Incidents in the Life of Markus Paul (20 page)

The fire could be seen across the water for twenty miles. It could be seen far away along the road, where the RCMP were at that moment debating what action to take. Sparks and heat filled the air, and peeled the paint on Roger’s front steps.

Roger, like everyone else, came out to stare at it. Some of the men backed away. Others decided to throw tires on the blaze, so it grew to cast an eerie light on all the cottages around it. The reserve’s new pumper came, but the four firemen from the reserve couldn’t get it to work. Finally they set the hose up, and though the men braced for a great rush of water only a dribble came out. All the women who were watching began to roar and laugh—one even fell on the ground laughing.

Sparks flew in the air and the fire trucks from Neguac were called but the pumper was kept away by the warriors. Some of the warriors, guided by this hooded man, twisted one of the hoses to cut off the flow of water, and torches were lit from the blaze and thrown at Roger’s house. One shard of glass thrust toward him cut his arm. He ran back and forth collecting the torches and throwing them back toward the warriors. Then he disappeared, came out a moment later with his rifle, pulled down the lever and put in a shell. The firemen left them and began to wet down the cottages. There was great fear that the hundred-year-old Cyr cottage, a landmark from the lumber baron years, would go up in flames. In fact sparks did catch a back eave, and had to be doused. So did Roger Savage’s propane tank.

Little Joe sat far up in an elm tree, looking down on the great sight, his eyes staring at the world in wonder and alarm.

People said that this fire signalled the end of Isaac’s power over the warriors. That he had no more and it was all a joke—everything was a joke—and Joel would soon be in charge.

The next morning Roger Savage came out of his house, in the twilight created by the still-hovering smoke, and with determined gestures seen only in the young, planted a sign in the middle of his yard. People
said later it was written in his own blood from the cut on his arm the night before. The sign stood until the end of the affair:

I
F
I
SAAC’S POWER WAS OVER, THEN THE RESERVE WOULD
reel into chaos. And Max Doran knew as much. He went to Isaac to get a statement—in fact to help Isaac put a better perspective on everything—but could not get an interview, and the whole reserve was the same. No one would tell him anything, about the fire, or who had set it or why, and some seemed to blame him for something. Many of the women and more than a few of the men seemed ashamed.

So after a few days, with no one speaking to him, he decided to go back out, after filing only four stories, including the one that was published on page three.

He was allowed to cross over the barricade at nine the next night.

“If you go, do not come back,” Joel told him, “for if you come back, you might not get away so easily. For so far you are telling the wrong story. I have been in touch with a reporter from Halifax, and he says you are an amateur.”

It was the closest Doran had ever come to swinging at someone, but he knew even if he managed to hit Joel he would never be able to hurt him. In fact he had seen Joel punched in the mouth by one of the warriors a few days before, and simply laugh.

“No one can do the story as good as me,” he said instead.

But Joel just looked away and busied himself with other things.

Doran crossed to Mary’s yard. Some of her grasses had been singed by the fire, and he could smell burned rubber that had melted right
into the asphalt. There had been a camera crew from CTV there all day, and they had finally been told to pull back.

Doran had his bag packed and was ready to go down to Saint John. That was because no one would talk to him. He knew that to file another story about the reserve or Roger Savage and not mention the fire would be unprofessional. Yet here is what he felt secretly: to file a story about the fire Isaac did not approve of would be psychologically damaging and would work against him and his position at the paper. He sat in Mary Cyr’s house, thinking he had done his level best, even if he had failed. She had a handyman there helping replace the eaves. But he walked back and forth looking at Max with distrust.

Max asked Mary for advice.

“What do you think you should do?” she replied.

And here he sensed for the first time that she was not as wise or beneficial as he had believed, or perhaps was wisely beneficial to herself. But that made him love her even more. He then tried to make a joke about the pendant falling on the floor, but she looked at him for a long time, as if she didn’t remember.

“Oh,” she said finally. “Yes. The pendant. How nice that was of you.”

