Incidents in the Life of Markus Paul (18 page)

“So what do you think of all of this?”

“What do I think about all of this? I think the little bastard finally went and killed someone. That’s what I think about all of this. You have a few quarters?”

Doran took some out of his pocket, and she grabbed at them all, finished her rye and looked at him while clinking the ice and holding the glass against her cheek.

“Why do you say that?”

“If a mother can’t tell the truth about her children, what else is there?” she said. She turned to him and smiled, tossing her head, and her eyes cast on him were knowledgeable in the art of seduction she had performed most of her life. “Buy me one?” she asked.

So he bought her a rye and then walked back toward the reserve by the same road, his thoughts troubled by this woman, and by so much else. Yes, he was becoming famous. And the only way to continue to be famous was to prove what he had suggested in his writing. To back down now—after being interviewed on two CBC programs—would ruin him. He knew this. In fact, if any other scenario was proved, he might be sued for libel. That is how far out on the branch he had crawled. Therefore, as much as he might find it personally distasteful, he was glad the mother had condemned her own son.

The evening was quiet and rain had started just lightly as he came to the old cement store, and he walked toward it, peered through its dark and broken windows. He wanted to get a picture of it at twilight—but first he must get the best angle. He thought of publishing this picture with a story concerning the mother—it might work. But as he was setting his camera to take the photo, Joel Ginnish came out from behind the store and called out to him.

“What the hell are you doing?”

“Nothing—I just wanted a picture.”

“Get out of here, spy,” Ginnish said, and came forward, and grabbed the camera from him.

“Give me my camera back,” Doran said.

“Spy,” Ginnish said. “You’re not allowed here—do you understand? You stay back at the front end of our homeland. Don’t you dare come up again, Isaac or no Isaac,” he said, pushing at Doran’s chest with a finger.

“Give me my damn camera back!” Doran said.

“You’re a spy—you’re with the RCMP and Isaac don’t know that but I do. Don’t take no pictures of this place.”

And he turned away, tossing the camera behind him. Doran just managed to grab it.

Doran, shaken, went to speak to Isaac about this. He said he had to be sure who was in charge, for he did not want to deal with Joel again.

“Don’t worry,” Isaac said, “he is no trouble—no trouble at all.”

Two days went by. And Isaac was still debating what he should do with Joel when more news came.

Isaac was told to go to the police station. There, Hanover told him the police would not recommend the charge against Roger Savage. There was simply no way they could prove at all what had happened. No, the case could not go to court as an indictable offence. However, he still could be charged with mischief—and no one liked or believed him anymore. Everyone knew he had done something. Why, he wasn’t even spoken to when he went out anywhere.

Charging Roger is what Isaac had been waiting for, what he had been on the phone about and how he had kept Joel civil. It was his promise to the young men, that Roger would be charged, and they wouldn’t have to see his face again, and the pools would be theirs.

But just as when the
Lutheran
went and left them, so now this struck him as another complete betrayal. He had the same repressed rage on his face all day. He could not get Hanover’s look of unconcern out of his mind.

“We can’t say he hooked, deliberately or not,” Hanover said. Then he shrugged and smiled. “I doubt if he’ll be working many boats again.”

This last statement’s trivial nature infuriated Isaac Snow even more.

“Don’t go out of whack,” Hanover said, “or it will be a long, long summer for everyone. You want to know something? Roger’s mother’s in jail—been in since yesterday. Want to see her?”

“No, I don’t want to see her.”

But Isaac was too astute not to realize what Amos had realized some time before—that really Joel and his men did not want Roger charged, for that would defuse a situation they were relying upon to continue. And it was in Isaac’s best interest too to prolong it, for the gain it could assure him. For him to want Roger charged would mean he wanted this to end. But it could not end without a confrontation.

He knew this, and Joel knew this, and the young journalist Gordon Young who had grown up close to them all knew this too. Only Doran seemed to miss this essential point.

Sergeant Hanover phoned Amos as well, and later that afternoon Isaac went to see Amos.

