Incidents in the Life of Markus Paul (17 page)

“Well, tell me this—why would Isaac need a bodyguard?”

“All important people do,” Tommie said.

It was the spotter plane that made Joel Ginnish famous about the reserve, and proved that he would do dangerous things.

As they milled about one day, keeping an eye on who was coming and who was going, some boys saw the RCMP spotter plane in the sky. They ran and told Joel Ginnish. Joel had been lying on the grass, was looking up at the blue sky, thinking of what he could do next, and how he might do it, and what might be said about him if he did. As he lay there staring up at the sky, some boys came to him and told him what was happening.

So he stood up and watched the spotter plane going back and forth above them, a small Cessna with a white undercarriage. And it was close enough over his marijuana store. He shrugged, looked up at it and spit.

Some boys went to Amos to ask him what he was going to do, for really it was up to him whether RCMP came onto the reserve. There was a delicately worded policy that allowed the three native constables to be the principal law enforcement here unless a true crisis loomed. So the youngsters sought Amos’s advice. But Amos, sitting in his backyard watching the starlings fly about the birdhouse, had watched
the plane a long time. He smiled and said that as far as he could tell they were not on the reserve—they were above it—and he could think of little to do to them if they were above it.

Then some of the little boys surrounded him again and asked him what they should do—they were supposed to have jobs where they would take bricks to the men who were making up mortar, and haul away the old gravel to the truck. (None of the children were actually needed; it was just to give them something to do.) Amos told them the men did not come because they were protesting. He told them to go home and wait. Or ask Joel Ginnish what to do.

“What are they protesting?”

“The death of Hector.”

“But why would they stop work on our rec centre?”

Amos told them he himself wasn’t sure.

Later he went to find some of the men who a few weeks ago were complaining they had no work and were now all of a sudden on strike because of something that Amos had not done. All that afternoon, almost until supper hour, he trod along the old asphalt roadway filled with heaves and ruts from the winter, trying to find those men who had so eagerly anticipated work. But not one of them he spoke to would go back to the centre.

“You couldn’t pay me enough,” one man said.

“Me neither,” said his friend.

Amos did his best to talk them out of this reaction, did his best to tell them that things must come about through the courts, but all the men old enough to vote turned their backs on him, and he was alone on the windswept roadway toward evening. The windswept road and high waves crashing up over the breakwater meant a storm was looming. As he walked down the lanes he came to the spot where his son had died. He tried not to look at it. In fact he walked around it as if he were walking around a giant puddle.

When he turned to go back home, he saw Little Joe, wearing the floppy hat he always wore, trying to wheel his load of bricks up a
scaffold toward the recreation centre’s main wall, his little arm muscles taut, and stumbling under the weight, with only Markus there to help him, their pant legs flapping in the wind.

“I will build it myself,” Markus said, “so don’t fear, Grandpa.”

This made the old man lonely enough to cry.

Joel watched the plane for a while. The plane no longer skirted the road where the old store sat vacant and sad, and he was not thinking too much about it now, until the boys came back and said Amos said to let it go, that there was not much you could do to a plane in the sky.

Joel declared: “That’s not what I say.”

They cheered when he said this, so he went to Isaac’s house and complained to him.

But Isaac told him to let it go as well.

Joel shook his head, and listened to the plane as it came over the house, and went back out over the bay. “But what about the sound—do you like the sound of it?”

Isaac looked at him and shrugged, and said: “I don’t like the sound of people constantly nattering in my ear, either. Leave it go. There are more important things.”

Isaac had heard that morning from the Wissard boys that Joel had taken salmon from the nets. Yet Joel had come to him the evening before and said Roger or someone upriver had hayed those nets in high water, and bogged them down. But if Isaac mentioned this to Joel himself, Joel would be astonished and hurt, and go away brooding that people so insulted him. Still Isaac mentioned it—that is, the rumour that Joel had stolen fish.

“Me do that?” Joel said, hurt at the suggestion. “I’d rather light my nose on fire.”

