But it wasn’t anything like that. By late fall, he claimed to be somewhere in the top ten of the happiest men in Canada. “And men hate being happy,” he would tell me. “By their nature, they like to cause trouble or worry a thing until it breaks their back. I’m the exception to the rule. Men are stubborn too, but look at me. Again the exception. I could take a hint when it was time to leave public life. Some poor assholes stick around until its too late. Like that poor old son of a bitch John G.D. I want you to know I don’t hold a grudge against him. John took me off this island and he bloody well helped me to come back home.”
My father had one fairly serious setback in his recovery. My mother doesn’t like to admit it, but they were making love when it happened. I hadn’t heard the bed springs squeak like that in years and, Lord knows, it must have been a bit early in my old man’s recovery, what with arteries stitched up and lungs patched up, but they were going at it one Saturday night when something must have gone wrong with the repair work. My mother came into my bedroom and told me we had to drive my father to the hospital again because he was having a hard time breathing.
Poor old Dad was a little embarrassed. “Don’t worry, Dorothy,” he said to her on the way there, “I’ll get my wind back.” He did get his wind back, and the squeaking of the bed springs was like music to my ears. But before each session of my parents’ lovemaking, my mother asked me to stand by on call just in case there were medical problems. Fortunately I was never again needed to haul my old man to the hospital.
After a while I stopped worrying about my father’s health and the dangers of lovemaking on a man who had survived the assassin’s bullet. I no longer let myself fret about my mother’s mental stability either. Since her own near-death encounter, she had regained a number of contacts in the spirit world. But it was different now for all of us. In her younger days, she had taken to the metaphysical with a serious, sometimes even eerie, tenor. Her guides had been sombre, dark figures, often well-meaning, but not the sort you’d like to have hanging around for a Friday night gathering of friends for beer and chips. Now, my mother’s invisible friends seemed to be a friendly, chatty lot who could converse with her about immortality and the ongoing spiritual exchange as readily as they could tell her about a new way to prepare a clam sauce.
My father bought a new boat that spring. We cruised her far out to sea on those warm sunny days, dropped anchor and jigged for squid or simply dropped a hand-line or two for cod and mackerel. And we talked, catching up on years of father and son talk. Casey came along too and got to know her father like she had always wanted to. We had all grown tanned and tempered by that September. Trouble would not return to us until later that fall.
My father was at work writing a book about his philosophy and his days in government and, most of all, about the politics of life and death. “I’m a born again anarchist,” he told me. “It wasn’t until I was on the other side, sliding down that long, dark, slanty tunnel that I could begin to see how foolish I had been. I was flat on my back and it felt like I was in a flume of dark warm water. The walls were black, but they had a kind of funny glow to them. When I started, there had been this awful pain in my chest. And I was never as scared as that. I was out of control. I must have gone miles and miles and I kept thinking… I’m going down. And if I’m going down, I’m gonna end up in hell. But then I try real hard and I discover I can sit upright and the pain is all gone. I feel like a little kid again on some kind of slide. And up ahead I see a little light that just keeps growing brighter and brighter. I think that when I get to that light, I’ll just shoot out onto some goddamn playground somewhere, like that one behind your old elementary school in Sheet Harbour.
“But I see it’s not a place — that light up there — it’s a person. It’s your mother, standing there ready to catch me. I’m so happy I figure I’m gonna pee myself only I don’t know if I can pee myself, ‘cause I also know that I must be dead. I’m thinking, so this is dead. It’s funny being dead, a lot funnier than you’d figure. And there’s your mom. I think I’m gonna crash right into her, only I don’t. I arrive there and the tunnel is gone. I’m standing right up on my feet — no pain, no problems, nothing. And your mother is there. Damn, was I ever happy to see her.
“Then this terrible feeling comes over me. Because I was the one who was supposed to be dying. Not her. She holds me in her arms and I want to scream out, ‘What are you doing here? You can’t be here with me!’ But before I can speak she says, ‘I had to come here to bring you back.’”
“And, oh boy, I wanted to go back just then. I mean, I think I wanted to stay, if your mother was there with me, but she held up one hand in the air and in the palm of her hand I could see Casey and in the palm of the other hand I could see you, Ian. So I put my hands up to each of hers and I started drifting off backwards until I was back in bed there in the hospital. The pain came back all at once and it felt so bloody awful, I thought I’d made a mistake. And I couldn’t find your mother anywhere. Man was I scared.”
48
By September the Liberals had been in power for nearly a year. Jason Cameron was an old party chum of Bud Tillish and Bud, his past failures in politics behind him, had been sworn in as minister of Mines and Energy. There was talk of sweeping away all the old Tory misdeeds — the graft, the influence peddling, the patronage and the general squandering of public funds. It was the same self-congratulatory sort of remarks that the public would have heard when Colin came to power and swept away the Liberal’s graft, influence peddling, patronage and squandering of public funds. And in that brief hiatus of public cynicism when a people turn the other cheek and are ever hopeful of real improvement from their politicians, a mild euphoria swept through Nova Scotia.
