The Cast Stone

by Harold Johnson

  The man was young and had not earned patience yet; a young man with a salon haircut, and shoes, brown leather; slacks and short-sleeved shirt that matched; black and tan.

  “Hello.” He stood not so tall in front of her.

  “Hello yourself.”

  “I’m looking for a Mr. Ben Robe.” Benji shuffled his feet, tried to find a more casual stance, couldn’t, and stood exposed like a schoolboy in front of the master, or a penitent in front of the priest.

  Rosie recognized the young man, though she had never before seen him. She smiled inwardly and the smile found its expression on her face.

  “A Mr. Ben Robe, are there more of them?”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “It’s okay. So what you want with Ben?”

  “You know him?”

  Rosie nodded. “Oh yeah, some days I know him better than I want to.”

  “He lives near here?”

  “Right through there.” Rosie pointed with her mouth to the beginning of the path through the trees. “Come on, I’ll take you there.” She stood up quickly. She wanted to be there when these two met.

  Ben’s son was here, her daughter would not be too far behind.

  Leroy was eleven months older than Elroy. Their mother must have been too tired to have much imagination left over when she named the second son, still angry that the myth, you can’t get pregnant when you’re breast feeding, wasn’t true. People who knew the boys occasionally mixed up which one was older, Leroy was born January tenth and Elroy celebrated his birthday a month earlier on December ninth, other people thought the boys were twins. Twelve siblings knew the boys’ correct ages, but even their mother Agnes occasionally mixed them up. She mixed up the names and ages of all of her children, and had to recite their names in chronological order to find the one she wanted. “Rudy, Barbara, Martha, Elizabeth, Leroy, Elroy, Mary, William, Jonas, Stewart, John, Peter.” Never in Agnes’s life had she blamed the church for inflicting the denial of birth control on her, and had dutifully attended, a ladder of children behind her, every Sunday.

  Tomorrow, Elroy would be in that church for the last time. Tonight he lay in his finest, white buttoned-up shirt, hands folded, head on a satin pillow, eyes closed, his long bright white hair shiny in the fluorescent light. He looked to be almost smiling. “Peaceful” people remarked when they looked into the casket. “He looks so peaceful.” It gave them comfort that Elroy’s suffering was over.

  Leroy was at the wake. He sat with his friends at a table near the exit doors of the school gymnasium, close to outside where he slipped every once in a while for a cigarette. Later in the night when the crowd thinned out he would exercise Elder’s privilege and smoke inside. It would piss Elroy off if he knew. Elroy had never smoked, probably because Leroy had started first.

  The competition between the boys had begun as soon as they laid eyes on each other. There were some here tonight who remembered when Leroy and Elroy played hockey, never on the same team, each pushing to excel over the other. If Elroy scored a goal, Leroy would be nearly manic to get one as well, skates shattering ice, driving for the net. The boys played hard, elbows and shoulder checks, and sometimes, but not often, a teammate might think that he could drop the gloves against the opposing brother, only to find that brotherhood was far more powerful than team spirit. Fight with one brother, you had to fight both, regardless of which team they were on.

  Ben sat across the gymnasium from Leroy at the same table as Rosie and Elsie and little Rachel whom Rosie had on her lap. Benji was there, not knowing what to make of the situation. This was completely foreign to him, not only that an entire community would attend a wake, but that they were all Indians, and he was half-Indian too. He didn’t know how to behave, didn’t know the protocol. This should be a solemn occasion, the death of an Elder, but people were teasing and laughing as though it were nearly a celebration. All of the stories he heard were either ribald or otherwise twisted to evoke laughter.

  There was the story of how Elroy had beaten Leroy in a poker game and went home wearing Leroy’s jacket and driving his truck. Time blended and someone else — Benji could not remember the person’s name, had trouble remembering all the names of all the people he was introduced to, all the new relatives — this someone, this relative, told of another famous poker game.

