The Cast Stone (31 page)

Elsie helped Benji to hang the net. “You've had quite the day.”

“You can say that again. If it wasn't for Red we'd be in real trouble. He not only helped to get our boat up onto shore. He chopped ice for about fifty metres so that he could get his boat out to open water to go rescue this net.”

“Red's a good guy.”

“I like his attitude. Know what he said about the motor? ‘Well good thing it happened today, now you have until spring to get the parts.'”

“So, how bad is the motor?”

“Broke the housing around the gears and the water pump is shot. I should have known better. It's not like Dad doesn't have enough going on right now without me wrecking his stuff.”

“Don't worry about it, it's just stuff.” Elsie hung the last of her side of the net on the peg, turned, and wrapped her arms around Benji from behind.

He turned back for the kiss on the cheek he knew was coming. “Dad might not think of it as just stuff.”

“Like Red said, you have till spring to fix it.” Elsie hugged him tighter.

“‘I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, saith the Lord, which is, and which was, and which is to come, the Almighty'.” John Penner nearly screamed.

Ben thought about this simple linear construct of time. It wasn't at all relevant to his experience; he let the thought go, let it drift out into the cyclical universe that Ben chose to exist in.

Penner was in the middle of his daily rant, and Ben knew from experience not to push his buttons. Penner's vomit of words excluded rationality, excluded Ben, excluded even Penner himself. The words poured, spewed, angry and raw. This wasn't a preacher bent on conversion. This wasn't a teacher explaining. This was hate wrapped in gospel, hate warped by gospel. Hate that surfaced and subsided quickly. Penner stopped. Briefly the interview room fell silent. He looked directly at Ben and asked. “Do you believe in Democracy?”

Ben hesitated, looked for the trick in the question and decided it would be safe to answer “Yes.”

“That is absolute foolishness. Democracy is the work of Satan. Satan puts ideas into men's heads to lead them away from the Kingdom of Jesus. There is only one rightful government. That is the government of God. Jesus came here to create his kingdom on Earth. It is his kingdom that we should be working to create. Not our, or your kingdom, Ben.” Penner's voice changed. It became a pleading. “Do you honestly believe we could create a kingdom on Earth that would be superior to Jesus' kingdom? Do you believe that man is better than God?” He didn't give Ben an opportunity to answer. “Of course not. Now you are asking, what would this look like, this kingdom of Jesus on Earth? Well, let me tell you. It would be Christian Totalitarianism. Mao had it right, even Hitler knew what he was doing. God chose those men. He chose them to get the world ready for the day when he puts his kingdom back on Earth.”

For the remainder of the interview Ben sat and listened to the words of hate, the words that were part prayer, part calls for help, part confession (though this had to be read in) and part demand for the damnation of everything not Godly.

The chainsaw screamed in Benji's hand; he concentrated on Red's instructions. “Cut out a wedge on the side you want the tree to fall toward. Then when you make the back cut, don't cut all the way through, leave a little wood, that's what you use to steer with.” The standing dead pine was a nice size. A good tree to learn with. Red stood back and watched Benji fall his very first tree. Eighty feet, at least eighty feet. Red looked toward the heavy crown where dwarf mistletoe cancered the ancient tree, rapid growth, branches twisted into thick brooms. The disease clustered in stands of pine, leaving dead wood for insects, and the birds that feed off them and easy fire wood for people like Red who still enjoyed simpler though harder ways of living.

Red didn't notice the change in colour of the sawdust, from white to orange brown sprayed out onto the thin covering of snow. He was looking toward the crown, feeling pride in Benji, a good sized tree for his first. Fall a tree like that and a person couldn't help but to feel proud of himself. Neither of them knew about the ants. Big carpenter ants that ate away the tree's core, left a honeycomb labyrinth at the centre. The little wood that Benji was to use to steer the tree with had no strength. The big pine leaned, twisted on the cut at its base and slowly began to fall. Red saw it first. The tree was coming toward them. He grabbed Benji's shoulder, pulled and stepped aside. They stood still and watched the tree pick up speed. Benji screamed a silent “
No!
” when he realized where the tree was going. “
No!
” his heart sank “
Please No!
” The top of the tree hit the cab of Ben's truck where the passenger door met the roof, smashed glass and warped metal, the weight of two hundred years growth and the inertia of coming to earth drove the tree until the roof of the truck touched the seat. The steel frame under the cab bent, then held, snow caught in the branches and released in the fall flittered down for a few more seconds, then everything was still and quiet.

