Incidents in the Life of Markus Paul

by David Adams Richards

  “Believe it or not,” the captain said, in his strong Rotterdam accent, born of poverty not unlike that of Roger Savage, “and howl all you will, but say nothing outside your berth. For it is a lesson in Dutch history what the Canadians did for us in war—and many back home are already reminding the papers of that fact. So be quiet, all of you. If the boy did something wrong they will decide it among themselves. If any of you did see it—step forward now and I will phone the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.”

  He waited.

  Not a soul stepped forward.

  As far as the captain was concerned, the sooner they were out of the strait and at sea the better. Besides, the men were aware that the Liverpool Star, which they were holding up, might if it came to it make sure the Lutheran was held up when unloading in England. One call at the right time and place might make them have to wait in channel an extra four or five days. They stared at the bulwark of their own ship, and thought longingly of their own families.

  Old Amos put some tobacco in his mouth and chewed it while he inspected the walls. Two steel girders jutted out about a foot from the smooth wall of the hold and ran parallel to each other on both sides, about fifteen feet above them. There were two chains hanging halfway below that, to a foot above the wood that was holed. On either side of the hold, the water buckets sat, one on its top and the other on its side, with both ladles lying in the same place. Above the heads of the sailors, the sky, murky with blue-grey clouds, and far above them an osprey looking for some flatfish or perch. Amos was standing on the pulp that had been placed in the hold the morning of Hector’s death and he looked at it quizzically. He wondered how many loads came down that day—then looked up at the girders again.

  When the men above him turned away, and he was sure he was not being looked at, he hauled out his small Instamatic and took five pictures. Then he looked over at Markus and smiled and winked.

  Then he straightened up his sore back and brushed off his pants and climbed back up the ladder, letting Markus go before him.

  When Amos got to the deck he looked down at the hold, and then at the pulp still in the yard. Then he tried to rub his back with his right hand. Then he nodded at all the men looking at him, aware that he seemed most foreign to these foreigners.

  “Old back on me—just about had it.” He smiled.

  Then, with his grandson leading the way, he walked down the gangplank with his shadow off to the side, cast into the green and beautiful Miramichi water.

  He walked toward the crane and looked at it, and at the date of the last inspection, three years before the accident. Amos was very troubled. Craig and Co., which owned the crane and the yard, would not want to be seen as negligent. But they had an out. Roger Savage had hooked on without being hired to hook on. The company had already issued a statement to the paper that Roger had been asked to leave the yard. No one could determine at the moment if this was in fact true. Most of the time it wouldn’t be. That is, he was often there, and had been hired to work before. He was known and a very good worker. So letting him wander the yard wouldn’t be considered anything out of the ordinary—until scrutiny and cover-up said it was.

  So Amos scratched at the side of his face and looked up at the pulleys, and then he walked over to the last stretch of pulpwood in the long lot and looked back at the ship, humming lonely in the clear day, and said to himself:

  “Dear, dear.”

  And looked at Markus and sighed.

  Isaac waited for Amos to make a report, some report about what he intended. But nothing happened. Old Amos came back from the ship and went in and ate his supper of fish cakes and pickled beets. Isaac went back to the house and again, just like the last time, Amos was feeding his face. He waited at the door because he’d been told by Amos that he would be the first to receive any new information. But old Amos simply ate his supper, with the radio turned on to the French country music station. “J’aime Cherie” was playing.

  Amos, with the five pictures he had taken but not yet examined, had no information that Isaac would want. For if he said, “It is nothing to worry our noodles about,” Isaac would not believe him. If he said, “It was an accident,” Isaac would not want to hear him. He knew Isaac wanted him to say: “It is a murder and I am taking action—I will block the road to his house until Savage is charged with murder, and we will take over the riparian rights to those pools! And build our lodge, and you will be in charge of it!”

  This Isaac now wanted because it was needed by those who surrounded him, and he needed to please them.

  But then Amos considered all of this slightly further and decided that Isaac did not want him to say he would take action either, for it would make Isaac less important if Amos mounted his own protest. In fact the one thing he could do to quash Isaac’s power at this moment was to usurp Isaac’s part in it. But he did not. He had to solve something first.

  “Roger is not a bad man,” he said.

  “Go tell that to Hector,” Isaac said.

  “Oh yes, well, dear me.”

  So Isaac stayed outside, and Amos laid the photos out on the table and strained to see what they said. He sat eating fish cakes as his grandson Markus watched him, as he picked up a photo, shook his head, tapped a photo with his finger, shook his head, then ate another fish cake. Now and again he would look over at his grandson, and Markus would edge forward in his chair, with his feet wrapped about the legs, hoping the old man would speak. So the old man said:

  “Markus.”

  “Yes?” Markus asked hurriedly. “What?”

  “Snare me a piece of bread, will you?”

  Isaac went away without Amos speaking further to him.

  This was the day of the first newspaper report by Max Doran. The article was not specific, but gave a needling sense that things had been botched from the start—and not only by the wharf, but by the band council. This was what Amos expected, and again he was troubled.

