The Cast Stone (27 page)

“I need lots of things. But nothing you can bring.” Rick lifted his hand, the right one, the one without the tube, reached feebly with it. Vicky took it, held it, squeezed it, took it in both of hers, patted it, leaned over and kissed the back of it, smiled down on her son, put as much happiness and kindness as she could find into the smile, but her eyes showed her pain.

“Your dad needs to be on his feet at times like this.”

“I know, Mom.”

“He never was a man to sit down. He's trying to stand up the best he can.”

“I know, I'm trying to stand up too.”

“You don't worry about anything, Ricky, you just rest and get better.”

Ricky looked directly into his mother's pained eyes. Breathed in slowly. “I'm not going to get better.” He was standing up the best he knew how, he was not hiding behind a lie, he was standing straight, honest, like his father. “U238, the doctor said. There's no magic cure. I'm not coming out of this one. I'm not coming home.” A tear began at the inner corner of Vicky's left eye, welled out and ran the length of her nose, around the end and hung beside her nostril, bubbled there while she sniffled.

“Don't cry, Mom. Please, that makes it hard.”

She took one of her hands away from his to wipe away the tear and snot, breathed in deeply looking for strength in the air, wiped her face with her palm.

“I don't want to die, Mom.”

Vicky's tears poured, dripped down her face into her mouth, she tasted salt.

“It's not fair. I should be on the farm.” Ricky gasped air between words, sucked it in, whistled it past the plastic tube in his nose. “It wasn't our war. You and me and Dad and Clarice, we never started it, never wanted anything to do with it. You know what we did wrong, Mom?” He waited for her to answer. She didn't, couldn't, her mouth was full of tears.

“We didn't do anything to stop it.” Ricky answered for her. “We never stood up to the crazies. Never put them in their place. They came and said that God wanted us to do this and we would not talk against God and we went to war; that's what we did wrong.”

Vicky knelt beside the bed, her legs would not hold her up anymore and she could not let go of Ricky's hand. She laid her wet cheek against that young hand, rested her upper body on the starch white bed and poured tears onto the hand.

“Mom,” Ricky tugged at his hand to get her attention. “Mom.” She looked up. Raised herself on her elbows, found the strength she did not believe she had. Raised herself until she could see his face, his serious young face. “I need you to know something, Mom. It's important.” Vicky nodded and wet dripped from her chin with each nod. “ I never killed anyone. I never shot anyone. I want you to know that.”

“Uh-huh,” she dripped more tears.

Rick relaxed back into the pillows, looked toward the tiled ceiling. “I never killed nobody.” He sucked in air, hospital air, air that smelled of disinfectant and linen. “I never killed nobody.”

“You'll have to stay and look after your dad's place.” Rosie was standing in Ben's big garden. It was full now, beets were ready, potatoes were beyond bloom and needed another hilling up, the squash were not doing so well, too dry; squash need lots of water.

Benji leaned on the hoe, looked toward the house, at the red truck parked beside it. “I guess, eh?”

“Someone has to.” Elsie was thinking of moving the last of her few belongings over from her mother's place. She had only come home for a visit, to see how her mother was doing, had stayed the entire summer. She had no wish to return to the little apartment in Red Deer. There was nothing there that she wanted. It was Bert's apartment, his family would take care of it. Elsie didn't want to go back there, that little life ended with the message that Bert had been killed, ended before it started. It was a false chapter in her life, a promising beginning, not more than a couple of weekends with a soldier home on leave, a pregnancy and emails and phone calls and she promised she would stay at his apartment, look after his stuff, wait for him to come home. She kept her promise, stayed and waited. He did not keep his promise. They sent his coffin to his family in Edmonton. It was a very short chapter that ended in loneliness despite the company of her daughter.

“How long do you think they will keep him?” Benji was not asking anyone in particular. He felt a tinge of guilt at not being there the day his father was arrested; he'd been occupied with Elsie.

“Who knows.” Rosie felt the dryness of the soil as she dug for the root of a dandelion. Sandy soil grows good root crops but it doesn't hold moisture. It would be nice to mix in some clay. There was that blue clay up the little creek where her father once killed a caribou, but it was a fair distance even if they used Ben's boat, and how would they carry it?

“Your dad is going to be okay.” Elsie picked up Rachel, fingered the dirt out of her mouth, wiped the grit from her face and put her back down on the centre of the old patch quilt.

“I've got that same feeling, like there is nothing to worry about. It's strange. I'm not at all worried about him. Even when I try to imagine the things they could be doing to him.” Benji continued to lean on the hoe, felt the heat of the sun on his back through the thin shirt.

“Trust that feeling.” Rosie sat on her legs, straightened her back, stretched it out.

“You think it's intuition?”

“You can call it that if you want. You and your dad are connected, learn to trust the connection.” Rosie wiped the loose soil from her hands against her dress. “I feel it too.”

“But you and him aren't related are you, Mom?”

Rosie turned to look toward her daughter. “No, Ben doesn't have many close relatives left. Most families back then had lots of children, Adolphus and Eleanor only had Ben. They used to gossip about her that she was using Indian medicine for birth control.”

“Was she?” Elsie wanted a bit of gossip, even if it was ancient.