“You were trying to do something good. You were getting wood to keep me and Rachel warm for the winter.” Elsie hugged Benji tighter. “Don't be too hard on yourself. Your dad will understand, you were trying to do something good.”

“Happy birthday, Lester.” Rosie hoped to lift his spirits.

“How'd you know it was my birthday.” Lester lifted his head and a bit of one shoulder from the couch.

“I remembered when you were born. Your mom came over to our house to ask for a ride to town. December first. I think she came to her big sister's house, half expecting my mom to midwife for her. But in the end we took her to the hospital instead.”

“You got a good memory, Rosie.” Lester let his head rest back on the softness of the overlarge couch, let the foam and fibre swallow him.

“I remember when she brought you home too. She pretty much lived with us that winter.”

Rosie's memories drew Lester backward through time. “Where was my dad?” he wondered, looking upwards at the tile of the ceiling.

“Work. Cutting pulp. Something, I'm not sure. Only home on weekends. During the week, your mom stayed with us.” She remembered the baby and the fussing. It was her first experience up close with a baby, a young girl trying to be a part of this woman thing that was happening between her mother and her aunt. She was playing with dolls with her aunt again, and the doll was wriggly baby Lester. “Anyway, that was a long time ago.” Rosie suddenly felt uncomfortable, talking about her aunt with the man who murdered her. She came back to the present. Lester on the couch with a bad cold. A cake in the oven. Not one of the big cakes she used to make for her children, she was a little short on ingredients, just a little something because it was his birthday and he was sick. Cake and a little kindness can be good medicine.

Winter, again, another cycle of the great wheel. We count winters because they are the most memorable. Ben wondered if he would spend this entire winter indoors. What would be his memories? This cell, concrete and steel, not so different from the winters in the university; thinking, re-gathering, ordering thoughts, finding the order that organizes chaos. The cell was not so different from his university office; windowless, cinder block cold, only his body confined, now by guards, then by exam schedules, his mind free as ever to fly, to find the truth in itself, or out there in the snow and wind, flying above the boreal of his home, or walking the ancient trails. Ben walked often with his father, listened again to his stories, spent hours in front of a warm fire again and reheard the wisdom. The thick of winter, silent, smothered in hip-deep snow, when the magpie circled the cabin looking for scraps, the storyteller, just through the window:
“The people moved around lots back
then, whenever you wanted, pack your tent, harness your dogs
or make a new birchbark canoe. I knew whenever my dad made
a new canoe, as soon as it was finished we'd move again. It was
like a new canoe was a good reason to move.”

Ben had been reading history; stories about Indians who moved to be closer to the missions, the priests, the documentation of conversions, and asked his father. “
The truth, my son,
is that some people did move to the missions. But a lot more
moved away. That's why we're here. Your grandfather moved
away from the Churchill River because there were getting to be
too many Christians up there. He came here. Strange though,
I met a young man a while ago. He was from that Churchill
River area. Out travelling, the way young men are supposed to,
came back to see the land of his grandfather, the Thunder Hills.
Seems, that old man moved away from here for the same reason,
to get away from the Christians. You know, you hear how we
used to banish people. Even Chief and Council nowadays want
to banish people. Got a drug dealer they don't know what to do
with and they tell the court to banish that person, kick him off
the reserve. That's not how it used to be up here. Maybe in the
South they did that. But up here, there was lots of room. People
could move. What happened most often if a person was acting
up, didn't get along with everyone else, well, the people would
move, leave that person behind. That's a good way to do things.
Banish somebody and you make hard feelings, and things were
hard enough before. Make a hard decision like that and you
make a hard thing harder. But now we can't do that anymore,
the land is all taken up. Did you know they cut lines around
the reserve to mark the boundary? As if the reserve wasn't too
small as it was, the government paid to cut lines, wide ones all
the way around, I think just to rub it in. ‘You Indians stay there'
and what are the people going to do when someone acts up,
what choice do they have? They have to move to the city.”