  “In them days they used to play for muskrat pelts, I guess. In the spring when trapping was over they used to come down here to the Hudson’s Bay post from all over as soon as the ice was off the lake. This is way, way back — thirties, forties, maybe. My dad said they used to play anywhere. Someone would spread a tarp on the ground,” the unknown relative spread his hands to show Benji, “and a trapper could either win big or lose a whole winter worth of work. Anyway, this one game it was old Kooch Primeau, I barely remember him, he was old when I was a kid and that was a long time ago, and he was losing. He took out his false teeth and threw them out there. And they say old Duncan Bird, he was chief here after that, he took out his glass eye,” the unknown relative made a plucking motion, “and threw it on the pile and said ‘I see you.’”

  When the laughing died down, when the last person had repeated, “I see you,” Ben explained to Benji. “Old Duncan Bird was my mother’s grandfather, so your great-great grandfather.”

  “You’re related to just about everyone here.” Rosie adjusted Rachel in her arms, tried to find some way to ease Benji’s tension.

  “Be careful who you try to snag.” Elsie liked Benji. He was a good-looking young man.

  “As if. He knows better than to try to snag at a wake — if he wants a woman he’ll come back at pow-wow time.” Rosie was really reminding her daughter of propriety.

  “Am I related to — ?” Benji even had trouble remembering Elroy’s name. He indicated the casket in the centre of the gymnasium with a nod in its direction.

  “Sort of, I guess. Leroy and Elroy were my dad’s cousins I think.” Ben was not sure.

  “No, The Moosehunter family came here from the west side,” Rosie remembered. “Your family has been here since Treaty; they came later. Your dad and Elroy and Leroy used to go work together in the logging camps, but they weren’t related.”

  “So I’m not related to him.” Benji wondered what he was doing at a wake for a stranger.

  “Well, sort of. Leroy married a Bird woman. She’s been dead now for so long I can’t remember her name, but she was your Granny’s cousin.” Rosie had a good memory for lineage.

  Benji guessed from the white casket with the red C logo blazoned on the open lid. “He was a Montreal Canadiens fan.”

  “No, that’s Leroy getting his last lick at his brother. Elroy had to cheer for the Maple Leafs because Leroy cheered for Montreal. Everybody knew that.” Even Ben knew of the famous rivalry. “It was Leroy that got to pick the casket.”

  Rosie warned. “Leroy thinks he got the last laugh at his brother. But Elroy’s still around, Leroy better watch out. Tricks from the Otherside can be cruel sometimes.”

  Before the midnight meal was served, Ben was asked to go sit with the Elders.

  “How come not you?” Elsie asked Rosie.

  “Oh, that’s just Leroy, wants to talk politics with the men. He sees me here with my granddaughter. Knows I’m with family, and hey, he paid me a compliment. I’m not old enough to sit with them.” Rosie smiled at her daughter. There was no insult, none intended, none taken. Rosie lifted the little girl under the arms until she stood on Rosie’s lap looking at her, looked long into her granddaughter’s face, at the way she held up her head, felt the strength in the legs as the baby tried to stand against her thighs. “I can’t place you little one. You look like someone from long ago but I don’t remember who.”

  “She looks like her father.”

  The silence that followed was broken by Benji. “Where is her father?”

  A longer silence was broken by Elsie. “He was with the Pats,”

  Benji offered a bewildered look.

  “PPCLI�
� Elsie responded.

  The look deepened.

  “Princess Patricia Canadian Light Infantry, defending Toronto.”

  “You’re a widow.” Benji didn’t know what else to say. He felt a tinge of guilt. The man died defending his city, died defending him, defending the school where they had gathered and waited, cringed at the shriek of sirens.

  “I never think of myself that way. Bert never even got to see his daughter.” Elsie read his guilt. Offered a gentle explanation to ease what she thought was concern. “He was home on leave, we got together, I got pregnant, then the Americans came. I hardly knew him. But I am thankful to him. He left me a bit of himself, a gift.”

