The 53rd Parallel

by Carl Nordgren

  It was the evening of the last night the Ojibway would spend at Mathew's grave for his spirit was ready for his journey on the Path of Souls.

  Simon and Tommy filled their plates with fish and manoomin. Simon nodded for Tommy to follow him, and they sat on a log at the River bank.

  The only canoes left were from Joe Loon's clan.

  “We leave tomorrow. The others will go home. I will take a journey to honor Big Brother. You may come with me.”

  “Yes, I will.”

  The next morning, Tommy and Simon pushed off in Nigig and headed down the River.

  In the Abitibi boardroom the two brothers sat on one side of the table, their father on the other, their grandfather at the head.

  The grandfather had the trace of an accent that spoke of a birth and adolescence in England's Midlands, for he had come to Canada with his family when he was in his early teens.

  “What's most important to the family is that these Irish and Indians together have taken the position, yes, it is their view, that this young fellow, Mathew Loon is the young man's name, well apparently, this aboriginal actually intended to shoot himself.”

  The youngest brother hit the table in excited relief, right in front of his older brother.

  “It's what I've been saying all along!”

  “And it's a most unexpected explanation they're offering up, you see. They say it wasn't an accident at all, nor suicide per se, nothing like an act of despair, but rather some sort of act of self-sacrifice. They say Mathew Loon gave his life, and he did this for the express purpose of stopping the two of you from building your mill on the River.”

  The youngest brother laughed.

  “Then he's well named, eh, because that's just crazy. Why stop a pulp mill that'll provide jobs for his people? For that he'd shoot himself dead?”

  “No, no, you must understand the following, and take it to heart, for it appears your adversaries have, you see. They seem to believe that if your mill opens and begins to use this new process of yours, well, you see, they believe the one scientist got it right, the dissenter they call him, and that the mercury you're dumping will poison their River and will be the end of their way of life.”

  The older brother made a point of keeping the mercury safety research file close at hand when he came to the boardroom and at that comment he began to open it.

  “We've gone through the research five times; I've marked the dates you've asked me to—”

  “But if I am going to have to deal with them, and you two have certainly fixed it so I must deal with them, then I am going to understand their fear, and accept it as their fear, and not deny it.”

  The older brother pulled out a paper.

  “Mercury's so heavy it'll sink right to the River bottom, and their camp is 27.7 kilometers away.” He turned to another page. “And you can swallow—”

  “Yes, yes, I really don't need you to take me through all that again, you see, for right now is not the time to win an argument with them. Now's the time to calm the waters.”

  “So what are you proposing?”

  “I'm past proposing. Your father and I are not asking your opinions here, you see, we're simply doing you the courtesy of keeping you informed of a deal already accepted by all the parties. I've decided that to keep there from being any formal investigation, to keep your names clear of this, and, of course, by that I mean keep my name clear of this… And yes, let's not forget, out of sorrow for the loss of this young Loon's life, I have promised the Burkes we will postpone the construction of your mill.”

  “What?”

  “And when we do start the construction, when we begin again next year, we will not be incorporating the new process as part of operations.”

  “Why? After all the work I've done to get the permits?”

  “After all the work I've done for 40 years to build this business! You can wait your turn before you double its size or crash it trying. We will hold off and take the next couple of years to fully explore this new process. We don't want this little skirmish of yours to grow into an ongoing conflict. You know how the Irish get hungry for revenge. So I am declaring it history, and if your study is right there will be plenty of time to take your new process operational before the market demand really grows.”

  The pain in the older brother's leg was sometimes relieved by standing and stretching it out to the side, and he did that now.

  “Whether you want my opinion or not, it seems to me you're giving up an awful lot out of sympathy for someone who they admit shot himself.”

