The Redemption of Oscar Wolf

by James Bartleman

  The constable took Clem aside and tried to reason with him. “You know, Clem, we go back a long way. You used to raise hell when you were a kid, but I thought those days were long over. I’d really be sorry if I had to arrest you. So for your own good, if you gotta get drunk, for God’s sake do it at home and sleep it off in your own bed, otherwise I’ll have to take you in. And put some clothes on if you gotta be out and about in the thunder and lightning. You’re not a pretty sight.”

  But Clem just laughed, and he laughed harder when he was arrested and hauled up before the magistrate and fined ten dollars for public intoxication. The wife he had left years earlier resurfaced and told everyone that the day he had walked out on her was the happiest day in her life. She had always thought, she said, there was something wrong with his head, and his wandering around in his birthday suit just proved it. She spoke to her blood relatives, who were also Clem’s blood relatives, and turned them against him. Clem’s own father, infuriated at his son’s public drunkenness and his general lack of decorum, and embarrassed that a member of his family would run after an unruly Indian widow, let it be known that after much prayer and reflection, he had cut him out of his will. Clem carried on as before.

  Having noted that Clem’s popularity in the community had fallen, and confident there would be no outcry if they took firm measures, the members of the Muskoka District Health Board found the courage to force him to shut down his dairy business, but he just branched out into hog farming. However, his pigs burrowed under the fences he put up around his pigpens and were always escaping and running through the village, grunting and squealing and uprooting vegetable gardens and frightening children and old women. The magistrate fined him five dollars for violating village ordinances, but after Clem handed over the money, he went home and defiantly opened the gate to the enclosure and let his swine roam the village as before.

  “I got the money to pay the fines,” he told anyone who would listen.

  That was when the village council decided that enough was enough. It just so happened that the old village dump, which had served the needs of the community and surrounding summer resorts for the previous fifty years, was spilling over with garbage and swarming with rats and other vermin. A new one had been urgently needed for years, but each time officials proposed a new dumpsite, the people who lived in the vicinity came with their friends to meetings of the council to complain and no action was ever taken. Clem’s isolation within the community, however, gave the council the opportunity it needed. It expropriated the necessary land from his holdings, built a garbage dump behind his house, and constructed a road that passed less than twenty feet from his front door to reach it.

  As the council had foreseen, no one, not even Clem’s father, protested its action. To ensure everyone knew where the new facility was located, municipal workers erected a ten-by-fifteen-foot sign at the entrance to the new road that helpfully pointed out that new dump was open twenty-four hours a day to accept “Household, Institutional and Construction Waste of all Kinds.” Clem, they expected, would be so disgusted by the sights and sounds of garbage trucks passing by his house that he would give up and leave the village, never to return. That, at least, was the council’s hope.

  Clem poured himself a tumblerful of dandelion wine and offered one to Oscar.

  “Thanks, Clem, but I don’t think your father and the Huxleys would want me to start drinking.”

  Clem listened to his story with a deepening frown.

  ”Goddamn it, Oscar,” he then said. “Wake up to the fact you’re alive! Its time you grew up and lived your own life. You’re an Indian, for God’s sake. You don’t need anyone’s permission to have a little drink. You don’t belong with those snobs on Millionaires’ Row, and for that matter you don’t belong among the people of this village. The folks around here don’t really trust you. They think you’re a fake. They think there’s something phoney about your attempts to be one of them, as if it was all an act.”

  “I don’t think Reverend Huxley feels that way,” Oscar said.

  “As far as the Reverend and his friends go,” Clem replied, “you probably could play along with their plans and be one of them someday. But if you do what they say and become a missionary, you’ll spend the rest of your life going to church on Sundays, living in a house with white lace curtains, and spending your time with stuffed shirts who don’t smoke or drink. I’ve known from the beginning you set that fire back in 1930 and have been trying to make amends ever since by sucking up to everyone.”

  “Maybe I’ll have a drink of your wine after all,” Oscar said, sitting up straight in his chair.

