Murder

by David Adams Richards

  The posture of freedom is not free if it accuses what it does not take the time to understand. And you will always recognize what is posture in the end.

  In the movies I refer to, the “supposed” loner always gives himself away by wearing the ducktail, is adorned with the right leather jacket, blessed by the right tokens of rebellion, storming into the office to tell the boss to go to hell, and smirking with his friends just before the final curtain falls.

  Oh, but the real scapegoats are unheralded until such time as the mob disperses. They are arrested and tormented for throwing crabapples on a street, and by the mendacity of justice persecuted unto death. They are beaten and kicked like my father trying to protect his little brother, without a friend in the world to help.

  No one wants to be alone, but some of us—well, some of us have to. We have no choice. Alone or die. Strange, I know. I do know. But here’s the secret: as long as we’ve been alive, those who stand alone have never been given the other option.

  Christ wanted us to realize few are brave enough to cast the first stone—but anyone and everyone in a mob of “regular gals and guys” will freely cast the second.

  2011–2015

  HUNTING

  THOUGH I BELIEVE THAT IF SOMEONE EATS MEAT, THEY SHOULD be morally obligated to kill at least once in their lifetime that which they eat, I have not hunted seriously since 1995. That year I hunted in the south of the province above the granite rocks of the Fundy coast and I hunted until later in November. It was cold weather that autumn, with snow mixed with rain along the coast during the day, and deer would make their way along the trails and down to the rocky beach for salt, and I hunted in among those deer trails intersecting one another. Here in spruce and birch cover the brooks flowed to the bay, and old logging roads, forgotten for half a century or more, allowed for deer to travel unseen and unmolested to the shore at ebb tide and back up to the hills in the evening time, to lie in the long grass unseen in wood thicket.

  * * *

  —

  There was an apple orchard, too, where I hunted, and on the first day I made it to the orchard at dawn and then moved along a deer trail that ran diagonally from that old logging road to the quiet brook that swept under windfalls and there I stayed for most of the morning. I had the ability then to find a place where deer moved during the rut, where the buck would paw the ground and mark his territory, and where he would circle around to see if a doe had entered the area. I hunted alone, from the time I was twenty-three years of age, and I would sit as quietly as possible for hours on end. There were many deer in the south of the province that year, though they were generally not as large as those in the north of the province, and I was sitting in a forgotten part of the world, too, near three or four moss-ravaged tombstones, the resting place of a mother and her five children who had died in 1851. The village they once belonged to having nothing to mark it except those forlorn graves.

  Now and again along those old trails I would catch sight of a coyote slinking on its belly, or watch an osprey in the low, darkening clouds. And it was cold that first day, too, and threatened snow. So I knew snow would come either this day or the next, and the cold would make the deer move.

  * * *

  —

  I had with me a knapsack, with a Thermos of tea, a lunch, a small skinning knife and some chewing tobacco. And I had a chew of tobacco and a cup of tea about ten that morning, and listened to the soundlessness of the woods and the shrill, lowly caw of a crow as it flew from nowhere into nowhere, and I thought of that woman and her children, and how they left Ireland long, long ago, with such hope, and how their very resting place was a part of a community that no longer even existed, known only to a coy dog or hunter or a lonely passerby.

  * * *

  —

  I used a British .303 rifle with a Tasco scope, set at the lowest range for I was in close quarters, and I was using 180-grain bullets: that is, bullets with medium hitting power for deer. But I have used this bullet for moose, as well, to good effect. I had a clip with five bullets, with one in the chamber, six bullets in all, and I never had any more bullets on me, and never felt I needed more. For a long time, when I was younger—that is, younger than I was in 1995—I never used a scope, either, but over time I had long shots at both moose and deer and felt a scope necessary. After a while, as the day stilled and it got later, I took a walk out across the logging road to the apple orchard and stayed there. Then as the daylight reflecting in my scope dimmed almost to nothing, I took my clip out of the rifle and headed back to my truck in the dark.

  * * *

  —

  The next morning I got to the apple orchard at dawn, and took a walk down the logging road to the beach. On the logging road, about five hundred yards from the deer trail where I was sitting the previous day, a large buck had pawed the gravel over, and a little farther down there were the criss-crossed claws of a bear paw, where a male bear not yet gone to den had meandered up the road the night before and into the orchard. Knowing this a person should be careful when coming into or leaving an orchard, for though a spring bear is particularly cranky, an autumn bear can be, as well, and not too many people I know want to shoot one. I know I don’t. But bears range far and wide here, and do number in the thousands. So rural people in closer proximity worry about them, especially if they have small children.