  “Yes, well, you bring up a very interesting subject, this topic of shooting yourself. It appears there were Indian women in the village when you arrived, who took the children into hiding when the gun carrying white men attacked their camp.” The younger brother started to interrupt, but his father stopped him with a look. “Of course, these women are each of them in agreement with your statement that two shots were fired. However, they are also all in agreement in insisting that these two shots were fired approximately five minutes apart, and most certainly not three or four seconds as your story insists.”

  The youngest brother blurted, “So they say!”

  “Yes, that's right, so they say. But I can't think of what they have to gain from saying so, and it is no more than their innocent observation of what they heard before they had a sense of the significance of it, apparently. Hard to confuse it, five seconds with five minutes. So, Mr. Burke isn't changing his story about this aboriginal self-sacrifice, no, as I said, that's held in high esteem. But he did wonder what I thought might have been going on during those five minutes between the shots, and he has suggested, quite reasonably it seemed to me at the time, and after further reflection it seems quite reasonable still, that the Provincial Police might be interested in learning more about the whole thing. That's the moment I made my proposal to put off construction in honor of the boy.”

  Chapter 31

  Back Home

  This Man was standing in his canoe, painting on the great rock wall, his canoe bobbing gently, scraping softly against the rock face. It was a picture of Mathew standing above the River with his arms out, raised up, receiving great power.

  Tommy and Simon paddled Nigig up to the painted wall. As they got close, Tommy turned to Simon.

  “There's many places in Ireland where the Celts carved their images into rock walls. These are similar in many ways. Simple, but the natural lines seem filled with stories… and spirits.”

  “Maureen has told stories of Celtic Indians.”

  “Celtic Indians? I guess that's about right.”

  They studied the images in silence. This Man began a soft chant.

  “When Mathew returned from the white man's school, he could not find his true spirit. When we came here he thought he caught sight of it again.”

  “I believe it was with him when he died.”

  “Yes, it returned to him before he died.”

  Simon and Tommy sat at their campfire, a small tent pitched behind them next to a small wigwam.

  “We camped here before Mathew prayed for his vision. My Big Brother was afraid of his vision.”

  They were quiet. Tommy stirred the fire and released sparks to the stars.

  “Can I ask what Mathew's vision was?”

  “He never had one. Not everyone receives their vision. Sometimes the message from Gitchi Manitou is that your life is yours. You will decide what your story will be. Some take that as a freedom. But that was a message that gave no comfort to Mathew.”

  The next morning, in Dublin, while in the backroom of his music shop, Kevin heard the front door open. He came out to find a woman standing with her back to him, studying the high wall covered with fiddles and dulcimers, bodhrans and mandolins.

  Kevin recognized Maureen before she turned, and as she did, he retreated to the back corner of the shop so she would follow him and be out of sight from the shop window.

  “I need your help, Kevin.”

  “The
re's times I know the shop is under surveillance and of late it's often. Your best move now is to leave and make sure no one tails you. If you're sure you're clean, meet me at the Plumbridge rendezvous.”

  “Let 'em grab me. That's why I've come, to meet with them and explain the situation… to explain everythin'.”

  “Some who might grab you don't waste much time meeting. The others, it's best we meet with them when we're ready, and if you're saying you need my help, then I'm saying we're not ready.”

  Maureen gave Kevin's arm a squeeze before she left his shop and crossed the street to the café that offered a backdoor to a side street. By the time she turned a second corner she was certain no one was following her. She continued to where she had parked the hired car and after visiting her mother she would head to Plumbridge.

  Kevin had a part-time assistant who kept the shop open during his extended trips, and when the hurling lad entered the shop later that day, it was this clerk who greeted him.

  As on that tragic day the hurling lad had crushed an IRA brigade leader's skull he was given directions, to Kevin's new apartment, and was told to hurry. Kevin was leaving town that day.

  Kevin tossed his overnight bag in the Morris Minor and was starting the engine when he saw the hurling lad cross the far end of the street. Kevin rolled the window down as the lad approached and called out to him to get in.

  “Get on the floor, keep your head down, lower, and stay down 'til I tell you otherwise.”

