Incidents in the Life of Markus Paul (12 page)

But in the end, Roger Savage had no choice.

This is what he told his girl. And she was a nice girl too, May, a pleasant, kind girl who had always done what was expected of her. Just as her mother had married and had a nice wedding, so she too wanted to marry and have a nice wedding, and just as she had gone to the dances and said the same things everyone said, so she expected all the same things to happen to her. She had great aptitude in small things and wanted others to recognize that. So she pooh-poohed great
aptitude in great things. She didn’t want to look at the big picture, because the picture her mother and father had always focused on was small, and the picture most of her friends focused on was small. So the big picture had nothing to do with her. And this is what Roger, without knowing it, was forcing her to get involved in—the big picture—and she did not like that. So a week or two after the story came out, people were hedging their bets for her. Her mother and her father and her best friends, like Kellie Matchett, were wondering about Roger because everyone was saying he had deliberately tried to kill men in a hold. Now, one person could say that, and that would be fine—and two could as well—but when you had seventy thousand papers saying it every day, that was the big picture, and May did not like big pictures.

She did not know what to do—and Roger sensed her confusion. When she came to visit, she was nervous and jumped at noise, and had eyes as big as saucers. And he knew he frightened her when he spoke of his rifle. Once when he came to the kitchen, she was backed up near the counter staring at him as if she wanted to run away.

M
ARKUS
P
AUL, NOW THAT HE WAS OLDER, KNEW MORE ABOUT
how Max Doran was caught in a trap, and felt more sympathy for him. And he also believed that Isaac had not wanted to use the newspaperman for his own advantage in the deepening crisis.

But in another way, perhaps Isaac
had
wanted it. Or like any other politician, he did not worry over what he wanted or did not want. He existed on what might happen that he could then use. To say he had planned this was silly. He was the proof positive that mankind planned almost nothing. That is, he did not hope for Hector to die, or in his wildest dreams ever thought that he would, but it was now suddenly best that he had. He knew, strangely, that anyone else would not have moved so many
whites to concern. It was because of Hector’s tiny frame and his eloquent talk—the very things some boys, including Joel, used to mock. So Isaac had been forced to act more concerned than he was, and he could not help it either, for he saw how Doran was even more upset at the gruesome pictures of the death than he was, and he could use this as well.

Isaac did not start out to be opportunistic, but no politician alive can give up opportunity. The boy’s death meant little to him for a while. That is, politically. Then two things happened: Joel Ginnish came home and wondered why things were not being done about such obvious contempt toward his brother, and Isaac was compelled to play the part he had trained himself from adolescence to play.

Part of it—perhaps much of it—was sincere, but from the moment Doran came to visit him, something secretive began to happen. He realized he did not want things to go well for the band, for the investigation or for Roger—for any one of these things could hamper the power struggle he was now in against Amos Paul. And most of all, he did not want Max Doran to have sympathy for Roger.

He knew this, and his wife knew this, but both knew they could never mention it. So both of them were depressed when anything positive happened and both of them exalted when anything bad did. And neither of them could help feeling this. For like anyone in opposition, Isaac must hope the ruling party failed.

To his way of thinking, the death of Nathan Blacksnake would be avenged. So this death must be too. He could not allow Nathan Blacksnake’s case to take precedence over the case of Hector Penniac in the broadening public consciousness.

Max Doran did not want this either—for he wanted to make his own story the one urban Canadians gravitated to. So although he tried to rein himself in one moment, he pushed forward with his incriminating articles the next.

All this did not give Roger Savage much hope.

Isaac, with his grade seven education, knew all about Max Doran in a second. But he also knew this: if you pushed Max Doran too far and he truly felt he was compromising himself, he would never trust you again. Isaac was a born politician. At seventeen his whole reserve, on his instruction, had mounted a protest over the collection of seaweed. It was a government experiment, collecting seaweed to be used as fertilizer. But not one native had been employed. No one had been able to get a protest started—and Amos Paul, who at that time was forty-seven, had helped Isaac organize one. Their friendship had started then, soon after the death of Isaac’s father, and had not been strained until now.

“What do you plan to do?” Joel asked in Micmac. He was sitting back in the kitchen chair, on two legs, with his arms folded, chewing gum and watching his mentor.

Isaac knew much about Joel, and had followed him from afar. Joel had been a grade-school plotter. If you wanted a chair, he would bring you a couch. If you wanted a bicycle, he would bring you a car. Once he told some white cottagers he could get them a nice new door, and then he took the front door off his stepfather’s house and sold it.

“Can’t you get another?” he asked his outraged stepfather. “From Indian Affairs?”

He had robbed his old uncle’s pension money and forged a will. Or two wills. Isaac couldn’t remember. Joel stored his marijuana bales in the old cement store on the other side of the reserve, and sold it to boats coming in off P.E.I. He made thousands a year from this and complained he was poor. He sold fish to the Monk brothers, who constantly demanded more fish. The RCMP were well aware of this, and had planned a raid. Joel knew this, and Isaac knew that Joel would press for a barricade to claim sovereignty. This is what he had been trying to promote since the first band meeting about the crisis. If they put up roadblocks, the roadblocks themselves would protect the marijuana until he could get it moved away. This was as much of a concern as anything.

Joel was handsome and a bane to women. He had been kicked out of school in grade nine for impregnating a teacher. He would sit on the
school steps and try to explain to her that he had no money to take care of the child. He once took a Sunday school group into the woods and forgot about them when something more important attracted him—a bobcat he chased for four miles. Late that night he realized their picnic must be over.