  “I saw you peeking in the window of the Amick just before dawn early that June morning,” Clem said, as he poured a glass of homebrew for Oscar. “The sun wasn’t even up. One minute you were there, the next you were gone. Then all hell broke loose, the fire bells started to ring, and the old general store went up in flames. It had to be you. No one else was around at that time. You musta had your reasons, I thought, and you probably never figured it would spread like that.”

  “I didn’t think anyone knew my secret,” Oscar said, after quickly swallowing a half a glass of wine, the first alcohol he had ever tasted.

  “Don’t take me for a fool.”

  “I wouldn’t do such a thing today.”

  “I hope not. I wouldn’t let you off a second time.”

  “There are a few things about what happened afterward, Clem, that I’ve wondered about over the years.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like why your father and Reverend Huxley have been so good to me.”

  “I haven’t the slightest idea, Oscar.”

  “Do you think they’ve been helping me because I’m an Indian and they stole the land of my people? Because they feel guilty?”

  “What do you mean stole the land? There are only a few old-timers around who remember there was an Indian village here when they came to take up their land grants.”

  “Then who’s to blame?”

  “Why, nobody’s to blame. People in those days was just doing what they had to do to make a living. Nobody had any choice.”

  “Somebody’s got to take responsibility.”

  “Okay, let’s look at the matter a little more closely. The young people of today are not to blame because they weren’t around in those days. The settlers aren’t to blame because they just took the land the government gave them. The government in power at that time isn’t to blame because it was following the policies of the governments before them, taking the lands from the Indians to give to settlers to develop. The British aren’t to blame because they had turned over responsibility for the Indians to the Canadians when they pulled out. Christopher Columbus isn’t to blame since the kings and queens over there in Europe sent him over here. So who can you blame? You can’t blame nobody!”

  “I still think your father and others are helping me to make amends for what the settlers did to my people,” said Oscar.

  “Well, I don’t,” said Clem, “and I know them better than you. And they’ll drop you without a second thought if you ever step out of line. But now that I’ve given you some free advice, I’d like you to help me pay back the people around here who’ve shown me no respect.”

  “I once tried to get even, Clem, and it didn’t turn out the way I wanted.”

  “But this is different, Oscar. I’m not planning to burn down the village.”

  “Whatever you say,” Oscar said, his mind now deadened from the wine. “You can count on me.”

  “I got dynamite. Ever since everybody turned nasty, I’ve been quietly buying and storing lots of it. Things have come to a head and I want you to help me blow a hole in their goddamn road so big they’ll never be able to fix it. That’ll learn them not to mess with Clem McCrum.

  “Did I ever tell you my story about the constable and the outhouse?” he asked, fetching a gallon jug of pickled eggs. “Help yourself,” he said after unscrewing the lid. “You sho
uldn’t drink dandelion wine without pickled eggs, and I made them myself.”

  “The constable and the outhouse? I don’t think you ever did,” Oscar said, biting into an egg and almost gagging on the taste of the strong vinegar.

  “The constable was always chasing after us kids and giving us a hard time when all we were doing was having a little fun,” Clem said, pouring both of them tumblers of wine. “And so one Halloween we decided to get him. We waited until after dark and snuck around to the back of his house and moved the old outhouse a few feet down the path, just enough to leave the hole full of crap unprotected. We lay in wait and held our breath, hoping just the constable and not his family would fall into our trap. Finally, the back door opened and out came the constable himself, puffing on his pipe, without a care in the world. And sure enough, just as he reached for the handle of the outhouse door, he fell into the hole. He was waist-deep in shit and not happy. You could’ve heard him yelling right down to the Indian Camp. His wife and kids came out and they got him madder by laughing. They couldn’t stop laughing, and neither could we. But we took off right away since we didn’t want to get caught. What made it worse for that poor guy was that the next day everybody in the village knew the story and kept rubbing it in. I think in the end he found out who the culprits were but he never came after us. He was too embarrassed.”

