The Cast Stone

by Harold Johnson

  “Okay everyone, lunch.” Abe stepped from where he leaned against the soft-coloured wood rafters into the patch of light and stood beside Roland. “Thank you, Roland.” He shook his hand gently.

  Ben sat quietly during the break, enjoyed the fresh tomato in the sandwich of homemade bread. That tomato must have been picked not more than yesterday; it tasted of earth and water and vine.

  “You have a nice place here.” Monica washed down her sandwich with a bottle of cranberry juice.

  “You’re not the only one who thinks so,” Abe responded. “Had a fellow in here this morning determined he was going to buy it even if it wasn’t for sale. Had to threaten him before he would leave.”

  “So, how much was he offering?”

  “Started at two, by the time I was pushing him into his car he was up to four.”

  “Four, four what, four million?” Monica’s cranberry juice held suspended half way between the table and her mouth.

  “Yup, four million for a quarter section, an old barn, house and Quonset. I only paid a hundred and a quarter for it thirty years ago.”

  “So what’s the big jump in real estate. I thought the market was collapsed.”

  “In the big cities houses are almost worthless, but that’s because everyone who can afford to is trying to move out into the country.”

  “Frisco.” Monica got it. That was the answer.

  “Frisco.” Abe agreed. “So the people in Vancouver, Toronto, Montreal, move out to Saskatoon, Regina, even Prince Albert. People in the small cities move out into the country.”

  “But, four million Ameros. You could live a long time on that.” The cranberry juice made it to her lips.

  “Not as good as I live here. What’s four million? Doesn’t mean anything. If the price of land doubled again and it was eight million, I’d just end up using it to buy another place. If I sold out to that guy this morning, I’d just spend it all this afternoon pushing someone else out of their home. Naw, it wasn’t much of a deal.”

  “Or you could buy yourself a condominium in Toronto.”

  “Yeah. Right.” Abe bit into his sandwich.

  “Waweyatsin.” Ben pushed the word out, imitated his grandmother’s voice, clear, concise, tinted with a little smile. “Good for you, you deserved that, now learn from it,” she had said.

  “Waweyatsin,” he repeated because the word meant everything he wanted to say to these people seated, fed, legs outstretched, still holding bottles of water, relaxed after their meal. “Now you know what it feels like.” The sun through the open doors warmed his back, grandfather was behind him, he could speak from here. “Canada’s assertion of superiority over Aboriginal Peoples lasted for centuries. The Americans have only been here for a few years. Get used to it. They are not going home. No matter how much you cry, no matter if you say it’s not fair, they lied to us; they are not going away. Make all the rational arguments you want — this is our land, our home, you have no right to come and take it away from us, you are a bastard nation, supremacy knows no logic. The supremacists are here because they thoroughly believe that it is for your own good. And, maybe it is. Maybe Canada has to learn what it feels like, what it feels like to be dominated, to be moved off the land, to be re-educated. We tried to tell you for decades, but you wouldn’t listen. Way back at the Treaty signing, some of our ancestors tried to explain to you that you had no right to take, that you had to ask. But you wouldn’t listen, so Waweyatsin. Good for you. This is what happens to you when you act like you’re better than someone. Someone or something will come and put you in your place.”

  The room stirred, legs crossed, backs straightened, legs uncrossed, arms folded, unfolded.

  “Don’t worry about it. Learn from it. The same thing is going to happen to the Americans: someone is going to come along and put them in their place. Doesn’t matter that they have the world’s biggest army, doesn’t matter that they have robot soldiers, or half-robot soldiers, doesn’t matter they can kill you from outer space, that they have lasers that can fry you, or Bolts From Heaven to kill you in your hole. They’re still humans. They only believe they are God.

  “That is what supremacy is about, that’s where it came from, from people who thought they were more Godly, the chosen ones. They were given a flaming sword by their God to beat down the other. And, with that flaming sword they became part of their God, the hand of God, doing God’s work, bringing light to the darkness. Little Gods.”

