A Quality of Light (42 page)

“Thanks. Any coffee?”

“Sure. It’s instant, but what the hell.”

“What the hell.”

“You okay?”

“Me? Yeah. You?”

“All right. I haven’t slept much. Spotlights through the windows all night. Feel like I should be doing vaudeville or something.”

“The situation does have its burlesque qualities,” I said.

“You’re telling me. Let’s get to the boardroom. I don’t like keeping those people tied up any longer than I have to.”

“They’re not tied up all the time?” I asked, surprised.

“Hell no. We got cable, there’s cards, food, this place is a country club. Tonight we’re gonna tune in a ball game!”

“You’re not afraid they’ll run? Try to overpower you?” I asked.

“Nah. There’s no heroes here. Everyone just wants to get home without holes. Besides, we have an understanding.” he said.

“An understanding?”

“Yeah. Respect. They respect me enough to behave themselves and I respect them enough to let them have movement most of the day. The failure of that understanding is implied,” he said and offered a crooked little grin and a small lift of the rifle.

“You’d shoot them?”

“Me? Are you crazy? No. It’s them,” he said, hooking a thumb towards the windows. “Outside. They’re the dangerous ones here. They’re the ones who wanna play out High Noon. That’s our understanding. I’m their protection!” he said.

“You’re their captor,” I replied.

“Well, in a manner of speaking. I mean, I’ve got the detonator and all, but as long as I’m alive and well, the boys aren’t gonna come crashing in here shooting and blowing things up in the name of justice, propriety and the ghost of Matt Dillon. As long as I’m okay, they’re okay. And besides … no one’s got the joke yet.”

“What joke?”

“You said it yourself, Josh. The situation’s got its burlesque qualities. Only this isn’t a burlesque so much as it is counting coup,” he said.

“What are you talking about?”

He smiled, a warm generous smile that broke out of the starkness of the war paint as suddenly as inspiration through ennui. He put an arm around my shoulder and directed me along the hallway towards the far boardroom and the captives. My edginess lapsed somewhat in the boyish closeness.

“I don’t know if you ever found this out. I think maybe you have
to be pretty connected to the old way to have it given to you. But I’ll tell you anyway,” he said, ambling casually up the hallway. “In traditional times our men would go into battle to defend their territory. They went armed with the knowledge that life is the most sacred of things. Theirs, the world’s, their enemies’. Knowing that, they entered those conflicts with the desire to simply touch their enemy. They carried short curved staffs decorated with furs and feathers to represent living things and painted with symbolic designs and colors to represent the spiritual world. Those sticks were called coup sticks. As the two sides converged the trick was to touch your enemy with your coup stick. It was seen as a far greater measure of integrity and courage to be able to reach out and touch your enemy than to take his life. Warriors then recognized that anyone could take a life. That’s always been easy. It’s much harder to grant life, especially to an enemy.” He stopped to lean against the wall casually.

“But they needed something they could display as a symbol of their bravery. So when they braided their hair, they braided an extra little braid on the heart side. Like this,” he said, grabbing the tiny third braid I’d noticed. “It’s called a scalp lock — a warrior braid. When they went into battle the trick became to touch your enemy and cut off his scalp lock. Unlike Europeans, no one had to die for battle to be victorious, no one had to be crushed, or subjugated. They just took the warrior braid. The whiteman, of course, bastardized the tradition. He saw it as taking the whole scalp. Killing a warrior and dishonoring him by taking his hair. That’s where the Hollywood notion of Indians taking scalps came from. Same with hair. They’d have us believe that Indians wore their hair parted neatly in the middle and braided. We didn’t. We parted it on the heart side to remind us to always live heart first, not head first. Counting coup pretty much disappeared after settlement started. Our notions of courage and victory got swept up into the general mishmash like everything else. But it’s still possible to count coup these days. You just have to use a little science, that’s all.” He winked at me.

“So, are you saying that no one’s going to die here, Johnny? Is that it?” I asked cautiously.

