The Truth About Stories (18 page)

Is John around? I asked.

No, said Amy. He's not here anymore.

A number of years ago, the Canadian government closed down the cod
industry on the East Coast. It was, in many ways, a futile gesture. The cod were already
gone, had been going for years. The reason was simple. Overfishing. The government knew
about the potential problem long before it became a problem. So did the fishers. Yet
when the fishery wound up on death's doorstep, everyone seemed surprised, shocked,
angry that such a thing had happened. The fishers blamed the government, the government
blamed the fishers, everyone blamed the large offshore foreign trawlers as well as
seals, global warming, El Niño, Native people, the decline of religion, illegal
immigrants, and homosexuality.

Could such a thing have been prevented?

Of course.

Okay, so why didn't we prevent it?

The oil industry and our oil-based economy, not just
in Canada but in the world, depend on two things for their continued existence. The
ability of geologists to find new fields of oil and our willingness to ignore the
obvious, that, at some point, we're going to run out of oil. This would suggest
that reducing energy consumption, curbing the proliferation of private cars and
multilane highways, and converting to sustainable and reliable sources of energy such as
solar, tidal surge, or wind power would be our first priorities. In fact, we have no
such priorities. We have only the hope that the exhaustion of the oil supply will not
happen in our lifetime.

It's not that we don't care about ethics or ethical behaviour.
It's not that we don't care about the environment, about society, about
morality. It's just that we care more about our comfort and the things that make
us comfortable — property, prestige, power, appearance, safety. And the things
that insulate us from the vicissitudes of life. Money, for instance.

Money is wonderful insulation. The more money you have, the higher the
R-value. It won't buy you happiness, but it will keep out the chill of poverty. It
won't provide you with complete privacy, but it will keep the neighbours and the
social workers at bay.

One of my sweet dreams is to be able to buy a piece of property on the
ocean with a panorama of the coastline and the mountains. Lot number six at Rosie Bay in
Tofino. I'd build a modest cedar-plank house with nine-foot coffered ceilings,
hardwood floors, double-hung windows with muntins, and a terrific kitchen —
Sub-Zero
refrigerator, six-burner Aga gas stove, Miele dishwasher,
dark granite countertops.

Maybe a modest koi pond just off the deck.

Oh, and a tile shower enclosure in the master bedroom with etched-glass
doors, multiple heads, and pewter vents near the floor to let in steam.

I have a cartoon on the wall next to my computer. It shows a wagon train
of pioneer frogs in the middle of a desert. They look around the endless waste of sand
and cactus and one frog says to the other, “We'll put the swamp
here.”

Insulation. And comfort.

I know. It's an easy job to be critical, easy enough to look around
the world, easy enough to find bad behaviours everywhere, easy to say that the proof of
what we truly believe lies in what we do and not in what we say.

So I'll say it.

Perhaps we shouldn't be displeased with the “environmental
ethics” we have or the “business ethics” or the “political
ethics” or any of the myriad of other codes of conduct suggested by our actions.
After all, we've created them. We've created the stories that allow them to
exist and flourish. They didn't come out of nowhere. They didn't arrive from
another planet.

Want a different ethic? Tell a different story.

We could tell ourselves stories about community and co-operation. We do
that, you know. From time to time. Every so often, we hear a good disaster story —
families caught out by a flood, a town levelled by an earthquake, whales beaching
themselves — and we respond with a
ferocity and moral resolve
that does us proud.

A lost little girl in the forest will get us off our couches as quickly as
a fire in the kitchen.

I was in Oklahoma City a few years back and stopped by the site of the
federal building that Timothy McVeigh bombed to rubble. The people of Oklahoma City have
turned it into a memorial, complete with a reflection pool, a grassy area, and a series
of lighted glass chairs, one for every person killed in the blast. On the west side of
the memorial is a run of cyclone fencing on which people have hung cards and photographs
and words of sympathy, inspiration, and condolence. Here and there, teddy bears have
been stuffed into the wire in memory of the children who had been in the daycare when
the bomb exploded.