  Ben had not intended to start speaking so strongly. The notes in his shirt pocket, scribbled on a single sheet of paper, folded into a tiny square, held an outline of an academic lecture on the premise of colonization. He had wanted to talk about Albert Memmi and The Colonizer and the Colonized, how that book had started a revolution in academia. Albert wasn’t wrong. He had written about what he saw, what he felt, his truth; he had put a name to the oppressor, the colonialist. Then when people around the world began to see that Albert’s truth was their truth, the academics followed with their papers and journals until the discussion had become dominated with the dichotomy of colonization. But, even though the academics had imagined such things as a postcolonial period, nothing ever really changed. Colonial discourse never captured the heart of the phenomenon. People still died of hunger, of AIDS, from bombs, and loneliness.

  Ben had wanted to tell these people, this gathering of children of colonists sprinkled with children of the people of the land, that colonial discourse was about the symptoms of a doctrine of supremacy, that supremacy needed analysis. But his grandma spoke instead. He heard her laughing and the sound of that almost forgotten tinkle filled him and he laughed. He stood in front of the people and let his laugh rumble; it came up from his belly and out into the loft. It spread. Magic. Someone tittered. Someone else chuckled. Then the loft rattled with the laughter of everyone. It was funny that Canada experienced its own oppression, ironic and irony needed to be laughed at, to be laughed away.

  On the quarter section of land to the south of Abe’s place, Ruben Weebe looked at the silent cell phone in his hand. The phone had died in the middle of his conversation with his daughter in Saskatoon. It squealed for a full second, sharp and shrill in his ear, then died. He put the phone in his shirt pocket and tried the landline, the old-fashioned phone. It was silent, dead. The screen on the computer in the den was blank. “Ruth, Ruth.” Ruben walked through the house calling his wife. She was in their bedroom, putting clothes into the closet. “Ruth, something’s up.” She looked to Ruben’s face for the answer, ignored his words. The face said urgent and she followed him out of the house, to the shelterbelt where the caragana grew thick, to the spot they had decided upon, created, a spot with a hollow where two people could hide. Ruth sat silent and hugged Chico, a spaniel who squirmed but kept silent as though he too knew something was coming.

  Ed Trembley leaned against last year’s straw bale, enjoyed the sun in his face, on his shirt, heating his legs through the denim. He read from a little blue book that he had read many times, started over at the first page. He spoke the words to the sky.

  “The people of Venezuela, exercising their powers of creation and invoking the protection of God, the historical example of our Liberator Simon Bolivar, and the heroism and sacrifice of our aboriginal ancestors and the forerunners and founders of a free and sovereign nation.”

  The remainder of the page he read louder, as though an oath, “To the supreme end of reshaping the Republic to establish a democratic, participatory and self-reliant, multiethnic and multicultural society in a just, federal, and decentralized State that embodies the values of freedom, independence, peace, solidarity, the common good, the nation’s territorial integrity, comity, and the rule of law for this and future generations, guarantees the right to life, work, learning, education, social justice, and equality; without discrimination or subordination of any kind; promotes peaceful cooperation among nations and furthers and strengthens Latin American integration in accordance with the principles of non-inter
vention and national self-determination of the people, the universal and indivisible guarantee of human rights, the democratization of imitational society, nuclear disarmament, ecological balance and environmental resources as the common and inalienable heritage of humanity; exercising their innate power through their representatives comprising the National Constituent Assembly, by their freely cast vote and in a democratic Referendum, hereby ordain the following:"

  Ed stopped for a breath and in the new silence heard the sound of diesel engines, then the sound of military bombproof tires on gravel. He slid down until he was lying in the short barley and looked toward the grid road that ran straight and bare across the earth from horizon to this rise of land where he smelled the dryness of the soil inches from his face. He did not need the binoculars; the convoy of Hummers raised a cloud of ashen dust that sped toward him and toward the people in the loft at Abe’s place.

