No Great Mischief (31 page)

As the sun continued its decline, we were beset by a certain restlessness. Generally when some of us were above ground, either resting or sleeping, the others were at work. But now we were all on the surface together. For a while some of us wrote letters or lay on our bunks and tried to listen to the radio. Some people played cards. Someone tried to play the violin, briefly, but then put it aside. We walked to the coffee shop and then returned. We waited for supper. In the dining hall there were more men than usual because no one was underground. People jostled one another. The cooks ran out of food. We returned to
our bunkhouses. No one was particularly tired and it was too hot to sleep casually. We walked outside the camp gates. We walked to the parking lot. We sat on the rocks which were still warm from the earlier heat of the sun, or sat on the bumpers of some of the old cars. A man approached us and asked if we would like to have a good time. Calum said he didn’t think it was possible. The sun continued its decline and then it was dusk. We continued to sit on our rocks and our bumpers. Sometimes individuals would separate from the group and stand and urinate at the parking lot’s edge. We could hear the hiss and see the steam rising from the hot rocks.

“What the hell!” said Alexander MacDonald. “I’m going to buy you guys a beer.” He approached one of the taxi drivers and soon two large cases of beer were deposited at our feet. There was also a bottle of cheap rye whisky. It must have cost a lot of money.

Across the parking lot Fern Picard was sitting with his men. When he saw Alexander MacDonald make his purchase, he sent one of his men to do the same thing. It was almost as if he did not wish to be outdone.

As the man passed our group, someone said, “Monkey see. Monkey do.”

“Fuck off,” said Fern Picard’s man.

We sat in the dusk and sipped on the warm beer. Some people passed the whisky bottle around. We thanked Alexander MacDonald.

As it became darker, someone turned on a car radio. Alexander MacDonald got up and went back towards the bunkhouses. Later he returned and sat with us. There was movement among the
French Canadians as well. Shadowy figures departed and returned. The stars began to appear and then the moon. It was our only light.

Out of the semi-darkness Fern Picard appeared. “
Maudits enfants de chienne
,” he said and spat on the ground.

He was standing over Calum, who was sitting on a rock. Calum perceived his disadvantage and bent forward slightly from the waist. “Fuck off,” he said. “Mind your own business.”

Now we were aware of Fern Picard’s men moving out of the shadows to stand behind him. Those of us who were sitting rose to standing positions.

“Vous êtes des voleurs et des menteurs,”
said Fern Picard.
“Vous êtes des trous de cul. Ta soeur!”

Calum sprang forward from the rock, tackling Fern Picard below the knees and attempting to knock him backwards. Instead, because of Picard’s size and the way his feet were planted, he fell forward so that he was almost extended across Calum’s back. They rolled together across the rocky ground of the parking lot. And then they were all upon us, as we were upon them.

Members of the various construction crews who happened to be in the parking lot moved away quickly, although some stayed to watch from the shadowy edges near the trees.

“I didn’t come here to die in the boondocks,” I heard Alexander MacDonald say, as he vanished into the trees behind us.

In the darkness there was only the muffled thuds of fists on flesh and the uneven gasps and grunts of great exertion. I rolled across the parking lot with my hands around the neck of a young
man even as his hands pressed tightly against my throat. Each of us was trying to do the same thing to the other. Each of us was trying not to be on the bottom when our revolutions ended. If it seemed that he had me pinned upon my back and might complete his throttling, I would heave myself against his leg and roll to the right until our positions were reversed. He would do the same. Sometimes we would have to relinquish our grips on one another’s throats to regain our leverage. When we did so, we would each attempt to hit the other in the face with whatever hand was free. I did not even know his name.

Someone kicked over one of the beer cases, and when the bottles were broken, their agitated contents foamed upward and outward beyond their circles of confinement. We could smell the yeasty odour in the air.

I heard car doors or trunk lids slam, and then the sound of steel on stone. Someone had introduced car jacks or tire irons or wrenches or chains to the complications of the conflict.

There are many things that people will do in the dark that they will not do in light. The man with his teeth fastened in his opponent’s ear, or the man trying to insert the blade of his pocket knife between his opponent’s ribs, will be embarrassed by the smallness of their actions if they are exposed to light. Suddenly someone turned on the headlights of some of the surrounding cars, and then the tenor of the conflict probably altered in some ways. Altered, but did not diminish.

In the now well-lit arena my opponent and I rolled across the rocky surface. The backs of our shirts were bloodied because of the sharp stones that had penetrated the fabric. We could smell and taste the salty odour of our mingled blood.

The car radio continued to play. Charley Pride was singing “Crystal Chandeliers.”

Someone threw a huge heavy-duty pipe wrench either to us or at us. I was beneath my opponent when it landed with a clunk at our side. Our positions had altered so that now he was astride me, but I had a grip on each of his wrists so that he was unable to move his hands. He looked yearningly towards the wrench. Blood and spittle trickled down upon me from his chin.

Calum fell beside me with a thud. He landed on his back but was able, partially, to block the fall with his shoulders so that his head did not land upon the stone. His face was covered with blood, and almost as he landed Fern Picard was on top of him, hitting him with his right fist and then his left. He forced his thumb against Calum’s windpipe. Calum’s eyes rolled upward in their sockets and his breath began to rattle.

