Punishment

by Linden MacIntyre

  “You began to see less of each other, I think it’s fair to say?”

  “Yes.”

  “And was there a particular reason, a falling out?”

  “No, there was no falling out.” She looked at her lap, fidgeted with her hands. “She just started hanging out with a different crowd.”

  “I see. People that you knew?”

  “Yes. They were from the school.”

  “Did you know Angus John MacLeod?”

  “A little bit …”

  Sullivan was on his feet then, “Your Honour—”

  Jones interrupted: “Your Honour, Mr. MacLeod will be my next witness.”

  “Carry on,” the judge said.

  “Was there any particular reason why you didn’t become part of this group?”

  There was a long pause. “No,” she said finally.

  “Miss Pikar,” said Jones. “I’m going to suggest to you that there was a reason why you kept away from the people she started to spend time with, and that you and Maymie Stewart drifted apart sometime in early 2002 when Maymie became interested in drugs. Am I not correct?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Well let me ask you this. Did you, in 2002, become aware that Maymie had begun experimenting with drugs.”

  “Yes,” she said softly.

  “And how did you become aware of that?”

  “She told me.”

  Jones turned away from her, faced the spectators. “You know the name Dwayne Strickland?”

  “Yes.”

  “How do you know that name?”

  “People talked about him.”

  “And what were they saying?”

  “I guess that he was home from prison …”

  Sullivan stood. “I object …”

  “Withdrawn,” said Jones.

  “Do you know where your friends would normally go to obtain drugs?”

  “Yes.”

  “That the accused, Mr. Strickland, was the guy who …”

  From where he sat, Sullivan called out, “Objection …”

  The judge seemed to smirk at Jones. “I think you might want to ask a question.”

  “Would you agree that Dwayne Strickland was considered, at the school, as a supplier of drugs to your schoolmates?”

  “They said that.”

  “And your friend Maymie Stewart became part of the group of young people who would go to Strickland’s place to … socialize.”

  “Yes.”

  “But you never went?”

  “No.”

  “And that was because it was generally known that there was really only one reason for people of your age to be visiting a man who was much older and who had a fairly notorious …”

  Sullivan was on his feet but Jones had already given up.

  “No further questions. Thank you.”

  ——

  Sullivan turned briefly to Strickland, then seemed to ponder for a while before he walked toward the witness. “Just one or two questions,” he said. “Miss Pikar, you say you moved here?”

  “Yes. From Ontario.”

  “You lived in a city in Ontario?”

  “Yes. Kitchener.”

  “Is it safe to assume that there were drugs available in Kitchener?”

  She smiled. “Oh yes.”

  “Lots of drugs, I imagine.”

  “Probably.”

  “I’m going to assume that you don’t do drugs and don’t have much time for people who use drugs.”

  “I don’t judge. But that’s my choice.”

  “Let me ask … what brought you to St. Ninian?”

  “My dad is the gym teacher.”

  “And I’m going to suggest your family moved here because it’s a healthier, quieter, safer place than, say, Kitchener.”

  She hesitated.

  “You don’t have to answer that. Did you know your friend Maymie was going through some personal difficulties when you met her? That she’d recently lost a parent?”

  “She told me when her dad died. I was at his funeral. She and I talked about it. Quite a bit.”

  “You’d say that she was grieving?”

  “Yes. They were close. She carried a picture of him in her wallet.”

  “You’ve been to Maymie’s home?”

  “Yes. Once or twice.”

  “And she’s been to your place?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’d say that you and Maymie were very close friends there for a while.”

  “I thought so.”

  “Let me ask you, Kat. Did you ever see Maymie Stewart use drugs?”

  “No.”

  “How then do you know she did?”

  “Well, she kind of told me. But it was mostly from who she started hanging out with.”

  “She kind of told you?”

  “She asked if I’d ever tried weed.”

  “And you said?”

  “No, have you? And she just laughed and asked if I was from another planet.”

  “And you took that to mean?”

  “I guess that everybody has tried it. That I was unusual.”

  “And do you think that you’re unusual?”

  She shrugged. “Probably.”

  “Did you ever hear her mention Dwayne Strickland.”

  “I don’t think so. Well, maybe just that he’d come back here from being … from away. Everybody was talking about that.”

  “I see. I’m assuming that you’ve never been to Dwayne Strickland’s place.”

  “Never.”

  “People at the school, I assume, talked quite a bit about marijuana, maybe even used it on school property, between classes, lunch breaks and the like.”

  “Mmmhmmm.”

  “That’s a yes. And I’ll suggest that pot was fairly prevalent around the school when you first arrived here, a time, I’ll point out, when Mr. Strickland was still living in Ontario.”

  “I suppose so.”

  “Have you ever heard them talking at the school about OxyContin?”

  “Not that I remember.”

  “Are you aware of people using OxyContin for … fun?”

  “No, not here. But …”

  “That’s all I have, Your Honour. Thank you, Kat.”

  She sat still for a moment, looking slightly confused.

  The judge seemed tired. “You have one more witness?” he said to Jones.

