The Cast Stone

by Harold Johnson

  Ben scraped a heavy white plastic deck chair out a bit from the wall so that he could recline it, and waited. The sun sat high, just over the pine tree, a little east of south, still on the morning side of noon. The pine stood solidly in the middle of its circle of brown needles and the parallel ruts of the driveway curved around it and crawled up behind the truck. The shade of the pine dappled the dark red of the heavy-built, four-year-old Toyota extended cab.

  Ben had purchased the truck precisely because it was used. A new truck stands out. He thought about the morning he had stopped in a gravel pit to rub it down with grit to remove the shine laboriously applied by the dealer’s hired help. It was a solid dependable vehicle. It didn’t need to shine and attract attention. The truck was much like the boat he had purchased that same morning, solid, dependable, the way Rosie would describe Ben.

  The song sparrow sang again. Ben mimicked its song. “Someone, someone, someone is coming for tea, tea, tea.” The little bird walked sideways along a branch, out of the shadow to where the sun caught its feathers and brightened its drab colours. “You sure have a nice song for such a plain-looking bird.” It responded to the compliment and gave Ben the long version of the song with a few quick trick changes. He sat back into the curvature of the deck chair and waited for whoever might be coming for tea.

  There were things to do. There were always things to do. There might be three or four new weeds in his garden since yesterday. The gate at the corner of the pole fence was beginning to sag slightly and scrape against the ground. Maybe he should paint that fence around the square garden. Black spruce poles made excellent fence rails but they were not like pine, they darkened with age. Maybe he should paint them white. But that would mean a trip to the city to buy paint and someone, someone, someone was coming, coming for tea, tea.

  The sun drifted past the pine and Ben noted the movement of the tree’s shadow as it crawled slowly from his right to left across the grassy space. His mind drifted with the shadow and he let it spill back over time. He remembered his early days on this reserve, school, sports and people. He remembered his first metamorphosis. Not a physical change, a spiritual rebirth where all that he believed in came crashing down with the death of his father. Then there was the slow rebuilding of a personality, different than before, but only visible to him. That was the beginning of manhood. There were other times in his life when his universe had collapsed, when a strong belief in something was proven false. There was a poem from when he was twenty something:

  Adrift in a sea of chaos

  I gather my reality about me

  And build a raft thereof.

  What he had tried to say was that he had core beliefs that never changed. When his larger belief system collapsed, he returned to that core, that centre, that basic definition of Ben. After a series of metamorphoses he realized that there was very little in which a solid belief could be justified. Most of science, virtually all academia and political discourse was unstable and could collapse in a moment. That realization had been his moment of freedom, his emergence. He rose from the dark and walked in an ephemeral world open to change, open to contradiction.

  The pine shadow crept across the planks of the deck and touched his foot. A yellow dog sniffed its way down one rut of the driveway, moving slowly the way dogs do in summer. Ben watched its cautious approach, lethargic in the heat. She would be the progeny of the dogs Dolphus and Zachius brought back. That’s the story of where the good sleigh dogs came from. It was said that the brothers had paddled north with a canoe full of trade goods and returned in the middle of winter with two dog teams and sleighs filled with fur. Those dozen dogs were the great, great grandparents of every dog on the reserve. He noted that the yellow dog looked pregnant, a bit big in the belly, nipples beginning to show through the fur. She would be looking for a place to make a den, a home, someplace safe to give birth.

  The sun sat high over Ben, shone down through the gap in the forest canopy that opened above the small clean space around the cabin. A little wind would be nice now, something to move the still air that was beginning to heat up. He removed his thin jacket, folded it over the arm of the chair, and bathed in the warmth. Old bones like warm sunshine. Not that Ben would admit that he was old, but he was getting there. Time now to slow down, to take in all those elements that he had rushed past, time to sit and absorb. Maybe, just maybe, he would find some way to give back, to make up for the things he had taken. Everything has a price, a cost, an affect that comes from every choice. Put out good things and good things come back. The more you give the more you get; the more you take the less you can keep. He remembered all that he had taken and wondered when balance would assert itself and something would come and take away from him.

