Incidents in the Life of Markus Paul (5 page)

This left Roger, unwavering and unbending, to himself.

“This is not right at all,” the man with the chronic blink said on a rain-washed afternoon, looking out over the dreary water from the watchman’s shed on the property and drinking a cup of tea. “He knew that boy was there—he had a beef with the union bosses in the hold, and then the boy is hired on. This just don’t smell right at all.”

“Don’t smell right,” the father said.

“Don’t pass the smell test,” the boy said, “for sure.”

Further to this, the
Lutheran
’s company had claims on the wood and, now that it was mostly loaded, had put in a request to leave—this came from the Dutch company’s head office in Amsterdam. So, as the captain hoped, the ship would be allowed to slip port before the final inquest.

For the
Lutheran
had other worries. It had to be finished because another ship, the
Liverpool Star
, was to berth. This was a contentious subject between the safety board and the Dutch company. And it involved Markus’s grandfather as well. For Amos did not want the
Lutheran
to be allowed such a luxury—to slip port while the death of one of his own people was under investigation. Yet from the whaling days until now, no company wanted to spend money on sailors sitting in dock. Besides, they could easily put pressure on the owners of the wharf itself, who needed their business, and the woodlot owners, who needed to sell their wood to the ships coming in. It was a depressed market—if things got bogged, it would only cause hardship for those trying to make a living, for there were other ships riding high outside the bay, waiting to come in.

Markus’s grandfather tried to keep a positive outlook and keep everyone calm. He ran from one company spokesman to another and one police officer to another and one safety board expert to another, hoping to be influential for the Penniac family and for the band, and to keep Joel Ginnish, who was becoming an awful bigmouth, quiet. Hoping to get the funeral paid for and a stone placed in memory and a written declaration of exactly what had happened. He was assured he would get the safety board’s statement, as well as the police and autopsy
reports, for the band and the family. In these he hoped, for his old friend’s grandson, that it would be called an accident.

“Everything will get done,” he said. “They are treating us with the utmost respect.”

This is what he wanted. But he knew the shipping company was not treating them with the utmost respect. In fact the shipping company was not treating them with respect at all. The men from the company were simple Dutchmen who wanted to go home. They had to offload in England and pick up cargo for Rotterdam. Then if everything went well, after hurricane season they were to head south to Jamaica. This is what they all hoped for and spoke about in the galley at night. And this is why they hated this place now, and hated the man who had spilled the logs.

But knowing this, Amos had to say they were treating him with respect. Like a girl on a date whose boyfriend leaves to dance with some other girl, he had to pretend that this in itself was attendant to the fun.

So Amos paraded about saying everyone was helping him and all things would turn out well, and one must give these things time. Yes, he knew he was lying, but he did not want to cause pain.

During this time Isaac Snow went to ask Amos: had he heard the rumour that the ship was leaving? Isaac had walked into the house while the old man was sitting down to lunch. The old man looked puzzled and surprised, and said simply, pointing to the table: “There is enough here for both of us.”

Markus said nothing. Except he was aware of Isaac looking his way every now and again.

“If the ship leaves, there will be hell to pay,” Isaac said. “Joel is home,” he said. “Joel is home” was a statement not only of fact but of concern. Of course Amos, like everyone else, knew Joel was home. No one could help knowing Joel was home.

“The ship won’t leave. They told me in writing.”

“They told you in writing?”

“Yes—they did—they told me in writing.”

“If the ship leaves without Roger being charged or the Dutch giving their statements at an inquest, then I will have to do something. I will have to—you know this. So now is your chance to get it straightened out.”

“Straightened out—that’s interesting. Why is that interesting?”

But Isaac only looked at him, mystified.

“Straighten it out!” Isaac repeated. “We will regret it if we don’t!”

He said this sternly and looked down at the frail old man, whose white hair was cut short and whose shirt was buttoned up to his Adam’s apple and whose cheerful face was a mass of wrinkles so that it seemed as if tears would form a myriad of streams in his cheeks.

