The Republic of Nothing (20 page)

“I asked the moon once,” Casey said out loud, “why you were in Halifax, daddy?”

“And what did the moon say, Casey?” my father asked, happy to be distracted.

“The moon said that you were tired of being happy and you went there to look for something to make you sad.”

My father laughed. “The moon likes to play tricks on you,” he said. “I'm happy in Halifax. Would you like to live in Halifax, Casey?”

“No,” Casey said. “I don't think the moon would talk to me any more if I lived there.”

That night we dreamed of dragons breathing black smoke and wolves with long saliva-dripping tongues and a moon who spoke truth to us through a shattered pane of very old liquid glass. In the morning there was no sun, just a ceiling of low grey cloud fringed in dark blue-black lace. I heard barking and howling and finally the shot of a gun which jolted me awake. My father was out the door before me and I was behind him as we ran in the direction of the second gun shot. “It's coming from over by Hants' place,” my father said. I could see now that it was my old familiar father who had returned, for he had forgotten altogether about the car which would have made our journey quicker, fanbelt or not.

When we got to Hants Buckler's wharf we saw Hants standing in his long Johns in front of what was left of the skeletal elephant. He had blood dripping from one leg in a steady stream and he held a shotgun aimed straight at the sky. “Sonsabitches tore it apart,” he said. We could still hear yapping dogs in the distance.

“What did it?” I asked.

“Dogs from the mainland. Big German shepherds with eyes given to them by the devil and teeth stolen from a god-damn barracuda.” He looked down at the wounds on his legs. “They went for the elephant bones first and after that, I guess they wanted a taste of fresher marrow.”

“How many were there?” my father asked.

“Ten. Ten dogs the size of hammerhead sharks. Mean mothers too. Look at what they did.”

The dogs had truly managed to ruin the great work of elephant bones. They must have jumped up and wrenched the ankle bone from the elephant and then gone crazy enough to rattle the thing down, the great monument that had been Hants Buckler's pride and joy. Bones were scattered everywhere. And at Buckler's doorstep were the remains of his pet
seagull, Gilbert. The dogs had surprised the poor thing and tore it to bloody pieces before it had a chance to get out of the way. Hants just shook his head. “When I opened the door, they jumped me, the sons of bloody bitches and tore into my legs. They had teeth like ice picks.” He showed us his leg and my father stopped to look at it but Hants pulled back. “I wanted to kill them but couldn't,” Hants said. “Once you start to kill a thing, even a brute like one of them beasts, you never know what happens to you. It takes restraint at time like this. But I fired the gun to chase them off.”

We helped to patch up Hants and get him settled down with a cup of tea mixed half and half with rum. We offered to take him to Mrs. Bernie Todd for a more perfect, professional repair but he'd have none of it. “A body knows how to repair itself, “ he said. “Can't blame the dogs,” he said. “Can only blame the master.”

We all knew who owned the dogs. When we left, we took the inland route back to the house. We skirted the bog and my father pointed to something, a freshly pawed hole out in the middle. We slogged through it to where the Viking had lain asleep so many years. Sure enough, the dogs had dug here too and the leather of the face and a section of the shoulder had been chewed off. It seemed incredible that dogs would sniff out a dead man after so many centuries. The Viking was still to remain our secret and so we shovelled the mud and peat back over him, somehow believing that we were still protecting the lost legacy of the island.

“Burnet's old man raises them for hunting but doesn't hardly feed ‘em,” I said. “He kicks ‘em about and teaches them to be vicious. This was the first time that I know of, though, that they came on the island.”

“They'll be back now. We can't let that happen. I'll go talk to Burnet McCully.”

But I could have told him there was no talking. The Burnet McCullys were the kind of people that took whatever they
could from the world, gave nothing back and then dumped what was left out their back step. I insisted that I be there when my father confronted Burnet's old man. They lived together, father and son, the two of them without a wife or mother.

The next morning my father and I went to confront Burnet Senior. The dogs were in the back yard now all chained to a single post, snarling and biting at each other. Mr. McCully looked like he had maybe slept the night with the pack of dogs in a bed, he looked so dishevelled and disoriented. My father played it cool. The damage was explained with a clinical, un-emotional tone, for it was clear that my father had learned a trick or two of emotional control in the legislature. “What do you think we can do to prevent this from happening again and how do you plan on repaying Hants Buckler?” my father asked with the greatest decorum. McCully just stood mute. Burnet Jr. was awake now and pushed out the front door, past his old man, and began to piss on the ground alongside of where I stood. Mr. McCully had one wild eye that just sort of roamed about while the other was fixed like a vulture on my father.

Burnet Jr. was zipping up his fly and snickering like my father had just told some great joke. His own father was coughing and calling up a big wad of phlegm that he spit directly on the ground with a reptile-like hissing sound. “Not my problem,” he said. “Just the nature of a dog. I ain't doing a damn thing.”

“There are laws that deal with this sort of thing,” my father said. Inside him a volcano raged, but on the surface he was the Halifax diplomat. Here was the ultimate anarchist speaking about law and order to a Neanderthal.

