouldn’t have come up here by himself.”
“You’re not really helping,” I said.
“So… You found this money, and you’re giving it back?” he asked.
“Yeah.”
“Well how much is it?”
“Around $1,000,” I said.
“Well that’s just stupid,” he said. “Why didn’t you keep it? That’s what he’s going to do …” He nodded toward the officer.
“You know what?” I said. “What’s stupid was thinking that you’d be helpful. You can go. I think Brian and I can handle it.”
“Do you know how many hookers — and how much blow — you can buy with a thousand bucks?” he asked.
“Not that many, I don’t think,” I said, getting up to usher him out. “So my standards are slipping,” he said. To his credit, officer Brian ignored us.
“What did you do with the bag of coke?” Nigel asked, as I steered him toward the door. “You’re keeping that, right?”
“He’s kidding,” I told the officer. “That’s just how he is.”
I made officer Brian write me a receipt for the money, and before he left I showed him the bill for the propane bottle. I pointed out that the moneybox could very likely belong to the individual called William Victory, and since I had done most of the leg work for him, maybe he could just find that person and return it. I’d learned that term from the cop shows. Leg work.
“Yeah, I know Bill,” he said. “I’ll get back to you on this.”
And that was that. I slept for about twenty hours, and went back to work the following evening. During my night off, Nigel had made sure that the story got around, especially about how stupid I was, trying to return a box of found money. Different people approached me through the day to confirm the facts, and to either tell me how dumb I was, or that I had done “the right thing.” In my mind, there was no right thing, because it wasn’t my money. The guy’s name was in the box, on the receipt. It just wasn’t mine.
Officer Brian called my cell phone at lunchtime to tell me that Bill Victory was Wild Bill, an older gent who ran the trailer park with his wife, just to the west of town. A number of “our guys” — boilermakers
— had parked their rigs at the campground and were living there for the shutdown. Predictably, we called them the Trailer Park Boys. As well as the trailer park, Bill and his wife ran Wild Bill’s Burger Wagon, a fancy silver food truck that he had built as a concession stand for the chainsaw carving festival. On the day I found the money, Bill had put the box of cash on the fender of the Burger Wagon and driven away. When he turned the corner onto the highway, it must have flown off and opened, spilling cash all over the road. One of the Trailer Park Boys, Big Steve, took me aside and told me that Bill and Joyce were really nice people, and that Bill was having some health issues.
When I got back to the hotel early the next morning, my room felt different. Even before I turned on the lights, I knew someone other than the housekeeper had been there. On the little woodgrain table was a bouquet of flowers and a bulging envelope. Inside was a fifty-dollar gift certificate for the Red Dragon, a local Chinese restaurant, and sixty dollars in lottery tickets. As well, there was a thickly embossed card, with a picture of a horse on it. Inside, someone had written: Thank you so much for finding and returning the money. It was from the Burger Wagon, which my husband and I run in the summertime. Please stop by and say hello before you leave, the burgers are on us. It was signed Joyce and Bill Victory.
Twice before the end of the job I took Chinese take-out to work for lunch, and when I finally got around to checking the lottery tickets at the drug store, one of them was good for a hundred bucks. Well, well, well. After the job, as I pulled out of town for the last time, and drove past the carved effigies of serpents and sea creatures, owls and foxes, crucified Jesus, and the upside-down alligator, I was comforted. It was good to know that if I was ever in Chetwynd again, I had credit at Wild Bill’s Burger Wagon, and I waved to the giant, laughing Buddha. »