The Cast Stone (41 page)

“The other side. Can't see him, can you?” Leroy let his eyelids fall.

“No.”

“I didn't think so.”

“Who is he?”

“I don't know, maybe he's your grandson.” Leroy took a breath. “Keeps looking up at you,” he let the breath go, “like he's trying to decide. Do I want you for my grandpa or what?” He sagged deeper into the couch, shuddered and drew in a breath that rasped deep in his chest. Ben leaned forward, listened. Leroy's breathing was irregular, noisy. Ben got up, limped over and sat on the floor beside the couch. But, Leroy had no more words for him. He stopped breathing. Ben thought maybe this was the end when Leroy drew in another rasping gasp, let it out, opened his eyes staring into nothingness, his mouth moving around voiceless words. The end was without any twitch or movement. The old man drew one last shallow breath and when he let it out, he left with it.

Lester made it to the funeral. He looked sickly but he was standing. Rosie stood with her daughters and granddaughters. Ben was an honorary pallbearer. He was expected to be up close to the grave, just back of the bishop who was taking bishop's privilege to make a long speech before they lowered the ornate casket into the ground. Ben looked over at Rosie, remembered what she said last night at the wake. “I always wanted to have a child with you, Ben. But, we're going to have something better, we're going to have a grandchild together.” He thought about Benji's mother. How would Monica take being a grandmother. He hoped she would take it well.

The bishop finished speaking, stepped back from the grave and aside to let Ben come forward.

Ben stood at the edge of the sandy hole. He spoke softly. Even people close by had trouble hearing him as he recited the faded words on the yellow card in his shirt pocket. He still did not completely trust his memory. “Go placidly amid the noise and haste, and remember what peace there may be in silence. As far as possible without surrender be on good terms with all persons. Speak your truth quietly and clearly; and listen to others, even the dull and the ignorant; they too have their story.” Ben was aware of his voice and how it carried over the snow-covered ground and was swallowed up by the trees. He put more volume to it, “Avoid loud and aggressive persons, they are vexatious to the spirit . . . ” Ben's gaze fell from the large gathering of people down to the casket. He recited as much to Leroy as to them. “Take kindly the counsel of the years, gracefully surrendering the things of youth. Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune. But do not distress yourself with imaginings. Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness”

Betsy stood straight, faced her end, she would not go whimpering and crying. There was no out from here. Everything catches up to you in time, and Betsy's time had come. She knew it was coming, had known it for years, had made friends with it over and over again. “I only followed council's instructions,” she answered again.

“You set up the thing with Ed Trembley.” Monica held the weight of the pistol in the large fatigue jacket pocket.

“On council's instructions.”

Abe Friesen felt the rough bark of the “walking” stick in his right hand, remembered the night he crept back to his farm to cut it down from one of the maples, a memento from the land, the land that was to have kept him in his old age. “You weren't at the gathering of thinkers,” he accused.

Betsy did not answer, stood silent.

Abe waited, lifted the walking stick from the floor, held it in both hands.

“You knew the risks.” Only her eyes and her mouth moved as she spoke, her eyes on the heavy length of branch in Abe's hand.

“I lost my farm. I went to prison.”

“And I got you out.”

Abe felt the urge to swing the maple branch, to smash, to hurt.

“How did you do that, Betsy?” Monica stepped slightly closer, between Abe and the woman who had once been her friend. “How was it that you could negotiate with the bastards? Tell me that.”

“I think you figured it out.”

Monica had her answer. “Yeah, we figured it out, figured out why you weren't in the house in Lac La Biche.”

The accusation hit like a punch to Betsy's stomach. She involuntarily stepped back one full step.

Monica knew the force of her words from the sudden glare in Betsy's eyes. “We made you a hero because of that. The survivor of Lac La Biche is just a bitch.”

Betsy had no answer, no explanation, no rationalization. She had walked away from the house with the men who laughed and joked and teased, young men who wanted to be revolutionary heroes. She had walked away, and in all the next years she kept walking back. The story about the falling star in the daylight and the vaporized hole was just a story. She sat in the restaurant after the agent left. Sat and drank coffee and waited until the blast four blocks away rattled the windows. Then she simply drove off and never looked back, never even ordered the chicken she volunteered to go get.