Doran went to town the next day just to be away from things. The RCMP let him pass their monitoring station without a word—except they did check his licence and the car trunk.

When he got back from town at seven in the evening, Mary Cyr told him that all day her grandfather had been trying to reach him.

“Reach
me
?” Doran said, flabbergasted. “Your grandfather—my God—why reach me?”

Mary shrugged as if she had been the one to orchestrate this, and walked away from him with her beautiful hips moving in what could only be described as triumph.

And so he spoke to her grandfather that night.

“That equipment was donated by me,” her grandfather said, quite
distinctly. “I was asked to donate it. I donated it to help the band. So what I want to know is this: why was it burned? And I also want to know this because my cottage was almost destroyed. But what you were writing never indicated this kind of situation might erupt. Your last piece was simply a human interest story—good enough but not enough.” This was said without the least change of tone.

“But I had no idea this would happen,” Doran said, “and I don’t think, sir, that anyone could foresee it.”

“I was told this would happen two weeks ago,” Mr. Cyr said.

“Oh,” Doran said. “Yes.” He tried to think. “By whom?”

“By Gordon Young.”

Mr. Cyr simply hung up. After this, the managing editor telephoned. Though obsequious and polite with Mary Cyr, he was furious with Doran.

“I vouched for you, damn it!” And he too hung up.

Doran had to go back into the reserve or lose the story. Yet Doran didn’t know if they would allow him to cross, and if he did write, he would have to be 100 percent right in what he said—if not, his career would be over. If he lost it, he would never get another chance. But he could not really change his story or he would lose face. That too he knew.

So suddenly Doran was in another bind. How could he write the same thing and say nothing about the barricade being burned? He couldn’t. How could he change the angle of his story? He couldn’t.

He slept in the back bedroom of Mary Cyr’s and had nightmares about trees and nets and big smiling fish. The next morning he learned that the handyman fixing the eaves was a private detective sent along by Mr. Cyr to keep an eye on the property and protect his rather impressionable granddaughter. And this private detective did not seem fond of Doran and what he was implying about the whites in the area being backward and bigoted—though these words were never used exactly. And once the man stared at him with eyes of steel from the far side of the room when Max was trying to flirt with the woman under his protection.

“No, go on—go,” Mary said, pushing him by the back after breakfast and waving goodbye. “You are our indispensable mole—and so do go and do the mole-like things!”

So Doran resolutely went to the barricade and asked to go back in. For two hours they did not let him. They just laughed at him.

Finally Isaac gave word that he was allowed to pass.

“He is not,” Joel said. So two of the young men, Andy Francis being one, Gig Parrish being the other, told him he couldn’t cross back over.

Then Joel went to see Isaac, while Doran waited, with his big notebook sticking up out of his back pocket and holding his portable typewriter in his hand.

“Hopefully they will not let me pass, and I will end this story,” he thought. But at the same time, he thought of being mentioned by that famous person on the CBC. Another week or two—certainly he could last that long!

Another hour passed. He sat down in the dirt, hauled out a pack of cards—he always had one on him—and played solitaire on the road, with his straw hat pushed back on his head and First Nations cars passing around him. Sometimes their tires came very close to his knees.

He was wondering if being kept on this side of the line was not for the best when word came once again that Isaac had said he could pass. Joel came to the barricade with a .30-30 rifle, and shrugged, opened up the side gate of wire and waved him through.

And so reluctantly the warriors let him pass.

Doran went to Isaac that evening. Isaac was too smart not to know that Doran had come to ask permission to write about the conflict now emerging between him and Joel. If he dared write this, about his warriors being out of control, Isaac would be humiliated.

So unlike before, when it was easy for Doran to come in or out of the house, and even take a beer out of the fridge if he wanted, he now had to wait at the door before Isaac came to see him.

“I don’t want to see that mooch,” he heard Isaac saying, and then saying things in Micmac he did not understand, and then the word
mooch
once more.