“Well, that is good,” Amos said, a little chagrined. “Doesn’t it prove that an accident or maybe someone else might have done something? Maybe we can get twelve licences—and fish lobster on the Point Sapan side this year. Next we can go for a bit more of them—you see, I was talking to some fishery men and they all said the same thing.”

Isaac was in a difficult position now. He knew he had to act against the white authorities, or have the others act. Even if Hector’s death was an accident. And in his heart of hearts he was no longer sure. But although he had known Roger for twenty years, he had to say that it was no accident, and although Roger had come into his house, he had to say that he did not know him, and although Roger had helped him drop an engine into his car, he had to say the man had not done one good thing.

He had to, not because he was leader, but because it was expected of him. And if he did not do so, Joel would. And it was better for everyone
involved if Isaac rather than Joel handled things. There would be less violence and perhaps no violence at all.

Isaac went back to his house, slammed the door and took a small dish and flung it into the air. His wife was lucky enough to catch it before it smashed into the dining-room cabinet. Then he sat down and looked at Joel and those around him.

“Take him out now,” Joel said, “and try him, just like they tried your father.”

“Hmm?” Isaac said, as if he hadn’t heard.

“We will try him,” Andy Francis said, his hair tied back in a tiny ponytail, and his huge steel-toed boots making his big feet look like a clown’s.

“Hmm?”

“Try him ourselves!” Andy said, more loudly—with the first blemish of disrespect, which pricked Isaac suddenly.

“No, we can’t do that,” he said calmly.

“Why not?”

“Because I have thought of this all day. We do not have the manpower to do so. It would take a life to get him, and then all hell would break loose, so we cannot do so. We would have to hold him in the little cell here, and the RCMP would come and get him, so there would be a gun battle with them, or we would kill him.”

“We
should
kill him,” Andy said. “I didn’t know you’d be scared.”

“You want to kill him?” Isaac said calmly, without looking at the boy, and he took out his buck knife and stuck it into the table. “There—take this. You go kill him. See how long you last against Roger Savage.” He yawned after he said this.

“What do you propose, then?” Joel asked, unfazed. “Because right now we either do something or do nothing. And doing something is always better than doing nothing. That’s my motto.”

Isaac mashed his hands together, and thought of the hay.

His wife, Collette, lifted the knife from the table and wiped the spot where it had stuck in with a cloth. Then she poured her husband tea.

“What if we do something else—something that will draw more attention?” Isaac said. “Our main concern is for our children not to have to live like we have had to. We must make people realize this is what we want.” He looked at Andy Francis now, and Andy smiled timidly. “Never mind, boy,” he said. “Very few men here could take Roger Savage in a fight.”

“Could you?” Tommie Francis asked.

Isaac sniffed, nodded but said no more. That is because he had never bragged about his physical strength and was not about to now. And unlike Joel Ginnish he was by nature not a violent man but a brave one. Not that Joel was so violent; he just had no wherewithal to be anything but what he was. Isaac, angry at Joel about the hay and the spotter plane, smiled in spite of himself, for he remembered him at fourteen, only his head visible in the back seat, being driven up to town for a paternity test.

“I didn’t mean to do it—it just got the best of me,” was all he could say.

So Isaac patted Joel’s arm and reached a compromise with the man who was now considered the head of the warriors.

They would build a large barricade and protest Roger’s house being on their land. Roger would not be able to come and go, and they would keep him where he was until the prosecuting attorney reopened the investigation. In fact the barricade would force them to arrest him, or at least remove him, and then the land would be theirs.

Barring an all-out assault on Roger, the barricade seemed the best possible way to accomplish this. And doing it for the rights of the band seemed the best policy as well. “But no violence against him!” Isaac warned, pretending this decision was political in nature, and not, as it was, because he could not dislike Roger the way some did.

The next evening, as they walked back from the trout pond on the Church River, Markus, Sky, Little Joe and two of little Joe’s friends
stopped to watch as the barricade was put up, with lumber and brick that was supposed to be for the recreation centre.

