The Cast Stone

by Harold Johnson

  “You were trying to do something good. You were getting wood to keep me and Rachel warm for the winter.” Elsie hugged Benji tighter. “Don’t be too hard on yourself. Your dad will understand, you were trying to do something good.”

  “Happy birthday, Lester.” Rosie hoped to lift his spirits.

  “How’d you know it was my birthday.” Lester lifted his head and a bit of one shoulder from the couch.

  “I remembered when you were born. Your mom came over to our house to ask for a ride to town. December first. I think she came to her big sister’s house, half expecting my mom to midwife for her. But in the end we took her to the hospital instead.”

  “You got a good memory, Rosie.” Lester let his head rest back on the softness of the overlarge couch, let the foam and fibre swallow him.

  “I remember when she brought you home too. She pretty much lived with us that winter.”

  Rosie’s memories drew Lester backward through time. “Where was my dad?” he wondered, looking upwards at the tile of the ceiling.

  “Work. Cutting pulp. Something, I’m not sure. Only home on weekends. During the week, your mom stayed with us.” She remembered the baby and the fussing. It was her first experience up close with a baby, a young girl trying to be a part of this woman thing that was happening between her mother and her aunt. She was playing with dolls with her aunt again, and the doll was wriggly baby Lester. “Anyway, that was a long time ago.” Rosie suddenly felt uncomfortable, talking about her aunt with the man who murdered her. She came back to the present. Lester on the couch with a bad cold. A cake in the oven. Not one of the big cakes she used to make for her children, she was a little short on ingredients, just a little something because it was his birthday and he was sick. Cake and a little kindness can be good medicine.

  Winter, again, another cycle of the great wheel. We count winters because they are the most memorable. Ben wondered if he would spend this entire winter indoors. What would be his memories? This cell, concrete and steel, not so different from the winters in the university; thinking, re-gathering, ordering thoughts, finding the order that organizes chaos. The cell was not so different from his university office; windowless, cinder block cold, only his body confined, now by guards, then by exam schedules, his mind free as ever to fly, to find the truth in itself, or out there in the snow and wind, flying above the boreal of his home, or walking the ancient trails. Ben walked often with his father, listened again to his stories, spent hours in front of a warm fire again and reheard the wisdom. The thick of winter, silent, smothered in hip-deep snow, when the magpie circled the cabin looking for scraps, the storyteller, just through the window: “The people moved around lots back then, whenever you wanted, pack your tent, harness your dogs or make a new birchbark canoe. I knew whenever my dad made a new canoe, as soon as it was finished we’d move again. It was like a new canoe was a good reason to move.”

  Ben had been reading history; stories about Indians who moved to be closer to the missions, the priests, the documentation of conversions, and asked his father. “The truth, my son, is that some people did move to the missions. But a lot more moved away. That’s why we’re here. Your grandfather moved away from the Churchill River because there were getting to be too many Christians up there. He came here. Strange though, I met a young man a while ago. He was from that Churchill River area. Out travelling, the way young men are supposed to, came back to see the land of his grandfather, the Thunder Hills. Seems, that old man moved away from here for the same reason, to get away from the Christians. You know, you hear how we used to banish people. Even Chief and Council nowadays want to banish people. Got a drug dealer they don’t know what to do with and they tell the court to banish that person, kick him off the reserve. That’s not how it used to be up here. Maybe in the South they did that. But up here, there was lots of room. People could move. What happened most often if a person was acting up, didn’t get along with everyone else, well, the people would move, leave that person behind. That’s a good way to do things. Banish somebody and you make hard feelings, and things were hard enough before. Make a hard decision like that and you make a hard thing harder. But now we can’t do that anymore, the land is all taken up. Did you know they cut lines around the reserve to mark the boundary? As if the reserve wasn’t too small as it was, the government paid to cut lines, wide ones all the way around, I think just to rub it in. ‘You Indians stay there’ and what are the people going to do when someone acts up, what choice do they have? They have to move to the city.”

