The Republic of Nothing

by Lesley Choyce

“They won’t come after you here. You’re safe. Canada isn’t shipping back draft dodgers and deserters,” Ben said.

  “You know what happened when we were coming across the border?” he asked Ben, like he was about to tell some tri-vial joke. “Go ahead, Gwen. Tell ‘em, what happened.”

  Gwen just shook her head and sipped on the hot tea that had just been poured.

  Burnet stood up and pointed at the yellow stain on his dirty white Levis. “I pissed my pants. I was that scared.” He seemed to be enjoying his own humiliation.

  Gwen tried to change the subject. “I’ve been trained by the Quakers in the right things to say at the border. Burnet had fake I.D. He did just fine when they questioned him.”

  An hour later, Burnet was shown to an upstairs room and he went to sleep.

  “Many more like him in Boston?” Ben asked.

  “They’re not all that bad, but some are worse. Burnet still has two arms and two legs. Some don’t. Others just want to avoid the draft. They don’t want to go to war and they don’t think they should have to go to jail. We help them get over the border. Most are going to Montreal. I thought Burnet would be better off here.”

  Maybe some of my mother’s mind-reading techniques had rubbed off on me. I knew exactly what Ben was thinking as he said, “I’ve got a roof on my new house — well, almost. I can finish it this summer. I’ve got a reason to now. I think I can finally put Mr. Kirk’s house to the promised use.”

  I looked at Gwen. “You can stay here on the island then. You can help them adjust — continue being a counsellor. Whale-bone Island can be the permanent home of war resisters or a halfway house for those moving up here if they want to go on to Halifax or Montreal.”

  “It’s not a bad idea,” Ben said. “I’m willing to have a go at this thing. I’ve worked in psychiatric units. I can be of some help, I’m sure. Besides, 7 really need something.”

  Gwen was mulling it over in her mind. I was afraid to speak, afraid to say anything. I could see how everything was fitting perfectly together.

  “I’ve got to go back,” she said, finally, shattering my hopes and dreams. “There’s not much I could do here. I need to be there. I need to be in the States. You don’t understand. I’m good at convincing them it’s okay to leave their country when they have doubts. Like Burnet, they come in scared to death. They don’t want to fight, but some of them think they can’t run away from the war. Some of them are right on the line — they don’t know if they have the guts to leave it all behind. Sometimes they decide they’d rather be victims, rather be soldiers in a war they hate than have their family think they’re unpatriotic. It’s crazy, but you wouldn’t understand. You grew up here. They need me, Ian. They need me there.”

  I started to speak; I wanted to plead, to beg. Instead, I told her about the uranium. I told her that we stood a good chance of losing the island, of seeing it drilled and dug and wrecked forever, of having it carved up piece by piece and carted off to be made into fuel for nuclear weapons. “I’m scared, too,” I said at last. “I know you think you should be in Boston, but we need you here. You can still help out from this end. And the island needs you. I need you.” I suddenly felt very small and selfish. But I was trapped. I couldn’t leave to go with her, not now. And I couldn’t live with her away any more.

  Gwen looked straight at me, into me. I saw the confusion in her eyes, the worry in her face. Then she put her hand on my neck and pulled herself close to me. “All right, Ian,” she whispered in my ear. “Maybe I should stay. For you. You’ve done so much for me.”

  I knew then that I had just won some sort ot battle; I had been assured of her loyalty. I guess right then I didn’t care if what she meant was love or if it was something else. I didn’t care if I was being selfish by keeping Gwen here. All I knew was that I had her back with me here on the island, and I was going to hang onto her. I wasn’t going to let her go again.

  42

  There are times in life when everything falls completely apart and times when all the fragments come back together, coalescing into one magnificent, perfect whole. Order and meaning had fought a war with chaos and destruction; the former alliance had won. Gwen had returned. It became clear as we talked that she cared for Burnet only as a friend, that she would help him in his recovery, but she did not want him as a lover. We achieved a strange and rare conspiracy of compassion. Neither of us felt angry at Burnet for what he had been or what he had done. In fact, there was something very easy and natural about forgiving him now. To forgive was, indeed, among the most divine of human deeds. We would make a pact against the stupidity of grudges and revenge. We were of a new generation that would solve global problems by compassion and forgiveness.