So perhaps I'm wrong. Perhaps we do have the kind of ethics we
imagine we have. Maybe they're just not steady. Not dependable. Ethics of the
moment. Potential ethics. Ethics we can draw on when we feel the need to do so. Ethics
that can be wrapped in newspaper and stored in the freezer. Seasonal ethics.

Annuals rather than perennials.

About six months ago, I ran into John on the golf course where we used
to play. He was pleased to see me, he said, as we relaxed in the clubhouse, as happy as
he deserved to be. The boys were managing well. Amy was coping with Sam. At least she
didn't have to deal with his anger anymore.

They're better off without me, he said. Leaving was the best thing I
could have done.

He didn't accuse me of deserting him, of not
helping. And I didn't apologize for not being there when he and Amy could have
used my help. Not help, perhaps. Sympathy. Comfort. Understanding. Just being there.

Would it have made a difference?

This is the question we always ask
after
we have given up.

I don't tell this story out loud because it's not much of a
story. No plot. No neat ending. No clever turns of phrase. And because I always end up
weeping. Not for John and Amy. Not for Sam's brothers. And not for Sam.

But for myself.

And for the world I've helped to create. A world in which I allow my
intelligence and goodwill to be constantly subverted by my pursuit of comfort and
pleasure. And because knowing all of this, it is doubtful that given a second chance to
make amends for my despicable behaviour, I would do anything different, for I find it
easier to tell myself the story of my failure as a friend, as a human being, than to
have to live the story of making the sustained effort to help.

So you can see, the story about John and Amy Cardinal is not a story I
want to tell. It is, quite probably, a story that I should not tell. It is certainly not
a story that I want anyone to hear.

I could have made this up, you know. A sad story to play on your
sympathies. An anecdote to give my concerns a human face.

I didn't.

But you've no reason to trust me when I say
that I know John's story as well as I know my own.

After all, I'm a storyteller.

You can have it if you want. John's story, that is. Do with it what
you will. I'd just as soon you forget it, or, at least, not mention my name if you
tell it to friends. Just don't say in the years to come that you would have lived
your
life differently if only you had heard this story.

You've heard it now.

Chapter 1: “You'll Never Believe What
Happened” Is Always a Great Way to Start

1
.
Jeannette Armstrong, in
Speaking for the Generations: Native Writers on
Writing
, ed. Simon Ortiz (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1998), 181.

2
.
Leslie Silko,
Ceremony
(New York: Viking Press, 1977), 138.

3
.
Basil Johnston, “How Do We Learn Language?” in
Talking on the Page:
Editing Aboriginal Oral Texts
, eds. Laura Murray and Keren Rice (Toronto:
University of Toronto Press, 1999), 14.

4
.
Linda McQuaig,
All You Can Eat: Greed, Lust and the New Capitalism
(Toronto:
Viking, 2001), 12.

Chapter 2: You're Not the Indian I Had in Mind

1
.
Laura Coltelli,
Winged Words: American Indian Writers Speak
(Lincoln:
University of Nebraska Press, 1990), 156.

2
. Louis Owens,
I Hear the Train: Reflections,
Inventions, Refractions
(Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2001),
91–92.

3
.
Owens, 103.

Chapter 3: Let Me Entertain You

1
.
Andrea Menard, “The Halfbreed Blues,”
Prairie Fire
22, no. 3
(autumn 2001): 32.

2
.
Samuel Eliot Morison,
The European Discovery of America: The Southern Voyages
,
1492–1616 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1974), 65.

3
.
William Brooks Greenlee, ed.,
The Voyages of Pedro Alvares Cabral to Brasil and
India
(London: Hakluyt Society, 1938), 10–11.

4
.
David B. Quinn, ed.,
New American World: America from Concept to Discovery
(New
York: Arno, 1979), 1:149.

5
.
Douglas Edward Leach,
Flintlock and Tomahawk: New England in King Philip's
War
(New York: Macmillan, 1958), 22.

6
.
Leach, 22.