Men hot-wired the cement truck and took it right from the yard, and parked it across the road, along with a half-ton. It seemed everyone wanted to do something more than the other fellow. And the little kids Markus was with ran to help. Some couldn’t even pick up the poles, but they still tried. Markus stood there with his four trout that he had caught just at dusk with a tiny butt bug. He had been very proud of his fish and he had let Little Joe carry them for a while when they walked back by the cottages, so the cottagers would think Little Joe had caught them. But Little Joe, seeing the barricade being built, ran ahead, dropping the trout into the dust on the side of the lane. Everyone began to throw things on the barricade—even tin pans. Mattresses and pillows, too.

One boy took off his Timex watch. “It takes a licking and keeps on ticking!” he said.

Little Joe went home, smelling of trout and worms, and was put into the bathtub. Mrs. Francis put some bubbles in and began to scrub his ears and his face. He had all of his trout sinkers and spinners lined up on the bathtub’s side, three bobbins in the tub with him bobbing about, and a red devil lure Markus had given him lying on a facecloth—he was counting them, as if they were gold. He told Mrs. Francis he had almost caught a trout, and had seen four chipmunks and a skunk.

She continued to scrub, and then emptied his pockets of gum and liquorice and three small worms.

“Church tomorrow,” she said. “We are still a family, no matter what.”

Little Joe asked why people would put up the roadblock.

“I don’t know—but stay away from them. It’ll be over soon.”

Mrs. Francis was old-fashioned—that is, she secretly distrusted the young men now saying they were working valiantly on her behalf, and
so did two dozen other families who never once had any say about the blockade but were now obligated to say they approved of it.

These were things that couldn’t be said. That is, that a terrible division had surfaced among some families. Everyone on the reserve knew this, and knew they had to keep this division out of the papers. Most of the families were sick and tired of it all. Half of them secretly supported Amos.

So Isaac was trying to keep everyone in order until such time as the demands they had made were discussed.

He told a general meeting of the band council that the phones could not be used to speak of anything about the crisis—for he had his reporter, yet he knew that other reporters, from as far away as Hamilton and Toronto, were trying to tap into the lines. This is what had happened in the Nathan Blacksnake case out west, he told them. Too many opinions. He needed to control what he could, for as long as possible. He wanted no television cameras on the reserve unless he said so. Isaac felt that if he did not regulate what was said or done, too many others would say and do things that would work against them all, and make them a laughingstock. He had seen this in too many other cases. And he was concerned again about Joel.

Also, the warriors had wanted to be paid, and Isaac had confiscated the pay from the recreation centre to give to them. He intended to give it back, but right now it was the only measure he could take. He told his men he didn’t want any of them to speak to the press unless he said so.

Mr. Doran could come and go with a special pass—the behind-the-curtain pass, as it came to be known.

“I am trying to keep you safe,” Isaac told Joel when he complained. “We can control one reporter—we can’t control fifty. And I want the marijuana gone. The last thing we need is to have that discovered. And,” he said, “do not take one more salmon from other men’s nets. If that comes out, the sympathy people have for us will go! They will tar us all with the same brush—just as they did my father!”

With all that said, he walked home as most men of influence and power did, alone.

A
T THE COTTAGES, THINGS WENT ALONG MUCH THE SAME
. The cottagers began to arrive little by little, from as far away as New York.

Mary Cyr, Mr. Cyr’s at times estranged granddaughter, was the sole resident of her large gabled cottage nearest the reserve, and drank most of the summer. She was in a kind of rarefied holiday state, where very often one would not think of her as drinking until they spoke to her. Then they would hear the disconnected phrases and see the suddenly slight stumble, which she would excuse by giggling. She would enter the windswept doors of summer cottages at midnight and sit with teenagers, some of whom had no idea who this woman was, watching them play some board game like Monopoly or Trivial Pursuit. She would talk about love and astrology and tell them that her sign and Jesus Christ’s was Capricorn. This kind of common quirkiness seemed special, not because it was special but because she was young and very wealthy and her grandfather owned one-sixth of the province. The trees would wave overhead on those oft lovely nights, and small cottage lights would interrupt the dark along the shore road, and teens would giggle and whisper, and the whole world had a charm.