The Republic of Nothing (12 page)

“It's all a matter of the balance of things,” rny father explained. “She created a vast silence that was like a blanket around her and now she has to take off the blanket of silence by weaving a quilt of words.”

My father, soon to embark upon a career in a small, noisy legislature, was about to learn much about words, how men used them to empty logic and meaning from common everyday actions.
Words, he would learn, were tools that could be employed to destroy as well as create, to diminish as well as to augment. He would meet several robust but vacuous men in the legislature afflicted with the same habits my sister had acquired. And often he would wish the blanket of silence wrapped around them.

I must say I enjoyed giving away fish and watching the way people reacted. But I was not sure if I would be proud of my father and his new occupation. I saw it as a traitorous act against the Republic of Nothing. “The republic needs no one to lead,” he assured me. “It runs by itself. That's my secret of governing. Leave everyone alone and things will turn out fine. Don't push anybody around.” I believe he thought he would take these principles first to the legislature and then to the larger world because there was a strange distant fire in his eyes.

Hants Buckler thought it was good for my father to get off the island and see the world, shake up a few old fogies in Halifax. Hants reminded my father, the ambassador to the outside world, that there was room yet for the right kind of immigrants to our island. He was concerned that the small tide of refugees had stopped. He still had twice as much furniture as he needed and wanted rid of it before the next big hurricane. “If it wasn't my Jesus job to cart and store all this stuff I'd sooner just look after living things. Living things live, they give something back to you and then they die and you can get rid of them. Material things just clutter up your life and your mind.”

My grandparents were the only ones who seemed to have any sense of politics and realized that an alliance of basic Whale-bone anarchy and Toryism was not a marriage made in heaven. “You're sure you found the right party?” Mrs. Bernie Todd asked.

“The Tories found me, and they wanted me. I sense something pre-ordained,” my father answered noncommittally.

“Nothing much pre-ordained about John G.D. Maclntyre,” Jack said. “The man's just a loud-mouthed swine.”

But my father was above what he called “mere politics” and was off to steer the world into a new tomorrow, although I realized that it was not a formalized plan. Like my mother, he believed the stars were steering him and his past selves were all crowding together in his skull to counsel him through the roughest of hells that a Halifax legislature could set before him.

Only bad news finds its way from Halifax to our doorstep, but occasionally good things leave a place like this and go to Halifax. A city is a city for all that. My father would not accept the offer of a personally chauffcured lift from John G.D. because Everett was “a man of the people” and wouldn't be “seen consorting with politicians.” This mightily confused John G.D. who had driven all the way out from town to haul the new MLA back in hopes that a simple-minded man from a place like Whalebone would do nothing but tow the party line. But John G.D. knew that the landslide victory over Bud Tillish had done nothing but good for his party and that what-ever my old man was up to was okay with him. “That's good, Everett. You tell the public that. Tell them you don't
consort
with politicians. As a member of the legislative assembly, you will rise above the rest of us consorters and bring a new light to the legislature. A new vision.”

“A new vision,” my old man repeated there in the kitchen. But my mother had tears in her eyes. Her visions were of a different sort. Behind her my sister was standing on a chair, reading the labels of everything in the kitchen cupboard — “Cow Brand Baking Soda, Uncle Ben's Converted Rice, Paradise Coconut Shreds, Crosbie's Molasses, Lantic Sugar.” Suddenly my mother wheeled on her heels and caught her as she leaned too far over to read “Gallinger's Ginger Snaps” and was falling headlong onto the oil stove. As usual, my mother's timing was impeccable.

Dogs barked as we walked my father off the island — the usual assortment of ragged, snarling creatures tethered to posts
in the mainland McCully yard. Attempting to join the manic chorus was Gwendolyn's white poodle, Enrico Fermi. Enrico had somehow adapted his cosmopolitan dogself to the island through many happy days of eating raw fish heads down by Hants' place and then heaving them up on the living room floor of the Phillips' household each evening. The dog would not follow us off the island, however. Perhaps it had better sense than at least one member of my family. And as we walked off the bridge onto the mainland, Enrico Fermi stopped barking as if he had already forgotten about us. He turned his attention to the swirling waters of the Musquash below, watching the gaspereau swim by.

So we walked the old man down to Highway Seven, past the ragged line of houses owned by the landlubbers who my father now represented. Further along, one old man with a bent back came out and pumped my father's hand. “Give ‘em holy hell,” he said. We passed a curious man headed our way along the old road where recent rains had filled the potholes with muddy water. He had on city clothes and a felt hat which he tipped with a soft “Hello” as we passed. He was maybe forty years old and carried himself like he had once lived among polite people who never spat on the ground or chewed beef jerky. He was not from around here and we all recognized that here was another new islander, another immigrant from somewhere. “Hants Buckler can finally find a home for some of his furniture,” my mother said.

“A refugee?” I asked.

“Most certainly,” she answered.

My little sister, who had not found a thing to read the en-tire walk, began to make up a story. “Once upon a time there was a man with a black tie and a felt hat walking down the longest, muddiest road in the world and he came across a royal family who he thought were the most beautiful people in the world… “

Casey had stopped in mid-sentence because we had
reached the highway and my father grabbed a hold of his thumb and gave it a twist with his other hand as if to loosen it up for the work it was about to do. He was planning on hitchhiking to Halifax, being a man of the people and all and besides, he said, it would give him “a chance to meet a few more constituents and sound out their views.” I knew that he was not interested in being persuaded in any way shape or form by someone else's views. He was going to Halifax to see if he couldn't help turn the rest of the province into the sort of political and social Utopia that existed on Whalebone Island.