  The shadow of the pine moved away and began to point more easterly. Five children on three bicycles wove noisily down the gravel road. The sun’s heat drove them to the lake and the water. Two larger girls, eleven, twelve maybe, each peddled a bike with a younger child balanced on the cross bar. A smaller square boy with a long towel over his shoulders that was in danger of catching in the chain and sprocket, peddled as fast as he talked. He was one of those children that had not learned that internal dialogue should be kept internal. He voiced every thought, unconcerned whether any one was listening. The two older girls were not listening; they carried on their own conversation. The sounds of tires on gravel and the voices of the children dimmed as they travelled on down the road past Ben’s home.

  He went back to his thoughts from before he caught the pickerel this morning, President Obama shaking hands with Hugo Chavez. Yes, that was the last time he had hope. The world looked as if it might heal itself. But then . . . Oh well, best not to think about it too much. What was, was. It had been so long; so long since the famous handshake. And hope. What the hell was hope anyway? Such a pitiful word.

  The afternoon settled into summer silence, too hot even for mosquitoes. The sun eased across the westerly part of its zenith and began its course to the horizon. Ben stayed in his chair. He sat forward slightly and looked for the song sparrow. It wasn’t in the willows. He sat back and waited, wondered what he would have for supper, or rather how he would cook the fish, or which fish. If the person who was coming were white he would fry the pickerel. White people seem to like that kind of food. If the visitor was an Indian, he would cook the big whitefish.

  Lester found his way back to his car as the sun touched the horizon. He had not really tried to find his relatives today. How do you return to your family and say, “Hi, I’m Lester, remember me? I’m the guy who shot my father, my mother, and my wife.” He had walked around some, kept mostly out of sight, not skulking, just avoiding where people gathered, like at the gas station and store or around the band office. He found the old trails were still active, the paths through the trees, the short way to somewhere. The change to the reserve in twenty-four years was incredible. Who could have guessed that the Canadian government would be so embarrassed that they would build houses for Indians that were more than the shacks that Lester left? A quarter of a century is time enough for change, but for Lester who had been away from any change at all, confined to the constants of concrete and steel and wire reinforced glass, the reserve was unrecognizable.

  He sat in the back of the old Monte Carlo and sipped slowly and steadily from the bottle. Was the whisky better after twenty-four years of aging under the seat of a car? Lester could not answer, he had no comparisons to say better or worse than. It was different than jailhouse brew, but he could not say it was better. The light changed to copper, tinted the treetops, softened the colours and eased the day to a close. The whisky had the effect that Lester sought; he closed his eyes and let himself drift away.

  Ben fried the pickerel. Monica laughed and joked and got in the way as she tried to help in the preparations. “Where do you keep your potato peeler?”

  “In the knife block.”

  “I don’t see it.”

  “It’s called a knife, it’s
the one with the handle sticking out.”

  They managed to get through the preparation of a very late supper and enjoyed the simplicity of crisp fried fish, boiled potatoes, and canned tomatoes.

  “What took you so long to get here today?” Ben eased back from the table and placed his fork across his empty tomato-stained plate.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I was expecting you earlier.”

  “Stopped to shop in Saskatoon.” Monica gave Ben her puzzled look. He let her stay puzzled. He had his answer. He had sat all afternoon in the sun while she shopped.

  Monica sat up straight, rested her thin arms on the table, “What do you mean, you were expecting me? Has someone been here?”

  “No, no one.”

  “Then why were you expecting me?”

  “A little bird came and told me you were coming.” Ben poured himself the cup of tea that he had waited for all afternoon. It did not matter if he knew anything or not. He was satisfied. He was fed, he was dry, and he was warm. The tea held a hint of the wild mint he picked that morning along the shore.

