I'll See You in My Dreams: An Arthur Beauchamp Novel (9 page)

Affecting a desire to catch up with the world, I paid the local newsboy ten cents and a nickel tip for the evening Sun, then buried myself in it, silently handing Ophelia the keys to the Bug. This is how I hid my shame at my abysmal handling of our previous chat. Other than to ask if the gas tank was full she didn't try to engage me, but her temper was on display as she directed oaths at rush-hour drivers.

A U.S. nuclear test somewhere over the Pacific. Doctors in Saskatchewan threatening to strike. The federal election campaign in high gear. Howard Hughes still missing.

Running out of news, I toughed my way through the sports (“Koufax Fans 18”) and the strips (Pogo, Major Hoople). I tried to keep my eyes off Ophelia, though I could not escape glimpses of hitched-up skirt, bared knees, nyloned legs working the pedals.

We pulled into Oakalla's driveway half an hour later, just as I was reading the want ads (“West Point Grey bungalow, $14,500” – at that rate, could I ever afford my own house?). Walking over to the prison building, I was looking stiffly ahead and almost tripped.

“Careful of the curb,” she said, taking my arm.

“Sorry.”

She squeezed my hand. I felt much better for that.

In the admissions lobby I immediately sensed tension among the staff. Jethro wanted the deputy warden's say-so before signing us in but wouldn't tell us why. Astonishingly, it was not I but Ophelia who was summoned to the deputy's office. As I twiddled my thumbs I heard a distant, confusing female chorus. “We shall not, we shall not be moved.”

I looked through the visitors' book. Gabriel had had another visit yesterday from Jim Brady, the organizer for Mine, Mill. It was a Communist union, and I hoped they weren't trying to use Gabriel for some political end. I had tried to return Brady's call but got no answer.

Ophelia returned, looking purposeful, and took me aside. “There's a sit-in in the women's wing; they're locked arm-in-arm in the mess hall. Something about cockroaches in the soup. The deputy has asked me to mediate. The Sons of Freedom are at
the centre of it. Why can't they call themselves the Daughters of Freedom?” She was back to her buoyant self.

“Give it your best.” I didn't entertain much hope for her. The Freedomite women were obsessively militant, with arson and public nudity their weapons of choice.

I made my way to a cramped interview room with two chairs and a small table, on which I spread my papers. Gabriel was brought in unrestrained, in his green prison garb. His braids were gone; the prison barber had left just stubble, and quite a few nicks.

“They claimed to be looking for lice,” he said. “They were disappointed they couldn't find any. Most guys around here tend to roll with that shit. I can't seem to learn how to do that.”

Thus the nicks, I suspected. I tried not to imagine the scene. Again I sensed him working at keeping the lid on. As I went through my briefcase, he studied me with a dark intensity. For what? Weakness?
Maybe he thinks he can get around you
.

“I hope these will satisfy your reading habit for a few days.” I handed him the books and periodical. A sudden mood shift, a smile and a thank-you-very-much – I had passed a small test. “Ophelia may not be able to join us. She has been seconded to referee a rebellion in the women's section.”

“They've got more balls than some of my brothers on this side. Their pride was beat out of them when they were kids.”

“Not you, though, Gabriel.”

“I was forged differently.”

“How?”

“My dad taught me never to be a good Indian. That's what they want – good Indians. Lobotomized in their religio-fascist schools.” He stiffened, then made an effort to relax again; I wondered if he'd had anger therapy. Maybe Mulligan, with his pastoral training, had taught him some tools.

“You used a phrase last time: residential school syndrome. Enlighten me.”

“Destruction of pride. That's the concept – break the rebellion before it gets started. Force-feed us religion. Smother our language.
Cultural genocide. God knows how many have died because they couldn't cope, couldn't function.”

I supposed he meant suicide. I remember Professor Mulligan railing on about the unholy union of these church-run schools and their government sponsors, supported by a supine press reporting only happy news – like last weekend's Easter edition, with its photo of a cherubic holy man passing out candies to his joyous flock.

Gabriel's discourse about these schools gave rise to a suspicion that he'd chosen me over Harry Rankin not because he thought he could get around me, as Ophelia suggested, but because he needed a convert, someone he could bend to his cause. I would resist with all my heart any effort to make this a political trial, but I felt a need to know him better, to crack the hard shell of his anger in hope of finding a soft yolk. “Tell me about your residential school.”

He mused awhile. “St. Paul's. I was seven when they grabbed me – my folks had been hiding me. We were about three hundred kids, and I was number 156. That's what they called me. They could never remember my name.” He called out, mimicking: “ ‘One-fifty-six, lead us in the Lord's Prayer.' I survived a lot of shit in there, Arthur, mostly for talking Indian. My anger survived. I don't know if my ability to love survived.” As he tried to steady his voice he turned away, toward the barren grey wall. I guess he saw me as a typical uninformed white liberal, and maybe I was.

“My folks suffered worse. They were shanghaied by the priests when they were five and hauled way up north to a school in Alert Bay. Try to imagine: one day you're out picking berries with your mom, the next day the door clangs shut and you're in a prison worse than this, wetting your pants and getting whipped for it. It's an essential part of the white colonizers' plan to destroy Native families. With straps and slaps, hands down your pants. There's no nurturing in a res school, no love. I don't relate to my parents much now, especially my dad. They definitely lost the ability to love.”

He disappeared in thought after these final trembling syllables, his eyes wet. I was moved too. My other aboriginal clients had always
shied from the subject of their school days, as if ashamed. This was a firm validation of Mulligan's distrust of these institutions.

“Dermot did a stint as principal of a res school on the Prairies. You knew that?”