  Kevin pulled away from the curb. There were just a few cars parked ahead of him and only one behind him on this residential street. They all appeared empty, and none moved as Kevin turned onto a side street.

  “Just how foolish are you?”

  The hurling lad sat on the floorboards, leaning over the seat, looking up at Kevin, and he smiled.

  “If I've made the discovery I think I've made, I knew you'd want me to come tell you about it.”

  “And just what have you discovered?”

  “I've been to Derry.”

  “Enlisting in the Royal Irish Fusiliers is what I hear.”

  “You know everythin'?”

  Kevin checked his mirror as he made a quick turn.

  “No, but I try… Tell me your discovery.”

  “I'm hopin' it keeps me alive an' safe.”

  “It's going to have to be a most extraordinary discovery to accomplish that for you now, I'm afraid.”

  “I got a cousin who got me a recruitin' visit an' a tour of Ebrington Barracks. When they was leadin' us past the armory, well, the doors was propped wide open, an' I'm tellin' ya, Kevin, I never imagined so many Brens an Stens, an' rifles, an' mortars all in one place.”

  “When that place is called an armory, it's what you'd expect.”

  “But listen to this. As they were escortin' us recruits past it again, later in the day, I saw where they put the keys for the lock on the armory door.”

  “You got nothing.”

  “I remembered the advice you gave me, that if I see one thin' leadin' to an advantage, start lookin' for the next thing, so I kept sharp attention to the surroundin's an' realized the most extraordinary thing. You just sort of expect a soldier to be armed, yeah; when you picture a soldier in your head you seem him carryin' a gun, so it took me a few minutes before I noticed that none of the men in the barracks, none of the men in the offices, none of the men in the mess, not a single soldier was carryin' even so much as a pistol on him. Not a one. They was all walkin' 'round unarmed.”

  “Now I'm interested.”

  “So I'm sayin' good-bye to my cousin and I ask him about what I saw, and he says it's always so. That unless the men are drillin', the guns are all locked away in the armory, and he's been there six months, and it's been true each an' every day, yeah. All exceptin' for one, he says. The sentry at the main gate, he's got one of dem Sten machine guns.”

  “One Sten's plenty.”

  “But the day I was there, yeah, he didn't have the magazine loaded in it.”

  “And the next day?”

  “An' so I walk by the next day, an' it's a different sentry, wit' a Sten, without a magazine loaded. And yesterday, the first sentry's back, no magazine in his machine gun, that's three days runnin'. That's when I figured I should come tell you what I've found.”

  “What's your cousin's sentiments?”

  “A ticket for each of us to Chicago where we got family an' we're both in. If I get word to him, he'll make sure the keys are where I expect them to be.”

  “You can get up now. I'm headed to meet someone tonight in Plumbridge.” He made one last evasive turn before he headed on his true course. “She might be very interested in your discovery.”

  The priest of a local parish, an old family friend, drove Maureen's hired car up to the cottage where she was born and raised. It was one of a cluster of small cottages just outside Carrowkeel on a spur off the main road that headed south to Derry.

  The priest found Maureen's mother ready. She got in the car, and they drove away.

  An old road crested the ridge overlooking Lough Foyle, and Maureen waited there for her mother. When she got out of the car they took each other by the hands, facing each other, but when Maureen saw her mother's tears begin, she dropped one hand and led her to the shore.

  They walked a slow pace around the lough while Maureen described the Great Lodge at Innish Cove and told her of their Ojibway friends.

  They sat on the rocks at the shore and she told her mother about the events that led up to Mathew's death.

  She stole glances at her mother to study the deep wrinkles around her eyes.

  Her mother had known Maureen was an IRA sympathizer. There had even been times she suspected she had followed her father and become a volunteer. But she was afraid as she listened to Maureen tell of the Nazis' money and the factions that appeared to be after her now.

  She saw the lines and scars of a tired daughter.