“I’m saying no one’s going to die. And that’s the joke they haven’t got yet!” He leaned in close to me and glanced over his shoulder, bugging out his eyes and arching his eyebrows. The old Johnny. He cupped one hand close to my ear and whispered, “Because there’s no explosives.”

“What!”

He grinned slyly. “There’s no explosives.”

“What about downstairs? I retaped the dynamite to the door handles myself.”

“No. You
thought
you retaped the dynamite to the door handles. Anyone who was looking only
thought
they saw you do it. They only
thought
the entranceway was sealed and primed. But it’s not real. Well, yeah, the dynamite is real, but the wires and stuff? I faked it. I’m no mad bomber, Josh. The only thing I ever blew up was a story or two.” He grinned broadly. “You can learn anything from books, Josh.”

I was flabbergasted. “But the commissionaires. The knapsack. The detonator.”

He laughed. “It was all acting. Acting. Props. I created the illusion of a well-thought-out, well-prepared occupation and I played the part of a grim, rational desperado. That government guy Mueller bought it hook, line and sinker and he sold everybody into believing it. When I let those four hostages go I made sure they saw me painting myself, saw me checking ammunition, got a good long look at the detonator, everything. Right down to loading and stuffing the derringers in my moccasins. And they bought it all because it’s perfect timing. Theater is timing. Everyone’s so shook up over Oka and the firepower and the masked Warriors that the idea of one crazy waving guns and planting bombs in solidarity isn’t so big a stretch.”

“You have got to be kidding,” I said.

“No joke,” he replied firmly.

“But why?”

“Burlesque.” He grinned. “Camp. Irony. Farce. A ludicrous representation. What better way to show the effects of a forced occupation than to perform an occupation yourself?

“Welcome to the frontlines,” he said quietly.

“I’m lost here,” I said. “I’m not sure I get what you’re trying to tell me.”

“It’s a performance piece, Josh. Five hundred years ago they landed here and began a forced occupation of our land. They
invaded.
They wanted conquest. Why do you think the Spaniards called themselves
conquistadores?
Because they sought to conquer. To conquer the land, to conquer the people they found here. Only they called it exploration and discovery. Euphemism is as strong a weapon as bullets and steel, you know. But how can you be a conqueror when you get
welcomed
on your arrival? How do you call yourself a discoverer when you were lost in the first place? Columbus didn’t discover America. It was never lost. He was! Can’t you see the farce in that? The broad comedy?” He rattled it all off with piercing eyes.

“Sure. Okay. It’s a tragic comedy. So?” I asked.

“So this occupation is built on the same lies. Rightness. Power. Destiny. The people who are the victims of this occupation, the apparent victims anyway, are in this room here,” he said, indicating the boardroom. “They’re sitting there hog-tied. Incapable of motion. All of their rights are gone. In all of this great country they’re forced to stay in one small piece of it. They have no political voice. They’re only recognized as humans when I bequeath a little humanity. They’re under my
care
because I arrived here with power. I conquered. And I conquered with
lies.
I made them less by making myself more. And that’s all okay to me as long as I can still believe that I’m right, that power gives me the right, that it’s my destiny as a warrior and that history is a tool for justification. This fourth floor starting to sound a little like North America? Like Canada?” he asked.

I remembered the American Indian Movement’s occupation of Alcatraz Island and how the manifesto they issued to the US government likened the conditions there to a typical Indian reservation.
That had been theatrical, dramatic and effective as long as the occupation lasted. Once it was over, however, little was ever made of the action and it remained a small satirical footnote in the annals of the Indian movement. The idea behind Johnny’s action was not new. It was bold, and definitely outrageous, but not new. I asked him how long the message would have credence once a resolution was reached.

“That’s why you’re here,” he said. “I’m going to be seen as an eccentric at the very least. Probably more in the vein of a criminal sociopath with a warped sense of humor. That’s what they’ll try to make me out as. They’ll discount anything I might say and any allusion I might draw to the truth of things. So I need a spokesman to make sense of it all. I created a caricature here with the war paint and the guns and shit. Right down to the little derringers in my moccasins. That’s all anyone’s going to be able to see after it’s all over, and I need them to be able to see the
story.
The coup that’s been counted here. I need you to tell them,” he said solemnly.

