The Cast Stone (23 page)

“No need to read all of it. It's mostly nonsense and jibberish anyway.” Monica interrupted Ben's reading with her hand running down the screen. “All we're looking for is the word
that
. Here we are.” She pointed to a line of text:
when you sing
about that two men from Val Dore were taken last night and a
third was summarily shot.
“When you read That Jack, the truth is between the word ‘that' and the next period.”

“So, the report we just heard wasn't correct. There was a casualty.”

“Not completely. Homeland Security didn't have any casualties. Truth is tricky stuff, it depends on who is doing the reporting.”

Ben forked some of the egg onto the oily toast. “Isn't the web being constantly monitored? I've been under the impression that it was impossible to use it for subversive purposes.”

“It is monitored. Always has been. But their search engines can't read everything all the time. The web is too big for any one computer, that's the beauty of it. So they use key words. You'll never find That Jack using words like insurgent, or even Homeland Security or democracy and definitely not resistance. And he hides it in Spam. Nobody reads Spam, apparently not even Homeland Security.” Monica grinned, pleased with herself to share in That Jack's brilliance.

“So, what does That Jack have to say about Abe Friesen?” Ben needed to know.

“Yesterday.” Monica ran her finger across the screen again. “Here.” She removed her hand so that Ben could read. He quickly found the word
that
and read:
foes of the people that
will not speak, Abe Friesen, John Doe and Jane Doe, live in pain.

“And what does that mean.” Ben wasn't hungry. He put down the last strip of bacon that he had been nibbling on. “He's being tortured. Right.”

“That's what it looks like. But have faith. He hasn't talked.”

“Not yet.”

“Maybe never. It's not true that everyone talks. Sometimes they overdo it and the prisoner can't talk.”

“You mean they kill them.”

“That's blunt, but you're right. Sometimes they end up killing a prisoner before he or she talks.”

“I can't even let myself imagine that for Abe. Even if it means they don't find out about me. I can't wish for Abe's death.” Ben stood, grinding the chair against the ceramic tile floor of Monica's dining nook. Sunshine through the big bay window, refraction of light off the spread of trees along the river, bright cheery tapestry, and a Che poster all dimmed, suddenly became sullen.

“Listen, Ben.” Monica put a hand on his shoulder. He faced away from her toward the river. “There's still a chance, there's always a chance.” She could not tell him about the negotiations, about prisoner exchanges. But she could assure. “I know for a fact that there is still a chance that Abe is going to get out of this.”

Ben turned at her touch. “I never wanted to be a part of this. This isn't my fight.”

“It's everybody's fight, Ben.” Monica stood back, faced him “This is the way the world is and we all do what we have to do.” She suddenly felt naked in his stare, as though he was looking right through her robe, right through her.

Ben wanted to tell her he had been fighting all his life, but could see that it wouldn't do any good, she would not understand, would try to argue her point, prove that she was right. He looked at her, at the length of her, at all of the parts that showed through the gap of her robe, at the height of thigh, and slant from throat to navel, at a familiar face, at the drape of her hair, at the single heavy gold hoop in her left ear. Monica thrived on being a revolutionary. It gave her purpose. He could not take that away from her. She was doing what she believed in. This was Monica's reality and it was too far away from Ben's understanding to even begin a conversation.

“Do you know where I can buy a gun?” The words surprised him as though someone else, something else, something deeper spoke. He wondered if it was his fear.

A squadron of fighter jets smashed the air, just above the tree tops. They didn't see the planes coming across the lake. At seven hundred miles-per-hour, they had only been visible for half a minute and Benji and Elsie were too busy with each other to be watching. Thunder, thought Elsie. Thor's hammer, thought Benji when he had time to recover, to stand naked in the wind.

“What the hell was it?”

“Jets.” Elsie had caught the flash of metal against the sky a half second before the sound slammed into them. She stood stooped beside him in the wind, pulling jeans up muscular thighs. “We should head back.” She was now thinking about her daughter. She also noted with a little concern that the wind was pushing the water into large waves.

“Ever drive a boat?” Ben had asked.

“Yeah, on Lake Ontario.” Benji had answered his father. He did not say, “once, a boat with a steering wheel, while my friend untangled fishing lines.”