  He kicked the straw away from the blocks of industrial Styrofoam, poured the plastic bottle filled with a mixture of diesel fuel and gasoline, struck a lighter to the fuel, waited a long second and another, until he was sure that the flame had taken, then ran; ran hard for the river to the east, to the valley where the river wandered between steep banks and willow and aspen grew thick and would hide a person from the sky. The burning foam billowed a greasy black finger of smoke upward behind him as he ran crouched. His knapsack with the little blue book, a little food, water, a mirror, and an industrial laser bounced on his back.

  “Out! Out!” Abe yelled into the loft. People scrambled, all laughter died at the sight of the black smoke in the distance climbing into the sky.

  “I’ll drive,” Monica almost shouted as she and Ben ran up to his truck.

  Abe stood at the gate and designated the vehicles leaving the yard, spreading them to the four directions. “Go north and at the first intersection take the west road.”

  “So, how’s your day going?” The ferryman leaned into the passenger side window of the truck, rested his elbows on the door.

  “So far, so good,” Ben answered.

  The flat-bottomed ferry angled in the current of the South Saskatchewan River, followed the cable strung shore to shore. Its diesel engine rumbled and tugged against the cable, drew it into the little house and expelled it again out the other side, drawing the six-car ferry toward the far bank of aspen and the winding lane of gravel that ended abruptly where the heavy wooden planks marked the landing. Monica stared straight ahead, watched that landing draw incrementally closer.

  “Would it be all right to get out and walk around a bit?” Ben asked.

  “Oh, hell, yeah, everyone does. People just love to see water.” The ferryman stepped back so that Ben could open the door. “Takes about seven minutes to get across,” he added as he turned to talk to the driver of the older Ford pickup.

  Ben walked over to the ferry edge to watch the flow of beige water slip away down the river valley. He stood looking out downstream, felt the moisture rise from the water, and wondered about the others. Was anyone still there when whoever was coming arrived?

  A lone gull tilted wings and glided beside the ferry, flashed white in the sun as it banked away and turned to follow the river. There’s a shortage of birds, Ben thought.

  Even though he was only a few kilometres from the university, Ben had never been here before. The river rippled far below its high-water marks. Willow and a coarse grass that he did not know had begun to grow on the dark mud flats abandoned by the shrunken river. But, it was green. The valley was lush in contrast to the burnt prairie it cut through. Comforting to see trees, green trees. Ben wanted to be home, the lake still blue, and evergreens.

  Monica wanted to be anywhere but here, exposed, dependent, trapped. Any minute and Homeland Security would appear on that far landing that was taking forever to arrive and they had no way out. Jump into the river and swim back? If she had to. Could Ben make it? Probably not. Too old for that. But, maybe. Ben was strong. Built like a bear. Her mind tumbled as it raced.

  Off the ferry the truck spun gravel as Monica turned sharply to the right, away from the main road onto a track that led into the aspen and willow, over a rise, down again, a curve then the truck was pointed at the steep wall of the river valley. The track ran at an unbelievable angle upwards. She pushed the four-wheel drive button and eased the truck into the climb. It pointed its hood at the cloudless sky and began the ascent.

  “Hey, just a second.” Ben was reaching around for his seat belt.

  “Not to worry. I’ve done this before. Well, I haven’t actually driven up here. I had a boyfriend when I was in school who used to bring me here to show off his truck. It’s okay. Really. We just have to take it real slow and steady. These Toyotas are incredible here. Watch.”

  The engine changed tone as it began to work, a deeper sound, a grumble. It climbed the impossible bank upwards, pushed Ben back into the seat until all he could see was the blue of a hot, dry sky.

  Ed Trembley ran hard for the green fringe at the edge of the dusty summerfallow. He found a strength that rose from somewhere, maybe from fear, felt it first in his chest, then in his legs as he increased his stride, stretched new legs and ran. The Hummer’s engine grew louder behind him. The last vehicle of the convoy had turned as it passed the smouldering foam to give chase.

  The river valley dropped quickly away from the prairie, a near vertical drop of a dozen metres where the cut bank had crumbled, hid at its top by a bramble of chokecherry and thistles. Ed charged through this brush, dropped suddenly and slid feet first down the steep decline. The roar of the Hummer and the sound of smashed brush behind him became the sound of an airplane over top of him. The driver of the heavy truck must have intended to run Ed over and now it was too late. The Hummer dropped grill first, slammed into the valley wall where the cliff bottom became a steep slope. It flipped end over end through the aspen, bounced incredibly high after each crash landing and ended on its roof in the swirl of the river bend.

