The Cast Stone

by Harold Johnson

  “It was your responsibility.”

  “I gave the prisoners to Ed Tremblay. He captured them. I trusted him.” Monica defended herself.

  “It was still your responsibility.” Councilwoman Betsy Chance sat across the long table from Monica, looked directly at her. Monica stood straight at the narrow end of the table, not quite at military attention, but in a formal pose, stood for this dressing down from the full council. “Council appointed you to look after the prisoners.”

  Councilman Moosehunter leaned forward slightly to see around the person to his right, so that he could see Monica. “It’s not that we really give a damn about whether the prisoner was poisoned, you realize. We’re dedicated to killing as many Americans as we can, same as you. The problem lies in two separate factors. First, we traded a prisoner for two of ours, one of those was at your urging. Council went with your recommendation.” The person beside him leaned back so that Councilman Moosehunter did not have to lean so far forward. “By poisoning the prisoner you jeopardized all future exchanges. This is very delicate. The process of a prisoner exchange requires a great deal of good faith and it exposes our negotiators to incredible risk. Councilwoman Chance negotiated that transfer for us. Her credibility is now tarnished.”

  Monica glanced at her friend Betsy who sat shoulders back and stared directly at her.

  “The second factor,” Councilman Moosehunter continued, “maybe the more critical factor, is that the prisoner was poisoned with yellowcake. The Americans now know for certain that we have it. We’ve been able to keep them guessing so far. Do we have the material or not? Now they know. Maybe it’s a good thing, maybe it was time to let them know that we have it. But, that was for council to decide, not you.”

  “I was not aware of Ed Tremblay’s actions. He acted without my instructions.”

  “It was still your responsibility.” Councilwoman Chance repeated.

  “I am not denying my responsibility.” Monica stood a little straighter, a little more formal. “I am merely advising council of the facts. I take full responsibility for my actions and ask the indulgence of council once more. Please tell me what council needs done to repair the damage.”

  Council sat back in unison. Each of the seven looking down the table at Monica. Chairman Booth sipped water from a plastic bottle before he spoke, straightened his glasses to see the length of the table. “We are going to ask you to do something that you might find goes against your sense of loyalty. You will have to decide where your loyalty lies, with this council or with Ed Tremblay.”

  “I assure council that my loyalty lies here.” Monica indicated the table.

  “One thing more.” Councilwoman Chance turned slightly as she spoke. “Your friend Ben Robe has been taken in. We appointed someone to watch out for him, but our man was obstructed by a neighbour woman.”

  “Rosie?” Monica guessed.

  “Whoever she was, she grabbed our man’s gun away from him as he came out of her house. The arrest did not take long. Your friend Robe apparently went willingly, did not resist.”

  “That is just for your information. You are not to do, or try to do anything more about it.” Councilman Moosehunter did not lean forward to speak this time. He did not even bother to look at Monica.

  “Should I have the barrel of yellowcake moved from the house?”

  “Where to?” Councilwoman Chance spoke in a sarcastic tone.

  Monica shrugged, lost for a second. She had never received a dressing down before, did not know how to react. She was determined to stand up, say ‘yes sir’, ‘no sir’, ‘three bags full sir’, ‘never complain, never explain’, ‘take your lumps’, ‘maintain honour’, all those military axioms. Yet she was shaken by Betsy’s behaviour. Betsy her friend was a different person from Councilwoman Chance. Councilwoman Chance obviously was not her friend.

  “That barrel is in the best place we could find.” Chairman Booth spoke quietly, explaining to a five-year-old patiently. “There aren’t many houses left with cold war bomb shelters made of a foot of reinforced concrete. That barrel is giving off radiation, radiation that can be detected by satellites. Radiation that can only be stopped by an inch of lead or heavy concrete. As Councilwoman Chance asked you, where do you think we could move it to?”

  Monica shrugged again.

  “So you realize, Miss, what needs to be done is not to move the yellowcake, but to remove the risk.”

  “You mean Ed.”

  “We mean Ed.” Councilman Booth stood abruptly; his chair scraped back loudly. “You will cooperate with Councilwoman Chance in ameliorating the problem.” The meeting was over.

  His body was shutting down. Rick did not need Doctor Finlayson’s report that his kidneys and liver were failing. He did not need to look at the intravenous tubing stretched to the hum and bubbling machines, did not need to crane his neck to see the digital readouts. He knew, felt the slowing of his life, felt it fade, drip away. The time would come soon when he closed his eyes and would never open them again. He forced them open now, to look around the hospital room, at his mother sitting in the armchair by the window where there was good light. She was keeping her hands busy with her knitting, found comfort in doing, in making. His father would be pacing — the room was too small for him, he needed the hallways, and the little green area outside where patients and visitors sat at plastic picnic tables, ate a sandwich or drank a coffee and smoked cigarettes.

  Vicky looked away from her knitting for a second, at her son in the bed, the back raised. He was looking at her. She smiled at him, put down her needles and yarn on the floor beside her.

