The Cast Stone (8 page)

Roland took his hands from his pockets, put them behind his back, hesitated then let them fall to his sides, limp.

“When Wright said that Canada was a ticking bomb, he put every Canadian prisoner into the interview room. The first criterion has been met. It's estimated that forty percent of the population of Dakota Max is Canadian. The interview wing of that place is going to be busy.

“For those of you who don't know, Dakota Max is owned and operated by Greatwest Electric. It is a privately run, for-profit prison. It does not pretend to be a correctional facility. There are no programs. The prisoners are not there to learn to correct their ways. Prisoners in Dakota Max are there to suffer for their crimes. Period. There is no such thing as a private cell. Prisoners are in ranges of one hundred. These are open rooms with twenty-five foot walls. The roof is made to open outwards. Once a day for an hour the roof opens, rain or shine, and the prisoners get their mandatory one hour of fresh air; bake, boil, or bath.”

Roland smiled, a little upturn at the corners of his mouth that only tightened the hard lines of his bony face. He ran his hand across the leg of his pants, maybe to remove the sweat from his palm.

“Food is supplied by whatever fast food company bids the lowest — breakfast, dinner, and supper, wrapped in tinfoil and tissue.” The tiny smile faded.

“It's quite the place. Prisoners and guards never interact. Control is accomplished with knockout gas. Seal the range, pump in the gas and all the prisoners go to sleep. End of riot. But what is a riot? Guidelines again. A riot is any major disturbance. Couple of guys get in a fight, in comes the gas. Somebody gets sick. Either the prisoners themselves take him to the door, or they go to sleep so that the guards can enter the range safely. Someone throwing up can be a major disturbance.

“Of course there are calculations that need to be made. Too much gas and prisoners die, too little gas and some will not go to sleep. The guidelines allow for a death rate of less than one percent. Some people have suggested that they over use the gas to keep the population down. I don't think so. Greatwest Electric is paid by the person; purposely killing prisoners is poor business.”

He shifted slightly, so that the sun at his back completely shadowed his face. He was too far away for Ben to read his emotions. His words were flat.

“The beds are moulded into the floor. Can't hide a shiv under the mattress, there is no mattress. One personal affects locker moulded into the headboard, room enough for a toothbrush, a pocket book, maybe, definitely room for a Bible. Razors aren't allowed, nor haircuts; after awhile everyone begins to look pretty shaggy. The guards however are all very clean-shaven, helps to differentiate.

“So that's the ranges, pretty bare. Entertainment is each other. Next to the ranges are the interview facilities, and finally the exit. With Greatwest Electric in charge, of course the exit is the chair, no fatal injection, or gas chambers at Dakota Max. It's full current. Nothing cheap or chintzy about the exit.”

Roland was about to step away from the spot where the sunlight washed the loft floor when Monica stood quickly.

“Roland, a question please. You said that you didn't think that GE used gas purposely to make room for new prisoners, but isn't it true that DM is chronically overcrowded? That gas is used routinely? You were there. You are our best source of information. We've heard rumours that DM is mostly filled with Canadians, but the official reports suggest that DM only has about a forty percent Canadian population. You, yourself said that it's estimated that the Canadian population there is about forty percent. What's the real count?”

“Yeah, I was there.” Roland's voice was softer. He was not listing facts now. The words came from a place deeper than the top of his mind. “That's why I don't think it's intentional. I did two-and-a-half years. I was only sentenced to two. The judge was Canadian, Roberts, right over there in Saskatoon. He had to give me a two-year sentence instead of two years less a day where I would be sent to a provincial jail. The charge involved weapons. I did two and a half because Greatwest Electric gets paid by prisoner days. It was accounting that kept me there. Purposely killing prisoners is not good business. It doesn't pay.”

“But you were gassed?” Monica continued to stand.

“More than once.”

“We know that. How many times? How many did you see killed?”

Roland inhaled, he opened his mouth but no words came out when he exhaled. He raised his hands palms up. “I don't know. I lost count. Gas is colourless, odourless. You're talking to your buddy and your tongue gets numb and you wake up on the floor with a real bad hangover. You don't know how long you've been gone, hours or maybe days and some people are missing. Sometimes you wake up in a different range, or you wake up and your buddy is gone. Maybe he never woke up, you hope he's in another range, you even hope he's gone for an interview.”

“But you have seen people killed by gas.”

“Yeah, a few.”

“How many? In two-and-a-half years, how many?”

“Eight, eight that didn't wake up, that were still in the range. But I don't know if they were brought back or not. We carried them to the door, stepped back behind the yellow line, and they came and got them. I hope some of them were revived, but I don't know. I really don't know.”

“How many Canadians? What's the real count? Or do you know?”

“To be absolutely honest, I don't know. It's possible I was only in ranges of Canadians. Maybe they kept Canadian and American populations separate. In the ranges I was in, the population was eighty, ninety percent Canadian.”

A woman in a dark denim jacket raised an arm in the air. “Were you tortured?”

Roland took an unconscious quarter step back as though hit in his centre by the question. Looked straight ahead, his voice flat. “I was interviewed.”

“What did they do to you?” the woman's voice held a hint of intrigue.

“That's not something I want to talk about.” Roland spoke direct, clear, purposefully blunt.

“But, do you know why you were,” the woman paused, “interviewed?”