  Ben left his father, reached down and touched his toes, both hands, slowly, stretched out the back muscles, felt the tightness in his lower back resist the stretch, pushed through the resistance; and again, straightened and bent, this time a little slower as he bent through the range of muscle tightness. He bent his knees, squatted and rose, listened to the leg muscles speak to him through his bones. Then, he began his push-up routine, not worried about the count. There was nothing important about one hundred, that was a number, a favourite number of the younger men, a hundred push-ups at a set, repeated several times a day. Ben was thankful for them, their dedication inspired him, reminded him, mind, body and spirit all need attention. He repeated the motions, push slowly up, feel the muscle, experience the ache as tight becomes loose: push slowly up, the burn of the rise felt different than the pain of the slow, controlled down. Repeat, listen to the body, push against the pain beyond the pain of yesterday, beyond where he stopped last time, forced another, one more push-up and then down, then relaxed, lay for a moment on the hard concrete floor of the cell, remembered that Mother Earth, the great grandmother was there under the cement and stone. He laid in her arms for those last few moments before lights out and felt her comfort.

  “Did you laugh?”

  “I couldn’t, you had to see his face. I wanted to. It was hard not to. His first tree.” Red shook his head, “His very first tree. It looked like he was going to cry.”

  “I would’ve laughed anyway.”

  “I know you would, my dear.” Red brushed his wife’s hair away from his face, it tickled his nose. He slid his arm under her pillow so as not to pull her long loose hair, intent on drawing her close. He missed in the dark, put his arm inside of the pillowcase, fumbled until he realized why he was unable to hug her, pulled his arm out and tried again. Lorraine snuggled against her rail-thin husband, ran her free hand down his back, felt the cool of his skin. She rolled away onto her back, looked up toward the ceiling. The night was young, lots of time yet for talk.

  “You should have laughed at him. I know he’s mostly white and doesn’t get it yet. But he has to learn sometime. Know what I mean?”

  Red ran his hand over Lorraine’s stomach, made another circle, then stopped, let his palm absorb the warmth. “If you’d seen his face.”

  “I know, you said that already. But,” she put her hand on top of his before he could begin circling again. “But, if you laughed at him, laughed right away, maybe he wouldn’t’ve taken it so seriously.”

  “I didn’t want to see him cry.” Red defended himself.

  “I know you didn’t. You were trying to be kind.” She pressed his palm against her belly. “That’s the way you are. All I’m saying is that it might have been kinder in the long run to have laughed at him right away, instead of letting him feel bad, know what I mean?”

  “Yeah, I guess.”

  “Know what?” she held his hand from moving, kept it from making the circles again. “You should take him hunting.”

  “Aow.” It sounded like a sigh.

  “No seriously.” She kept him from drawing his hand away. “Think about it.”

  “I am.” It wasn’t a good thought.

  “Somebody has to teach him.”

  “I know, but why me? That’s a lot of teaching.” Red remembered the way Benji clomped when he walked.

  “Somebody taught you.”

  “That’s different. I didn’t grow up in a city.”

  “
Not his fault, take him with you. It won’t be so bad.” She moved his hand in a little circle, enjoyed the feel of the rough of the callus and the cool of his palm.

  “You don’t know what you’re asking.”

  “It won’t be so bad.” She rolled over onto her side again, drew Red close. “It won’t be so bad.” She whispered into his ear, felt his palm climb her spine.

  “Collaborators?”

  “Yeah, collaborators.”

  “No, Betsy.” Monica did not like where this was going. All she wanted was a nice dark roast coffee, a little demerara sugar, very little, just enough to counter the bite of the coffee, and conversation with a friend. Then Betsy had to start talking like this. They should have been talking about anything else, the weather even. Snow was swirling out the window of the Roastery. They used to come here and sit for hours Saturday mornings and discuss political ideas, or listen to the chatter at other tables. “That won’t get us anywhere.” Monica wanted the conversation to go in another direction, or stop. “If we start hitting our own, they’ll turn against us.”

