by Thomas King
MAIDIE MATTHEWS is stacking twenty-pound bags of sheep manure in a pile on the sidewalk in front of the store.
“End of next week, there won’t be a bag left,” she tells me.
Dino Kiazzie calls Maidie “Kri-Kri,” because, he says, she reminds him of the feral goats on Crete.
“So, if you want a sack of the good shit, you better get it now.”
According to Dino, kri-kris are all bone and horns, with no soft spots to pet and a constant need to bang heads.
“Just don’t come crying to me when it’s all gone.”
I’m not in the market for manure, good or otherwise. What I need is a pry bar for wresting the limestone slabs out of the old riverbed and a cart of some sort to get them back to the school. I’ve been carrying the stones one at a time and have decided that this is neither smart nor efficient.
“How those chisels working out?”
I find a cart that looks like a kid’s wagon with steel mesh sides and a lever that allows you to dump the load.
“That’s the new and improved Little Elephant Garden Wagon.”
I spend several minutes pushing the cart back, pulling it forward, working the lever.
“Truth be told, it ain’t all that new, and the biggest improvement is in the price.”
I buy a pair of leather gloves as well.
“Your cousin wandered by,” said Maidie. “Him and his horn. Looked like he’d spent the night in a sack of rats.”
I put the gloves in my new garden cart.
“And the Lock-Mould came in. Ten cartons of the stuff.”
I’m not sure what Maidie is talking about, so I wait.
“For the mould in the trailers.” Maidie shakes her head. “Government folks are supposed to come in the next week or so to show everyone how to use the stuff. Suspect they’ll make a bunch of speeches, shake a bunch of hands, take a bunch of pictures, get all weepy about reconciliation.”
I wait some more.
“Looks a whole lot like whipped cream, but you take one sniff and you won’t be putting it on your pumpkin pie anytime soon.”
I debate between a Stanley Wonder Bar and a longer demolition bar and decide on the shorter of the two. I pay cash and get the five-percent discount.
“You be sure about that wagon,” Maidie cautions me. “I don’t take returns.”
I PULL THE CART back to the school. I’m hungry, but I take my time, pretend I’m walking a large dog.
“Hello,” I could say to Iku Takahashi, if I happen to run into her on the trail, “this is Brutus.” Or Daisy. Or Max. Or Lucy. Maybe my dog and Koala could be friends. Go on walks together. Chase each other around trees.
Buddy and Koala.
Koala and Chester.
By the time I get to the turnoff for Broken Bough Falls, I’m smiling and humming the tune about who let the dogs out. I even throw in a couple of dance steps. I’m sure I look like an idiot, and I’m glad the crows aren’t around to see me.
WHEN I LEFT THE CITY, I decided I would stop talking. Completely. That was easy enough. I also decided to stop paying attention to what was happening in the world.
That was harder.
At the Locken Group, I was paid to collect the flotsam and jetsam of humanity. Collect it. Sort it. Process it. And finally, to squeeze out patterns from the distillate.
A great many people are fond of saying that information is power.
It’s not.
Thomas Locken knew that information by itself was worthless, that the only value was in the patterns that information revealed. Understanding those patterns, being able to predict how and where they would form and the effect they would have, that was power.
Seeing the patterns. Recognizing their significance. Forecasting. That was my job.
THE KITCHEN IS EMPTY. No cat. No Oliver Flood hiding in the cupboard. No Roman Moosonee and his horn lurking under the stairs. Today, lunch will be a hard-boiled egg, Swiss cheese, sliced tomatoes, cottage cheese, and a piece of toast. This is my lunch every day. What it lacks in variety, it makes up for in speed and nutrition.
Repetition is the rule for breakfast as well. Quinoa with a sprinkling of Parmesan and a large spoonful of cottage cheese.
Dinner, on the other hand, is a rotating medley of foods that can be cooked and refrigerated in bulk. Chili, stew, any number of casseroles, meat loaf, and soup. Cook once. Eat the same thing for the rest of the week.
