Provider's Son (27 page)

Levi's phone rang again, but he ignored it.

“Women trouble?” Bill said.

“Not really,” Levi said.

“I couldnt help overhear you say something about a baby.”

“She called you again?” Jon said, leaning out from the side of his father.

“Okay, boys, dont leave me out of the loop,” Bill said, “especially when Im sitting in the middle.”

“Can I?” Jon asked Levi. Levi shrugged, and Jon told him everything about Johanna, and how she had tried to get money out of Levi.

Bill laughed, but when Jon was finished he turned to Levi. “Is she really pregnant?”

“She looked like she was,” Levi said. “She didnt sound like she was lying anyway.”

“And she actually thinks youre going to help her?” Bill asked, and laughed.

But when Levi didnt laugh along Bill looked at him. “Are you?”

“Why should I?”

“Im not saying you should do anything.”

“No, Im not going to help her. Its not my fault she had a hard life. She stole me wallet.”

The stadium roared with delight and the siren whirred as the Senators managed to score the first goal. Levi wanted so badly to enjoy this, but it wasn't going to happen. What's the point? he thought.

What's the point?

The men skating about on the ice after a black piece of rubber suddenly seemed the most irrelevant thing he had ever witnessed.

What's the point?

Every other time he had asked that question in the past he had always known there was an answer even if he didn't know what it was, or he knew what the answer was and didn't want to accept it. Now, for the first time, the only answer he could summon was a smothering emptiness.

Levi stood up in panic.

“You okay?” Bill said.

“Wheres the washroom?”

“Out in the hallway.”

Levi rushed out of the booth and into the hallway. He stood there searching for the washroom sign. Not seeing it, he headed in one direction. He passed by a husband and wife with their two daughters. All of them were wearing Senators jerseys. He could not find the washroom that way, so he turned back and saw the sign a hundred feet in the other direction.

What was the point of him trying to enjoy himself in this place if there was no point to anything? If innocent people all around him were falling from scaffolds, drowning in oceans, losing their marriages, losing their children. What was the point?

Levi stumbled into the washroom and into the stall. He took the flask out of his pocket and chugged back three long mouthfuls.

A man entered and walked up to his stall and stopped.

“Levi?” It was Jon. “You in there?”

“Yeah.”

“You okay, man? Dad said you looked like you saw a ghost.”

“No Jon, Im not okay.”

“Whats up?”

“My life used to be simple. I had a family. I fished for a living. It whudnt easy but when I looks back on it now it seems like a goddamn fantasy compared to this. It might sound bad but I wish I didnt start them chairs with you. I shouldnt have left the Island in the first place. I dont belong here.”

Jon leaned against the sink. “But we created something beautiful. Something true among all this greed and bullshit. Im not joking when I say those rocking chairs are the most important thing Ive ever been a part of.”

They were both silent for a moment. The thick walls made the rumble of the crowd seem miles away.

“Whats the point?”

“To open up minds. People are selfish by nature, but I think good art makes them a little less so.”

“No, whats the point of watching hockey?”

“Its probably a vicarious kind of thing to want to watch it.”

“Well for one thing I havent got a goddamn clue what vicarus means. And besides that I still dont see the point.”

“Vicarious means enjoying something through someone else.”

“No. You dont understand. Whats the
point
? Whats the point of anything?”

“Oh. Now I see whats wrong.”

“By if you do, tell me for Jesus sake.” Levi took a swig of his vodka.

“I think youre starting to ask yourself the big questions.”

“Yeah. Big questions with no answers, that ends up driving you foolish.”

“Wisdom has a price, just like everything else.”

“Where did you read that to?”

“You know I do have some of my own thoughts once in a while. Considering Im an artist and whatnot. That wasnt exactly original though.”

“I suppose nothing is original. Sorry by, Im not used to feeling like this.”

A man came in and they listened in silence to him urinating, and leave again.

Levi passed his flask under the stall and listened to Jon take a nip, followed by gasps of disgust.

“Good stuff,” Jon said.

“Now I got this young native girl calling me, and I cant stop thinking about her. I promised her Id help her just so I could get the picture back, but I still feels guilty. If you was in my situation would you help her?”

“Maybe.”

“Yeah, but what if she was white, and you didnt know her?”

“Well, if I promised her.”

Bill seemed relieved when they got back, as if he had expected Levi and Jon to run away. Montreal had scored a goal, and Levi tried to care.

The Apology

Crossing the Alexandra bridge from Gatineau, Quebec to Ottawa, The House of Commons stood in the distance on the banks of the Ottawa River. The water wasn't choppy, but with its spots of swirling white foam moving beneath them it was obvious that swimming against it would be futile. The current would push you wherever it wanted.

Wellington Street was tidy, with young deciduous trees planted every fifteen feet or so along the extra wide stone sidewalk. The whole area, the three government blocks, even if it was grand, seemed deceptively approachable. The wall around the grounds was barely a wall at all, but about three feet of masonry with a few feet of decorative metalwork adorning the top. Even though they had come early, a crowd had already started to gather, with a line-up that led outside and down over the steps. It appeared they were not going to get an opportunity to sit in the gallery.

“Is that for watching it out here?” Levi said, nodding towards the trucks parked on the grounds near the building with giant screens on their side. They realized it must be.

“I heard theyre having all the galleries open to the public,” Bill said. “Lets stand in line anyway, and see what happens.”

Levi looked over the line and was surprised by the amount of white people. He still felt uncomfortable, as if he was intruding. “So did you go to one of them schools?” Levi asked Bill.

“I did.”

Levi only nodded, wondering if he should have asked.

“And I finished, and graduated with honours.”

“Yes by,” Levi said, “nothing wrong with that.”

Jon stared into the lineup, making no comment.

