Incidents in the Life of Markus Paul (13 page)

That he got a chance to build a recreation centre was the greatest moment in Amos’s life. He was so happy he invited the whole river to a moose barbecue. He had a famous native hockey player break the sod. Their picture was in the paper. He still had a copy of it on his fridge, along with a picture of Markus in his baseball uniform, and all Mrs. Francis’s grandchildren—twelve of them, all lined up, and the five youngsters she had adopted. That is, if they truly gave Nobel prizes for humanity, Mrs. Francis would and should have had one.

Amos did not hire only certain families for the work, as other chiefs might have done; he hired everyone he could. It was a way for Amos to say, “This is going to be a new council. Things are going to be done in a new way.”

Now Isaac and his lieutenant, Joel Ginnish, had organized a work stoppage. Isaac did this supposedly as a protest over Hector. But in
reality he did this because everyone expected it and he could do nothing less. And even the newspaper had expected it and hinted at it a week before—hinted that although Isaac was patient, this patience might not last. In reality he was doing what the paper suggested.

It came down to one thing for Amos—why had Hector not been at the side of the hold, as he should have been? This is what puzzled Amos more and more as time passed. Amos had been on the ship, but he found out very little. The only thing he could come up with is what he reported to the council later. That is, that as far as he could tell no one could see down into the hold from the ground, so that would suggest that Roger had done nothing intentionally at all.

“Then why is the paper suggesting it?” Mrs. Francis asked.

She believed the paper had the answers, because the paper believed it did and the public supposed the paper was right and for the most part supported what it said.

“I don’t know what Mr. Doran got right or wrong,” the old man said. “I am not at all sure where he gets his information—but there are a lot of loose tongues.”

But all of this was only making them more anxious. For the little reserve was isolated, and surrounded by white villages. Once again their own slights toward Hector plagued them, and made their own decision making cathartic.

Amos sat there wondering why he thought so differently at this moment. Why he thought so differently from all the people angry at Roger.

Then he took the papers back to his house, and spread them out in the attic, where he had his little desk and the life of his parents and even his grandparents still lingered, and began to read Doran’s articles, one by one.

Something was wrong with each article, but he did not quite know what. The interview with Topper and Bill Monk told him nothing
about Hector or what was going on, or what they had been talking about. This is what he mentioned later to his grandson Markus.

“The one thing they do not mention is why Hector was standing where he was, or if they told him to come back to the wall and protect himself if the load fell. That is what anyone should do!”

It was very strange for old Amos to sit in the attic or the kitchen of his little house and think that something was wrong with someone who said he was supporting his band of people. It made him happy one moment and sad the next.

“It is a puzzle,” old Amos thought.

So this is what he told the council the next night. No matter who you put the blame on collectively, you could not do so singularly, for nothing had been proved. It was not fair to do so. It was not fair to Roger to blame the death of Nathan Blacksnake on him.

“Who the hell is Nathan Blacksnake?” someone said.

“He is the boy who was murdered out west.”

“By who—Roger?”

“No. I am only saying, he did not have anything to do with that, so why make the connection to that—unless—well, unless you want to imply more than you say.” Here he raised his voice, and tried to sound stern. “So let us not bother about Roger anymore,” he said. “Let us wait until it is cleared up or brought to trial. Let’s get back to work and finish the centre and let the kids go off to Tim Hortons camp. People are saying with the new bill passed we will be able to do what we want with the lumber and the rivers—but that is no better than not being able to do anything. There is more than one way to put dirt in your eye!” Here he smiled childlike. And he sat and waited for the response. The poor old man thought he would get applause. But no one moved, so he continued.

“Let this go,” he said, “and live to fight another day.”

But no one except Mrs. Francis took his side. In many respects it was as if Hector had never really existed. For the Hector they now spoke about none would recognize. He was a much greater and braver
man than skinny, shy little Hector, whose ears they had painted blue as a joke.

