Incidents in the Life of Markus Paul (2 page)

When people inspected the clamp later, it seemed as if someone had pried it open. That was either criminal negligence or malicious forethought. No one said this at first, however. It would all take time.

Roger had wanted to use his money to finish building a room he had started in his old house and get staging up and attach new shingles in the summer. His little house was dropping, and he wanted to raise it up on a hydraulic jack and mend the back end. And he hoped he could use what he had from working lumber boats to buy out Cullen Savoy’s lobster licence the next year.

What was more intriguing was this—something that would haunt everything else: the dicey fact of riparian rights to three salmon pools
on the North River that Roger Savage had inherited and that many Micmac, especially Isaac Snow, said belonged to them. The riparian rights were water rights to the salmon pools that bordered Roger’s land. He said he owned them, the band said they owned them, and as yet they had come to no meeting of minds.

Hector had been the only First Nations boy to graduate the year before. Two First Nations girls graduated, but boys from this particular reserve were usually less successful. But Hector had been determined. This would become an important point when discussing Roger and Hector: one a white boy living a rather traditional, and to some a pointless, existence—as Barack Obama might say, “clinging to guns and religion”—and the other a native boy, wanting to do something out of the ordinary for others, in fact a humanitarian.

Roger went home and sat at his table, saying nothing and listening to nothing. He looked numb, and on occasion he moved his hand up to his forehead and took it away. He put supper on—a pot for boiling potatoes, and some fried pork chops. But when it was ready he did not eat. He shook some salt on the potatoes and stared at them a long time. Then he stared out at his gravel drive and the damp yellow stalk weeds in the yard. He blinked impassively at passing cars. He did not answer the phone. And then others started to appear in the evening yard. It was a cool June night, but one that suggested great warm weather would come.

He sat at the table and drank his tea, moving the tea bag back and forth in his cup as he always did, and looking at the old crooked table as if he was mesmerized.

“An Indian was killed loadin’ a boat today!” Kellie Matchett yelled into him.

“It was Hector,” one of the men said.

“I know it—I was there. Now please go,” Roger replied.

“What?”

“Go!”

Roger did not like Kellie Matchett—and within ten minutes of his telling her to leave the yard, Kellie was phoning upriver to Roger’s girlfriend, May, explaining to her that something really terrible had happened on the wharf, and it involved Roger. Kellie Matchett was of course only relaying information to her sweet friend May. She was, however, quite happy the news was terrible.

Later, just before dark, the police came, and Constable Drew asked Roger out to the car. The officer was shorter than Roger and had a small bone structure, yet his disposition was pleasant enough. He had heard many things about this Roger Savage already—not of any substantive criminal nature, but of a man who kept to himself and did not like others, and who had threatened men to stay off his land.

Roger sat in the front seat, the window rolled down halfway.

“Did you hook, or did George Morrissey?” Constable Drew asked, looking down at his notebook.

“George hooked—I was just wasting time,” Roger said. His voice was unusually quiet and powerful. Drew told him nothing was being suggested but not to leave the area until the matter was cleared up, because the leaners, the two brothers who were drunk, had said he had hooked. And there had been some confusion in the hold when the load dropped, and no one was sure at the moment if the load was hooked wrong or had hit the side—which meant that either the crane operator had made a mistake or the man who hooked on did. The Monk brothers did not want to blame anyone. But they themselves had been close to death, and Roger, some said, had been hanging around suspiciously.

“What do they mean, suspicious?” Roger asked.

“Well, do you think it was suspicious that you were hanging around?” Constable Drew asked.

Roger shook his head. “No, not at all,” he said. “I work there. The leaners are there every day, drinking and picking up what they can, and no one calls them suspicious.”

He should not have said that and he knew it. But the very word
suspicious
allowed him a glimpse into what was in store. That is, he knew in his heart it was really not at all suspicious, yet suddenly his answer had made it so.