My father sat before the TV and watched Jason Cameron give bold and promising speeches as premier. My father could predict nearly word for word what would issue from the man’s mouth. It was an odd form of family entertainment to see my father race ahead with his own version of the speech and then hear the less convincing echo of the man on TV, not nearly as eloquent, forge on with the eminent destiny of this great province.
“I lost one of the best speech writers in Halifax to that bastard,” my father said. “We had already been working on this one. After I got shot, Tyrone Glebe went over to the Grits. I liked the man. He had no party loyalty whatsoever. Just wanted to cover his ass and keep his job. He was very up-front about it. He gave me some grand ideas and I fired his imagination with some doozies as well. I’m really quite happy he could put them to use.”
But from where I sat, so much of it boiled down to talk about the great two-faced demon goddess of “economic development.”
“Ever since I’ve come back from the hereafter, I’m beginning to think I might have been wrong about this economy stuff,” my father admitted. “It was such a beguiling idea. But I think I was taken in.” He was still staring at the bland, stone-block face of Jason Cameron. “What we need is spiritual growth. And I don’t mean organized religion.”
I was really happy to hear my old man talk like that again. There was something about dying that took the Tory right out of him. If he was still a politician, he had reverted to something less organized, more renegade and more homespun. “Look at that dip weed,” he said, pointing at the TV screen. “Not an ounce of human emotion in his body. You couldn’t get an honest human reaction out of Jason Cameron if you put a cherry bomb up his ass and lit it. The sucker wants to run the province like a goddamn business. Nova Scotia is not a corporation. It’s a bunch of the most beautiful yahoos with more spunk than people anywhere else on the planet. It’s a frigging state of awareness, a realm of possibility, not some goddamn fart factory aiming to provide profit for shareholders.”
My mother switched off the set. “We agree,” she said. “Now let’s go catch some crabs.”
Crabbing was my mother’s way of bringing the family back together. We would sit on Hants Buckler’s dock or hang out down by the bridge and dr
op lines with hunks of herring into the water, pulling up dozens of rock crabs, blue and orange and black. They would all get tossed into a large bushel basket and we’d take them home where my mother would concoct some exotic new dish of crab meat. My mother said that she had been informed by one of her guides, a young herbalist from the thirteenth century, that crab meat helps to strengthen the heart.
“I’m in favour of anything that strengthens the heart,” I said.
It was on a sluggishly delightful afternoon in late September when the uranium drilling truck returned. We were on the bridge, leisurely pulling up a crab or three when the truck trundled past us, shaking the whole structure. It was the same truck whose engine I had corroded with the best of acids available on the island. The man driving didn’t even look at us.
“This bridge is only rated at two tons. That truck’s over the limit,” my father said to us. “He’s violating provincial law.” It was a curious response. I wanted to know what he was really thinking.
A minute later, another truck towing a flatbed with a bulldozer approached the bridge. The driver cautiously pulled up onto the wooden structure, then gunned the engine and roared across to follow the first truck.
“Son of a bitch,” my father said. We had all felt the crack. I lay down on the road and looked at the creosote beams that were the primary supports to the span. “Wilful destruction of provincial property,” I said.
A wave of numbness shot through my body. I looked away from my father because I didn’t want him to see my face. I looked across towards Burnet Sr.’s dilapidated house where his new brood of dogs, awakened by the trucks, were yelping and tearing themselves against their chains. I could hear Burnet’s old man yelling at them from inside the house to “shaddup.” Strange to think that he didn’t know his son was less than half a mile away on the island and refusing to go see him. I was suddenly thankful that I had a father I could talk to, a father who had returned from politics and the dead to stand by his family come hell or high water.
“War,” my father said.
“What?” Casey asked.
“They’ve declared war on the island,” my father said.
An RCMP cruiser now appeared as it came around the turn past Burnet’s house and pulled up on the bridge, coming to a stop by my father. The same young Mountie who had questioned me got out and walked over to my father. “Pleased to meet you, sir. My name’s Elgin Shaeffer. Sorry to hear about the little accident. My father was a great admirer of you.”
“He from the Shore?” my father asked.
“Born and raised here. Voted Tory all his life.”
“I’m sure he did,” my father said. “What can I do for you?” “Well, sir, you probably just saw the mining trucks that came by here.”
“I did,” my father said, “and I’d like to report two significant violations of provincial highway law.”
The Mountie shook his head. “Well, I don’t know if I can do anything about that if I wasn’t here to see it. You could file a complaint, I suppose, but that wasn’t why I came out here.”
“I’ll file a complaint,” my father said.
“What I came out to tell you,” the young man said, acting a little embarrassed, “is that I’ve got a court order stating that you not go near the mining site.”
My father’s eyes flared but he kept his cool, levelled his voice. “Now why is that, son? Why is it that I’m not permitted on Crown land, land owned by the good people of this province for all to use in a proper manner?”