  Gwen spoke of the people she met in the States, of the great movement of revolution so powerful that the war would have to cease for there would be no more soldiers willing to fight. Burnet himself was a reminder to us of how war destroys even the strong, even those with killer instincts. Reduced to a weak phantom of his former self, Burnet was a victim but also a survivor of his past. We would give him a new name and he would live among us, resurrected. Saul transformed to Paul on the road to Damascus. A living metaphor of the transfiguration of the world that the hippies and their allies would bring about.

  After Gwen and I left the old Kirk house at nine o’clock that night, we climbed up onto the almost completed roof of Ben’s home-in-progress and sat beneath the Nova Scotia sky as the sun departed and the first stars blossomed in the pink and blue of night. Venus appeared first near the cusp of the horizon, a good omen. I held Gwen in my arms and kissed her with all the strength I had. It was the kiss of our rediscovery. So much time had passed since we had been last together.

  Gwen and I discussed the game plan. Ben wanted very much “something to do.” The island was a perfect refuge for draft dodgers and for AWOL soldiers. The Canadian government would not object. If questions were raised, I would use my father’s influence to protect us. I would put his shameless politics to some good use, although I would not dare mention this until after he was renominated by his party and safely reelected. The papers made it clear. Despite Colin’s boondoggles and sleaze, my father would be a shoo-in. A “man of the people” with a “new vision for the province.” If ever I had hated my father, I had forgotten about it. Hate would be dropped altogether from the vocabulary of the new order. Peace, equality, freedom, forgiveness and compassion. We would have a code. It was already being hammered out by the kingpins of the revolution, young American men and women Gwen suggested, so pure in their motives and with such inspiration in their hearts that their followers were now in the millions. We would trans-form the world without guns or greed.

  The sky drew dark and those familiar stars, those friends that my mother and I had dreamed into being, returned. They had been there all along, just hiding behind the light of day. In the dark, though, all things became pure and vivid and the shape of the dream had sharp definition. I told Gwen about how her father and I had wrecked the uranium driller’s equipment.

  “You and my father?” She could hardly believe it. He was part of the revolution.

  “We worked together quite well.”

  “Beautiful. Wow.”

  “I’m learning to like the guy. We have a lot in common.” Well, maybe not a lot. We both hated uranium and loved Gwen. That was probably the limit of it, but it was enough. “Mannheim/Atlanta will never come back now. They’ll realize that they’re up against a bunch of crazy anarchists.”

  But Gwen seemed to have lost interest in my assessment of the battle for Whalebone Island. She stood up on the gently sloping roof, brushed her beautiful long hair out with her hands, undid a couple of buttons and let her long paisley dress slip to the boards beneath her bare feet. She towered over me as I lay on my elbows and I looked up at her long naked, beautiful legs. I slid my hand onto her leg and felt the sheer delight of her warm soft skin. I kissed her delicately upon the foot, then the ankle, then crawled forwar
d on my elbows like a soldier on his belly in the battlefield of love, in a war where no enemy exists.

  I heard her let out a wonderful cosmic sigh as she slipped down onto her knees and I made a trail up her thigh until I found her cleft and softly invaded with my tongue. She bent back and as I watched I saw the beautiful arc of her body aglow with the cold, clean light of startime. I dove deep with my tongue and reached up the length of her with my arms until she found my hands and pulled me, a prisoner, now further and further into her. I don’t pretend that I have such great skills at such things but a young man invents, improvises, takes tutorial delight from the shuddering of a woman’s body. On a divine night like this he takes counsel from the light of distant suns. After the first shock wave of our lovemaking passed, I slid up onto her and we rolled over and over on the roof, our backs occasionally encountering the shock of a renegade roofing nail. If it scratched or drew blood, I’m sure we couldn’t have cared less, for we made love until exhausted. Then we fell asleep, right there on the sloping roof beneath the stars.