Gabriel swivelled back to me. “He had writer's block over it – with his memoir.” A head shake. “Still in turmoil twenty years later. Something happened there, I think, in Pius Eleven Res School. He left the Church soon after.” He added thoughtfully, “When Louis Riel lost faith, he said, ‘Rome has fallen.' Dermot used that line a lot, his expression of despair.”

I told him of the time Dermot cried out, “Rome has fallen,” on running out of his favourite port. He remembered Dermot wailing that phrase in his high, chirping voice on losing a fat trout from his line. It was the first time I'd seen Gabriel give me the benefit of a real smile, lacking in irony. In fact we laughed, then carried on about Dermot and his idiosyncrasies, his quirky, cynical wit, his excited way of talking when he was on a roll. I felt a connection with Gabriel then, keen and deep.

“Let's talk about your relationship with Dermot.”

Yet another smile, playful. “Maybe I became the chosen one because he gave up on you, Arthur. After you threw the academic life away, after you chose law instead of Latin.”

I found irony in that. Had I not thrown that life away, I would not be trying to save his. “You were lucky – an enviable student ratio, one to one.”

Four or five hours a day, he said, for nearly three years, on weekends, holidays, academic breaks. Sometimes a whole day. Before leaving for the city, Mulligan would give him a reading list. He devoured everything, a dictionary at his side, the
Britannica
or an atlas open. I supposed he must have an outstanding
IQ
. So quick of mind, so hungry to fill it, so coherent in expression.

He explained it was not by happenstance that he'd wound up working for Mulligan. In seeking out an employee, Dermot had burrowed through the records of St. Paul's Residential School – records still extant though the school was closed by then – seeking
graduates with superior grades. The brightest and most troublesome was the former Number 156, who was doing probation for assaulting a cop. Mulligan would have admired that rebel spirit. He'd have seen the sharp intelligence in his eyes. Gabriel became his project.

Gabriel saw Irene rarely. “I stayed out of the house the odd time she was there. I was uncomfortable with her, didn't get a sense of welcoming.” Mulligan had apologized for her: she was inhibited, wasn't suited to the country, often wasn't well.

I assured him she was on his side and would be a good character witness.

He seemed a little surprised. “Tell her I appreciate that.”

Mulligan had arrived for his sabbatical in late March, a month before his death, and Irene joined him a week before Easter. The master and student had spent much time outside, hiking or fishing. “We'd talk and argue … I was into Marxist writers, and we fought about that.”

I said that Ophelia would be visiting him on the weekend to record a more detailed history, but I needed some data to prepare me for my Squamish trip. I showed him Monique Joseph's statement.
On Saturday last I was never in the company of Gabriel Swift, of this reserve
.

I'd feared he would blow his top, but he just sagged. “Those cop-suckers.”

I wasn't sure whom he meant. “You told Knepp and Jettles you were teaching her chess and listening to music all afternoon. I presume you also made love?”

“Well … we fooled around. If Monique got pregnant, I was afraid her dad would come after me on a rampage, with a loaded rifle.”

The scenario described in Jettles's report hinted at an unsavoury congeniality between the police and Chief Joseph,
who everyone on the force calls Ben
. I needed a credible rationale from Gabriel as to why Monique would lie.

He was still working through the betrayal, frowning, biting his lip. But his voice was steady, his chain of reasoning sound. “Benjamin
had ordered her to break off with me. I was too old for her; I was dangerous, political, a troublemaker. Monique would have lied to him when she got home that evening. Afterwards she would have felt compelled to maintain that lie.”

I groped for encouraging words. “We'll see how well she holds up on the witness stand. I may try to locate her this weekend.”

“Try to get to her away from her dad if you can, Arthur.”

As he read Doug Wall's avowal of having seen him near the Mulligan farm that afternoon with a rifle, I could see the fury work through him. This time he couldn't master it. He made two fists, brought them down hard on the table. “Shit! Shit!”

“Easy, Gabriel.”

He closed his eyes and sat silently for about fifteen seconds, then slowly returned to me, speaking calmly. “I saw him. I even waved. This was in the morning, miles away, at the south end of the reserve, near where I live. He lives way north of there. I was deer hunting.”

“Did you bag one?”

“No.”

Too bad; that would have helped. “What do you know about this character?”

“He has half a brain. Some Indian blood, but not enough. Drifts about the valley, does odd jobs when he can. Sells hooch on the rez. Chief Joseph lets him do that because he drops off a courtesy bottle.” A shudder, a sigh, and a soft expletive. “I'm going down on this one, aren't I?”

“Not at all, Gabriel. They have a circumstantial case full of holes and fully consistent with suicide. No body, no clear motive, not an inkling of proof you were with Mulligan when he disappeared.”

Gabriel shook his head. “Knepp and Jettles have made my hanging their life's cause.”

“And that's what I'll strenuously argue to the jury.” I dared not tell him Canadian jurors tended to regard members of their fabled force as upright to a man. I asked him about the altercation that brought on his charge of assaulting an officer.

“My dad was off in Squamish, drinking. My mom asked me to
drag him home before he blew his
UI
cheque. Roscoe Knepp drove up just as I was leading him from the bar, and he started strutting around like a rooster, threatening to throw Dad in the tank. I told him to stuff it. He came on with his lippy-Indian-shit stuff and I put him on his ass with a cut lip.”

“You got a break – a suspended sentence.”

“Yeah, pissed Knepp right off. But he'll get the last laugh, won't he?” A ghoulish dramatization, yanking up his collar like a tightened noose.

Gabriel had known Thelma and Buck McLean for years; there were no strangers in the sparsely inhabited Upper Squamish. But he was on minimal speaking terms with them. “Thelma is prone to wild accusations, especially about her favourite topic – the thieving Indians that lurk everywhere. There was an issue once over a runaway chicken that she intimated I'd killed and plucked. And something about underwear missing from her line. I'm sorry, I laughed.”