  “Was Mathew's death sent me here, Mum, but to do what, I'm still not sure. It was my moves that led to his death, my desires to set things right that turned them wrong, an' I'm tired of bein' the schemer. If I could return their money, I would, but it's all been spent buildin' Innish Cove.”

  “Sounds like you have given them more than most. Shouldn't they see that an' release any claim on you?”

  “I think there might be some from past days could see a fair logic to that, but Kevin says these new lads jump to the gun. I've got Kevin on me side, or at least it feels that way now. We're meetin' tonight to talk about how we can make this all end as best it can.”

  Simon and Tommy paddled Nigig across the middle of a great lake on their way back to Innish Cove. They paddled silently. They had been approaching a loon floating calmly in the middle of the lake. As they drew near, the loon swam in a quick circle then dove underwater. Tommy counted to 74 before the loon resurfaced at a safe distance away.

  The rendezvous was just outside Plumbridge, at the Cruckaclady farmhouse. It was late into the evening. Kevin and the hurling lad were talking with the farmer when Maureen drove up. The farmer left them, and Kevin made the introductions.

  “Meet the lady of the legends, Maureen O'Toole.”

  “Yes 'um, you're just as beautiful as everyone says.”

  “Sure, of course, an' so show us a favor an' leave Kevin an' me alone, an' don't be offended by my request.”

  “I'll go see if there's a stew pot on the stove.”

  Kevin's plans needed the hurling lad to stay close by.

  “No, just go wait under that tree until I call you in.”

  As he walked away Maureen followed Kevin into the widow's cottage just down the lane from the farmhouse. While the old Maimeo sat at the hearth smoking her pipe, Kevin and Maureen settled in at the table.

  “I need the end of this now, Kevin, an' I won't be leavin' 'til I'm assured all claims are settled.”

  “So then, how much money did you bring?”

  “Ah Kevin, I told you, it's all tied u
p in the camp. This is all I've brought with me.”

  She placed the old valise that Russell had given her on the table, opened it, and showed him the four Colt pistols and boxes of ammunition. She kept one Colt in her jacket pocket, loaded, along with a handful of bullets.

  “An' I'm dry of any desire to be makin' plans.”

  “What have you decided so far?”

  “I got an objective, just no play to make it so.”

  “And your objective is?”

  “First and last, to protect Innish Cove. An' that includes Brian and Joe Loon's people. I'm here to protect them. At all cost. At any cost. What's most important to me now is they be left alone.”

  “But without the money, some are thinking the camp is theirs.”

  “I'm tired, Kevin. I need you to tell me what I should do to get Innish Cove clear an' clean of all I've done.”

  “You were offering more guns than this if I remember a conversation in a dark forest one night.”

  “My front for buyin' them would have to be Innish Cove an' I'm prayin' we can find a way to keep it free from that.”

  “So if I had a plan that would get the camp free and clear, you're in?”

  “With that assurance locked down tight, I'm in.”

  “Time to call in the lad and we'll see if we don't have an idea that can save both of you and Innish Cove.”

  The lad explained the situation he'd found at the Ebrington Barracks to Maureen while the Maimeo nodded by the fire. While he worked on a map of the layout Maureen asked for, she helped the old lady to her bed. By the time they heard her snoring, Maureen had begun to outline the approach.

  The next morning, Kevin drove to Dublin to make a proposal to the Executive Council while Maureen drove to Derry with the hurling lad to reconnoiter. Kevin was able to meet with four senior members of the Executive Council that night.

  “So, first off, she claims Russell didn't raise 50,000 pounds, that is was barely 2,000, and it was his deep disappointment that the trip was a failure that broke him. Additionally, it was his orders to deny they met that she was acting on. She insists all the money's in the business, along with a good bit of debt. And then she tells me that between the shooting death of this poor Indian boy and the pulp mill threatening their River, they may not even open again next season, and if they don't she's not sure they'll ever open again.”