“Oh, come now, it won’t be hard to find them in the dark,” he told their worried parents. “They’re white.”

But Joel was a necessary part of the reserve. A man who would and could take action whenever you needed him, fearless, bold and a great fighter.

So after being let out of jail for smuggling cigarettes across the border—“Only two and a half truckloads—what’s the problem?” he said—and stealing from his own people’s fish traps, Joel was now always appearing at the door with a grave concern that his brother’s memory be treated with proper solemnity

“You’re quite the captain,” Isaac had said to him for the last four years, as a warning. “Look at you, you’re always up to no good,” he’d joked all last winter, as a warning. “Haven’t they locked you up yet?” Isaac would always say this jokingly, but as an indication as to where they morally parted company.

“Not yet,” Joel would say, smiling, “so let’s blow something up.”

Isaac well knew the band would have problems with anyone so volatile, that Joel would continue to do very reckless things unless he could be held in check. Yet a division between them now would make one or the other a liar, and both were in this position where they must rely on each other.

They both lied about unity in order not to be considered liars. Isaac, for his part, realized the only way not to have Joel do something erratic was to include him, and try then to handle him.

That evening, sitting in the soft, darkening room in Isaac’s house, they devised a plan. It was a warm night, and the window at the front was open. They heard children on the beach, and saw the lights twinkling off the wharf, and far away a buoy light too. Joel had his audience
with the man he admired. But in reality Joel admired men only so long. He had no friends, only contacts. This is what Joel wanted: First a work stoppage at the recreation centre. Then if need be, the one thing the whites could not stand, a blockade, disrupting all traffic needing to use their roads, and essentially isolating Roger Savage’s house.

Both of them felt gratified to have each other’s support in this, but Isaac knew in his heart as a shrewd politician that it probably wouldn’t be enough, and to keep himself in power, in the spotlight and in the political arena, he would have to order more action, even if his better nature told him not to. Not only his own warriors but others from other reserves would want him to. He was in contact with many other reserves by now.

The one thing in their favour was that young reporter, Max Doran, who was convinced of Roger’s guilt. They had to promote this, simply by reinforcing it. The rest would take care of itself. Besides, Isaac did think Roger was guilty, so what was the harm? As an astute politician, Isaac was using Doran as a way not so much to create publicity as to gauge public opinion, and to register any changes that might be coming. In so doing Max Doran was acting as a sounding board without being aware of it. And the articles that he wrote generated much support.

As for Joel himself, in his animated way he pressed for the blockade not only because it would disrupt traffic and bring attention to what had happened, but also because it would keep the RCMP away from the reserve and allow him a free hand with the bales of marijuana in the old store.

And though he would have been astonished if anyone had told him this is why he really wanted the blockade, and he would have been morally outraged at this terrible assumption and lack of sensitivity, this in fact is what he did want.

Later that night—and it had turned into a wild night—Joel left and walked down the shore road, past where the last reserve light was
flickering and into the dark. If you were a man like Joel, you would have seen much violence and hatred against you already, and you would know intrinsically how you were dismissed, how your family was and your people were. Why would you not want a blockade to bring attention to this? In fact the one thing a person sought was and should be freedom. And this is what Joel wanted too, because if your land was taken, what did it matter if it was a century or even two centuries before?

But he also had a criminal mind, and this hampered his search for freedom and turned it into something it was not, and at the same time promoted his criminal acts as acts of freedom and defiance, giving these acts a sanctity they did not possess.

The night had turned cold too, and he buttoned up his jean jacket as he walked. He knew he must get rid of his stash of marijuana before the police came in—but the waves were high, it had come up big sea, and the small drifters rocked in the swells out in the dark. The boat wouldn’t make it across, and poor Joel knew something else—he suspected the man he was selling to had been compromised and had made a deal with the RCMP to catch him. So even if the boat did come across, it was sure to have undercover officers.

He went to the old store and sat in the dark wondering what to do. He could sell the bales to the Monk brothers, but perhaps not at the moment, and for less money—but then he would have to start making inquiries to them if they wanted to buy it. Then he would have to move it. And he tried to think of where—just in case the police did raid. And he could think of only one place—the old shed on Isaac Snow’s back lot. Isaac never went there and neither did anyone else. But it would have to be moved at night, within the next day or two, and he would need some help. He thought of the Francis boys, Andy and Tommie, who wanted to be warriors. Yes, they would do it for him, without question. As for Isaac knowing—well, it was best not to tell him. He had too much to worry about.

“Besides, he told me to get it out of here,” Joel said out loud, in exasperation. “So I’m only doing what he wants.”

He would have been mystified, and hurt, if anyone mentioned it might be wrong to do this to Isaac Snow.

“Who’s more of a friend than me?” he would have said incredulously.

He heard the waves crash down on the beach, and far away one small light from somewhere flickered against the storm.

I
T WAS
J
ULY
1985,
AND THE RESERVE WAS AS YET QUIET
. It might remain so if Amos could keep things settled. If not, things might happen that would cause enormous difficulty not only for his people but for other people as well. And each day the old man woke to this realization.

Amos was not a great politician because he was not, as is said about so many politicians, from René Lévesque to Richard Hatfield, cunning. He had helped Isaac for years until Isaac went away, and then he had become chief. Now Isaac was back, and he looked upon all that Amos had done with derision, as if it was not enough.