  Clem then told dozens of other tales from his boyhood and youth and Oscar responded with stories about life back on the reserve when he was a boy, and about things he had had to do to keep Mrs. Huxley happy over the past five years that in retrospect seemed funny. By now firm friends, they laughed and joked and drank all night, staying up to witness the dawn chorus of seagulls, crows, and vultures sitting on dead tree branches and circling high over the burning garbage at the dump. They carried on carousing until mid-morning when the church bells began to echo throughout the village announcing the imminent start of Sunday services.

  “We gotta get this done when everyone is still in church,” Clem said. “They’ll all be scared shitless when they hear the blast.”

  They then made repeated trips to carry three dozen cases of dynamite from Clem’s cellar and stuff them into the culvert at the T-junction where the dump road joined the highway through the village. Clem swiped a match on the seat of his pants, lit a fuse, and he and Oscar ran for cover. The ensuing explosion rained rocks and stones down on the village, shattered windows for miles around, sent cattle and sheep grazing on nearby farms fleeing in panic, led dogs to howl, disrupted services in all three churches as Clem had hoped, splintered the expensive stained glass window donated to the church by James McCrum, and was even heard by the guests assembling for Sunday brunch at the Fitzgibbons’ summer home on Millionaires’ Row.

  “How odd,” Hilda Fitzgibbon said to her husband. “It’s thundering out and there isn’t a cloud in the sky.”

  “I wouldn’t worry about it, my dear,” Dwight said, and he resumed providing his views to Claire on the studies she should follow when she registered at the University of Toronto during the week to come.

  Although two hundred yards up the road, Oscar and Clem were lifted off their feet by the blast and thrown to the ground. Both got up unhurt and laughing. “That’ll show those bastards they can’t tangle with me!” Clem yelled.

  Deaf from the explosion, Oscar could only guess at what Clem was saying, but he didn’t wait around to learn more. A stupendous cloud of dust was rising hundreds of feet into the air, obscuring a crater blasted out of the ground fifteen feet deep and twenty feet wide. All that remained of the trees for a good fifty yards into the bush were their trunks, sheared off ten feet above the ground. Oscar fought his way through the debris of broken branches around the hole and made it to the highway as the fire bells of all three churches began clanging, summoning the volunteer firemen to assemble at the fire hall.

  Reverend Huxley, James and Mrs. McCrum, and the other parishioners of the Presbyterian church had evacuated the building and were outside looking up the street in the direction of the blast when Oscar came into view, his shirt-tails hanging out, covered in dust, his head down, and walking fast.

  “Oscar, Oscar, what’s going on?” James McCrum called out as he drew near.

  “Were you hurt in the blast, Oscar?” Reverend Huxley shouted to him as he went by. “Was anyone hurt, Oscar? Stop, Oscar, come back and tell us. We need to know.”

  Oscar paid no attention. His ears were ringing, he was drunk, and he just wanted to find some place to lie down and sleep in peace.

  2

  The next morning, Oscar woke up shivering, covered in dew and lying on the ground in front of his grandfather’s shack where he had hid out until he was sober enough to go back to the manse. His head was aching, the taste of sour homemade wine and pickled eggs polluted his mouth and breath, and he had a thirst no amount of river water could quench.

  “Where were you?” Mrs. Huxley asked him when he walked unsteadily through the door of the manse. “Why didn’t you come home last night? Didn’t you know we would be worried? In case you hadn’t noticed, we’re responsible for you.”

  “I don’t think we have time to get into all that, Isabel,” Reverend Huxley said, interrupting his wife.

  At the breakfast table that same morning, she had surprised him by the virulence of her remarks about Indians and Oscar.

  “You can take these people out of their shacks and help them live like civilized white people,” she had said. “But they revert to type sooner or later. I bet he’s going to walk away from the chance of going to university despite everything we’ve done for him. And in these hard times it wasn’t always easy.”

  While not as outraged at Oscar’s behaviour as his wife, Reverend Huxley was deeply disappointed and told him so on the drive to the railway station.

