Métis Beach

by Claudine Bourbonnais

  He replied, “I’m in a state of nothing, man!”

  He looked at me without friendly feelings, for the first time since we met. It made me shiver.

  A few days later, at his place in East Harlem, he got angry with me, and pushed me, violently. He was drunk again. “Sure,” he moaned, waving open hands under my nose. “Can you see it? The grenade in my hand? They pulled the pin out, can’t you see? Why can’t you see it for fuck’s sake! It’s right there, man! Look closer!” He pushed me, his open hand against my chest. Surprised, I fell straight on my back, no time to break my fall. The pain was intense, an electric shock. Moïse cackled. “I’m such an idiot.… Of course you’ve got nothing to fear.”

  You. Said with such contempt. You. Another cut, but I was raw with guilt already. I pulled myself up, gasping for breath, tears in my eyes. And Moïse kept tormenting me, “You’re no American. You can’t understand.” And the ridiculous words I’d muttered, as if I were responsible for even a part of this whole goddamn mess.

  “I’m sorry, Moïse.…”

  “I’m the one who’s sorry, man!”

  That night, I returned to Harperley Hall, my heart heavy, convinced I was losing my friend. He’s got nothing but contempt for you, Romain. He hates you the way he hates rich kids who have peace of mind.

  At Harperley Hall, things weren’t much better. As soon as I crossed the threshold, Dana jumped on me, harassing me with questions. “Where were you? What the hell were you doing? Have you been drinking again? Look at you, you look like a lush!”

  Since Burke had entered Dana’s life, work for me had become rarer. Interviews, conferences, special events — Burke took care of it all quickly and efficiently. Dana never missed an opportunity. All that was left for me to do was to open and sort correspondence, something I’d been overlooking of late. “What exactly am I paying you for, young man?” Shamefaced, I lowered my eyes, knowing I was taking advantage of her generosity, her money, her patience. I’d become a parasite. Dirty jeans, used t-shirts, long hair, not always clean. I was far from the promise that the mirrors at Brooks Brothers had offered me three years earlier, in high-quality clothes that hadn’t been out of my wardrobe for some time. “What do you do with Moïse, eh? Drugs?” Angry eyes, suspicious, when I came home late at night, staggering with drunkenness and despair. Rosie shook her head, picked up my clothes from the carpet, and washed them overnight. And in the morning, always the same rebukes, “You’re twenty, Romain! You’re almost a grown man now. I want to help you, pay for school, some spending money, but you’ve got to make an effort!” And I shrugged, my mind in a haze. I was aware enough to know I couldn’t keep on like this. Moïse was in all my thoughts. He’d put my life on pause.

  2

  Moïse still hadn’t received a draft notice, but he already knew he wouldn’t follow orders. “Between a killer and a criminal, I’ll choose criminal, man.”

  He made his decision in the autumn of 1965, when he saw a man in front of a frenzied crowd committing a criminal act. “I’ll do the same thing, man! Yes! I’ll do the same thing!”

  That day, I picked him up at the bookstore, and we took the subway to Battery Park, where we could hear a discordant clamour coming from Whitehall Street. Excited, Moïse walked quickly. He hadn’t been drinking yet that day, nor had he drunk the day before. He was full of energy and didn’t want to miss a moment of this demonstration, organized in front of the Army recruitment office, a sinister granite and red brick building, the colour of blood and sand. Applause as the first speakers arrived on stage, folk music playing in the background, and police officers all around. “Come, come on, man! Quick!”

  Rumours had circulated about what one of the young speakers was about to do. A heroic gesture that a few young men had already committed — in fact, enough had done so for Congress to pass a law increasing the sentence for this crime — but no one had done it so publicly, in front of photographers and television cameras.

  That afternoon in October 1965, Moïse seemed to brighten a little and come out of the funk he’d been in.

  Whitehall Street was filled with enthusiastic, noisy pacifists, all surrounding a small truck equipped with a sound system, topped with a platform and a microphone. In the crowd, a small group was singing and playing the guitar, though it was hard to hear them over the sound of counter-demonstrators behind a line of police, chanting, “Communists! Go back to the U.S.S.R.!”

  All the ingredients were coming together for conflict. Around us, you could see clenched jaws under police helmets, eyes riveted on the crowd. Tension was in the air, an oncoming storm. Moïse was rubbing his hands together.