He went back into the house, went to the attic and began to shake, violently. He was in a bad spot. He had always felt people did not like him. Now they would have reason not to.

Also, he had told them George had hooked, because it was George’s union card that was at stake, not his. But to say George had hooked, even to keep George’s union card secure, put Roger in a terrible light if George recanted and those two leaners told on him. So he realized what was now too late to take back. He could not now tell the truth, saying he was lying only to protect someone else.

Roger’s shaking lasted well into the first night. Then he became aware that he must pull himself together. At some point he decided to offer money he had saved for the house and the siding for Hector’s funeral.

On the second night of the wake, Roger walked into the funeral parlour. Young Markus Paul was standing near the front and saw the change in atmosphere when Roger entered. It became one of suspicion and dislike. No one this disliked could be unaware of the fact. The air was filled with the scent of oak and flowers, and people were lined up at both doors. The coffin was closed, and would remain so.

“Penniac’s dead and you’re alive,” one boy said when he and his friends noticed Roger at the side door. He said it in Micmac, not thinking Roger would understand. But Roger did. He knew Micmac well enough. The youngster was hushed by the chief, Amos Paul, and told to show respect.

Later that night, after he went home, Roger drank a pint of rum by himself and fell into a twitching slumber, from which he woke periodically. He drank often, and always on his own.

It was a terrible thing to have happened. And that Indian boy was right—he, Roger, was alive and Hector was not. So he felt he had to do something, and one thing to do was to offer money for the funeral.

Isaac Snow and Joel Ginnish held a meeting that night. Joel was not supposed to be on the reserve because of the trouble he caused. But his half-brother’s death had led to a change in attitude toward him. Not only was he once again accepted, but his presence seemed valuable and desired, and his mother was comforted by him.

Both Isaac Snow and Joel Ginnish were certain they had to do something. The fact that they were seen together—one a politician, one an outlaw, both of them unquestionably brave—did not go unnoticed. Isaac had already been to the chief’s house twice to ask him how the band council was going to handle this crisis, and came away disappointed with the old man’s answer, which was that there was no crisis to handle.

Isaac, who had last year returned to the reserve too late to run for chief, felt he was obligated to show he could lead. And Joel, just released from jail for theft, felt that not to do something would be cowardice.

“There is no crisis,” old Amos Paul had said in his slow Micmac, giving his innocent, almost toothless, smile. “So let’s not make one.”

Over the next week this became the crux of the secondary argument. That is, the first argument about what really happened had a secondary amendment, which stated that those who were telling people what must have happened could not have their own motives examined, for fear of the questioner being called, if white, prejudiced, and if native, traitors.

Markus Paul sensed this because he was the chief’s grandson. But he too said nothing.

So Roger went to the Penniac family with the money from his last cashed paycheque.

By this time many believed Roger had hooked the load that killed the Micmac who took his job, and he had done it because Bill Monk was in the hold. Then Roger did something unfortunate to lend credence to this idea—he offered money to the family, as if to buy them off.

The money became a sore point with certain powerful people on the reserve. And with Joel Ginnish in particular.

“There will be no money for Hector from him,” Joel said.

Roger now posed a predicament to the Micmac band itself; in fact he became the focus of the dispute between the old chief, Amos Paul, and the younger, more dynamic Isaac Snow. This in fact was the true crisis, and what everything else revolved around. At first the crisis had been nebulous, detached from specifics. Isaac Snow wanted the reserve to run one way, Amos Paul another. Now something specific had been placed within the border of the reserve itself: Savage’s claim to riparian rights and his ramshackle house. Both pools and house overlapped Micmac land, and everyone on the reserve knew this.