Joel Ginnish suddenly stood on top of an auditorium chair, and looking down at Amos, said he lived to do one thing—remember Hector.

“He went there knowing he would be killed, and yet he climbed down into that hold and did his work like a man,” Joel said, looking about furiously as if wanting someone to disagree with him.

“I know he did,” Andy Francis said, now standing on his chair as well. “I know he did, for a fact I know! I am living for one reason only, to remember Hector the right way!”

“You are?” Amos said, astonished.

“Yes, I am—living the whole entire rest of my life to remember Hector!”

“Oh my,” Amos said.

What would happen if Amos went against them now?

Ever since the ship had gone, Isaac had been polite to but dismissive of the “little half-pint chief.”

That is because people were simply telling him he was chief now. Besides, the government officials were phoning him before they spoke to Amos. And Joel was saying things to impress this chief, Isaac Snow, and to impress the boys who were young enough to be impressed by him, like Andy and Tom Francis. Joel was saying that they would take over, and take over soon, and the reserve would be run more efficiently and in a new way.

“What about Amos?” Andy asked.

“Like father, like son. And I knew his son,” Joel said.

Amos had stayed awake half the night one winter to keep his son David alive. He walked to his house each morning and stayed with him until late at night, trying to feed him soup and keep him sober. He took his rifle from him and gave it to Roger Savage’s dad to keep, for he did not want David to injure himself or anyone else.

In the end Amos took the boy Markus in with him. Later that spring, he sent Markus away to school in Rogersville—and three times Markus escaped and came home, once through the woods so he would not be detected, and ended up on Amos’s doorstep. So Amos thought to himself: “Markus is very brave—already as brave as most men. Someday I will start a school here, and teach my children Micmac.”

And that is what he was now trying to do. But he wanted to do it for the future, not the past. And though he was old, he believed this crisis showed that the difference between him and Isaac was a fundamental one.

The past was gone—yet in so many ways they were told by their elders and leaders that in order to embrace the future and heal, they must re-establish the past that was gone. In this, they had been on a hamster wheel for a hundred years. To leave the hamster wheel was to leave the reserve. To leave the reserve was to leave the land. To leave the land was to leave the past. To leave the past was to leave who they were as a people. That would change them forever. Yet in some way, some how, they must leave it. This is what Amos knew. And he knew this is why Isaac, young as he was, would fail. Not because he was not noble—he certainly was—and not because he wasn’t just—he was just—but because his nobility and justice were directed toward something that was impossible to hold, that would slip through his fingers like starlight. And Amos knew that all starlight—even that of the great sun—as soon as it reached them had already passed by.

A “half-pint,” Isaac had called him.

But still and all, half-pints were some-times knowledgeable about what heroics really were. And what they were not.

T
WO
NIGHTS LATER, FIVE YOUNGSTERS MET
. M
ARKUS AND
the two Francis brothers, Tommie and Andy, and Little Joe Barnaby
and his sister, Sky. Tommie and Andy were older and both had quit school and showed impatience that Markus had not.

Markus and Little Joe and Sky were inseparable. Sky and Little Joe lived at the edge of Stone Street, which ran down beside a narrow gully toward the road, and where one day a few years ago Little Joe saw the body of a man lying in the snow with his eyes glazed over. He ran and told Markus to come and look at the dead man, not knowing in his excited state that it was Markus’s father.

Markus would see Sky, who herself had just turned sixteen, every evening now. He would wait all day to see her. (He had at one time written her a poem that he had hidden.) In fact he could not think of life without her. To him, Sky would always be part of his life. At this time in his life he believed that they would be married, and he would someday be chief. Then he would daydream about doing many great and important things, and dying for her too. He knew he would die for her in a second. As long as he lived, he believed that would never change.

Some days they would go swimming together—just the two of them. And once she jumped into the water quickly, just in her bra and panties, and swam under the drifter and out to the buoy. Her beauty was so captivating at that moment that he grew weak—a secret all women know, even the kindest of them, to sap men’s strength away.