“I guess you was one of the lucky ones then,” Levi said.

“That first year was hard,” Bill said, his voice as cheerful as ever, but his eyes revealing something else. “I was six years old. Oh boy, I missed my mother so much that I cried myself to sleep every night for a month. But I got used to it. And like I said, they treated us okay in my school. The principal, Reverend Albright, is still alive. Hes a good man in his own way.”

Jon guffawed to himself. Bill looked at him and turned back to Levi.

“It goes without saying that a lot of us werent as lucky as I was. Some of those schools...oh boy, they were hell on earth. Some of the stories Ive heard...”

When the doors opened people began filing in quickly. And as the security guard let each person in Levi became more and more convinced that they were going to make it. After all it was a huge building, and they were already inside the hallway. He had seen the public gallery on television and it looked big enough to hold a few hundred people. But as they came to Levi, Bill, and Jon, the guard said, “One more. Thats it.”

Everyone left in the line began sighing and muttering angrily. “Sorry, folks. Wer already over our limit. Theyve let us use all the galleries for public galleries.”

“But the three of us are together,” Jon said.

“One more, or Ill pick the next person behind you three.”

The three of them looked at one another.

“Well obviously its not me,” Levi said, stepping out of line.

Bill and Jon looked at each other.

“You were the one there,” Jon said to his father.

“But I want you to be a part of this,” Bill said to his son.

“Ill go outside and watch it.”

“But I want you to be able to say you were here.”

“Dad, the apology is more for you than me.”

“Its for all of us.”

The guard seemed impatient but afraid to say anything. Instead he looked at his watch, and then he sighed and put his hand on both their shoulders.

“Okay,” the guard said. “I guess we can squeeze in two more.”

“Sorry,” Jon said to Levi, who watched as they entered the hall, and the door closed behind them. People milled about, disappointed, but Levi went back out into the park. In truth he was relieved. Watching it on the video screen in the open air seemed much more appealing. Already there were twice as many people there as when he arrived, and more kept coming.

Considering what they were gathered for the atmosphere was not sombre. At least not yet. Levi stared at the many tones of skin and facial structures and tried to guess which ones might be Cree. He was using Jon, Bill and Caprice as his reference points, but he had a feeling he wasn't being very accurate. Or maybe he was. There was no way to find out. He certainly couldn't go up to a man and ask, Hey buddy, is you one of them Crees? He wondered how many of the people who appeared white actually had native blood.

He wasn't sure how to conduct himself. Should he keep a slightly guilty look on his face at all times? The only guilt he felt was for not feeling as guilty as he figured he probably should. He did feel for the girl who kept calling him, but that wasn't because she was native, that was because she was a young woman in a lot of trouble who asked for his help. And he lied to her. And if he had to admit it to himself, her belief that God had appointed him as her helper weighed on him. God, the one he supposedly no longer believed in.

The media was everywhere, carefully choosing their subjects for interviews, usually natives who looked “traditional,” even though the choices appeared random. He had enough experience with the media now to understand how they worked.

When the ceremonies began, Prime Minister Stephen Harper led eleven people down stairs into the hallway, and onto the floor of the House of Commons. Some of them wore ceremonial clothing, including the man in the lead who wore a traditional headdress of feathers. Levi smiled to himself. It seemed odd to him, this ancient native attire in the House of Commons, with all those politicians in expensive business suits.

Last was a dark skinned lady in a long blue dress with a silver necklace and the cross hanging on her chest, escorted by, he assumed, her daughter. She looked poised and ancient, as if she had stepped out of another time. What had she witnessed in the last century? Who had she loved, and where had she danced?

When the guests of the original inhabitants of a northern land now called Canada, stood in a circle on The Floor, the House stood and clapped. This continued for a while, but as the out of step clapping of the politicians began to fade, another louder, more rhythmic clapping in the galleries replaced it, a sound that was ancient but recognizable. The politicians began looking up at their audience, and slowly their hands began to clap in unison to the rhythm surrounding them, as if remembering a song they had forgotten, and it continued this way a little longer. Then everyone on The Floor sat in the circle of green upholstered chairs provided for them.

The Prime Minister started in French and alternated with English throughout, as did the leaders of the New Democrats, Liberal, and Bloc Québécois parties when they also rose to speak.

As the leader of Canada began a silence fell over the crowd.

Mr. Speaker, I stand before you today to offer an apology to former
students of Indian residential schools...

And so it began, the acknowledgement of over one hundred years of neglect, abuse, and worst of all, the attempted elimination of a people's culture through their most vulnerable and valuable, their children.

…respect for each other and a desire to move forward together
with a renewed understanding that strong families, strong communities,
and vibrant cultures and traditions will contribute to a stronger
Canada for all of us.

By the time Harper was finished Levi found himself trying not to stare at those who were crying.

Harper's apology seemed sincere in itself, but there was something missing. And it wasn't until Jack Layton, the leader of the New Democratic Party, stood in the chamber and spoke that Levi realized what that missing element was. Stories. The whole government apology had consisted of generalities, but no specific examples to give true meaning to the suffering. Was that avoidance deliberate? It was in this moment Levi realized one of the values of a story. Empathy. Then he thought of the name of the book still lying, unopened, in his suitcase,
A National
Crime
. The word “crime” had been absent in the whole apology.

Stephane Dion had told two short anecdotes when he had arisen before Layton but they had not caught Levi's attention like Layton's story, who began by saying that every First Nations person he had met of his own age was a survivor. Many were also children of survivors.

One of those children had told him about her mother, a Cree from northern Quebec, who had twelve of her fourteen children taken from her and put into residential schools. One of those children, a boy, had died while away, but the mother had never been told why or how. She was also never told where her son had been buried.