So Amos Paul had to decide which was more honourable—doing nothing or doing something. The younger men felt they had to act—to make a case if they thought there was anything suspicious in the death of Hector. So already they were pressing the old chief, asking him what he would do, and as always, slowly and deliberately, Amos was trying to come to some conclusion about what should be done. And as always, some of the men thought he was procrastinating. Worse, this case involved Roger, the grandson of Amos’ friend Lawrence Savage, whom he had guided for at the camp along the back Tabusintac, whom he had worked for on the waters and been paid to do so. So he had a conflict of interest.

It was also the very worst timing. Just before the accident, the band council had decided to approach Roger about these things—his house overlapping their land and their belief that his pools belonged to them. But when they had realized Roger was trying to get his house repaired in order to get married, they decided to let it go. They would
give him another year before speaking to him about it. And they had signed off on that just three nights before the accident.

Now this put everyone in difficulty and it was not the band’s fault. They had not gone to the wharf; they had not hooked on the loose pulp. They had not tampered with the clamp, as many said Roger Savage had. But the feeling was even more subtle: it was as if Roger was wilfully flaunting their decision to be magnanimous.

Amos Paul had to deal with this his very first term as chief and at the twilight of his life. His primary concern was to satisfy the men and women who wanted justice. But their actions had to be just, and he had an obligation to keep Roger Savage safe. That is, Roger Savage was his responsibility now.

The Penniacs, of course, did not take the money.

Roger, money still in hand, went along the shore and stared out at the islands in the bay draped in evening mist.

He walked back along the bleak shore road, with clouds overhead. He looked like a common labourer, his pants and his boots dusty, his forehead broad, his eyes dark brown. He was a very good carpenter and a good mason. He was exceptionally strong and very quiet. Bad luck had plagued his family most of his life, and he had decided that the one thing he could not do was become embittered by it. His mother had left him as a child. His father had fallen from a scaffold when working on the bridge. He had taken care of himself from fifteen on. He had no training from a father to be a man, and so came to manhood on his own. He had lived in his father’s house, rumoured to be part of the native settlement of 1815.

It did look in hindsight as if Roger offering his money was not a spontaneous act of generosity but calculated to assuage the guilt of privilege. This was the crux of the problem, and Chief Amos Paul sensed it. He also sensed something more—that the white papers would soon get hold of the story. And a lot would depend on who they sent to cover it.

He hoped this would not happen, but told his grandson Markus that night while sitting on the back porch, “This will work against Roger, I know. The papers might jump on him.”

Over the next few days, as the old chief went along the streets of his shabby little reserve, people asked him what he was going to do about this man Roger Savage.

“What do you mean?” he would say.

“I mean, we make an appeal for his land now, is what I mean!” Joel Ginnish, obviously upset, said. “We need a chief who will take our side. Roger should be off our land. There is no doubt this is a racist act against our people!”

“Do you understand,” Amos answered, “that this has nothing to do with him claiming the land? One case does not involve the other. So we must see what happens.”

Before, Amos had sounded wise and reasonable; now he only sounded old. So Joel Ginnish turned away and went over to Isaac’s house.

After he offered the money, Roger went home and drank a large glass of water sitting at the kitchen table. In his own mind he still might have thought that nothing was wrong—or that everything would be all right. But then he became very uncertain. He had said a few months ago that the First Nations men weren’t welcome anymore along his back fields if they insisted his pools were theirs.

But saying that they were not welcome was a very stupid thing, and he realized this now.

His hand was trembling, for he had told a lie and he would be seen in a bad light because of it. He had told people he hadn’t hooked on because George Morrissey, who was supposed to hook, might lose his union card. But now George didn’t want any part of it, was saying he’d had no idea Roger was going to hook that particular load. Roger had
phoned George and asked him to back him, but George said, “Who told you to hook? I was just going to take a piss.”

Others had already told George not to get involved—that this was a dispute between Roger and a bunch on the reserve. But these words were like a thunderclap over Roger’s head. How had the clamp been left opened? He was sure he had hooked right. So now he had to continue with his story, that he did not hook, for if he admitted to the lie he was by proxy admitting to something more treacherous.