  When I woke, maybe an hour later, chilled now by a light breeze up off of the ocean, I found that we had rolled in unison to the very edge of the roof. Below us was a ten-foot drop to a pile of shingle scraps. As I gently nudged Gwen back from the precipice, she woke up and we laughed, reassembled ourselves, sorted out our intermingled souls and put our clothes back on.

  “Beautiful,” Gwen said.

  “Wow,” I added. Those two words had become anthem.

  “Beautiful. Wow,” we declared together, bumping our heads forehead to forehead.

  I walked Gwen home, led her to her door, then evaporated into the night to find my way back to my bed at home, to explain everything right down to our lovemaking to my mother and to prepare myself for the years of euphoria to come.

  If any of this sounds naive, I beg you to remember that I had grown up the son of a proud anarchic revolutionary and a beautiful metaphysical sorceress. Dreams changed lives. Wives appeared as gifts from the sea. The distribution of free fish to the masses brought power of political dimension. On an island in the Republic of Nothing, minds were read, dogs brought back from the dead, elephants appeared on the shore, Vikings slept and grandfathers took trains and ferries back to life from purgatory. Certainly in such a republic, mere human happiness was possible. Certainly two people could love each other enough, forge enough forgiveness and compassion in their souls to transform a small planet into a Garden of Eden. All of this was possible.

  My mother was asleep when I got home. I counted the pills. She had not taken a single one. I leaned over her, listened to her regular breathing. I decided that I liked the sound of my mother breathing. Something about it reminded me of the sitar music on the Beatles’ Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band album. My mother’s arm was stretched across the bed where my father had once slept. Her hand clutched his pillow. Every time I saw my mother sleeping alone I was saddened, but tonight was different. I was sure that if things were going so right for me, I could not help but drag the rest of us into good fortune.

  I lay down beside of my mother on the place where my father should have been. I lay on top of the covers but put my head on the pillow and lifted my mother’s hand, held it in my own. I remained like that, motionless on my back, drifting off into a deep meditative trance, for I was convinced that sleep was no longer necessary for me. I had been revived enough by Gwen’s return to remain fully awake for the rest of my days.

  I knew that my deep meditative trance might well have something to do with my mother as well. During the heights of her powers, she had some sort of energy field that could stretch out to affect others. Had Tennessee Ernie possessed the right equipment, I’m sure he could have measured this aura, this electromagnetic wavelength that could engulf another mind with her own and bring about a deep, relaxing state. I was like that, lost in the limits of a peaceful, emptied mind when I felt her pull her hand away. I felt the bed shudder and jerk and heard my mother trying to speak. It took me a few seconds to come back into this world.

  At first I felt slightly embarrassed that I had lay down on the bed beside my mother and drifted off like this. The old me worried, in my daze, if this was somehow perverse or unnatural, but I quickly erased that from my mind. I sat up. My mother was making noises. Her head was shaking from side to side. Her eyes were still closed but she was trying to talk, trying to let out a sound, but it was as if she could not open her mouth. I knew she was dreaming something terrible and I remembered something about the dangers of awakening someone in the middle of a nightmare. I wanted to hold her to quiet her thrash-ing, but I was afraid to touch her. She shook her head from side to side rapidly and so hard I feared she’d break her neck.

  Still not knowing quite what to do, I got up off the bed and began whispering to her, “It’s all right. You’re going to be all right, Dorothy.” But her movements became more spasmodic. Then her mouth unsealed and she began to say, “No, No, No!” in a hoarse, distressed whisper. Her arms started to strike out into the air at something. “You can’t do this,” she said in her nightmare and then finally, overwhelmed by what-ever had taken possession of her, she let out a long blood-chilling scream and sat bolt upright in bed.

  Casey came running into the room and switched on the light. She saw the confusion in my face and the panic in my mother. She took our mother in her arms and began to rock her like a little baby. Dorothy was awake now and crying, a sound of pure agony spilling out into the room like nothing I had ever heard before.