  “You okay, Ricky?” She asked leaning over him.

  “As okay as it could be, Mom. Where’s dad?”

  “He’s around somewhere. Do you need something.”

  “I need lots of things. But nothing you can bring.” Rick lifted his hand, the right one, the one without the tube, reached feebly with it. Vicky took it, held it, squeezed it, took it in both of hers, patted it, leaned over and kissed the back of it, smiled down on her son, put as much happiness and kindness as she could find into the smile, but her eyes showed her pain.

  “Your dad needs to be on his feet at times like this.”

  “I know, Mom.”

  “He never was a man to sit down. He’s trying to stand up the best he can.”

  “I know, I’m trying to stand up too.”

  “You don’t worry about anything, Ricky, you just rest and get better.”

  Ricky looked directly into his mother’s pained eyes. Breathed in slowly. “I’m not going to get better.” He was standing up the best he knew how, he was not hiding behind a lie, he was standing straight, honest, like his father. “U238, the doctor said. There’s no magic cure. I’m not coming out of this one. I’m not coming home.” A tear began at the inner corner of Vicky’s left eye, welled out and ran the length of her nose, around the end and hung beside her nostril, bubbled there while she sniffled.

  “Don’t cry, Mom. Please, that makes it hard.”

  She took one of her hands away from his to wipe away the tear and snot, breathed in deeply looking for strength in the air, wiped her face with her palm.

  “I don’t want to die, Mom.”

  Vicky’s tears poured, dripped down her face into her mouth, she tasted salt.

  “It’s not fair. I should be on the farm.” Ricky gasped air between words, sucked it in, whistled it past the plastic tube in his nose. “It wasn’t our war. You and me and Dad and Clarice, we never started it, never wanted anything to do with it. You know what we did wrong, Mom?” He waited for her to answer. She didn’t, couldn’t, her mouth was full of tears.

  “We didn’t do anything to stop it.” Ricky answered for her. “We never stood up to the crazies. Never put them in their place. They came and said that God wanted us to do this and we would not talk against God and we went to war; that’s what we did wrong.”

  Vicky knelt beside the bed, her legs would not hold her up anymore a
nd she could not let go of Ricky’s hand. She laid her wet cheek against that young hand, rested her upper body on the starch white bed and poured tears onto the hand.

  “Mom,” Ricky tugged at his hand to get her attention. “Mom.” She looked up. Raised herself on her elbows, found the strength she did not believe she had. Raised herself until she could see his face, his serious young face. “I need you to know something, Mom. It’s important.” Vicky nodded and wet dripped from her chin with each nod. “ I never killed anyone. I never shot anyone. I want you to know that.”

  “Uh-huh,” she dripped more tears.

  Rick relaxed back into the pillows, looked toward the tiled ceiling. “I never killed nobody.” He sucked in air, hospital air, air that smelled of disinfectant and linen. “I never killed nobody.”

  “You’ll have to stay and look after your dad’s place.” Rosie was standing in Ben’s big garden. It was full now, beets were ready, potatoes were beyond bloom and needed another hilling up, the squash were not doing so well, too dry; squash need lots of water.

  Benji leaned on the hoe, looked toward the house, at the red truck parked beside it. “I guess, eh?”

  “Someone has to.” Elsie was thinking of moving the last of her few belongings over from her mother’s place. She had only come home for a visit, to see how her mother was doing, had stayed the entire summer. She had no wish to return to the little apartment in Red Deer. There was nothing there that she wanted. It was Bert’s apartment, his family would take care of it. Elsie didn’t want to go back there, that little life ended with the message that Bert had been killed, ended before it started. It was a false chapter in her life, a promising beginning, not more than a couple of weekends with a soldier home on leave, a pregnancy and emails and phone calls and she promised she would stay at his apartment, look after his stuff, wait for him to come home. She kept her promise, stayed and waited. He did not keep his promise. They sent his coffin to his family in Edmonton. It was a very short chapter that ended in loneliness despite the company of her daughter.

  “How long do you think they will keep him?” Benji was not asking anyone in particular. He felt a tinge of guilt at not being there the day his father was arrested; he’d been occupied with Elsie.

  “Who knows.” Rosie felt the dryness of the soil as she dug for the root of a dandelion. Sandy soil grows good root crops but it doesn’t hold moisture. It would be nice to mix in some clay. There was that blue clay up the little creek where her father once killed a caribou, but it was a fair distance even if they used Ben’s boat, and how would they carry it?

  “Your dad is going to be okay.” Elsie picked up Rachel, fingered the dirt out of her mouth, wiped the grit from her face and put her back down on the centre of the old patch quilt.

  “I’ve got that same feeling, like there is nothing to worry about. It’s strange. I’m not at all worried about him. Even when I try to imagine the things they could be doing to him.” Benji continued to lean on the hoe, felt the heat of the sun on his back through the thin shirt.