  “But you might be judging him all wrong,” Mrs. Francis said. “He probably wants to say nice things about Hector—won’t that be nice for the family if he does?”

  “Yes, he might want to say nice things,” Amos admitted, “but I wish we had all said nice things about Hector before.”

  The next morning, Amos went to Isaac’s house and, standing in the small foyer with his hat in hand, asked the man if he would like to go up to the ship.

  “Yes, I would like that,” Isaac said. He looked at his wife and nodded as if to say, Now things will get done.

  Amos nodded too, happy to please this fellow finally.

  So both got into Amos’s old truck and travelled up the highway. Amos had only first and third gear on the truck, so the engine was either lugging along or whining. And every once in a while he would look over at Isaac apologetically.

  “Roger probably hooked more than one load—trying to do Hector in—that’s how I think and that’s what many of our men are thinking too,” Isaac said when Amos looked at him again. “I mean, he could have jammed it opened with a rock or taken that supporting pin away. What do you think?”

  “The captain has treated me with the utmost respect,” Amos said, “and he is very concerned about all of this.”

  But as they drove down the old lane they saw something, little by little, emerge through the dark spruce trees, saw it as if a conjurer had played a trick—that was the feeling Amos had when he first realized that the ship’s berth at the wharf was empty. He and Isaac stared at nothing—space and nothing else. It struck them almost as perverse, to stare at this empty wharf, while farther out in the water, as if to add insult to injury, the Liverpool Star was turning its engine over.

  “My God—it’s gone!” Amos said at last, in astonishment. He said this in astonishment because the fourth hold had not been filled, and he felt that the workers would have done this before they left. But they had left it the way it was, and took what they had in the other, larger holds. What would that do out in the sea, where these holds had to be balanced? This fa
ct is what Amos had been relying on.

  Finally he looked at Isaac and shrugged and smiled. “They all ran away, Isaac. Look at that!”

  Isaac looked at Amos and said nothing. But his face was filled with a compressed rage. The incriminating load of logs was left on the wharf, as if perhaps the sailors thought it was bad luck to take.

  “Do you think I should take the logs?” Amos said.

  “How in hell should I know?”

  “Well, maybe I will take the logs, then,” Amos said. “What do you think? I mean, will they think I am stealing?”

  “We once owned a hundred billion tons of wood, and you worry about a few logs.”

  “I suppose you’re right. They might have thought they gave the ship bad luck. What do you think?”

  “How the hell should I know? All they ended up doing is running away!”

  Amos got out of the truck, and painfully and slowly loaded the eight-foot logs into his box, and got into the cab again. He looked at Isaac and smiled as if confused.

  “Yes, they left us,” he said, “but does that matter? We do not need them to figure this out. We are both very clever, you and I—and if we work together we can come to solve it ourselves.”

  But the compressed rage on Isaac’s face remained. He wanted nothing to do with this small fellow beside him.

  “Call the Coast Guard and have the ship pulled up,” Isaac said. “Do it now—they are still in Canadian waters. They haven’t even reached the last bell buoy yet.”

  Amos simply shrugged again. “What power do we have over the Coast Guard?” he asked quietly.

  Amos, who had finally got his chance to be chief, now realized the position he was in: although he had thought he would be having powwows and ceremonial meets, and exhibition hockey games against triple-A teams from around New Brunswick, a crisis was developing and he was in over his head. He remembered how many people had said Isaac should have run for chief when he came back from out west the year before. And now Joel Ginnish was out of jail and back on the reserve, his half-brother dead, and both Isaac and Joel were walking up and down.

  5

  ISAAC WAS A FAR, FAR GRANDER-LOOKING MAN THAN TIRED little Amos Paul. Isaac wore his hair long, in a ponytail down his back; he wore a deer shirt with symbols. In winter he stood out against gale-force winds to protect a stretch of land for Micmac hunters—a photo of him in the local paper attested to his courage.

  Markus had dreamed that Isaac and Amos would join together and do wonderful things. But now little Amos Paul seemed outclassed and alone, hobbling around trying to keep things safe.

  On the night after Amos and Isaac had been to the wharf, Markus made his way to Isaac’s house just after dark, with the smell of gas in the cool air and thin clouds beginning to form far away and the early croaking of frogs. The road stretched down between dilapidated houses and past unpaved streets running up against the hills into black shrubs and twisted windfalls.

  He was bothered by the thought of Hector, because of what he knew in his heart. No one had cared for Hector the way they should have. Not even Markus. They had all teased him for being skinny and tiny like a girl. And this is the one thing he had told Amos after the meeting of the band council. No one had spoken to Hector, no one cared about him, and he was mostly alone. That is why he went up to work the boat that day. He was lucky to get on, because of Amos. Because who ever bothered with him?

  Sometimes Hector would sit on the big rock down on the shore and skip stones for an hour or two without saying a thing. The only one who was kind enough to skip stones with him was Little Joe Barnaby, who was eight.

  Markus had always felt sorry for Hector. But what good did that do now? he had asked Amos. For he hadn’t been much of a friend himself.