7
.
Charles H. Lincoln, ed.,
Narrative of the Indian Wars,
1675–1699 (New
York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1913), 89.

8
.
Benjamin Trumbull,
A Complete History of Connecticut
, 1797 rpt. (New York:
Arno, 1972), 1:80.

9
.
John Richardson,
Wau-Nan-Gee, or, The Massacre at Chicago: A Romance of the American
Revolution
(New York: H. Long and Brother, 1852), 100.

10
.
J. Franklin Jameson, ed.,
Narratives of New Netherlands
(New York: Barnes and
Noble, 1967), 126.

11
.
Philip Deloria,
Playing Indian
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998),
25.

12
.
John Heckewelder,
Account of the History, Manners, and
Customs
of the Indian Nations Who Once Inhabited Pennsylvania and the Neighboring
States
(Philadelphia, 1818), 25.

13
.
Robert F. Berkhofer Jr.,
The White Man's Indian
(New York: Vintage,
1979), 89.

14
.
Loring Benson Priest,
Uncle Sam's Stepchildren: The Reformation of United
States Indian Policy,
1865–1887 (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press,
1979), 137.

15
.
Michael Paul Rogin,
Fathers and Children: Andrew Jackson and the Subjugation of the
American Indian
(New York: Alfred Knopf, 1975), 216.

16
.
Charles Eastman,
From the Deep Woods to Civilization
(Lincoln: University of
Nebraska Press, 1977), 193.

17
.
Eastman, 195.

18
.
John Stackhouse, “Comic Heroes or ‘Red Niggers'?”
Globe and
Mail
, November 9, 2001.

19
.
Stackhouse.

20
.
Stackhouse.

Chapter 4: A Million Porcupines Crying in the Dark

1
.
Leslie Silko,
Ceremony
(New York: Viking Press, 1997), 2.

2
.
Louis Owens,
I Hear the Train: Reflections, Inventions, Refractions
(Norman:
University of Oklahoma Press, 2001), 20.

3
.
Owens, 27.

4
. N.
Scott Momaday,
House Made of Dawn
(New York: Harper & Row, 1968),
95–96.

5
.
James Fenimore Cooper,
The Deerslayer
(New York: New American Library, 1963),
50.

6
.
Cooper, 50.

7
.
Cooper, 41.

8
.
Cooper, 116.

9
. Momaday, 103–104.

10
.
Beth Brant, “Recovery and Transformation: The Blue Heron,” in
Bridges of
Power
, eds. Rose Brewer and Lisa Albrecht (Gabiola, B.C.: New Society
Publishing, 1990), 119.

11
.
Robert Alexie,
Porcupines and China Dolls
(Toronto: Stoddart, 2002), 5.

12
.
Alexie, 12.

Chapter 5: What Is It About Us That You Don't
Like?

1
.
Diane Glancy,
The West Pole
(Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997),
70.

2
.
Arrell Morgan Gibson,
The American Indian: Prehistory to the Present
(Norman:
University of Oklahoma Press, 1980), 494.

3
. J.
Leslie and R. Maquire, eds.,
The Historical Development of the Indian Act
, 2nd
ed. (Ottawa: Treaties and Historical Research Centre, Indian Affairs and Northern
Development, 1978), 115.

4
.
Catherine Twinn, in Windspeaker [website], “Classroom Edition Topic: Bill
c-31” [cited August 7, 2003], available from
http://www.ammsa.com/classroom/CLASS1C-31.html
.

Afterwords: Private Stories

1
.
Ben Okri,
A Way of Being Free
(London: Phoenix House, 1997), 46.

Thomas King is Professor of English at the University of
Guelph, teaching Native Literature and Creative Writing. He has been nominated for
the Governor General's Award and the Commonwealth Writers' Prize. He is also known
for his popular CBC Radio series,
The Dead Dog Café Comedy Hour
, which aired from
1997 to 2000, and in 2002 and 2006. Thomas King's father was Cherokee, his mother is
Greek, and he is the first Massey lecturer of Native descent.