“You’d rather light your nose afire?”

“Give me a lighter. You know that whites have hayed our nets a dozen times.”

“Yes, I know that, I know that—but I do not think Roger ever did.”

“Then you should join Amos,” said Joel, “for Amos is the one who doesn’t think Roger did nothing either!”

So Isaac went off to find Amos and talk to him. He did not come back for a long while, and Joel saw Isaac’s .30-30 sitting on the shelf. He drummed his fingers and looked at it. Then he went outside with it cradled under his arm.

“What are you going to do?” Tommie Francis asked him.

Joel walked to the shore and without aiming fired from his hip at the plane as it made its sweep down toward the old broken store once more. The plane banked, seemed to twist in the air, and every one of the boys ran and hid. Joel couldn’t shoot straight, so he was lucky he hadn’t actually hit something.

Everyone now called Joel a crazy son of a bitch.

And everyone wanted to touch him, pat him on the back.

Later that day, Markus walked back along the shoulder of the road, with Little Joe behind him. Little Joe now seemed to be his only pal, the only one who had remained faithful. They were talking about going fishing for trout, and how they would dig the worms later that day.

As they came to a narrow part in the turn of the road they met Joel Ginnish, with Andy Francis, coming back from the shore with a group of boys. All were exhilarated, all were defiant, all were trying to prove their outlandishness.

All were filled with welters of insults toward those they met whom they didn’t deem worthy.

Ginnish’s shoulder connected with Markus’s and sent him back a foot as they passed.

“Oh sorry, Markus! Hey, are you still working at the rec centre? What a fool,” he said, and kept walking.

What hurt Markus was not that he had done this, but that Andy and the others broke out laughing.

Little Joe looked at them as they passed, and then turned to watch as they disappeared. He smelled the salt water in the evening air and it made him lonely suddenly.

“What did Joel say, Markus?” he yelled, trying to catch up.

“Nothing at all,” Markus answered.

“Are they coming fishing with us?”

“No, I don’t think so.”

That night, Amos lay on his back in the bed nearest the window in his upstairs room. He could hear the wondrous waves of the great Miramichi that his ancestors had heard three thousand years before. Now and again he sneezed, and sometimes he sighed. The other bed had belonged to his wife. Over her bed was a cross. On the night table between their beds was the Virgin and Child. Amos thought about how that man who had hanged—his friend—had not been guilty either. Seven years later they found out the truth, but what could they do then? The courts gave his friend’s wife some money. So what if Savage was not guilty? Would they kill him and then give his mother money? Certainly she would take the money. That was the big sticking point for Amos.

They said a hanging was over quickly, but Amos knew that for thirty seconds this man whom he had known since childhood struggled and gasped for air, and must have wondered why they were so stern and hateful to him, who had done nothing but get drunk in the wrong place, as he had most of his life. But this time it had happened next to a taxi driver who had been killed.

“The Indian did it,” people said in court. “The Indian did it.”

The man had smiled like a child and trembled and tried to be brave, and looked about nodding to everyone before they put the hood over his head. “I didn’t do it.” The man had shrugged.

Who could stand to do that? That is, put the hood over someone else’s head?

Amos knew Isaac never forgave anyone involved. And he had become more famous because of his father’s death than if it had not happened. For it was talked about as an unjust death. So Isaac, many felt, was destined to do something to prove how unjust his father’s death was. And when, a few weeks ago, it had looked to be an ordinary summer, with ordinary church picnics, and ordinary lazy afternoons, this idea had been thrust at Isaac. And unexpectedly a sociology professor at the university had invited Isaac to speak; and the auditorium was packed. The audience had given him a standing ovation, and there was prolonged applause when he said that this summer would be the summer of a powerful restitution, and Amos had felt about to disappear. That was because he could do nothing as bravely as Isaac, and everyone, especially Isaac, knew this.

Now Amos lay completely still, staring at the stars outside. Markus was on the other side of the door, too worried to knock on it. But Amos knew he was there. Markus’s sister, on the other hand, had joined the protest against her grandfather.