  * * *

  —

  The deer population is healthy here, too, and that day it was turning bitter and I knew soon it would snow. I made my way back into the spruce and birch cover, along the deer trail that ran above a fertile stream down to the hidden brook, and waited. There was ice forming along the trail and in the stream itself, and the wind had picked up, as it often did after mid-morning, and by one in the afternoon the snow began to fall. Oh, at first lightly enough, but soon it began to fall so hard it was difficult to see. So I continually checked my scope cover for two reasons: one to see if it was actually protecting the scope itself, to keep the lens from fogging; and two, to see if it would flip off easily if I did get a chance to take a shot at a deer.

  * * *

  —

  Here I had time to think, and listen to the rumbling of the tractor trailers off to the north carrying tons of wood away to be processed, either for wrapping paper, newsprint or toilet paper, the great roads they were on hidden in our wilderness and running throughout the province, and I realized that the great devastation done to our land is almost never done for the benefit of rural people, but done to fulfill an urban need. It is a subtle understanding that comes when one witnesses the hundreds and thousands of acres thrashed up and torn away, so we can read books and newspapers telling us to be conscientious about the environment. That is, we can pay much lip service to much we do not understand.

  As the snow fell, it began to cover up those old tombstones for the 144th time, and by two in the afternoon my feet and my hands were freezing and my tea was cold. But here is what I believe—and I am asking no one else to agree: that hunting has as much to do with determination and resolve as anything else. And one should not be allowed to be comfortable while they kill. That is, I was resolved then to hunt, and now I am not.

  * * *

  —

  I have known men who do not hunt and respect them a good deal, and I know a man who hunted once and did not again—another who had the rifle aimed and could not fire at the little partridge he had in his sights. I knew people who lived in a farm down the road from us. Each fall when they killed a pig the boy would go for a walk and not return until after dark, while the girls would go to their bedroom and lie on the bed with pillows over their ears. And who can blame them. For it might be a lesson to us who do eat meat, that the killing of a pig is at times more gruesome and cruel than the killing of a whitetail deer, or a moose. It is something we should know or at least have some understanding about.

  And the amount of meat you get is about the same.
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  * * *

  —

  I watched as the day grew dark and then stilled. Then, everything stopped—as if the heart rate of the world lowered. Most people who spend time in the woods understand this and realize this is when the deer begin to move along their rut marks. From an hour before dark until it was too late to see is perhaps the best time for hunting. Still, the snowfall was great and had covered up the blond, deadened grasses, and wisped off the branches of the gnarled spruce in front of me. I was thinking that the male bear whose tracks I saw had by now gone to den, and realized that it was about 4:20—and that I had a long walk back in the snow, along a faded logging road. And then a long drive home that evening.

  * * *

  —

  I was kneeling on one knee, thinking of picking up my knapsack, when I heard a slight noise. I couldn’t see anything—but I did know there was a deer there. I took the safety off my rifle. Took a deep breath, waiting ten seconds. I heard another twig move. Then a loud snap.

  * * *

  —

  I released my scope cover, but when I did, the elastic string vibrated. There was utter silence for a long moment.

  * * *

  —

  I knew the deer had stopped, and was listening. So I knew, too, I had no time to wait. I stood and fired. The deer turned too late, a patch of snow jolting off its back. I ejected the shell, put another in the chamber and fired again. The buck stumbled, tried valiantly to stand, fell sideways, sitting up in the snow when it died. It was an eight-point buck—probably the one that had pawed the gravel yesterday. One of his tines had been broken in a rut fight. He died in the only world he had ever known or understood.

  * * *

  —

  It was the last year I ever hunted. I moved to Toronto, where I lived for thirteen years.

  There at times in posh restaurants, elk or caribou or venison would be on the menu for $29.95. On occasion I would see a coyote skirting the traffic. I would read newspapers printed on paper harvested from home. And at times I would think of the young buck with the broken tine, and realize I would probably never hunt again.

  Once an urban boy asked, “What is it like to kill things?”

  Well, son, something a lot like that.

  EAST OF EDEN

  THE MIRAMICHI REGION OF NEW BRUNSWICK—HOME TO ONE OF the grandest rivers on the planet, the true home of the great Atlantic salmon, the Cunard Line and the man who financed the Spitfire—has come under attack once again by a national reporter, who whined that we did not come up to her expectations: we were a backward place.

  The superiority others feel toward someone is insidiously transparent to those who suffer the assault, and Maritimers have suffered from this endlessly over the last century.

  Here are some examples of the gaiety of dismissal I have come across:

  An economics professor from the University of Calgary, who sat beside me during a flight from Calgary to Toronto, asked if I could fly to the Maritimes from Toronto, or would I transfer to bus or train.

  “Dogsled, sir,” I said. “Then oxen, and of course my mule.”

  I’m not sure he got the joke.

  A professor from the University of Ottawa was outraged that then New Brunswick premier Frank McKenna arrived at a first ministers meeting in a limo. Hidden behind his concern for the supposed desperate poverty of our province was an elitism, masked as social conscience, that McKenna dare arrive in the same fashion as the professor’s Ontario premier. The idea that I moved to Toronto incensed this man, as well, because I had no right to try and be like my betters.