  The food served at the Elder’s table ran over the paper plate in front of Ben, deer meat stewed in its own juices until it fell apart, pan fried pickerel, baked bannock, fried bannock, a little scoop of dry pounded meat placed carefully on the edge of the plate where it wouldn’t get soaked by the juices from the deer meat; it should be dry, eaten with fingers and dipped in butter, and of course, every wake needs potato salad, lots of potato salad.

  “Bet you didn’t eat like this at that university, eh Ben?” Roderick nodded toward Ben’s plate as Ben tried to keep the blueberries thickened with cornstarch from running off, with a flimsy plastic fork.

  “Can’t say I did.” Ben decided to just eat what was there instead of trying to dam the flow that was defeating him.

  The talk during the meal was general, “Who shot the deer?”

  “It was Red who shot the deer, of course.”

  “That Jemima sure can cook.”

  “You bet, taught by her mother, still knows how to make pounded meat, don’t see much of this anymore.”

  Then when the plates were nearly empty, a few bits of bannock remaining, too much for old men to eat who didn’t work hard all day anymore, a young woman served hot tea from an overlarge black enamel tea pot, black tea that smelled of the handful of muskeg leaves thrown in ‘just for the Elders’, poured into white Styrofoam cups.

  Leroy stirred a second plastic spoonful of sugar into the tea. “So, Ben,” he leaned back into the hard chair, stretched old muscles, “What you make of this Treaty process that’s goin’ on?”

  “Haven’t followed it too close, I’m a bit out of the loop.” Ben talked around the bit of baked bannock dipped in the blueberries he had saved for the last.

  Roderick said something that he had repeated all his life, something his father had repeated to him: “Can’t change the treaties; doesn’t matter what, we can’t change the Treaties.”

  “Treaties were with Canada. There is no more Canada.” Leroy set the agenda for the coming discussion.

  Roderick remained adamant. “Treaties were with the Queen. Queen is white. I take it Treaties were with white people, Canadian or American shouldn’t matter.”

  “AFN don’t seem to think so. They’re negotiating as we speak,” Leroy invited.

  “Who said AFN could speak for us.”

  Ben joined, “That’s the thing, isn’t it. Who negotiates for us? If we are a Nation, if we really are Moccasin Lake Cree Nation, then we should be the ones who are at the table.”

  Roderick stood firm, “There shouldn’t be a table. We’ve been saying now for as long as I can remember, Treaties are sacred. If that really means something, then we have to act like it and not run to suck up to whoever has the power right now.”

  Leroy moved the discussion forward, “There’s talk of moving all the Cree onto one reserve, a big reserve like they got down in the States, instead of all these little ones.”

  “Can you imagine, eh, living beside Plains Cree and Swampy Cree — and where would everybody hunt? Won’t work.”

  “But think about it.” Ben was into the discussion. “Just think, if we had a big enough of a land base for us all, if we joined together, we might be a Nation. The reason we have tiny little reserves is because when we were negotiating Treaty, Commissioner Morris didn’t want us to have big reserves. He wanted to break us up so that we would be weak and less of a threat to Canada. The reason we have small reserves here is because Canada had a weak military. They were afraid of us.”

  “That’s not how I heard it.” Leroy couldn’t stay out of the discussion. “The way I heard is that the old chiefs selected their own reserves. Now here William Charles was chief at the time of Treaty and he selected this place for the reserve. Some of the people wanted to be over to the west where the national park is now, but William chose the biggest lake because it would have the most fish.”

  “Yeah, that’s how I heard it too.” Roderick agreed. “From what I been able to piece together, my family have lived here as far back as anyone remembers. Always lived here beside this lake. Used to be, we lived up by Thunder Mountain on the west shore, but when the reserve was made we moved here to the south end. But you know what will happen if they make one big reserve. They’ll move all the Indians from the South up here. Government always wanted to do that, put the Indians on empty land.”

  Leroy’s hand paused, held the cup of tea half way to his mouth: “Not anymore, I don’t think. They might move us down there on the prairie so they can take the resources from here. Americans need lumber and paper and especially our water. No, my bet is if they move us, they’ll march us down there to the empty prairie; we’ll walk another trail of tears.”