  “It’s okay, Mom,” Casey said. “Ian and I are both here. Everything is all right.”

  My mother looked straight at me now and I wanted to reach out, to hold her, but I was frightened by the strange and terrible look in her eyes. It was some sort of recognition, but I had no idea what she was seeing. She pulled away from me and wept into Casey’s neck. Casey just kept repeating over and over, “It’s okay, it’s okay, it’s okay.” I sat on the bed with them, wanting to hold onto them both but unsure of what to do. What had my mother seen in me after her dream, her nightmare? Casey, now grown suddenly older and responsible, rocked my mother until the terror had diminished into soft sobbing.

  “It was just a dream,” I told my mother, reaching out to her and, holding her tear-ravaged face in my hands. “It was just a dream. Everything is back to normal now.”

  She shook her head. “No. It wasn’t just a dream. And everything is not back to normal.”

  “What do you mean?” Casey asked.

  “I know what happened,” my mother said. “I finally know what happened before your father found me.”

  “Don’t talk about it now,” I said. “Just try to relax and think about being here with us.”

  “I want Everett to be here right now. I need him to be here. Why the hell isn’t he here?” she whispered.

  43

  My father would not be coming home that night. The leadership convention was only two days away. He was on a roll. I tried phoning his apartment but there was no answer. So I tried his office. He was there but Herb Legere was the closest I could get to my old man. “Your father is still in a strategy session. It’s been going all night,” he explained. “It’s crucial we iron out one final detail. I’d rather not bother him with a family matter right now.”

  “Family matter, for Christ’s sake!” I shouted over the phone. “My mother is very upset. This isn’t like her. I’m not sure what’s happening, but I know she’s in trouble and my father should be here.”

  Herb was cool as a cucumber. “I can refer you to a very good psychiatrist. In fact, I think there are a few in the party loyal. Perhaps one would be willing to drive down there to-night. What do you think?”

  “We don’t want a fucking psychiatrist!” I shouted at him over the phone, then stifled myself, not wanting my mother to hear more of my outburst.

  “Please, Ian,” Herb cajoled me. “These, as I said, are very sensitive times. I prefer news of your mother’s problems does
n’t spread. We’ll do whatever we can do to help.”

  “Fuck you, Herb,” I said. “Let me speak to my father. And after that, take a pair of vice grips and apply them to your balls.”

  “I can understand why you feel this way,” he said, still cool as a frozen turd. I was amazed at the skills it must take to be a good sycophant. Never act surprised. Never get emotional and above all, never lose your cool. “I’ll level with you, Ian, because I know you are an intelligent young man. Your father is under a lot of stress right now himself. Another member of the caucus has decided to make a big stink about your father’s nomination.”

  “Well, gosh, who could object to such a sweet guy like my father?” I said sarcastically.

  “John G.D. Maclntyre,” Herb answered. “You know him.” “I remember him,” I said. “He was the bastard who got my father into politics in the first place.”

  “John G.D. feels your father is too young. John is jealous and thinks he should have inherited the crown from Colin.”

  “Good. Let him.”

  “If Maclntyre gets nominated, we won’t survive the election. The party goes down the toilet.”

  “Great news. I’m going to celebrate. Now can I speak to my father?”

  “Ian, this is serious. There is a lot at stake here. Can I ask you something? Something personal that won’t go any farther than between you and me?”

  “Sure, Herb. Let’s be bosom buddies. You tell me your secrets and I’ll tell you mine.”

  “Well, I told you about John G. D. Now, would you consider telling me about the Republic of Nothing?”

  “What?” It caught me off guard.

  “And you wouldn’t happen to know anything about somebody pouring sulphuric acid down the carburettor of some equipment on Whalebone Island?”

  I felt the blood draining down toward my toes. “What are you talking about?”

  “John claims that somebody from the island is trying to discourage one of the best economic opportunities to happen to the Eastern Shore in the history of the province.”