  Amos had only nodded his head and patted his grandson’s hand.

  Rumour stated that the load was rigged, that the ship had been paid off to leave, to take the evidence out to sea. Just as the clouds swirled over Markus’s head, so did rumour. Not only was what had happened to Hector a terrible tragedy but it was romantic, especially to the girls, whom Markus himself wanted to impress.

  “But,” Markus ventured after arriving at Isaac’s house and seeing all the youngsters sitting about and drinking beer in the yard, calling out to old adversaries as if they all were bonded together forever, “my granddad says if he did hook on, he would still have to hook on right or the load wouldn’t have lifted and maybe even would have dropped before it got to the boat. Or as it swung over it.”

  “There’s a hundred ways to do it,” Joel Ginnish said, coming to the door and looking down at the boy as he made the motion of a knot. And everyone looked at Markus as if he was making things needlessly complicated because he was old Amos’s grandson. Joel’s words came from Joel, and that is why they were taken seriously. At that moment, Joel could have said anything and it would work to his advantage. So he stood there solemn and dignified while he spoke.

  Yet Markus knew that Joel Ginnish was no expert. He had never worked at anything. When Markus thought about it, the statement “There’s a hundred ways to do it” was not true at all. In fact, others there who had worked a boat or two would know that it wasn’t. But none were bold enough to contradict the statement. And what they were saying about Roger Savage was that he was a criminal. Not just stupid or blundering, but a real criminal who wanted to kill people.

  “We’ve got to get even,” someone said, “for Hec,” and people began to nod. And many began to call the boy Hec instead of Hector then and there.

  Markus, with his very limited experience, still knew Hector’s death would have had to involve prior knowledge and premeditation if it was more than an accident. Besides that—and it was a big besides—as long as Hector had stayed on his side of the hold, away from the drop, he would have been fine. And who in the yard would have known that Hector would step out as the load was coming down?

  “No,” Isaac said to Markus, putting his hand on his shoulder, “the load ricocheted and killed him. Let’s not destroy his memory by saying it was his fault.”

  “I don’t want to do that,” Markus said, knowing the idea that he wanted to be negative about Hector’s memory seemed more plausible than the fact that he might be telling the truth.

  The year before, Isaac and Markus and Amos had all been part of a big, happy family. They had done things together, riding about in Isaac’s Mercury, for Isaac had wanted to be known as a friend of the chief and a friend of the chief’s grandson. They had gone to the gravel pit and Isaac had let them shoot his .30-30 rifle at Custer—meaning, bottles. Last winter they had even shot a moose—well, they didn’t, but Isaac had—and Isaac had showed Markus how to hunt.

  Isaac had been over to Amos’s house for a beer or two to talk about the recreation centre and the Skilsaws there. Then Joel had come along. Joel suddenly acted as if he were instrumental in everything. He told people who Isaac was going to see and who he wasn’t. He carried Little Joe Barnaby around on his shoulder. Joel had boxed in the Golden Gloves in 1979, so Markus was a little shy around him.

  “Have you ever been in trouble?” Markus had asked.

  “Oh, I been accused of lots of stuff,” Joel would say, and kids liked him all the more.

  That night, Markus went to bed thinking his grandfather was not in the best position and not the most favourite on the reserve anymore. Isaac was no man to fool with; he would do what he had to do in a crisis. And it certainly seemed like a crisis now. Markus did not know what to do. He could pray like his mother had, but he was too embarrassed to do that too.

  Markus had read C. S. Lewis’s “The Inner Ring” in a course he had taken that past year, from one of the teachers who still felt it wise to teach classics, from Cicero to Burke, and had suddenly realized what it was that was bothering him. This very essay C.S. Lewis had written about the willingness to forgo a certain integrity in order to belong to a group was dangerously close to describing exactly what was happening with him and the other
boys. And he had found this out one afternoon.

  Joel had set up a ring out back of his house so they could learn to box. He was teaching the boys to feint and jab, and teaching them to move laterally, and for the shorter boxers to come inside, to utilize their upper bodies and throw the uppercut. The men stood around watching this, the broad heat of midday on their backs and shoulders; the women watched too, yelling at times to their sons or boyfriends. Joel himself smiled at Markus and waved him over, and all the men and women turned toward him.

  “No, I won’t do it today,” Markus said with a shrug.

  Joel smiled. “Chicken—just like yer old man.”

  “You mean my grandfather?” Markus said.

  “No, I mean David, yer old man—chicken.”

  Markus felt this was the meanest thing he had heard about his family. He had heard other mean things, but this was perhaps the meanest so far. He stood at the side of the lane and watched, and the men turned their backs on him. Markus hated what was said about his father, but he did not want to go over there. He felt it was because he was the grandson of Amos that some of the other boys said they wanted to get him into the ring. Even his great friends Andy and Tommie Francis, who were each older than he was by a year or two.

  He was not frightened—it was worse than that. He was embarrassed that these friends, whom he had once laughed and played baseball with, now said they wanted to get him into the ring because Joel Ginnish was walking about the reserve, as Amos joked, as the big sheriff.