  “Yes, Your Honour, and I’m hoping that if, with my friend’s indulgence, we sit until five o’clock, we should be able to finish hearing evidence today.”

  The judge looked toward Sullivan. “What do you think?”

  Sullivan shrugged. “Depends on what the witness has to say.”

  Angus John MacLeod spoke softly, nervously, as Jones spent an hour leading him through the recitation of who he was and what it was like to be a teenager in St. Ninian. He was familiar to me, his manner of speech, his extensive knowledge of family history. But the culture he described could have fit the adolescent experience of any kid in any part of North America—a yearning to be part of something larger and mostly inaccessible, an exaggerated world of glamour, opportunity, excitement.

  Angus John came home from a remote oil rig in northern Alberta to testify that he had been a friend of the deceased and that he knew Dwayne Strickland as well as anybody did.

  “And what was your impression of the accused … of Mr. Strickland.”

  “He was okay, I guess.” I noticed that he was looking directly at Strickland with what seemed like confidence or perhaps indifference.

  “Would you say that you and Mr. Strickland were friends?”

  “Yeah, sort of.”

  “But you didn’t know him growing up?

  “He was gone.”

  “But you knew where he was.”

  He smiled. “Yup. Everybody knew.”

  “You’re friends now?”

  He frowned. “I wouldn’t say so. Not since Maymie.”

  “Not since Maymie?”

  T
he witness stared at Strickland, darkly, nodding, then looked toward Jones, said nothing.

  Jones rustled through some papers on the table, as if he’d forgotten something. Then looked up again. “Could you tell the court how you got to know Dwayne Strickland, after he returned here? There is quite a difference in your ages.”

  “Well. Yes. We’d go to his place. Hang out.”

  “And was there a particular attraction, at his place? Something that made it a good place to … hang out?”

  “Well.” Nervous chuckle. “I don’t know …” He looked toward the judge who seemed bemused. “It was just a place to kick back.”

  “By ‘kick back’ you mean relax.”

  “Yep.”

  “And to relax you might consume alcohol.”

  “Sometimes. He didn’t mind.”

  “You’d bring your own alcohol.”

  “Usually.”

  Jones turned to face us, smiling broadly. “Mr. Strickland was NOT a bootlegger.”

  “Ummm, no,” said MacLeod. “There’s no problem getting alcohol. They got it at Collie’s store, even.”

  “And drugs?”

  No answer. There was a long silence in the courtroom.

  “I’ll repeat the question, Mr. MacLeod. Was Strickland’s place known to you and your friends as a place where you could acquire drugs?”

  “Yes and no.”

  “What do you mean ‘yes and no’?” Jones snapped.

  “Well, if you didn’t have your own, Dwayne could provide it.”

  “He’d provide it. He’d give it to you?”

  “Well. No.”

  “He’d sell it to you.”

  No response.

  The judge said, “You have to answer one way or the other.”

  “Yes.”

  “Have you personally paid Dwayne Strickland for drugs?”

  “Yes. For weed.”

  “Weed. Marijuana. But is it fair to say that you could have had other drugs at Strickland’s? Wasn’t it generally known that Dwayne Strickland was the go-to guy for just about …”

  Sullivan was on his feet. “Your Honour. My learned friend is asking the witness to indulge in the kind of malicious speculation that I’ve been talking about. That question is entirely out of order.”

  “It’s relevant,” the judge said, “that the accused was known to be part of the drug scene.”

  Jones was on his feet again. “I think we’ve established that. Let me move on then. Mr. MacLeod, you were a friend of the deceased. The victim?”

  “I was.”

  “How would you describe Mary Alice, Maymie, Stewart.”

  He seemed to struggle. “She was nice. Everybody liked Maymie.”

  “You knew her …”

  “… all my life.”

  “Would you describe her as a girlfriend?”

  “Just a friend.”

  “Would you have described her as a regular at Dwayne Strickland’s?”

  “Oh no. Not at all.”

  “In fact, the one and only time she went there, prior to her … death … you brought her. Yes?”

  “Yes.”

  “You introduced her to Dwayne Strickland.”

  He nodded. He seemed distressed, looked down at Caddy.

  “You aren’t accused of anything, Angus. But I want to ask you … how did Maymie seem the evening that you both went to Strickland’s?”

  “She was nervous.”

  “And what was the purpose of going to Strickland’s?”

  “We had a six-pack and a video we wanted to watch.”

  “Any other reason?”

  Audible sigh. “We wanted to get some weed off of him.”

  “You bought drugs from Dwayne Strickland on that occasion.”

  “Yes.”

  “And it was not the only occasion on which you purchased drugs from Dwayne Strickland?” Jones was now standing, back to the witness, staring hard at Strickland.

  The witness nodded. Jones turned around, “That was a yes.”

  “Yes.”

  “And on other occasions you have seen others purchase drugs from Strickland.”

  “A few times.”

  “I have no other questions.” Jones sat down.

  Sullivan was on his feet immediately. “Let’s be perfectly clear about this. You bought weed from Strickland.”