  Ed slid down the slope, caught a broken tree trunk, put his feet under himself and quickly worked his way to the vehicle. Two Homeland Security officers looked to be dead, hopefully dead. They were not breathing. Another black shirt gasped unconscious, twitched in the back seat. A fourth, opened his eyes when Ed pulled at him. Ed slammed a fist between the eyes and they shut.

  The river current made canoeing tricky. The added weight of two bound black-uniformed officers in the small canoe helped to balance the craft fore and aft but made the canoe ride deeper in the water, made paddling harder. Ed followed the shoreline, less current here in the shallows, as he worked his way upstream, pushing the paddle into the mud as much as he drew strokes in dark water. Following close to the shore also meant that it was unlikely that he would be seen as he neared the city with his hostages. It was always good to have something to trade with.

  “You’re going out on the lake? You just got home.” Rosie walked behind Ben as he attached the boat and trailer to the truck, removed tarpaulin and straps. He turned and looked directly at her. The little girl was there again, for just a second it was little Rosie.

  “Do you want to come along?”

  “Me?” Rosie suddenly found herself flustered.

  “Yes, you. There’s no one else here.” Kindness filtered his words. “I wasn’t talking to the puppies.” The first bold pup toddled out from under the house, fell, picked itself up, and pushed forward. “Hey, you.” Rosie picked it up by the scruff, cradled it in the crook of her elbow. “You’re too small to go wandering around.” She gently rubbed the soft pink of its belly before kneeling, bending further than her body was accustomed to and placing the puppy back in the tumble of its siblings between the outstretched legs of the yellow dog.

  “What you going to name her?”

  “Haven’t thought of it.”

  “If you have a dog it has to have a name.”

  “Then we’ll call her Betsy or something.”

  “No, what was the name of that dog you had wh
en you were a kid?”

  “Duke,” Ben answered quickly through a flash of memories.

  “Yeah, him.” Rosie remembered “Can’t name a female dog Duke.”

  “Then Duchess. She’s kinda royal, don’t you think?”

  “Seems fitting to name a dog after monarchy, sort of irreverent. I like it.”

  “Good start, but you’ve got six more under there.”

  “Wait and see what they turn out to be first. They’ll tell us what their names are.”

  “Got to be careful what you name a dog. Give a dog a dumb name and they’ll live up to it. My kids once named a dog Mischief. Good enough of a name, but it wasn’t until I got them to change it to Maggie before that dog stopped getting into everything.”

  The lake reflected high clouds at its north end, grey against dark water. The boat skipped across shallow waves as it followed along the west shore, to the lee of the line of hills. They rode in silence for an hour. Rosie sat with her back to the wind, huddled in a large red-and-white life jacket and watched the lake flow away behind Ben at the tiller. The boat curved across from west to east then followed that shore south, back to the community, and Rosie found herself on the rickety wooden dock wondering what the purpose of the trip had been. She tried to help Ben reload the boat to the trailer, finally gave up and just stood out of the way.

  “He’d only been away for a few days and he was lonely for the lake,” Rosie concluded as she hoisted herself into the truck.

  She stayed around all afternoon as Ben kept himself busy, not the busy of a man obsessed with doing, going, rushing, but the busy of maintaining space, putting away the net that hung on two wooden pegs on the cabin wall where it had been left to dry, folding it into a plastic tub so that it would come out easily the next time he used it. She kept up a steady stream of talk while she helped pick the dried weeds out of the net mesh. She talked for the sound. Now that her children were gone, her house silent and empty, she felt a vacuum that needed to be filled. And there was of course Lester. Ben needed to know everything about Lester, but she needed to be careful not to cross the line into idle gossip. Ben accepted Rosie’s voice as background to their visit; let the words fill the space around them. The words were kind, and gentle, simple stories, everyday things that happened, remembered and brought back to life.