  “Everyone was looking forward to your attendance at church yesterday,” he said. “I had a special sermon prepared to bid you farewell as you embarked on your new life. James McCrum was going to speak. The choir was going to sing “Shall We Gather at the River.” That was all ruined. Why didn’t you come afterward and tell me what you had done and say you were sorry? Why didn’t you come home last night? Maybe you were trying to pretend nothing had happened, but you didn’t fool me. I was a soldier and I know a drunk when I see one.”

  As Oscar resisted the urge to vomit out the window, Reverend Huxley said that he had forgiven him. “And James McCrum, after much thought and prayer, has forgiven you as well. He is a true Christian who believes in the power of forgiveness and redemption and has faith that you will do great things with your life despite this setback.”

  In fact, Reverend Huxley had found it hard to calm McCrum down.

  “Clem has once again disgraced the family name,” McCrum had said. “And to think I once thought he would take over McCrum and Son! But he will pay the price for his vandalism with a spell in jail. Oscar, however, has thumbed his nose at us by behaving like any ordinary drunken Indian.”

  It had taken all of Reverend Huxley’s powers of persuasion to persuade McCrum to honour his promise to fund his university education.

  “I’m now inclined to think there was some truth to rumours that he and that Fitzgibbon girl were sneaking around drinking and up to no good all summer behind your back,” he told Reverend Huxley. “But for his grandfather’s sake, I’m prepared to give him one last chance.”

  Oscar slept all the way on the train to Union Station in downtown Toronto and took a streetcar to the University of Toronto where he joined the lineup of students waiting to register for their first-year courses. An envelope containing a money order from James McCrum, made out to the university to cover his tuition and residence costs for the year, was in one pocket; in another pocket was the ten dollars Mrs. Huxley had let him keep for spending money after he had handed over the wages he had earned working at the general store over the summer. He looked around the room hoping to see a friendly face, ideally another Native student who wouldn’t reject him if h
e were to walk up and extend his hand and say, “I’m Oscar Wolf and I’m new here. I guess you’re new as well. Let’s be friends.”

  But there were no brown faces in the room, or for that matter any black or yellow ones. Instead, a mass of anxious eighteen- and nineteen-year-old white high-school boys with a sprinkling of white women the same age milled around clutching their acceptance letters in their hands, looking for the right line to join to register. Those with sunburned faces and red necks, he guessed, were probably the sons and daughters of farmers. Others, with their pale complexions, he supposed might be the offspring of small businessmen, clergymen, doctors, lawyers, and teachers. One group stood out from the others by the elegance of their clothing, by their perfect tans, and by their self-assurance. Claire, he saw, was one of them, and although she stared directly at him, she gave no hint she knew him.

  I don’t want to do this, Oscar thought, looking away. I don’t want to be subjected to constant brush-offs from Claire. I don’t want to be humiliated again by the students who were at the Fitzgibbon’s brunch. I don’t want to spend the next three or four years of my life here with no friends and as the only Native student on campus. I don’t want to spend the money of someone whose store I destroyed. I don’t want to keep up the pretence that I have a religious calling when I’m not sure I believe in God. Clem told me I shouldn’t try to be something I wasn’t by trying to fit into the white man’s world. It’s time I was honest with myself. I’ve got to return to Port Carling and confess my crimes and betrayals to my benefactors and beg their forgiveness. And since they like me so much, they’ll forgive me and I’ll be free to leave and do whatever I want.

  But as he walked back to Union Station to take the train back to Muskoka, Oscar had second thoughts. Confessing everything and accepting the consequences of his misdeeds would certainly be the honourable thing to do, but what if Lily Horton’s family was to learn of his confession? They would be forced to relive the grief they suffered when they first learned of their daughter’s death. What if his benefactors were not to forgive him? What if the Hortons and his benefactors were to call the police? The police would charge him with arson, manslaughter, and murder, and he would be sent to jail for many years; he might even be sentenced to death and be hanged in the district jail.