  “Yes.”

  “How much weed?”

  “That night, with Maymie?”

  “Yes.”

  “Two joints.”

  “You bought two joints. Two marijuana cigarettes.”

  “Yes.”

  “And smoked them in his presence?”

  “Yes.”

  “And watched a video and drank a few beers.”

  “That was about it.”

  “And what was Mr. Strickland doing while this bacchanal was going on?”

  “He had a beer. Couple of tokes. Watched the video with us.”

  “Beer you brought? A toke from a joint you paid for?”

  “Right.”

  Sullivan paced for a moment, suppressing a smile. “And this video, do you remember what it was?”

  “A music video. Shania Twain, I think.”

  “Not pornographic.”

  MacLeod grinned then. “Maybe a little bit.” A chuckle rippled through the courtroom.

  “Just a couple of more questions, Angus. You know about OxyContin.”

  “Uh-huh. Not personally.”

  “Is OxyContin widely used around here?”

  “It’s starting. But mostly in the bigger places.”

  “Were you aware of people using OxyContin at Dwayne Strickland’s.”

  “No.”

  “Never a mention of it.”

  “Nothing I ever heard.”

  “Your friend, Maymie … had she ever mentioned OxyContin?”

  “No. Not to me.”

  “Okay. But like the rest of you, she experimented with what we call soft drugs.”

  “Well. I wouldn’t say experimented. She wasn’t really into drugs.”

  “Oh? She wasn’t really into drugs?”

  “She wasn’t all that interested.”

  “Let me suggest to you that drugs have been, for quite sometime now, freely available here for anybody who is interested in acquiring or using them. Am I right?”

  “I guess …”

  “In fact, for quite some time there has been a growing concern here over the availability of drugs, and the increased availability of drugs like cocaine, methamphetamine and OxyContin.”

  “I’ve heard that …”

  “And Angus, would I be wrong in suggesting that one of the reasons for the rising drug abuse problem is the forced migration of so many local young people to jobs out west, jobs that pay a lot of money and enable young men like yourself to come home quite frequently …”

  Now Jones was on his feet. “I have to seriously object to the insinuation …”

  “I’m not insinuating anything, Your Honour, just trying to get a proper picture of what life is like …”

  The judge waved them down. “I’m not entirely unaware of contemporary social conditions, Mr. Sullivan. I get the picture. Maybe we could move on to some more specific issues.”

  “Yes, Your Honour,” said Sullivan. He faced the witness, stood silent for what felt like a long time.

  “Angus, can you recall for me the last time you saw Maymie?”

  Angus seemed to struggle for a moment. “I saw her. That day.”

  “What day?”

  “The day she …”

  “On the day … before the night she died?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “What was the occasion?”

  “I was leaving for west the next morning. I wanted to say good … to say goodbye.”

  “And what do you recall of that meeting?”

  “She was sad.”

  “Sad that you were going?”

  “Oh no, not that. We weren’t like that.”


  “What do you mean by sad?”

  His face twisted suddenly and he swallowed. “She cried.”

  “She cried. And did she have anything to say about why?”

  “She said. She said. She wanted to come with me.”

  “And your response?”

  “I thought she was joking.”

  “And was she?”

  “Probably. Though there’s girls in the camps, even on the rigs now.”

  “But she didn’t go with you, obviously.”

  “No … I wish though …”

  “And do you know what happened after that meeting, your farewell meeting with Maymie?”

  “I’m pretty sure she went home. She told me she was going home.”

  “And would you say that she was still sad when she left you.”

  “Yeah. Yes.”

  “And did she give you any idea what made her sad?”

  He shrugged. “No.”

  “That’s all I have. Thank you, Angus.”

  Sullivan sat down, staring at the tabletop. The room was silent. Then the judge said, “A brief recess.” Then, looking down at Sullivan and Jones, “Gentlemen, we should talk.”

  Neil was standing near the doorway, arms folded as I walked by. “You know where this is heading,” he said. I shrugged. I wanted to go home. I went to the washroom. A homely face stared back at me from the mirror, and yet Sophie told me once she loved it for what she saw there. I could see nothing at all. I’d have made a quiet exit except that Caddy was somewhere in the building and needed me.

  I entered a cubicle, closed the door, sat face in hands. Strickland will go free, I thought. Strickland deserves to go free. And his freedom will represent a challenge to the place, and a provocation. It will eliminate a facile answer to a lot of questions, not just how and why poor Mary Alice died but about a mythical community and virtues that we always took for granted—integrity, civility. I had a sense of dread. People do not easily abandon the comfort of their myths and certainties. I longed for someone I could hold and really talk to.

  Two men came in and I could hear them talking at the urinals. One was saying: “I saw everybody going back in. They must be ready to go back at it.” I waited where I was until they were gone, then followed them toward the courtroom.

  I slipped into a seat in the back row as the judge was saying that he would in due course provide written reasons for his decision but for the time being and because the situation was so clear to him he wanted to render a decision verbally right away.