  “As long as it wasn’t Homeland Security.” Monica wiped her mouth with the square of paper towel she had placed beside her plate. “Have you kept up with the Resistance? Her voice changed pitch. It was sharper now. The visit, the customary extended ‘how do you do?’ was finished and now it was time for business, for work.

  “Only what I get on CBC.”

  “And that’s all bullshit.”

  “Are you telling me that we haven’t had three thousand bombs dropped in Canada since the annexation?”

  “Annexation! Annexation, fuckin’ invasion. CBC may as well be NBC for all the shit they put out.” Her anger pulled at her face, lengthened it.

  Ben shrugged.

  Monica leaned back, “I know, I know, they put out what they can. But, it pisses me off that the people don’t hear what’s really going on.”

  “Is the bomb count wrong?” Ben’s question wasn’t rhetorical.

  “Who knows, probably. Does the bomb count include cluster bombs? Does it include Bolts from Heaven? They’ve dropped at least a dozen. Tore the shit out of the boys in Lac La Biche. What gets me the most is that garbage about balanced reporting; I mean what was that righteousness stuff about? The Christian right isn’t balanced, hasn’t been since Bush. And we all know that isn’t what it’s all about. It’s about Fort Mac, it’s about oil. They invaded us because Prime Minister Thoreau threatened to cut off all trade with the Americans. San Francisco was just an excuse. Everyone knows that it’s about oil. Terrorists from Canada, immorality and drugs and atheism and all that other crap are just excuses, and the world allows it.”

  “I’m not defending the invasion, annexation, but the bombing of San Francisco changed a lot of things.”

  “I’m not convinced that bomb came through Canada. I think they don’t have a clue how it got there, and used it as an excuse. I wouldn’t doubt they did it themselves. Think about it. The Christians didn’t like what was happening in Frisco; they called it sin city and hated it as much as Islam did.”

  “That’s too far for me. Nobody sacrifices that much.”

  Monica sat back “I don’t know. I don’t know.” She used a stray strand of dark brown hair across her forehead as an opportunity to run her hand over her head, to soothe her thoughts. “Frisco changed things. But, how did anyone get a dirty bomb across the border. Ever since 9/11 there have been radiation detectors at every border crossing. I’m just not convinced that those eight were the ones that did it. And now we’ll never know. Nobody can re-examine them.”

  “Quick trials and quick executions have a way of putting an end to questions.”

  “James Henderson was talking at the university awhile ago and he said we were back in the last century, that all of the gains in human rights have been erased. His argument was that we have to start all over again and redevelop a body of law stronger than the old UN Charter or our Charter of Rights and Freedoms, a body of law developed without interference by special interest. You should’ve been there Ben. The entire theatre sat there with their mouths open. I was wishing someone like you were there to push his buttons; get him to see the other side, to see the people in the equation.”

  “James is doing what James knows. It took courage for him to stand up.”

  “He wasn’t standing up against the Americans. Never once said directly that the bastards needed to be put back into their place. His argument was that law needed to be redeveloped. He was quite conciliatory.”

  “As he should be. Calling people bastards doesn’t do much.”

  “Have you read Warren Churchill’s piece about American Bastardism?”

  “No, What’s he saying now?” Ben stacked Monica’s plate on top of his, gathered the knives and forks and carried them to the sink.

  “Oh, it was a wonderful piece about how the Americans are truly bastards in the literal sense. The world does not recognize the marriage of their parents, that the left was not free to marry the right, the Democrat–Republican marriage was never consecrated, thus American politics is illegitimate.” Monica poured herself another cup of tea.

  Ben stood for a while looking out the window above the sink at the night’s blackness, at the silhouette of the pine with a few stars in its crown. He looked skyward to see more of the stars but the house’s eaves stopped his view. “Like I said, it doesn’t help.” He turned back to Monica. “We can swear at them all we want; they’re still here.”