“Well, it has to do with that little incident last year. Some-body ruined the engine of a truck, painted something about a republic of something or other and the Attorney General has informed the RCMP that it was most likely you, sir, behind it.”
“Are you suggesting, that the former premier of the province of Nova Scotia drove out here from Province House to wreck the engine of somebody’s goddamn truck?”
“That seems to be what the Attorney General is saying.”
“My father didn’t do anything,” I said. And I was ready to blurt out the truth. I wouldn’t have mentioned Tennessee Ernie, but I wasn’t going to let my father’s image be tarnished because of me. But before I could get the words out, my father was pulling me aside.
He spoke loud enough so the Mountie could hear in a cool calm voice, “Ian, would you mind going down to get a look at the damage to the bridge caused by those mining people? I want to be able to file a complete report here with the Constable before he leaves.”
“Yeah, sure, Dad,” I said. And I climbed down the side of the bridge structure to get a closer look at the creosote beams that held up the bridge. Sure enough, the one just below us had been splintered in two and another had a serious bow in it, having buckled from the weight of the truck. It didn’t look to me like it would take much more abuse. As I climbed back up I told them both what I saw. “If I was you, officer, I’d have this bridge closed immediately to all traffic before the whole thing collapses,” I added.
He looked at me befuddled. “I don’t think I have the authority. We’ll have to have an inspection team come out from Halifax for that,” he said.
My father was scratching his jaw and studying Elgin Shaeffer. “Elgin, I want you to know there’s a lot at stake here. If they start tearing up this island, there’s no telling what might happen. I’m sure that your own father would tell you that, next to loyalty to the party you were born into, there’s nothing more important than the land. We start ruining the land and selling it off to the Yanks to make nuclear weapons, we might as well just roll over and die.”
“These would be my sentiments exactly, sir, if I had any say in the matter. Liberal scum never did do nothing good for this province.”
“Damn straight,” my father said, playing up to the Mountie’s political prejudice.
“Well, serve me the papers then, Elgin, and you can go on about your work.”
“I wish I didn’t have to do this.”
“It’s okay.”
Elgin handed over a legal document that my father took and stuffed into his shirt pocket. “You don’t have any idea who was behind all this little vendetta to discredit me and put me to shame, do you? Off the record, of course.”
Elgin shrugged his shoulders and looked uncomfortable. “I don’t really like to say,” he began and maybe he was ready to spill the beans, but it wouldn’t be necessary. Approaching the bridge was the Mannheim/Atlanta pick-up truck. The guy driving it was the Atlanta half of the operation.
I tried to stop the truck before it got to us. I waved the driver to stop. He rolled down his window and said in the deepest southern drawl I’d ever heard, “You’re all in very deep shit, now. Ain’t nobody allowed to mess with a man’s machinery like that.” I just smiled like he had just given me a compliment, looked past him to the man sitting opposite — Bud Tillish.
“Mr. Tillish,” I said. “A belated ongratulations on your victory. I haven’t had a chance to come by personally to offer my sincere best wishes.”
Bud Tillish just looked the other way as if I didn’t exist.
“I wouldn’t drive on the bridge if I were you,” I said to both of them. “Some big flatbed with a bulldozer just drove over, cracked the beam right in half. Nothing holding the thing up but splinters and good will.”
“Horse shit,” Atlanta said, putting the truck in gear, spinning gravel and pulling up to the ass end of the RCMP cruiser where he lay on the horn.
Elgin looked really annoyed as he saw Bud Tillish sitting in the truck. He gave my father a knowing glance — Liberal scumbags. But he sucked in his breath and sat down in his car and drove across the bridge and onto the island where he stopped on the side of the road and studied us in his rear-view mirror.
Atlanta drove up and stopped alongside of my father. Bud Tillish leaned across him and flipped up his sunglasses. “You try to stop this operation, McQuade, and you’re in big trouble. I know all about your lunatic schemes and your fantasy republic. If I could only
have let the public know what a maniac you were years ago, I’d have had you out of office and into the Loony Bin. Then you could have stopped pretending you were premier or president and been anything you want — Napoleon, Castro, you name it.”
“Good to see you too, Bud,” my father said. “You working for the Americans now?” he asked, pointing to the Mannheim/Atlanta emblem on the side of the truck. “Or is it the Germans?”
Atlanta stuck his finger in my old man’s face. “We’re an international corporation, goddamn it. Americans and West Germans — only thanks to you bloody hicks, our investors in Germany are about ready to pull out.”
“Uranium sounds like a dangerous business,” my father said. “I’d get out if it, too, and into something more… what’s the right word, more sensible.”
“Shee-it,” said Atlanta.
“Just remember who’s in power now in this province. Just remember who has the real authority,” Tillish scolded my old man.
“Bud,” my father responded, “Don’t forget that it doesn’t matter how important you think you are, there are always higher levels of authority.”
But Bud didn’t seem too impressed. Neither did Atlanta. The truck was stopped dead centre in the bridge.
The Republic of Nothing Page 34