Young Burnet picked up an axe from a chopping block and began to split kindling with such malice I expected the wood to cry out in pain. My father studied the vile face of Burnet Sr. a minute and then looked down at me, as if waiting for me to suggest some alternative. I had nothing to offer. I was scared. Something about Burnet and his old man had always scared me — they were brutal, stupid and uncaring. Nothing on the
island or in nature rivalled them. At that minute, I hated them both to the bottom of my being.

“Get out of here. And take your skinny kid,” McCully snarled.

But my father was not to leave so easily. His face was a study of cool intelligence and reason. “I'm sorry you'll have to see this,” he said to me and walked towards the dogs chained behind the house.

Without so much as blinking an eye, my father walked into the midst of the pack of them, picked up the biggest, meanest German shepherd and yanked its leash from the stake. He held the dog's head as he carried it towards Big Man Burnet. He had one arm fixed across its squirming body, the other hand gripping the head tightly with an arm across the neck. I thought I knew what he was about to do. It seemed like a terrible thing, an inhumane thing for any man to do even under the circumstances. My father had always been a powerfully strong man. His days in Halifax had not atrophied his solid muscles; it could not undo years of hauling nets, loading lobster traps and doing the work of the island and the sea.

I wanted to say no. He was about to snap the dog's neck in half right in front of Burnet. Like Hants Buckler, I suddenly felt sorry for the beast. I didn't believe it was the fault of a whipped, maltreated dog that it did what it did. Old man Burnet looked my father straight in the eye, daring him. A faint, sinister grin seemed to appear and as his mouth cracked open, a thin bead of dirty, tobacco-coloured drool slipped out of the side. He was pushing my father to do it. He wanted it to happen and wanted to watch the powder keg of violence set off in uppity old Everett McQuade. “Do you care what happens to this dog?” my father asked. I could hear his voice quivering ever so slightly now. There was anger and hostility pent up in there.

I watched Burnet Jr. pick up the axe now and wield it like a weapon in front of him, ready to pounce, to lop off my head, maybe, or chop my father and me in two.

“I don't give a shit what happens to that dog,” Burnet Sr. answered, taunting, trying to push my father over the edge so that he'd have cause to rip into the bloody politician with his own teeth and tear him limb from limb.

“Seems to me, all this dog needs is a little something to eat. He's half-starved,” my father said. And with a quick, sudden motion, he wrenched hard on the dog's neck pushing it forward towards Burnet Sr. until the creature's muzzle was square in Burnet's crotch. Then, quick as lightning, my father let go of the dog's head as it chomped down hard on the first thing in its vicinity. McCully fell backwards as his son ran to pull the dog off his old man who lay howling on the step. As we walked away, my father repeated the words of Hants Buckler. “Can't blame the dog,” he said. “Can only blame the master.”

My father seemed particularly rejuvenated as we stood JL on the little bridge after the incident. “In a true anarchy, Ian, you have this problem about freedom. If everyone is free to do what they want, every once in a while you have some asshole, like Burnet there whose
freedom
causes trouble for someone else. Then somebody has to set things straight or you have an unfair system. Otherwise you have to start creating a bunch of laws and good people start to lose their personal independence.”

I guess I didn't realize just then that my father was himself a lawmaker — that was what the legislature was all about. Up until that minute I don't think he had ever seen himself as such. He got elected on a fluke and wanted to change the world. He didn't want to make a bunch of laws.

“Without laws, though, who decides on the punishment?” I discovered that I was unconsciously holding onto my crotch
just then, still imagining what it must feel like to have a full-grown, razor-toothed German shepherd lunge at your privates and take a deep bite.

“Me,” my father said. “Somebody had to do something or those damn dogs might have gone back one night and killed Hants Buckler.” He seemed almost smug now. Even at my age, I could see through his logic. Something was wrong. We both looked down at the clear, cold water flowing toward the sea beneath the bridge. It carried a beautiful mane of long flowing green, gold and reddish seaweed. “Necum Teuch,” my father said. “That's how the Micmac would have described this stream. Meant ‘hair of the dead'.”

As I looked into the water, I could see what the Micmac had seen. Long flowing hair in the channel, long-gone remains of their ancestors, still with them or trying to find their way back to the surface of the earth.

“That doctor friend of yours?”

“Ben. Ben Ackerman,” I reminded him.

“Think he knows how to stitch up a man's pecker?” I thought that my father had lost his conscience in Halifax, but something in the little creek reminded him. The dead Indians were speaking, maybe.
It's not fair to let a man die because he doesn't take good care of his dogs.

“He's a doctor,” I said, shrugging.

“I wouldn't want even Burnet to bleed to death.”

Ben was meditating in his kitchen when we got there. My father was a little uneasy around him at first, just like before, but I could see that they liked each other. My old man told him what had happened. “I guess I got a bit carried away,” he admitted.

“We better get over there quick,” Ben said.

Back at the Burnet house, my father and I stood out front while Ackerman knocked on the door, explained who he was and went in. Burnet Jr. let him in and scowled out at me. I knew I was going to pay for this somehow, on the bus or at
school. It's one thing for fathers to feud, another what kids have to live with and suffer.

Afterwards, on the walk back, Ben said that Burriet Sr. would be okay. “Gonna hurt like hell to piss for a while though. Couple places the teeth went clean through.”