Now Betsy was walking into 3112 Avenue H North. Monica and Abe did not have to watch, did not have to make sure she didn't try to run. Betsy had nowhere to go. It wasn't that Abe and Monica had forced her to come here. She had volunteered. Betsy put the idea forward, offered an ultimate solution. It wasn't an act of honour so much as a declaration of
fuck it all.
Fuck everything. Lets bring this fuckin' show to an end. Get it
done. I'll show you bastards how it's done.

Monica's coat fit Betsy a little too tight and the scarf smelled of her perfume. The two men who sat in the running car across the street were obvious, bold, sure. Betsy felt an urge to wave, to tell them, “Okay, call on your brimstone, bring on your heaven, bring on your hell.” She didn't. She turned in at the gate, walked calmly to the house and used Monica's key to open the door. She took off the coat, dropped it on the floor, dropped the scarf and sat down on the pile to wait. She heard the sound of the car across the street drive away.

“Hey Freddy, hey Joe, how are you guys? I'll be with you in a minute.” She may have spoken to the empty room at 3112 Avenue H North, Saskatoon, but she was back in the house in Lac La Biche and her friends, her true friends, were with her again.

“A dog sled?” Red wasn't at all expecting this phone call. And he certainly wasn't expecting that the person asking him to build a dog sled would be Ben Robe. “I could make you one, or I could give you the one in my shed.”

“What's in your shed?”

“Oh, about a ten-foot toboggan, the canvas might be a bit rotten, but I've tried to keep it dry.”

An hour later, Ben and Benji helped Red slide a solid oak toboggan down from the rafters of his shed, over piles of “stuff” and out into the snow. “It was my Dad's,” Red explained. He grabbed the canvas carryall in both hands and tugged, hard. The canvas did not tear. “Well it didn't rot. It's only been up there for about thirty years.”

“You've done a good job in taking care of it.” Ben stood at the back of the toboggan, gloved hands on the handles. It felt right, felt like something normal, real, something with history, from a time when things were better.

“See the rubber there,” Red pointed. “On the handles. My dad put that there. He cut an old inner tube into strips. Used to tie everything with that stuff.”

Ben gripped the handle harder, it had a good feel to it.

“My Dad had lots of tricks like that. If you tie something with rubber, it isn't coming undone, and ice doesn't stick to it.”

“I imagine it would be warm as well.” Ben's hands had not left the handle.

“I suppose you are going to want harness too.” Red turned back toward the shed. A moment later and he threw a bundle of harness and gang lines into the toboggan carryall.

Benji knelt to check them out, to tug at nylon harness, to open a brass snap, feel the pressure of its spring, note that it wasn't corroded or stiff. “What made you keep all this stuff?” He looked up toward Red.

“I didn't keep it.” Red's smile widened ever so slightly. “I just never bothered to throw it away.”

A child once played on this floor, crawled around on the hardwood, hands and knees slipping on the shine; not hers, not Betsy's; Betsy never had any children. She ran her hand across the wood grain, stroking, perhaps even caressing — something from this world, solid, tactile before the moment of vapourization, before she crossed over to another world.

She imagined someone somewhere, perhaps he even looked like Ernie, perhaps it was Ernie himself at the controls, guiding a satellite, adjusting, lining up, perhaps there were even cross-hairs, and Google Earth type zoom, and he would put the satellite directly above her and drop a tungsten rod that would heat up in the atmosphere until it was pure vapour, then it would hit the house, and Betsy and the house and the hardwood floor would all be vapour, would all be ghosts.

Didn't Ernie say that they were not using tungsten anymore, too expensive, they were using spent uranium? Just Betsy's luck eh, hit with an old fuel rod from a nuclear reactor because someone didn't want to pay the storage costs. That would be more like it — more fitting with the way the rest of Betsy's life had gone, or hadn't gone.

Fuckin' Ernie. What an asshole. At first she'd thought — and that was decades ago now — at first she'd thought he was maybe like a Hell's Angels guy or something; getting her to move stuff, a little something from here to there; something exciting, something with a bit of thrill to it. What's a few guns from Ottawa to Edmonton? Then Ernie wanted her to become friends with people who were going to protest at the G-20 meetings, just find out what they were up to, go along, become one of them.
“Hell, Betsy, even go to the protest, have a little
fun. If you happen to get arrested I'll cover your ass.”
Fuckin' Ernie.

There' was no quitting when Ernie had his hands on you. You didn't bow out on Ernie, Fuck no. There was only one out — only one exit — and this was it; the hard way out, the permanent fuckin' door slam.