For a long time the little house was dead silent. Finally Amos spoke. “You told me they say there are about two billion stars in our galaxy,” he said cheerfully to his grandson.

“Yes, I did.”

“Well, so far I can only count about thirty-seven. Where are all the rest?”

“They are there, Papa,” Markus said.

“I am not so sure.” Amos sighed and lit a cigarette. “Thirty-eight … thirty-nine . forty,” he said.

“You are doing good,” Markus said.

“Counting or being chief?”

“Both,” Markus answered.

They were silent.

“I am not so sure, son,” Amos said. “And I am sorry for us all.”

He believed in miracles, Amos did. That is why the mother and child were on the night table. That is why it was so important to him. He
believed that the truth was always revealed, for no matter how much men wanted to hide something, they could not. How was that? There was not a thing in the world that was hidden irrevocably, so this mystery too would be solved, if only they gave it time. That is, when they said nothing was hidden, everyone meant that the big crimes would be solved. But Amos was thinking of the multitude of little things—the betrayals of one another that maybe caused even worse things than big crimes—the unending small things that finally killed love in the soul.

T
HE NEXT MORNING AT DAWN
, I
SAAC WOKE UP AND WENT
into the woods at the back of his house. From here he walked to the river, then up along the shoreline, his feet sinking in muck, plagued by the thousands of blackflies alive at this time of day, until he came to the sandbar where the reserve line met Roger’s land. All along the shore he looked for traces of hay and saw none. This disturbed him greatly. For it meant that the hay was not put in the river this far up, for some of it surely would have bottled. That meant that Roger did not spill his carts of hay into the water to sweep away the native nets—someone else did. He was plagued by this as much as he was by the blackflies. He too, like so many, had grown up without a father, and at times you could tell that even in his strength and determination there was the look of vulnerability in his quiet face. But not one trace of hay, and the nets swept away, meant that the haying had taken place close to his reserve. Yet he knew that to blame Joel publicly would cause the entire campaign to collapse. An internal dispute is what their enemies would want, and they had enough of those. They had enough people just waiting to call them liars and thieves. He knew a few people had different ideas about him—not the great man, the image projected, but a manipulating politician. He too had to fight against many things.

He was more than angered by this act of Joel’s. He was hurt deeply by
such a trivial kind of betrayal, and exasperated that what he feared would happen had. The problem was, he had given up discussions on licences this summer—and he had done so to gain more attention and a more favourable bargaining position for next year. But if this was found out—this childish stunt—what favourable position would they have? Just as he had to make sure Roger was considered guilty (which he believed), he now had to assume Joel innocent (which he did not believe). That was the price that came with power. And now he had much power.

He sat on a rock for an hour watching as some grilse made their way up into the dark pool above, now and again flipping their silver bellies in the sun.

That evening, a great grey sky hung over the reserve and the bay looked like turquoise. The waves were listless, and the First Nations boats were moored beyond the breakwater, their bows thrust out of the water and their anchor ropes covered in seaweed.

Doran was out for a walk with his camera to collect pictures for his scrapbook. He was now a solemn character, thin and seeming out of place, but still welcome as he put his camera up to his eye here and there. Two girls hugged each other as he snapped them. Little Joe managed a big wide grin. Farther along the dusty street, near the old store that sat at the crossroads with its windows broken, he saw a big eagle in the scarred tree. The sun came out on the patches of whitewashed brick of the old store. He walked farther along and came to the back of the reserve, where an old asphalt road led out to the village, and he decided he would go there to take some pictures too. There he took pictures of signs and traffic lights all with a measure of impulsiveness, and then went in for a drink at Bunny’s. He ordered a beer and was surprised to see Roger’s mother playing the game machine in the corner. She was chain-smoking and running in her quarters. He took his beer and went over to see her.

“Oh,” she said, her voice husky from being awake all night, “you’re the reporter everyone is talking about. Even on the national news.”