They had trouble getting Ben's boat away from the rocky shore with the waves pounding in. Elsie stood in the water and held the bow while he lowered the leg and started the motor. Now out in the roll of the lake, Benji was more than a little unsure; he was on the border of panic as the boat pounded against the waves, nosed high in the air, and splashed down into the next draw only to begin to nose up again. He gripped the tiller, concentrated on his heading, southwest across the wide part of the lake toward the reserve, not that very far, just there under that part of the sky that was deeper black than the rest: ten kilometres maybe, ten impossible kilometres. There may be shelter from the wind along the west shore, he thought, shifted his concentrated stare toward the hills for a second, but even that was six or seven kilometres away. He looked back to where the reserve should be, at the next wave, larger than the rest. The bow of the boat rose, obliterated his view until all he could see was aluminum and wood-covered seats and Elsie sitting dead centre facing him, holding on to the seat under her with both hands, her hair blowing forward, hiding her face.

The rain hit, hard, stinging his face, forcing him to turn away, take his eyes from the horizon that his heart pounded for, ached for. He wanted to cry, cry like a little boy who could not have what he wanted and all he wanted was to get this boat safely to shore. He looked down out of the driving rain. His feet were in water. It sloshed half way up his calf. He was going to drown out here because of his own stupidity and worse he was going to drown Elsie. He looked up, at her face. She either was not afraid or was not showing it. She sat hunched away from the sting of rain on her back, looked up as he looked at her. Their eyes met.

She read his fear, saw the shock-etched face with the mouth pulled hard into a straight line. She looked around, beyond the roil, the mash of waves, capped in white foam. She was pointing with her right arm extended straight out, her mouth moved and the wind tore her words away. Benji looked to where she was pointing. He didn't understand. She made big full arm-pointing gestures; he heard the word cabin and turned the boat out of the wind.

Running with the wind was suddenly smoother, easier. The backs of the waves were not as steep as their face. The rain lost its sting, was not in his face, he could see. There was the shoreline, the point of land he remembered. Just to the left of that was where the creek led back to the shelter of the old cabin.

Elsie spoke into the wind again. Benji did not hear. She was not speaking to him. She was talking to her mother, words into the wind.

Rachel began to cry, little whimpers of discomfort. Rosie picked her up, held her to herself, felt the baby's face buried in the soft between her throat and her shoulder. “It's okay, my girl. It's okay. Your mommy is okay.” She crooned and swayed, gently rocking Rachel as she walked back to the kitchen. Nothing to do with a day like today but stay inside and bake a pie. A nice plump apple pie, lots of cinnamon.

Elsie stood naked again in front of the stove that crackled and snapped. Dry pine wood does that, she remembered, turning to warm her backside. The cabin smelled slightly of the smoke that leaked from the pipes they had fashioned together. Their clothes steamed on the string lines stretched above the snap and crackle. Elsie laughed, not at anything, lifted her long wet hair from her shoulders with both hands and let it fall. Benji turned at the sound, his hands still outstretched over the heat of the stove. His laugh joined with hers, not at anything, nothing more than relief. Naked, wet, and shivering needed to be laughed at.

Strong winds never blow for very long and the sun always shines again another day.

“You and Elsie are getting along well.” Ben wanted to talk.

“Yeah, pretty good.” Benji appreciated the question, appreciated his father showing interest in him. He turned from the computer after he tapped the keyboard, once, then again, waited for the shutdown page to appear where the video had flashed before folding down the screen to better see his father. Nothing there but cinematic flitter anyway. His father didn't own a television, obsolete things now that internet provided complete entertainment, complete communication, despite those out there dedicated to crashing it.

Ben's cabin appeared spartan to Benji. It was not filled with the collection of a lifetime, not at all like his adopted parents' house, where clutter ruled, and people moved carefully around the assorted and arranged. Here was open, from log wall to log wall, a larger version of the cabin he and Elsie had spent half of one day, a sleepless night, and most of the next day in.

“She's quite the woman. A bit of a flake if you know what I mean, otherwise . . . ” Benji searched for the words. Words that would tell his father that he was falling, crazy in love. But how does a man say something like that, especially to another man. “Otherwise she's perfect.”

“I've known her mother since I was a kid. Good family, Rosie is good people, so were her parents and Elsie comes from there. But what makes you think she's a ‘flake'?”

“Oh nothing, really. We were just out at the cabin and I asked her if she was concerned that her mother might be worrying about us and she says no, she sent her mother a message on the wind that we were all right.”