Most days were spent waiting for her after supper hour.

And then around seven o’clock she and Little Joe would come across the old softball field, hand in hand, and he would walk over to meet them. They would stand in the dry dust near the pitcher’s mound talking and then move off toward the row of dilapidated trailers, and sit in behind them, near the woods, where the blackflies never seemed to go home. There, their position in the world was established. They did not have to talk to the elders and they did not have to obey orders.

There was talk now of an insurgency and of the Mounties stopping it and raiding the reserve and breaking the warriors up.

“I will do something if it comes to it,” Markus said. He knew Sky was looking at him, and didn’t want to look her way for fear of losing
her attention. Sky’s first duty was to take care of her brother, Little Joe, and then remain loyal to those she loved. That is, if there was going to be something happening, Little Joe would come first in her mind.

Tommie and Andy, though they were grandchildren of Mrs. Francis, thought they were much more in tune with the times than their grandmother. Often at night her poor, tired body would be seen going along the streets looking for them, because she did not want them to get into trouble. Often now they were drunk.

In the last few days they had been running errands for Joel Ginnish, and spoke as if they were his confidants, as boys do when older men suddenly become aware of their usefulness and take them under their wing.

“What will you do if Amos can’t make up his mind?” Tommie Francis asked Markus now. “Isaac will have to.” Though his grandmother was on the band council, Tommie was making his own statements now.

But this question assumed that Amos had not made up his mind, and that there was only one way for that mind to be made up. And this more than anything showed how trying the times were, this belief that there was only one way to make up your mind, and you had to be as radical as Joel Ginnish or your mind wasn’t made up.

So Tommie simply continued: “I might just go up and burn a white lobster boat if that’s what they are going to treat us like—if Amos is so wishy-washy.”

Markus was furious about this remark, stated in front of him with obvious disrespect.

“Yes, you go ahead,” he said, “and let me know all about it. For you have always let me know about things you thought you would do, and as yet have not done.”

He said this very deftly, and picked up a stick and tossed it into the corner wood. When he did, a squirrel began to scold, and a dog at one of the old trailers barked. Though the Francis boys were both older, they were not as tough as Markus, and so did not answer him. But still he was prodded on the back of their cant.

“I am going,” he said, “for a walk to the wharf. Who wants to come?”

Both said no, that they had to meet with Isaac—they were warriors, and they would do whatever they had to do.

Markus said nothing.

“I’ll go if you go,” Little Joe said.

Little Joe, with his feet half as long as his sister’s, and his legs stretched out to their knees, sat beside them. When Markus stretched out, Little Joe did too. When he sat up, so did Little Joe. People knew who Sky’s father was, though no one said. But no one knew who Little Joe’s father was. Or very few did. Their mother had died in a car accident just the year before, so Sky was the mother in many ways to Little Joe.

“Maybe you should talk to Isaac too, Markus,” Andy said.

“Why?” Markus said hesitantly. “Why don’t we talk to my grand father?”

“Well, Isaac would know what to do—and Amos might not,” Tommie said. “It’s time to decide. That’s what Joel says—it’s time to decide!”

Yes, it was time to decide, and this was the terrible problem.

The three native constables on the reserve—everyone called them Huey, Louie and Dewey—had not been seen outside the small jail. They had practically disappeared, because they had a role to play. If they did not have a role to play they would be out in the car, patrolling the streets, but since they knew if they were out in the streets they would have to arrest someone, or join someone, they did nothing. So the streets were bare and broken and tired and no one patrolled them. They were supposed to patrol them or have the RCMP come on the reserve, and Amos was trying to get them to do this. The day before, the three of them had walked up the street and walked right past Joel Ginnish holding Isaac’s rifle, and nodded and said, “Oh hi, Joel,” and turned and walked back to the jail. In many ways Markus did not blame them.