  Roderick disagreed, “Naw, they been taking the resources from here all along. Used to be they could just buy it and our government would sell it to them cheap. Didn’t matter that we were here or not. Just look at all the highways in this country. They all run north–south. That’s not so that we could get around. That’s so that they could get the resources out of the North and sell them to the Americans. Won’t be anything different now.”

  “Well, Thoreau sure as hell didn’t sell us out, did he?” Leroy shot back.

  “All the ones before him did, didn’t they? And look what happened when he shot off his mouth.” Roderick was beginning to have fun.

  Leroy the Liberal had to defend Thoreau, had no choice at all now. He would have to stay a Liberal because Elroy died a Conservative. Roderick knew well the ferocity of his cousins’ politics. He had mediated between and around them for decades, knew of the rivalry and the campaigning, and who put up more posters for their party and who attended more rallies, and speeches, and who was the best prime minister and who was running the country into ruin.

  “People blame him for bringing on the invasion, but you got to remember he stood up, them spineless Conservatives had us in so many wars defending the bastards that the world was beginning to think we were the same country. That’s probably why nobody’s helping us now. Sure Thoreau was a radical, that’s why we elected him, remember. It took a Liberal to stand up to the Americans.”

  “Well the way I remember it, Liberals weren’t much better before Thoreau; they gave away as much as the others.”

  “What about Trudeau? What about Chretien? You can’t say they gave in to the Americans. Compare them to Harper or even Mulroney, remember him? Now that’s going back maybe a little too far for you. But do you remember free trade, remember what that did?” Leroy was on a roll. How dare anyone knock the Liberals.

  “I always thought that Thoreau was a populist,” Ben joined in. “He won that election because of anti-American sentiment. People didn’t vote for the Liberal party as much as they voted on a single issue — ‘get back at the Americans’. He didn’t really have much when he threatened to close the border. The border was closed. They had already built their fences and towers, Black Hawk helicopters, cameras, all that.”

  “It wasn’t a single issue.” Leroy defended. “We were going to do something about global warming remember. The big oil companies were screaming and spending money on that election. Every spare dime they had went against Thoreau. We had a plan for greenhouse gases that was the most aggressive in the entire world. Canada was going to become a showcase for the planet. We were going to prove that you co
uld do something. Canada was about to shine again after years of following the Americans. We were going to stand out in the world again.” The old fist, knuckles scarred, rested on the table, not pounding, not yet. “The world was beginning to think that Canada was America, and after Afghanistan, and how we acted under the Conservatives over Iran, it’s no wonder.”

  “I gotta agree with you on that.” Roderick hesitated while a young man cleared away the stained paper plates. “It was getting so that the rest of the world saw us all as one, and that used to worry me. If we were too close to the Americans, their enemies became our enemies, and the Americans were good at making enemies.”

  “You bet,” Leroy spoke in a rush. “We were set to change that when they annexed us. We never got the chance.”

  Ben held his ground. “I wonder if Thoreau really would have followed through with his threats. He won the election on the promise to do something, but he was in power for two years and was still only making noises.”

  “Thoreau was only one man,” Leroy defended. “It takes a whole nation to make change, especially the big changes we were trying to effect.”

  “Well, Ben might not have believed Thoreau, but Wright sure did.” Roderick sided.

  Ben put his study of obscure history to use. “I don’t know, the Americans always intended or at least contemplated taking over Canada; Thoreau’s noise only offered an excuse. In the nineteen thirties the Americans had detailed plans for invading Canada.”

  Roderick also remembered history. “1812, was the first, eh.”

  “Then the Fenians.” Leroy knew history too.

  Ben set the record straight. “1775 was the first one. That was the Quebec invasion. The next was 1812. Some historians have suggested that the reason for the American Revolutionary war was not because of the tax on tea as popular history would have you believe but was rather started by the Americans as an excuse to invade Canada — annexation, expansionism seems to have been part of the American ideal since its inception. They thought it was going to be easy, in fact Jefferson said it was ‘just a matter of marching’.”