  “Trust that feeling.” Rosie sat on her legs, straightened her back, stretched it out.

  “You think it’s intuition?”

  “You can call it that if you want. You and your dad are connected, learn to trust the connection.” Rosie wiped the loose soil from her hands against her dress. “I feel it too.”

  “But you and him aren’t related are you, Mom?”

  Rosie turned to look toward her daughter. “No, Ben doesn’t have many close relatives left. Most families back then had lots of children, Adolphus and Eleanor only had Ben. They used to gossip about her that she was using Indian medicine for birth control.”

  “Was she?” Elsie wanted a bit of gossip, even if it was ancient.

  “What kind of medicine?” Benji wanted to know what it was made from.

  “I don’t know if she was or not.” Rosie deliberately answered Elsie instead of Benji. Some medicines were dangerous if you let people who didn’t know anything use them. The medicine Rosie knew about caused abortions and sometimes sterilization, not something to be given out randomly. The world did not need that medicine anymore, there were enough birth controls and procedures. She looked down at the pile of plants she had pulled from around the row of carrots, weeds some people might call them.

  Benji went back to thinking about Ben, put the hoe to the earth again, chopped the little green that grew up between the rows of onions. Yeah, his father was all right. He would take care of things here until he got home. It wouldn’t be so bad. He had the house to live in, a good solid truck to use, a boat to go out on the lake whenever he wanted. He was learning about boats, listened to people who knew about crossing big water, how to take the waves on the beam instead of dead on. He had the monthly allowance his adopted parents willed him, a trust until he was thirty.

  Benji had not thought about them in a long time, those two people who should have known they were too old to take in a child. Something was different now when they came into his mind. They did not stir the anger. He imagined what they might have said if he had brought Elsie home, Elsie with a baby, an Indian woman and a papoose into the home of a retired diplomat. How would they have introduced their daughter-in-law-to-be to their circle, an all-white circle of elites? Benji could not hold the thought of their possible discomfort. Instead he wondered whether they would like her. Probably, they probably would have liked her, taken her in and made a fuss over her and Rachel, poured tea for her in the middle of the afternoon and offered cookies and little cakes. And Rachel, well they would have been proud to be grandparents and they would have made good grandparents. He could see them spoiling the little girl with frilly dresses and fancy hats and teaching her to speak English like the Queen. He could hear Joyce calling her princess, and James with her on his lap in the big recliner chair reading her a fairy tale book. Here in the garden, with his hands sore from the wood of the handle of the hoe, the sun on his back and the smell of water from the lake on the little wind, he wasn’t angry at them anymore. In a way he missed them, wished they could see him now.

  “What was Lester up to the other day?” Elsie asked her mother.

  “I don’t know what he had in mind. Came out of the house with a gun just when they were putting Ben in that truck. He came running past me. I just reached out and grabbed it out of his hand.” Rosie laughed. “He ran another three or four steps before he realized he didn’t have it anymore — Rachel is eating dirt again.”

  Elsie picked her daughter up, brushed the soil from her face and held her wiggly and flailing on her hip. “Don’t eat too much of that, my girl.”

  “Yeah, Ben needs all the soil he has.” Rosie pushed herself to her feet. “We really have to do something about this garden. Maybe haul in some peat from the muskeg or something.”

  Benji leaned on the hoe again. He was beginning to like this long-handled thing. “So, why did you take the gun away from him?”

  “What was he going to do? Him with one little gun and all them with machine guns and who knows what else, all he was going to do was get himself killed. I didn’t want him to get Ben in more trouble than he was.”

  “But maybe he could have surprised them, got Dad free.”

  “Then what?”

  “Then Dad would be free.”

  “No, then they would have sent more men and more guns and more trucks and Lester would have to get a bigger gun, and your dad would have to hide out in the bush for the rest of his life.”

  “RCMP never chased anyone who went out in the bush.” Elsie hoisted Rachel a little. It seemed that gardening was done for now. She picked up the quilt with her free hand.

  “No, that’s true, they never did. But these aren’t the RCMP. Maybe these Americans would go into the bush to look for someone. But even when the RCMP were after someone, they never stayed out there very long. Longest I remember was John James and he only hid out four months. Gets lonely out there.” Rosie dumped her weeds onto the compost pile she was start
ing by the gate and headed toward the house, Elsie and Rachel followed. Benji looked around. No, there was nothing left to put the hoe to. He leaned it against the rail, closed the gate, looked back again at the garden, the freshly painted pole fence that did not keep anything out, at the rows of vegetables and the potato patch that took the whole northeast corner. There was a lot of food in that garden, he thought, as he followed the women. A person could survive off that for a while if they had to.

  The voice beyond the black hood asked. “Are you a Christian, Mr. Robe?”

  “Remove the hood.”

  “Now, Mr. Robe, we have been through this before. The hood is for your protection. It’s a reminder to you that you live in darkness and only when you have accepted Jesus into your life will you see the light.”

  “So you’re going to torture me in the name of Jesus.”