  “If we don’t hit them, and hit them hard, the people will follow who they think are the strongest. Strength Monica. We have to show that we’re strong. Otherwise we become insignificant. They have to learn there’s a cost to doing business with the enemy.”

  “But they’re our own people. Remember Ben, he always said that the people were ultimately in control. Even in a tyranny, the people decided at some level to live with it, made the choice, whether consciously or not, to accept where they were. Without the people we will never succeed. Start hitting collaborators and we lose. That’s the path to our own end.”

  “Your rationalizations start out correctly enough, the people are the key to final success. But we are losing them, every day, more and more, they’re lining up for the easy money. We don’t have the money, we can’t compete. We teach our children not to take candy from a stranger, and when they dig in the cookie jar too often we slap their hands.”

  “You’re not talking about slapping some kid’s hand here. Agribition, that’s been around for probably a century.”

  “And they’ve always collaborated with the Americans. What do you think Agribition is about? It’s about selling beef to the devil.”

  “Oh, it’s more than that. Farmers from the whole country come to show off their stuff, not just to the Americans. Lots of people from Europe come to it.”

  “Used to come, Europeans used to come. Not anymore. Now it’s about supplying the bastards with T-bones, giving the fat of the land to the new master.”

  “Maybe, but I can’t stop thinking that if we hit them, the people will turn against us and we need them.” Monica looked to the snow, watched it swirl. They sat at a corner table, each with their backs to respective walls. The tables near to them were empty. Maybe it was the snow that kept people away. Maybe it was something else. Monica did not want to talk about this. The thought of security might have been a good reason to bring it to a stop, but they had talked here before, made plans, successful plans. Homeland Security could not listen to everything, all the time. The Roastery was as safe a place to talk as anywhere else, maybe safer. It had a proven track record. She tried another approach. “Has council thought this through?”

  “As far as you need to know, I am council.”

  “I’m not doubting.” Monica ran a thumbnail under a fingernail, nervously, realized what she was doing and stopped. She reached for her coffee, not because she wanted it, just to give her hand something to do, something that did not show Betsy that she was in anyway nervous, or distrustful. This was a first, this feeling, this sense, a sense of doubt, and doubt was dangerous. It led to fear. If Betsy was acting alone on this, Monica could not go directly to council, could not go around her, ask her superiors. That would be insubordination and the insubordinate, undisciplined did not survive long. She remembered Ed Tremblay.

  “On a final note, I have some good news for you.”

  “What might that be?” Monica was thankful for the topic shift.

  “We found Ben.”

  “Where?” Monica leaned forward with the word, closer to hear, pulled by the promise.

  “He’s here.”

  Monica waited for the rest of the good news, wordless.

  “He’s here, in Saskatoon.” Betsy fed a little more.

  Monica waited.

  “At the correctional centre.”

  “Not Dakota Max.” Monica sat back.

  “No, he’s here.”

  “Then he should get a hearing and be allowed a lawyer, everything else.” Monica spun possibilities.

  “Not necessarily.” Betsy enjoyed feeding Monica little morsels of words.

  Monica waited for more. It didn’t come. They sat in silence a moment. Monica looked out the window at the gliding snow, let her mind go out into the city to look for Ben.

  Betsy looked at Monica, weighed her, weighed her strength, didn’t find any weakness and fed her the remainder. “Ben never went to Dakota Max. He’s been here all along under psychological review.”

  “But what does that mean?” Monica came back into the Roastery, looked into Betsy’s face, a long, hard face with new lines around the mouth adding to the old lines that were becoming deeper.

  “Don’t know. Usually politicals get sent south and the correctional centre is used for criminals. Don’t know what they’re up to. Maybe psychology is the new word for torture.

  Maybe they don’t have enough on him. Maybe Dakota Max is full. Who knows.”

  “Maybe we can get him out.”