  “Churchill does inspire however; everything becomes important now. Every act of resistance adds to the body of resistance. Someday the world is going to stand up to the Americans. That’s why we need you Ben. Your work on supremacy is far more important now than it was when you were writing about colonialism. You know your students are at the head of the resistance. It was you who inspired them; Jeff Moosehunter, Roland Natawayes, Art Livelong, Betsy Chance. They’re all part of it. Betsy was at Lac La Biche when it got hit.”

  “Is she all right?”

  “Shook, really shook. She wasn’t hit, not physically anyway. But it changed her. She’s jumpy, can’t stand noise. I saw her at Batoche, looking over her shoulder all the time, thinks she’s being followed. But, she hasn’t weakened; she’s still strong the way that Betsy always was strong, a proud Ojibway woman.”

  “She’d correct you and say a proud Anishinabe woman. You know this was never our fight, this American–Canadian thing. Canada promised in the Treaties that we would never be asked to go to war for them.”

  Lester’s head hurt and he put it back down on the seat of the Monte Carlo. His nose was plugged and his eyes felt itchy. This was more than a hangover; maybe something in the whisky, maybe old whisky caused this. He opened his eyes again in the early light at the sound of an approaching car. He watched the lone white woman drive past, wondered who she might be: social worker, public health nurse, schoolteacher — probably a schoolteacher to be up and around this early in the morning. Dawn light bronzed the land, softened the features of the trees, coated them until they appeared to have been dipped in a vat of boiling copper and set out again to stand guard along the side of the road.

  The smell of mould filled him as he tossed about on the back seat of the car. Here was the answer to his symptoms. Whisky would never betray him but mould he knew about. It had been in the farm annex when he spent time in minimum security. That was black mould, the mould that killed people, and prisoners were assigned bleach and scrub brushes to get rid of it. Lester needed a better place to live. His old Monte Carlo no longer held the power and prestige of its and Lester’s youth.

  “Are you going to lift your net this morning?” Rosie wanted to know how much time she had to visit.

  “I pulled it out yesterday; I have enough fish for awhile.” Ben stirred a half teaspoonful of sugar into his black coffee. Rosie was going to want to know who his guest had been. Ben decided to make her work for the information and only answer direct questions, se
e how long it took for Rosie to hint around before she came right out and asked.

  “Did you have a good sleep?”

  “Very good.”

  “Hmm.” Rosie did not much like coffee at the best of times, and she really did not like Ben’s morning coffee. It was way too strong for her tastes. She only accepted a cupful to be polite; now she was stuck with it. She put the cup down, held it for a moment between her hands, then eased it away, slid it across the wood of the table as she talked, moved the bitter black to greater and greater distance.

  “I had my children between eighteen and twenty-four, all in a rush, four kids in six years. Then they were my life for the next twenty years. Then all of a sudden I’m forty and all alone. My baby goes to live with her sister in the city and I have a new life to figure out. I’m alone and I have time to think again. And do you know what I think about for the next twenty years?”

  “No.” Ben shook his head.

  “I wondered what happened to the pictures.”

  “What pictures?”

  “The pictures of Father Lambert. What other pictures?” Rosie waited for an answer.

  Ben did not have an answer; he sat back and took the time he needed. Three years he had been home. Rosie came over almost every day; she drank tea, nibbled cookies, told stories and retold stories, offered to sew buttons back on, made him moccasins and a beautiful pair of gauntlets covered with otter fur and she never asked, or talked about that summer. He had relaxed, maybe she would never ask, but now there it was; the question.

  “There are no pictures, never were; I stole the camera from the school, but there was no film.”

  “You bluffed him?” Her face changed, serious Rosie dissolved into everyday Rosie. “You bluffed a priest with an empty camera.” She shook her head in disbelief. “You always had that, that something.” Rosie did not have the words to describe Ben’s inherent sense of absolute justice, his determination, his sense of self and place that overwhelmed less aware people.