“Well, we might regret something if we do,” old Amos said, the entire face of wrinkles brightening up.

What was it that they wanted? Amos asked Markus later.

His face looked very serious, and not at all puzzled, but wise and definite in what he had to say. He put some tobacco on a paper but he did not roll it; he only held it in his hand.

They wanted to protest—but what?

Against Roger, whom they’d known since he was born, and his flimsy little house at the edge of nowhere? Why, his house wasn’t half as nice as Isaac’s. And more importantly, his education was revamped by Mrs. Francis. So why would he do this!

And if they received from this protest what they wanted—everything in the world they wanted—would they give up their protest? No. He had long ago learned that they would not. If they got the three small pools (not even holding pools except in high water) that had been in Roger’s family three generations, they would not give up—because they could not get what they wanted. They wanted justice for crimes of the past. For something they could not get even for. And they had suffered terrible crimes, yes. But they could not get even. They wanted to live in the past the way they had once been, and could not be again. And no protest would ever change that fact.

“You mean we should let what happened to us go?”

“I am an old man. I don’t know what to tell you about letting things go—but how could we ever get revenge without burning the entire roof off the world? We are the only people who can make peace now. No white can do it—it is in our power only, and so we have to, in order to live. And the only person they will burn the roof off is Roger. Once you betray someone, you hold it against them—that is what they do—so we have to forgive them. But Roger is not one of them.”

Markus did not believe him, and could not believe that his grandfather would speak such words. But old Amos only shook his head and went on rolling his cigarette, and then took the old dog outside, closing the screen door behind him.

The next night Amos wanted to find out about Hector’s life and he invited those of Hector’s age to the band council, and he sat in his chief’s chair, which was far too large for him, its wood pressing against his old bones, while the other council members sat near him. Here was Mrs. Francis, who organized the weekly bingo. Here too was Mr. Billy Ward, and Mr. Jack Sonny. Few of them ever had spent one day in the comfort an average child in Newcastle had. In front of them, boys and girls, dressed like American children, their coal-black hair and eyes giving them away, stood up and began to talk, as Amos looked down at a spring from a ballpoint pen that he kept squeezing, as if he wasn’t at all interested.

Two or three youngsters took to grandstanding about how they had stood up for Hector when he was in the gully. How this guy or that said something to him, and how this native or that stood up for him. Markus was slightly amazed. Why did they now say this with such conviction? Why was it important for them now to be the friend of this man most of them had teased or ignored?

“Hector couldn’t even go up the road unless he was with someone—all the whites liked to torment him,” one boy said.

“Who did?” Amos said, suddenly looking up.

“Just look right and left and you’ll know,” the boy answered, which meant, look to the white houses either French or English.

“Oh, I see,” Amos said.

Old Amos looked down again and, having put the ballpoint pen together, made a mark on a piece of paper, as if he was drawing a boat, and mumbled something. Then he looked up with his small, bright eyes, sighed and thanked the boy for speaking. Then he put his head down again. The next to speak were two youngsters, a boy and girl who came together holding hands and giggling. They wanted the recreation centre named after Hector. And they also wanted a holiday to mark his passing every year.

“A what?” Mrs. Francis asked.

“A holiday—we could have a native holiday—”

That seemed like a good idea to everyone.

After everyone had spoken, Amos thanked them in Micmac and then in English for coming to the meeting and shuffled a few papers in front of himself.

“Well, what are you going to do?” Joel Ginnish asked, looking about, for he thought the meeting had been called to coordinate some action against Roger. Yes, Joel was back home. And he still felt the heaviness of Roger’s left hook. He was a curious mixture of charisma, charm and bitterness. Amos stared at him a long second. Amos, in fact, had always liked him.

“Yes, well, it’s a terrible thing,” Amos said, “a terrible thing.”

T
HERE WAS ONE WHITE MAN AT THE MEETING
. H
E WAS A
thin-faced man, young, his red cheeks whiskerless, with a straw hat tipped back on his head—as if planted there by some idea that was not his own. He had a ponytail down his back. A ponytail showed a kind of
empathy, or in Isaac’s case, strength and freedom. Two ponytails, two reasons to wear one.