So we left him there, his thumb cantilevered over a paved stretch of Highway Seven. He promised he'd spend no more time in Halifax than he had to and that he'd catch the Sherbrooke bus home every Friday. We turned and headed homeward just as the wind kicked up a gust of cold north air and forced it down our throats and a high grey pile of clouds bullied its way across the sky towards Whalebone.

No one spoke on the way back, not even Casey, until we came to the little bridge when my mother said, “I think that man has just killed Enrico Fermi.”

Up ahead, we saw the felt-hat stranger bending over the body of the white poodle. Shock and outrage overcame me and I raced ahead. How could someone have killed Gwendolyn's dog? But as I reached the scene, legs wobbly, heart pounding, I saw that things were different. Both the dog and the man were soaking wet. The man had his face over the dog's and with his hand cupped over its muzzle, he was breathing air into it.

My mother and Casey arrived and we all looked on in amazement. The man stopped, looked up at us and, trying to catch his breath, said, “The dog jumped in the river after a fish. I guess it couldn't swim. It drowned.”

“And you went in to save it?” my mother asked him.

He didn't answer. Instead, he went back to his work. None of us had ever seen anyone give mouth to mouth resuscitation to a dog.

“What are you doing?” Casey asked.

“It's okay,” the man answered between gasps for air. “I'm a doctor.”

But I was absolutely certain there was nothing even a doctor could do to save a drowned poodle. Such a sad wonder for a dog not to be able to swim. What a bitter moment it would be for me to break the news to Gwendolyn for the sight of her dead poodle made me think again how much I loved that beautiful, curious girl who had come into my life. Then I realized how poor I had been, so far, at communicating my true feelings to Gwen. As I turned away, in despair over the fate of Enrico, something happened.

The dog lurched and vomited. Then it sprang free and coughed, vomited some more bluish-white fluid and then some water. Finally it was just standing on all fours shaking itself, sending a spray of water droplets in all directions. It had been a miracle. The doctor, exhausted by his deed, lay on his back now, spread-eagled on the road as the dog walked gingerly to him, wagging its tail, and began to lick his face. My mother leaned over to help the man up. She had never seen a man bring a dead dog back to life before and she wanted to know how it was done.

Casey and I petted Enrico Fermi and let the dog kiss us on the mouth. We were both so glad to see it returned from the gates of heaven — for where else could a drowned poodle go? My mother was helping the doctor to his feet now and I was confused by a new look that had come over her. Her head was tilted slightly upward as she gazed into his eyes and, for a brief second, I had the feeling that she was not here with us on the bridge at all, that she was with this man, this stranger, and they were together and alone in some far-off place, away from us and possibly in another time.

Doctor Bentley Ackerman, the man who saved Enrico Fermi's life, had arrived in Halifax four days previously, slept at the Salvation Army and spent a morning studying topographic maps in a book store on Granville Street. He was a man who picked up on things quickly — things like medicine and geography. The owner of the Book Browser, a dour old Scot named Vincent Deacon, had treated Ackerman with great politeness, not knowing that the map browser had spent the night in the Salvation Army or that he had arrived by steamer from New York before that, having paid only fifteen dollars for a bunk on a lower deck among diesel fumes and rats the size of Norwegian house cats.

Deacon probably assumed that Ackerman was a wealthy, eccentric, albeit crumpled American, here to buy land perhaps and ready to tip generously anyone who was willing to help out. Ackerman was served tea at a table by the window. “You're looking on the wrong shore,” he told Ackerman, who was studying a map of the coast east of Halifax. “The good land is all on the South Shore. Here. Try this one of Chester or Mahone Bay.”

But Ackerman shoved aside the maps of the South Shore and insisted Deacon show him maps of the Eastern Shore. Deacon hitched his bifocals onto his nose and peered with much disdain as Ackerman surveyed the ragged-a^-a-dragon's-back coastline of the Eastern Shore until he found something interesting. “Whalebone Island,” Deacon said out loud. “Probably lots of heavy drink and inbreeding down that way.”

But Ackerman believed otherwise. He had been in search of an island, for a certain place where a man who had seen too much human horror could go to rest and live peacefully. He committed the map to memory, for his brain worked like a great camera, and he drank up the tepid tea. He stood up and thanked Deacon with the words, “You are a man of great
courage to be able to live with such a limited intellect and such a rigid view of humanity. A man of great courage, indeed.” It was said with such conviction that Deacon didn't know he had been verbally punched between the eyes but instead thought it had been some sort of American compliment, and he was not at all bothered until he realized that the rich American was out the door and had purchased nothing.

Because Ackerman had resurrected Enrico Fermi, he had no trouble making friends on the island. After shaking hands with my mother, saying very little but having a powerful impact with his star-flecked grey-blue eyes, he waved to Casey and me and followed Enrico off to make sure the dog could get home safely. Since he was headed to Gwendolyn's house, I asked my mother if she thought I could go along and I raced to catch up to Ackerman who jogged now alongside the dog like they were old chums.

“Where'd you come from?” I asked.

“From Halifax,” he said. A familiar answer.

“No. I mean where?”

“New York before that. I had enough of it. I decided to leave and start a life somewhere else.”

“Here?”

“Perhaps.”

“What kind of doctor are you? Are you like a veterinarian?”

“No. I help out the sick and wounded of any sort. Back in New York, I worked at a hospital in a place called Bedford Stuyvesant. Very poor people. I saw terrible things. I helped as many as my soul could handle. Then I had to leave.”