  “A jail break.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because, my girl, Ben is small potatoes. He doesn’t know anything. Council will never authorize it, and even if they did, then what? Ben goes into hiding. He goes to the bush. We have hundreds out there now, just here, under local authority. Imagine there must be thousands across Canada hiding out there. Great thing about Canada, we still have lots of bush. In the summer it’s not bad, kind of a picnic, an outdoor adventure. But now with winter, everyday we have people showing up, hungry, frozen, begging council for a place to stay, a blanket, a bed. Hell, we even have people turning themselves in because they think jail is better. At least it’s warm.”

  “Not Ben. Ben can survive out there.”

  “So much faith. In a way it’s good to see. It’s good to see faith in something. But, I think you’re putting it in the wrong place. Ben is an old man, he doesn’t know anything, he can’t do anything. He is just not a priority. Not for council and probably not for Homeland Security. Give them a little more time and they’ll figure it out for themselves. Then you’re beloved Ben can go back into retirement, fade away into the bush.”

  “Maybe.” Monica looked out the window again, the snow was getting heavier. “Maybe, but I still think that he knows a way out of this.”

  Elsie stood with her back to Benji, felt the smooth round of the log on her palm. She leaned against the wall, not for support, it was her stance: she touched the wall beside the window for the sensation of its solidness, its security, as she looked out at the snow on the pines, building on the ground, becoming deep. “Mom’s alone over there.” She spoke more to herself than anyone.

  Only Benji heard her. “Where’s Lester?”

  “Medevac yesterday. Mom helped him walk to the clinic. They took one look at him and put him on an ambulance to Prince Albert.” She turned to look at him, “It doesn’t look good. Pneumonia.”

  “Pneumonia’s not a big deal. A couple of days rest, some antibiotics and he’ll be back.”

  “It’s not a big deal unless you have AIDS.”

  “Lester has AIDS?” Benji put the book down.

  “Thought you knew.”

  “No. I thought he was just being lazy. Red needs him to work and he keeps staying home. I thought he just had a cold.” Benji spun thoughts, rapid thoughts, a blur of experiences with Lester. Had he ever had an open wound when Lester was around? Had he ev
er drunk out of the same cup, shared a bottle of water? His thoughts slowed to a stop without finding anything, realized the senselessness of his fear. “Is he going to be all right?”

  “Don’t know.” Elsie turned to slide a chair away from the table; she wanted to sit and watch the snow fall. She never got the chance. The chair scraped against the floor. The sound woke Rachel. She had been asleep for over an hour. Wore herself out, little legs that have just learned how to walk tire easily. The little girl fell asleep on her blanket spread on the floor, across a cushion she had pulled from the couch. Elsie had found her and put her on the bed. The floor was too cold a place for little ones to sleep.

  A north wind hammered down the length of Moccasin Lake, flew full force into the tiny community at the south end, brought with it any loose snow and piled it in the willows along the shore. It shaped drifts, then reshaped them, created its own abstract art forms: lines and swirls, depths and hollows — piled snow in one place for no other reason than it chose to, and in others exposed the naked black ice.

  Cut by the pines around Ben’s cabin, the wind lost some of its force before hitting the solid logs. It tried to find any loose chinks, a place where insulation was thin. Thwarted, it passed, without looking back where it would have seen Elsie standing in the window, her daughter held on her hip with one hand; the other against the wall, drawing strength in the middle of the storm. She was looking south toward her mother’s house.

  “I love you.” Benji put his arm around her waist; stood beside her, pulled her close so they stood hip-to-hip, thigh-to-thigh, rib cages pressed together.

  “I love you back.” Elsie turned from the window to kiss his cheek, a gentle brush of lips against bristle.

  Benji sought what Elsie was watching. All he saw was snow, swirls of it, skittering across the spaces between the trees, piling into, onto itself. He soon tired of it, could not capture whatever it was that had captured her, could not comprehend that she appreciated the power of the storm, the power of those forces that shape and form everything.