The white man was tall and wore a leather tie.

His name was Max Doran, and he was from a big paper down south. His face registered determination. He was the face of white concern.

Just as Roger had been told he should be resolved to be a labourer, so Max Doran had been told that if he was resolved he would get the real story. This story had been thrust into his lap because another young journalist, whose name was Gordon Young, could not do it. (Young had recused himself because he was a cousin of Roger Savage’s, something no one at the paper knew.) Max wanted the story—but like many people in the province, he believed he already had it. Everyone knew what had happened here.

So at the end of the meeting Max Doran looked here and there, trying to find the family of Hector Penniac. He rolled his sleeves up to show his freckled arms, so white on the bottom. Then, taking his gum and carefully folding it away, he walked out with the band members and disappeared, with Amos staring cautiously after him.

“Who is that skinny white boy?” Mrs. Francis asked.

“That is Max Doran—the famous journalist,” Amos whispered to Mrs. Francis. “And I am now afraid.”

That night after he got home, Amos silently put on the kettle and put bread in the toaster and sat at the table, and watched the toaster and listened to the kettle simmer into life.

Markus stood at the counter with his arms folded, not saying anything, hoping his granddad would say that yes it was terrible and he would take action.

But his grandfather said this: “I am thinking, how would this be murder, done like this? What do you think? It wouldn’t be much more than a fluke—at best a fluke.” He nibbled his toast.

“So a fluke is still a fluke,” Markus said. “Some people are saying
now … well, you know—Hector was, you know, and so might Roger have been, you know. And, well, maybe it was a quarrel, you know?”

“Yes . well, you might be right, of course.” Amos had heard these rumours from Mrs. Francis. “But then again, if I wanted to murder someone, I would not rely upon a fluke.”

“Then why won’t he say he hooked?”

“Because—I don’t know. Maybe because he lied at first for Mr. Morrissey’s benefit and can’t now take it back.”

But that lie did loom against the large blue bay outside.

Early the next morning Amos and Markus went along to the ship the
Lutheran
. Amos told Markus to stay in the truck while he asked to go in, to check out the hold. But Markus came and stood beside him.

There amid the scent of peeled pulp was the pungent scent of Hector’s death. The smell, and traces of blood that had not been washed away entirely by the ordinary seaman Vanderhoof, who had dutifully tried. They could tell that Hector had been close to the centre of the hold when the pulp hit him. The pulpwood that had crushed the young man’s skull was still lying in the centre of the hold. That is, it had not been placed away and where it would go had not been decided upon.

The other loads had been placed, however, and were snug, and the other holds were full. This hold was not yet filled, and no more loads would come to it. It was small, and had a cubby section just below it where two men would work. One man had been working the cubby that day, with three men in the upper part of the hold. The ship took about 110 tons of wood. It had been refitted below with new engine parts and a new generator; it was an old ship, actually launched sometime in the late forties. It carried a crew of twenty-seven men and women, nineteen of whom were ordinary seamen.

Some Dutch men looked down upon Amos and Markus quizzically, not used to seeing First Nations people. The Dutch men—and two women—had an innocent aloofness. It was as if what had happened had
been a story told to them, and now they believed it fully. With Amos, they were mute and dumbfounded. But at night, alone, the men howled at the idea that this little fellow was chief. This was something Amos knew, and took in stride.

Without looking at them, Amos yelled up, “How did the load come down?” and he jerked his arms to show the way he thought it might have happened.

But no one answered, because they had been warned by their captain not to say another thing. The papers in Rotterdam were calling Roger Savage a murderer, or close to it—that is, stories had circulated wildly, and everyone was interested in what had happened. The captain forbade them to speak, or they’d be fired, because any suggestion that the sailors themselves knew something would keep them in dock longer, and perhaps they’d be made to testify. This was the last thing the captain, Jon De Berg, wanted, and so he forbade them to speak.