“Ticking bomb. I was involved in a weapons offence. Maybe I knew something about the resistance. I can tell you that I told them every damn thing I knew. Everything, every name of every person I ever knew, everyone who ever spoke badly of Americans, every conceivable plot that I could imagine.”

The memory stirred a strong emotion. Roland paused; he seemed to be struggling with it. His face contorted slightly; he opened his mouth but no words came . . .

“Okay everyone, lunch.” Abe stepped from where he leaned against the soft-coloured wood rafters into the patch of light and stood beside Roland. “Thank you, Roland.” He shook his hand gently.

Ben sat quietly during the break, enjoyed the fresh tomato in the sandwich of homemade bread. That tomato must have been picked not more than yesterday; it tasted of earth and water and vine.

“You have a nice place here.” Monica washed down her sandwich with a bottle of cranberry juice.

“You're not the only one who thinks so,” Abe responded. “Had a fellow in here this morning determined he was going to buy it even if it wasn't for sale. Had to threaten him before he would leave.”

“So, how much was he offering?”

“Started at two, by the time I was pushing him into his car he was up to four.”

“Four, four what, four million?” Monica's cranberry juice held suspended half way between the table and her mouth.

“Yup, four million for a quarter section, an old barn, house and Quonset. I only paid a hundred and a quarter for it thirty years ago.”

“So what's the big jump in real estate. I thought the market was collapsed.”

“In the big cities houses are almost worthless, but that's because everyone who can afford to is trying to move out into the country.”

“Frisco.” Monica got it. That was the answer.

“Frisco.” Abe agreed. “So the people in Vancouver, Toronto, Montreal, move out to Saskatoon, Regina, even Prince Albert. People in the small cities move out into the country.”

“But, four million Ameros. You could live a long time on that.” The cranberry juice made it to her lips.

“Not as good as I live here. What's four million? Doesn't mean anything. If the price of land doubled again and it was eight million, I'd just end up using it to buy another place. If I sold out to that guy this morning, I'd just spend it all this afternoon pushing someone else out of their home. Naw, it wasn't much of a deal.”

“Or you could buy yourself a condominium in Toronto.”

“Yeah. Right.” Abe bit into his sandwich.

“
Waweyatsin
.” Ben pushed the word out, imitated his grandmother's voice, clear, concise, tinted with a little smile. “Good for you, you deserved that, now learn from it,” she had said.

“
Waweyatsin
,” he repeated because the word meant everything he wanted to say to these people seated, fed, legs outstretched, still holding bottles of water, relaxed after their meal. “Now you know what it feels like.” The sun through the open doors warmed his back, grandfather was behind him, he could speak from here. “Canada's assertion of superiority over Aboriginal Peoples lasted for centuries. The Americans have only been here for a few years. Get used to it. They are not going home. No matter how much you cry, no matter if you say it's not fair, they lied to us; they are not going away. Make all the rational arguments you want — this is our land, our home, you have no right to come and take it away from us, you are a bastard nation, supremacy knows no logic. The supremacists are here because they thoroughly believe that it is for your own good. And, maybe it is. Maybe Canada has to learn what it feels like, what it feels like to be dominated, to be moved off the land, to be re-educated. We tried to tell you for decades, but you wouldn't listen. Way back at the Treaty signing, some of our ancestors tried to explain to you that you had no right to take, that you had to ask. But you wouldn't listen, so
Waweyatsin
. Good for you. This is what happens to you when you act like you're better than someone. Someone or something will come and put you in your place.”

The room stirred, legs crossed, backs straightened, legs uncrossed, arms folded, unfolded.

“Don't worry about it. Learn from it. The same thing is going to happen to the Americans: someone is going to come along and put them in their place. Doesn't matter that they have the world's biggest army, doesn't matter that they have robot soldiers, or half-robot soldiers, doesn't matter they can kill you from outer space, that they have lasers that can fry you, or Bolts From Heaven to kill you in your hole. They're still humans. They only believe they are God.

“That is what supremacy is about, that's where it came from, from people who thought they were more Godly, the chosen ones. They were given a flaming sword by their God to beat down the other. And, with that flaming sword they became part of their God, the hand of God, doing God's work, bringing light to the darkness. Little Gods.”

Ben had not intended to start speaking so strongly. The notes in his shirt pocket, scribbled on a single sheet of paper, folded into a tiny square, held an outline of an academic lecture on the premise of colonization. He had wanted to talk about Albert Memmi and
The Colonizer and the Colonized
, how that book had started a revolution in academia. Albert wasn't wrong. He had written about what he saw, what he felt, his truth; he had put a name to the oppressor, the colonialist. Then when people around the world began to see that Albert's truth was their truth, the academics followed with their papers and journals until the discussion had become dominated with the dichotomy of colonization. But, even though the academics had imagined such things as a postcolonial period, nothing ever really changed. Colonial discourse never captured the heart of the phenomenon. People still died of hunger, of AIDS, from bombs, and loneliness.

Ben had wanted to tell these people, this gathering of children of colonists sprinkled with children of the people of the land, that colonial discourse was about the symptoms of a doctrine of supremacy, that supremacy needed analysis. But his grandma spoke instead. He heard her laughing and the sound of that almost forgotten tinkle filled him and he laughed. He stood in front of the people and let his laugh rumble; it came up from his belly and out into the loft. It spread. Magic. Someone tittered. Someone else chuckled. Then the loft rattled with the laughter of everyone. It was funny that Canada experienced its own oppression, ironic and irony needed to be laughed at, to be laughed away.