“What kind of medicine?” Benji wanted to know what it was made from.

“I don't know if she was or not.” Rosie deliberately answered Elsie instead of Benji. Some medicines were dangerous if you let people who didn't know anything use them. The medicine Rosie knew about caused abortions and sometimes sterilization, not something to be given out randomly. The world did not need that medicine anymore, there were enough birth controls and procedures. She looked down at the pile of plants she had pulled from around the row of carrots, weeds some people might call them.

Benji went back to thinking about Ben, put the hoe to the earth again, chopped the little green that grew up between the rows of onions. Yeah, his father was all right. He would take care of things here until he got home. It wouldn't be so bad. He had the house to live in, a good solid truck to use, a boat to go out on the lake whenever he wanted. He was learning about boats, listened to people who knew about crossing big water, how to take the waves on the beam instead of dead on. He had the monthly allowance his adopted parents willed him, a trust until he was thirty.

Benji had not thought about them in a long time, those two people who should have known they were too old to take in a child. Something was different now when they came into his mind. They did not stir the anger. He imagined what they might have said if he had brought Elsie home, Elsie with a baby, an Indian woman and a papoose into the home of a retired diplomat. How would they have introduced their daughter-in-law-to-be to their circle, an all-white circle of elites? Benji could not hold the thought of their possible discomfort. Instead he wondered whether they would like her. Probably, they probably would have liked her, taken her in and made a fuss over her and Rachel, poured tea for her in the middle of the afternoon and offered cookies and little cakes. And Rachel, well they would have been proud to be grandparents and they would have made good grandparents. He could see them spoiling the little girl with frilly dresses and fancy hats and teaching her to speak English like the Queen. He could hear Joyce calling her princess, and James with her on his lap in the big recliner chair reading her a fairy tale book. Here in the garden, with his hands sore from the wood of the handle of the hoe, the sun on his back and the smell of water from the lake on the little wind, he wasn't angry at them anymore. In a way he missed them, wished they could see him now.

“What was Lester up to the other day?” Elsie asked her mother.

“I don't know what he had in mind. Came out of the house with a gun just when they were putting Ben in that truck. He came running past me. I just reached out and grabbed it out of his hand.” Rosie laughed. “He ran another three or four steps before he realized he didn't have it anymore — Rachel is eating dirt again.”

Elsie picked her daughter up, brushed the soil from her face and held her wiggly and flailing on her hip. “Don't eat too much of that, my girl.”

“Yeah, Ben needs all the soil he has.” Rosie pushed herself to her feet. “We really have to do something about this garden. Maybe haul in some peat from the muskeg or something.”

Benji leaned on the hoe again. He was beginning to like this long-handled thing. “So, why did you take the gun away from him?”

“What was he going to do? Him with one little gun and all them with machine guns and who knows what else, all he was going to do was get himself killed. I didn't want him to get Ben in more trouble than he was.”

“But maybe he could have surprised them, got Dad free.”

“Then what?”

“Then Dad would be free.”

“No, then they would have sent more men and more guns and more trucks and Lester would have to get a bigger gun, and your dad would have to hide out in the bush for the rest of his life.”

“RCMP never chased anyone who went out in the bush.” Elsie hoisted Rachel a little. It seemed that gardening was done for now. She picked up the quilt with her free hand.

“No, that's true, they never did. But these aren't the RCMP. Maybe these Americans would go into the bush to look for someone. But even when the RCMP were after someone, they never stayed out there very long. Longest I remember was John James and he only hid out four months. Gets lonely out there.” Rosie dumped her weeds onto the compost pile she was starting by the gate and headed toward the house, Elsie and Rachel followed. Benji looked around. No, there was nothing left to put the hoe to. He leaned it against the rail, closed the gate, looked back again at the garden, the freshly painted pole fence that did not keep anything out, at the rows of vegetables and the potato patch that took the whole northeast corner. There was a lot of food in that garden, he thought, as he followed the women. A person could survive off that for a while if they had to.

The voice beyond the black hood asked. “Are you a Christian, Mr. Robe?”

“Remove the hood.”

“Now, Mr. Robe, we have been through this before. The hood is for your protection. It's a reminder to you that you live in darkness and only when you have accepted Jesus into your life will you see the light.”

“So you're going to torture me in the name of Jesus.”

“No, Mr. Robe. Nobody's going to torture you. I have a checklist here in my hand and do you know what? There's a little box on it that says Imminent Threat. That box is not checked off. No, Mr. Robe, if that box had a little x in it, you wouldn't be here, you would be somewhere else answering questions for someone else. This is just an interview we're having here, not an interrogation. You have nothing to worry about, all we are going to do is talk. Now, again, Mr. Robe, do you believe in Christ.”

“If you remove the hood, I'll tell you about how he was a medicine man.”

“A medicine man. Really, Mr. Robe, you don't follow the heathen way of thinking do you?” The voice waited for an answer. Ben waited for him to remove the hood, knew that it was too soon, that it would take much more before he saw the face of the voice, knew also that the voice would give in, knew that he had won the moment he was asked if he was a Christian. In the silence, Ben could hear the sound of metal against concrete, of people moving, talking. This place was never quiet. It echoed every move, every footstep, every human motion bounced and rebounded as though resisting its confinement.