The face of a routine.
There are a number of negatives associated with routines. They have the annoying habit of crashing on the unpredictability of life. On the other hand, they provide structure and can take some of the stress out of everyday living.
My meal routines exist because I don’t mind eating the same thing every day. They exist because I am determined to simplify my life. And they exist because I’m lazy.
I HAVE JUST SHELLED the egg and arranged the tomato wedges on the plate when I see the woman in the graveyard.
Ash Locken.
There’s no reason for her to be there, among the crosses and the stones, but there she is.
I put the bread in the toaster and open the cottage cheese. If she wants to wander the graves, then she can wander the graves. Her presence is no reason for me to interrupt my lunch.
The cat appears out of nowhere, jumps up on the counter, sits on the window ledge so she can watch whatever drama might unfold. The list of names is on the kitchen table. I don’t need to look at it, but I do anyway.
I FINISH MY LUNCH, rinse the dish and my fork, and put them away. I get into my work clothes, grab the hammer and the chisels, the new pry bar. Ready for a pleasant day of manual labour in the crisp spring air.
I go to the window. The graveyard is empty now. Locken has moved on, and it’s safe to come out of the school.
Except it’s not.
Ash Locken is waiting for me. She’s standing by the corner of the building, next to my Little Elephant Garden Wagon.
“I had a wagon when I was a kid,” she says, “but mine was pulled by a pony.”
I put my tools in the wagon, pull on my gloves.
“I decided to go for a walk, and I wound up here.” Locken looks around as though she’s just discovered where she is. “What are the odds?”
I pull my wagon through the graveyard. Locken follows me.
“At the hotel this morning, you were staring at me through the window.” Locken steps around a cross, looks down at one of the stones. “Do you stare at many women?”
Now that I have the pry bar and the wagon, I figure that I can move four or five stones at a time.
“Any thoughts?” she asks. “About last night?”
It is not a long walk to the dry riverbed, but it’s across uneven ground. Locken is wearing shoes with spool heels, and they twist under her feet. There is the chance that she will tire of following me and leave.
But she doesn’t.
“I’m not going anywhere, so we might as well talk.”
I look around for the crows, but they are nowhere to be seen. That figures. First sign of trouble and they disappear.
“What did you make of the note at the bottom of the list?” she says. “Handwritten. Rather cryptic, don’t you think?”
I bring the wagon to the middle of the riverbed, get down on my knees, and begin working on a stone buried in the silt.
“‘We Exist at the Sufferance of Others.’” Locken flashes a smile. “Almost biblical.”
I use the pry bar. The first stone comes up easily. I lift it into the wagon and go to work on a second.
“Amanda Cho.” Locken lets the name hang in the air. “Fabrice Gloor.”
The hard part is the chiselling. That will take much longer. On the other hand, the bonfire of the crosses will be satisfying.
“But I can see you’re busy.” Locken stands, smooths her dress. “And we’re just getting to know each other.”
Here, the dry riverbed is shallow, the bank not particularly high. Locken takes the slo
pe at an angle, scales it easily.
“Let’s do this again, soon.”
I follow her retreat until she clears the graveyard and the crosses.
And then I go back to the digging.
9
I don’t notice that the crows have returned until I put a large stone into the Little Elephant and discover that one of the birds has shit on my wagon. They’re in a large cottonwood, sitting together in a row on a bare branch, and they all look guilty.
I clean the crow poop off my wagon with a handkerchief. My guess is that the culprit is Slick, and I’m willing to make allowances for youthful exuberance.
So long as it doesn’t happen again.
I dig up three more stones, load them into the wagon, and head back to the graveyard.
FATHER EDWARD HINCH.
From all reports, a decent sort. Pious, idealistic, a young man who truly believed in the word of god and his omnipresence in the world, who trusted, without reservation, the church’s claim as god’s agent on earth.
“Guy was enthusiastic,” Nutty told me. “Had a thing for religious stuff.”