Isaac finally came from the dark back room with the flickering shadows of trees on the wall. He had a blinding headache and the light hurt his eyes. Three houses were being targeted by Joel’s men—the two Wissards, who had tattled on him over the fish, and Amos Paul. Isaac had been on the phone all day trying to bring this tension to a rest.

Now he stood at the door and reiterated his position. Yes, he said calmly, there is evidence that Roger Savage burned the dozer.

“There is?” Max asked, dumbfounded.

“Yes,” Isaac said, looking down at him sternly. “Yes, there is evidence that Roger burned it. Why do you think that is strange? Look at the sign he put out on his yard—doesn’t that prove it? He wanted to stop the barricade so he could travel to and from his house. It’s simple to see!”

“So you minded that the bulldozer was burned.”

“Of course we minded—it was Roger who burned it! But you always miss the point. All summer you have missed the point—you mooch about, missing the point. So if Roger lit the fire, tell that to your paper!”

“Is that what I should say?” Doran asked.

“You’re the reporter, so tell the truth,” Isaac said finally, and he turned away.

“Could I just ask where you heard that Roger burned the bulldozer?”

The truth was that Issac did not know because he had not been informed. He too was now being left out.

“Tell him to go fuck himself and tell the truth,” Isaac said to his wife as he went to the cupboard to get some aspirin. He took four and went into the back room. Then he gave a big blast of Micmac.

Collette looked at Doran and shrugged as if she didn’t know what to say.

Doran went away knowing he would not file that story about Roger—that he could not. He also knew that if he wrote any other story, Isaac
would disown him. He sat down at his typewriter. He imagined everyone was looking at him as he poured out these words:

“It is not in my nature to cast blame, so I do not play favourites here. There is just no evidence to suggest it was the warriors. In fact—”

He tore the page away. What he was really thinking of was Mary Cyr and how he did not want to disappoint her—and how he longed in his heart and soul to see her once again. And the way to do that was to have everyone like him, and everyone on his side.

He sat up all night, without writing another word.

The next day Andy Francis came on behalf of Joel and told Doran he was no longer allowed to leave the reserve—that he had been invited to do a story and he must stay until the story was done, and they would give him a place to keep him safe. But his story about Roger burning the bulldozer should be done as soon as possible. In fact this was an order from Isaac himself, and Joel too wanted it written by the afternoon.

“It’s not a bad thing to stay on the reserve, is it?” Andy added, to change the subject.

“What do you mean?” Doran asked.

“Oh, well … we’ve been staying on the reserve for two centuries,” Andy said.

They could still smell the burned tires and the diesel. It wafted through the air and tainted everything, so the mothers couldn’t take their young children out without putting cloths over their mouths.

“Is this what Isaac thinks?” Doran asked. “I mean, do we have proof?”

Andy took Doran’s head and turned it in the direction of the barricade, still singed by black soot and burned tires.

“There it is—proof,” he said.

Isaac had managed to allow the women and children to pass up the road to Sobeys that day and shop. So to lessen antagonism the store was kept
opened and hours extended just for them. Little Joe went shopping with his sister Sky. He had a big cart. He had some bananas, four bags of marshmallows, a bottle of ketchup, a can of tomato soup, two big bottles of Pepsi, seven Cadbury bars, a bar of soap (to be respectable), fifteen puddings and a pie mix.

They had put Doran in a shed, on Stone Street, with a sink and a small tub—but no hot water. If he wanted hot water he would have to go across the street to Mrs. Demers’s house. He had a toilet and an old stove—it was a wood stove, but he had an electric burner. He had one main light, and could type at the metal kitchen table. He learned this was the shed where Markus’s father, a Vietnam vet, had lived with his son and his daughter for almost three years. He learned that Roger Savage used to come over now and again to look in on him and the kids, and bring them groceries when he had the chance, for he was very close by.

“You mean
the
Roger Savage?” he asked when he went to Mrs. Demers’s to have a shower.