“Why me?” I asked.

He looked at me from out of the war paint and I could see the pain that lived at the edges of his eyes. Pain that had always been there in various squints and creases and looks. Pain that I never fully recognized until that very moment. He held the look for what seemed an eternity and I could sense the struggle he was having bringing the emotions to language.

“Because you and Staatz were the only ones who ever knew,” he said quietly.

“Knew what, John?” We were both surprised at the sudden propriety. I suppose it was my way of recognizing the unveiling of a truth, a solemnity reserved for confessionals and ritual.

“Knew that I was supposed to be a warrior. That I’ve done everything out of love and not obsession. That I’m not crazy. That I’m not a radical loony,” he answered humbly, fixing me with those mesmerizing eyes.

“Staatz is gone now but they’ll listen to you. You’re a preacher, a man of faith. You have no agenda, no politics, no subversive tendencies. They need the message to come from a man like that and
I need you to help me finish this in a good way. They can’t rush in with you here. They have to play it out and let me play it out to the conclusion I’ve decided on.”

“And what conclusion is that, John?”

He grinned again at the sound of the name.

“You’re frock is showing,” he said.

“Sorry.”

“Don’t be. It’s who you are.” He looked away. “The conclusion is that nobody dies. Nobody dies. See, they think that we think like they think, and we don’t. They think that this is about conflict, about flagrant challenge, about some zealous desire for revenge and retribution. But it’s not. It’s about resolution. So’s Oka. So’s every instance where the People have stood up and protected themselves. Always. Everywhere. Just like this. We walk out of here and we tell the story. Let the power of the symbol be the message. We make sure we know exactly what it is we’re going to say and we walk out of here. Everybody goes home safe. Except me. I go to jail, but that’s a sacrifice I was always prepared to make.”

“And you want me to act as your spokesman? That’s it?”

“No, not entirely,” he said firmly. “I need you to help me figure out how we’re going to get everybody out and not weaken my position. I can’t appear to have an illogical script. It has to be a strong final act. When the curtain comes down on this baby I want them to be hungry for more. I need you to help me write it.”

I was irritated. “You’re making it sound like all we’re doing is writing a play here.”

“We are,” he said and grinned. “We are. A human comedy. Because they won’t listen to politics any more. They won’t listen to leaders who speak in terms of human rights and moral obligation. Hell, they won’t even listen to those who speak on spiritual terms. They being the politicians. They being the media. They being the people who consume the stories and consume the rhetoric. Everybody. Canadians. They don’t listen any more. They need a story told in terms they can relate to. Something they can laugh about, cry about, pack around in their bellies for a while. Something that’ll sneak up on them in the dark of their nights like
they think Indians do. We don’t necessarily need weapons and masks to make our point. It helps sometimes, sure, but what we really need is a story powerful in its implication. A palpable truth, you know?”

“But what if they miss it?”

“Some of them will. They always have. Shit, look how many people think that
Gulliver’s Travels
was a cute story about giants and dwarfs. But some of them will get it. The learned, the enlightened, the creative, the inspired, the recovering wounded. They’ll understand. And those are the kinds of people who can help change things. Those are the kind of people we need to speak to about our survival. The ones who understand intuitively that surviving isn’t about going back, it’s about learning how to pull out the arrows and heal. Everybody needs to heal, Josh. Not just the Indians.”

“This whole thing is about healing?”

“Yeah.”

“But you were the one who told me that what we needed to do was fight, to be warriors and fight. The only message I ever got from you has been warrior this and warrior that. I have to tell you that this plan of yours doesn’t sound much like a warrior thing. It doesn’t sound like you.”

He gazed at me again for a long moment. “That’s because I learned something about that. Something about warriors and something about me.”

“You changed?”

“Yeah. Big time.”

“How?”

“What?”

“How?”

“And you said you weren’t a real Indian!” he said mischievously, and we both grinned at the old joke. “Let’s go untie these people, let you talk to them for a while, reassure them, talk to your phone contact, and then I’ll tell you all about it. Then we can work on getting us off this stage gracefully. Okay?”