Father Hinch was a collector. Of holy relics. All the money he could scrape together went to the purchase of religious artifacts.
“Bought a couple pieces of that cross. Had a stone from some famous mountain and a tooth from one of the saints.”
Buying or selling holy relics is simony, and it’s a sin. But according to Nutty, Hinch didn’t buy these things for his own edification. The money he spent was a donation in an ongoing effort to rescue spiritual artifacts from a temporal and skeptical world.
“Used to put all this stuff out on a table when he said Mass, so everyone could share in his happiness.”
The problem was, Hinch didn’t have the money to purchase chewing gum let alone a strand of the Virgin Mary’s hair.
“Robbed Peter to pay Paul,” said Nutty. “Took money from the school budget, when he should have been buying food and clothing and medical supplies for the kids.”
Then came the winter of 1944.
THE CROSS THAT MARKS Jacob Potts’s grave is rotted, and it breaks off when I try to pull it out. When this happens, I take the time to dig up the rest of the stake. I could ignore it, but I would know that the end of the stick is still in the ground, like a knife in a wound.
I should have brought my shovel with me. I try to dig the rest of the stake out with my hands, but it’s buried too deep, and the ground is still hard. I drop the stone next to the hole as a reminder of what I need to do.
Then I move on to the next cross.
THE STORM OF 1944 started on December 12 and the snow didn’t stop for four days. By the time the blizzard passed, Gleaming, the reserve, and the rest of the province were entombed under a mountain of snow.
Food at the school was scarce, warm clothing non-existent, and the children began to sicken. Father Hinch’s answer to malnourishment and disease was to pray. He said Mass twice a day, had the children gather around his collection of relics for the protection he was sure they would provide. At one point, to keep the children’s spirits up, he had everyone march around the chapel past the stations of the cross as he recited the rosary.
It wasn’t until the snow abated and the weather cleared that anyone in the town or on the reserve knew that something was wrong.
Five children died during that snowstorm. Another four died within the following month.
Father Hinch was adamant that the situation could have been far worse had it not been for the relics and the power they contained, and that the children who had died had died in a state of grace.
By the end of the second month after the storm, the death toll had reached fourteen.
I PULL UP THE CROSS for Mary Rogers and the one for Susan Wabano. Both come out cleanly. I put the stones in place, digging around them, inlaying them into the earth, so that anyone who comes into the graveyard won’t be stubbing their toes on the dead.
I wait for Mary and Susan to appear. But they don’t.
TODAY, I DECIDE I will just deal with the gathering and the placement of stones, will leave the chiselling for another day. I make three more trips to the riverbed and bring back four stones each trip.
Twelve stones. One for each of the apostles, if I’m looking for religious symbolism. Or one for each month in the year, if I’m not.
Twelve crosses. Plus the ten already in the pile. More than enough for a handsome fire.
I’m thinking about the graves and the crosses when I see Roman step into the cemetery.
THERE WAS AN INQUIRY of course. The band pressed the diocese to have Hinch removed, citing the embezzlement and his incompetence in providing the necessities of life. But Hinch had stood firm. The actions taken, he argued, had been the correct ones, the use of the school budget justified, the purchase of sacred artifacts necessary for the spiritual health of the children.
The deaths, god’s will.
Hinch stayed on for another twenty-one years, buying more trinkets and charms, dispensing nostrums, tending the graveyard.
ROMAN IS CLEAR-EYED and shaven, his clothes clean, his hair combed. He smiles at me as though we’re old friends.
“Cuz,” he says. “You want some help?”
I flip a stone into place and begin the process of setting it into the ground.
“Nutty said you’ve been digging up shit.” Roman turns and looks at the waiting pile of tinder. “Cool.”
Roman and his cornet have been onstage with the likes of Neil Young, A Tribe Called Red, Nickelback, and Shania Twain. He’s played at the Spotted Cat in New Orleans, Bimhuis in Amsterdam, the Rex in Toronto, and Ronnie Scott’s jazz club in London.