  My wife, Peg, after we moved to Ontario, telephoned the Ministry of Health. When she gave her last address as “Saint John, New Brunswick,” the woman said, “No, ma’am, I mean your last address in Canada.”

  Often when we—and I say “we” because it is the place where I was born and raised—come under attack from outsiders, the response has been, naively, to assume that with good publicity or a better media rapport we can change this person’s opinion. It was once suggested that if I stopped writing terrible things about the people there, our tourism would improve. I do not write terrible things (or not many), and a tourist’s opinions of a place are rarely informed by the kind of literature I write.

  But the real problem has nothing at all to do with the Miramichi or the Maritimes: it has to do with the kind of person writing the article that criticizes the Maritimes. None should mind being ridiculed by the foolish, the foppish or the insincere. Nor should anyone assume it a victory to gain their approval.

  Why bother informing her who we are? Why wish for her smile as a validation of our worth? Who in God’s name is so unconscious of their own worth as a people, as a people on one of the great rivers of the world, that they would ever think they have to list the creature comforts or the silly spectacles, so those who have always viewed us and our ancestors in ignorance will favour us now?

  It is not up to us to change anyone’s mind; it is up to them. We may convince them for a while, but their salute will fade as soon as our contrived regard does, and she or he or whoever will go back to assuming themselves superior to us once more, and bashing us when possible.

  For this kind of assault on our home is a reaction of insecure and provincial people, who can be found in Toronto, as well as anywhere else. I have met many from Ontario who do have more than a passing understanding of their country, but Toronto seems to be a state unto itself.

  The people on the Miramichi whom I respect the most would never bother answering this chatter. But it raises the ire of those Miramichiers who believe they belong to the pan-Canadianism expressed by the surface attention of certain programs of CBC Radio. Like their counterparts in Whitehorse, Regina or elsewhere, these Miramichiers have bought into a centralist affectation: that the CBC flings us together and shows us all to be the same. (Gzowski was famous at this, and I believe he meant well without realizing he was condescending.)

  Those on my river who treasure the folksy banalities that these programs safely allow are the first to react when pricked. They herd together on radio airwaves across the nation and become the spokespeople for their area, their town or small city, because they cherish someone else’s patronizing look at who they are, and believe they have arrived because of it. They’d wear the funniest hat in the parade, pick the banjo and assume the posture, then wait for the same kind of applause given to someone in Saskatoon.

  It is easy, then, to see how some consider that they have every right to belong in the way they have been gulled into believing they do—the all-inclusive way When, once again, by a report in a national newspaper, they are slapped into the realization that our very history makes us targets, they decry the injustice.

  My God, boys, I know it’s unjust, but why start there? And what does it matter if some reporter filled with the idea of her own entitlement finds you a convenient scapegoat?

  Once outside Canada, no one knows Ontario any more than they know New Brunswick, and the world has heard of Kosovo more often than both. When I taught in Virginia, Canada was a red blur to the students there. One told me she thought her father owned an island somewhere near Toronto and asked me if that was where the Miramichi was. Being polite, I said, “Sure.” One should not be upset, for I have faced questions as silly from economics professors from Calgary.

  So enjoy your Miramichi, boys and girls, this summer and forever. There’s not one like it up here.

  1999

  LAND

  THE HOUSE WAS OWNED BY MY FRIEND’S UNCLE—A WHITE house with a small, enclosed veranda, where a faded, flowered swing listed to the southwest, while autumn sun glinted on six window-panes. The uncle used to drink Napoleon wine there on sunny days, watching the bird feeders he had placed on the maple trees, and sometimes picking off the squirrels if too many of them started chasing away the birds.

  A host of crab trees, gn
arled from the roots up, grew haphazardly in the back, in a field of yellow grass, where the deer came out. At the end of this field sat a barn with a sagging roof, where a horse of little worth had lived out its life. Uncle Tate, a widower, fed it and kept it warm, but used it for nothing and cursed it in the pasture.

  A veteran of the Second World War, he died in 1963, cutting a new road through for the Fraser lumber mill. I remember Alden Nowlan’s answer to “A little hard work never killed anyone”:

  “My God—hard work kills people all the time.”

  It is what those who have not worked, or known those who have, have forgotten.

  There was no one to take his house. A distant cousin said it was his. A sister of that cousin said it was hers. I forget how things finally transpired; land was argued over (winter trees frigid under the moon, and everyone arguing over whose moon it was).

  Finally, his nephews went into the house and closed it up. What was valued was siphoned off. As teens we passed it a number of times going into the future. The nineteen-foot dory that Uncle Tate had used for herring was left at night against the barn, the pathway he took to the icefield to lay out smelt nets no longer in evidence.