My opponent, noticing that I was distracted, suddenly jerked his right hand free and lunged sideways towards the wrench. I tried to recapture his escaped wrist and, as we rolled, our tangled bodies nudged the wrench not to us but in the opposite direction. The wrench came to neither of us. Instead it came to Calum. His hand closed around its handle, as it might around a final gift. He heaved himself upward, dislodging Fern Picard, and swung the wrench. The heavy heel of the wrench crunched into the skull of Fern Picard, and he fell with a gurgling sound. He lay on his back and his eyes rolled upward in their sockets. His huge hands twitched, and a dark stain appeared on the front of his trousers. Fern Picard was dead.

Calum hurled the bloodied wrench into the bush. He knelt at the edge of the parking lot and his vomit came forth in
waves. My opponent and I had released each other and now stood side by side like spectators at a greater event. Someone turned off the radio and the headlights of the cars. Darkness descended upon us all.

After the security guards and the first-aid staff placed the blanket over Fern Picard, everyone waited. They say that roadblocks were set up on the big highways, but no one was apprehended. The police arrived, after what seemed like a very long time. Their sirens screamed and their lights flashed and there was great excitement among their vehicles. I noticed that Paul Belanger was among the police officers. But all of the rest of us were quiet.

We were living in a location where death was not uncommon, but this was different. It was pointed out, by an official, that this was the first death since May, and that had been the death of the red-haired Alexander MacDonald. An industrial accident.

Some of us were questioned on the spot, and some of us were taken to Sudbury. We were asked to tell what we saw. Many had seen the wrench strike Fern Picard. The scene had been illuminated by the headlights of the cars. And yes, it was true that Fern Picard had been unarmed. The security guard came forward to say that earlier in the summer he had seen Calum hit Fern Picard in the mouth and he had been unarmed then as well. We were
asked questions about ourselves and where we had lived in the past. I remember thinking that it was a good thing Alexander MacDonald was not there. I had not thought much about him in the past hours. I was asked if I was “sure” I was going to dental school. “We’ll check it out,” the officer said.

Because it was Saturday night we were held in the Sudbury jail until Monday. On that day Calum was brought before a justice of the peace in the provincial courthouse in Sudbury. He was charged with murder in the second degree. The arraignment lasted about fifteen minutes. The justice of the peace asked the Crown attorney if he wished a detention order. Was there a reason that the prisoner should be detained in custody pending his trial? Was he likely to flee? The Crown attorney responded in the affirmative, pointing out that Calum had a violent past and was a violent man. Behind him there stretched a trail of various offences from various jurisdictions. Some of them dated back to his early youth, while others were more recent, including his assault on the police officer who had tried to stop him on the day he brought home the red-haired Alexander MacDonald in a body bag.

The justice of the peace asked Calum if he were represented by a lawyer. “No,” he replied.

“Do you wish to be represented by a lawyer?” asked the justice of the peace.

“I have been looking after myself since I was sixteen years old,” said Calum. “I can handle this.”

The justice of the peace indicated that it was not a good idea.

Calum was kept in the Sudbury jail pending his trial before the Ontario High Court of Justice. At that time there were
judges who travelled the circuit, so it might be five or six months before he came to trial. The rest of us were asked to verify addresses in case we might be subpoenaed, and then we were told we were free to go.

As we were leaving the jail, among those hanging around outside someone said, “Look at how many of them have red hair. They look like people who would be violent.”

We went back to the camp, where everything was subdued. The French Canadians began packing their gear. Many of them were going home to Quebec for the funeral of Fern Picard. Some of them threw their belts and their wrenches into the bush, indicating that they would not be back. They had lost their leader. We had lost ours. Fern Picard had negotiated most of their contracts for them, and Calum had done the same for us.

When the Canada geese fly north in spring, there is a leader who points the way, a leader at the apex of the V as the formation moves across the land. Those who follow must believe that the leader is doing the best he can, but there is no guarantee that all journeys will end in salvation for everyone involved. Perhaps in the parlance of the earlier weeks, both Calum and Fern Picard might have been regarded as quarterbacks, but it is unlikely that either of them would have thought of themselves in terms that, to them, were so foreign and so strange.

Marcel Gingras and I met on the path. We raised our eyebrows at one another. It was too dangerous to risk the possibilities of speech.

Clann Chalum Ruaidh
went into our bunkhouse. With an iron bar we broke open the footlocker of Alexander MacDonald. In
it we found many items we recognized as not being his. At the bottom, above the manila envelopes, we found Fern Picard’s wallet. It contained one thousand dollars. It seemed that when Fern Picard called us liars and thieves he knew more than we did.

On one of the manila envelopes we scratched Fern Picard’s name and address, which we found on his driver’s licence. In the envelope, we placed the thousand dollars. We looked at one another. No one had a stamp.

We resolved that we would take the envelope and the wallet, somehow, across the Quebec border and there we would drop them into separate mailboxes. We would find a stamp and we would send them to
le pays des Laurentides
. It seemed the fitting thing to do.

When management of Renco Development came into our bunkhouse and announced that the hoist was fixed, no one expressed much interest. We said that we would think about it.

We never saw Alexander MacDonald again. I realized later that he had been wearing my MacDonald tartan shirt. The one that the mother of the red-haired Alexander MacDonald had purchased for him on my graduation day, the day that he had been killed. The shirt had been purchased for one Alexander MacDonald who had never worn it. It had been worn by a second and had vanished on the back of a third.

Apparently he never told his grandparents what had happened and, of course, he left before the final events played out to the end. He must have departed in a great hurry, perhaps in one of the taxis which had been so busy in the earlier hours of the evening. His grandparents, when they wrote to Grandpa
and Grandma, expressed their gratitude for all that we had done for him. It was good, they said, that all of us still believed in sticking with our blood. “Blood is thicker than water,” they wrote. “
Beannachd leibh.”