“You like jazz, cuz?”
But when he’s not playing, he generally winds up in trouble. One year, during the Remembrance Day celebration in the plaza, Roman showed up with the lyrics of an Edwin Starr song stencilled on a T-shirt and sporting a giant white poppy stuck to the side of a World War II combat helmet.
“Going to be at the Nail.”
“War, what is it good for?” was on the front of the T-shirt. “Absolutely nothing” was on the back. Roman had stood at the edge of the crowd and played “Last Post” while the mayor was trying to read a speech about patriotism, valour, and sacrifice.
“Just got to get the lips back in shape.” Roman kicks at the ground.
None of the people in the plaza that Remembrance Day would have admitted that they liked killing. All they wanted was to celebrate the traditions and pageantries of war, the bloodless rituals of flags and songs, without being reminded of the inherent slaughter.
“Jail don’t help with the embouchure.”
It was an illusion, of course. War was about killing, no matter how you dressed it up, and Roman, with his black T-shirt and white poppy, had called the question. And for that, the good folks of Gleaming did not forgive him.
Before the week was out, his trailer was vandalized, the tires on his pickup slashed.
“Let me know when you put the torch to the crosses.” Roman turns towards the reserve. “That’s something I’d like to see.”
I FINISH SETTING the stones and call it a day. The bonfire can wait. The crosses aren’t going anywhere, and I still have a great many left to remove.
The crows sit quietly in the tree, pretending that they know what is coming next. It’s a trick they’ve learned over the years, and they’re good at it.
I sit in the quiet of the graveyard, my back braced against the wagon. All around me, I can feel the children who are buried in this place, and I wonder if they know I’m here.
The Locken Group. Somehow, I thought I had escaped.
Ash Locken and the list. Somehow, I thought I was safe.
The crows come alive and begin squawking with delight. They’re right. I should have known better.
10
For the rest of the week, life is a slow, quiet routine.
I get out of bed, feed the cat, pick up the brownie, listen to
Florence and the news over coffee.
Even the weather has decided to co-operate, and I’m able to spend each afternoon in the graveyard, chiselling names into river stones. I pull up more crosses and put them on the pile, which is substantial now and should make for a remarkable blaze when the time comes.
But that is not today.
Today, the people from Indian Affairs are due to arrive on the reserve to meet with band and council. Nutty has asked me to be there. I don’t want to go, but there’s a good chance the crows will show up.
Maybe Slick will shit on the minister’s car.
I wouldn’t want to miss that.
I TAKE A SHOWER, shave, brush my teeth, put on a white shirt that I’ve kept from my days at Locken. The cat sits next to the toilet and watches me. I don’t know if cats can smile or if they even have a sense of humour. I suspect that they’re all sarcasm and mockery, and that this one is having a good time at my expense.
I avoid looking in the mirror. I have no interest in seeing what the cat sees.
I put on a light jacket and my oilskin hat. I’m not happy about leaving the school, not pleased with the prospect of standing around exposed, not excited by the certainty of pork-barrel speeches and fast-food ceremonies.
The acknowledgement that we’re on fill-in-the-blank Nation’s territory.
The assurance that the government has our best interests at heart.
The suggestion that things are not as bleak as they seem.
The promise that tomorrow will be better.
I TAKE MY TIME, walk around the long way, come into the council grounds at an angle. Nutty and Ada sit on folding chairs in the shade of the cedars. Florence stands behind them, her face flat, her lips set. Roman is at the big drum, along with Jake Somosi, Gordon James, and Benjamin Hunt. They sit there, drumsticks at the ready, in case a cavalry troop shows up unexpectedly.
The speeches are in full swing. The deputy minister, a young woman in a beaded leather jacket, is apologizing for the minister’s absence, citing pressing duties in Ottawa and assuring everyone that this is, in no way, an indication of the importance the government places on the matter, and that when she speaks, she speaks for the minister. She stands tall at the podium, an RCMP officer in red serge at each elbow.