  Everything happened quickly. On the platform on the small truck, one speaker after another was energizing the crowd to make more noise than the counter-demonstrators. “Shit, man! He’s there!” “Where?” “There!” A young man climbed the ladder to the roof of the truck. Short hair, dark suit, black tie: nothing distinguished him as one of the activists the White House hated. A serious young man with sharp features, dressed as if he was going to pick up his diploma. A short silence, a sound like machine gun fire from photographers. “Yes!” Moïse shouted, “It’s him!”

  The next day, images of him on television, in newspapers, would put fear in the hearts of parents with boys of their own. He looks so serious, can it be true? What about our son? Will he be a criminal too, anti-American? A striking image of David Miller touching flame to his draft card, an act of courage that thousands of young men would emulate across the country, even if it was illegal. That day, David Miller preferred to show rather than tell. He didn’t speak, but his simple gesture, as the crowd applauded and shouted encouragement, would earn him five years in prison. He was arrested by the FBI three days later in New Hampshire, but his arrest didn’t stop many others from following his example — we’d be there a month later when five of them burned their draft cards in front of fifteen hundred people in Union Square as Moïse shouted, “Bravo! Screw the bastards! I’ll be doing the same!” The same young men Bob Dylan denigrated in an interview in Playboy, saying, “Burning draft cards isn’t going to end any war. It’s not even going to save any lives. If someone can feel more honest with himself by burning his draft card, then that’s great; but if he’s just going to feel more important because he does it, then that’s a drag.” Moïse would come to hate his idol because of those words, and wouldn’t tolerate anyone saying Dylan’s name around him. “What’s he gonna do? Tell me! He’s gonna go to the front and play the hero? Of course not! He’s not gonna do a goddamn thing because he’s rich and famous, so he’s protected!”

  From then on, in every demonstration, as soon as someone came near him to ask whether he was Dylan, Moïse answered aggressively, “No! If I was him, I wouldn’t be here trying to save my goddamn life.”

  He got word from the army in 1966. “The bastards want to give me a medical. Never thought I would hope I’d have some horrendous disease.” But he was declared 1-A, in fighting condition. In November, he was called to 39 Whitehall Street. “Ten days, man. In ten days I’ll know. And Bob Dylan can go fuck himself!” I was so worried for him, “You’re not really thinking about it, are you? Five years in jail is a long time.”

  “Calm down, will you? If we’re ten thousand in jail, twenty thousand, they’ll have to stop locking us up.” He put his hand on my shoulder, with a smile he hoped was confident. “Remember Thoreau: ‘Under a government which imprisons anyone unjustly, the true place for a just man is also in prison.’”

  But that tide of young men ready to go to prison never happened. And every day, fear grew in me, imagining my friend in the hands of the law, like a criminal.

  3

  That day, I dashed out of Harperley Hall, the New York Times under my arm. I made my way to Central Park West, out of breath, jumped on the subway at Columbus Circle, and got off at Union Square. On the stairs, I bumped into a man. He started insulting me, and I told h
im off right back. We began shouting at each other, and it took other passengers to pull us apart. I finally arrived at New York City Lights Bookstore. I was in such an agitated state that Moïse, strangely calm despite the storm around him, said, “What’s up with you, man? Got bit by a rabid dog?”

  “Read this!”

  “Read what?”

  “This!” My hand shaking, I handed him the New York Times article. “They say hundreds of draft dodgers have found refuge in Canada. Some say there might be even more. Thousands.”

  He shrugged.

  “Moïse, please listen to me for once!” I shouted. Customers turned to look at the commotion. “Why not you?”

  “’Cause I’m not a coward!”

  “Am I coward because I fled my country?”

  “It isn’t the same.”

  “Not the same? So, tell me, what crime have you committed to spend five years in jail, for chrissake!”

  “It’s resistance, man. Like Thoreau.”

  “Goddamn it, Moïse! Thoreau spent a single night in jail. Not five years!”

  I was furious. He tried to get away from me, and I pursued him into the back of the store. I said, almost hysterical, “Thoreau gives people with nothing to fear a clear conscience. Civil disobedience, my ass! A goddamn game, you mean! The same one Joan Baez and her little friends play. So fucking courageous, like Thoreau, don’t pay your taxes to protest the war! They send a copy of his book instead. How nice! How fucking nice! Good citizens, full of righteous indignation! Good God, Moïse, they’re not risking much, are they?” He lifted his eyes. “Listen to me, goddamn it!” I grabbed him by the shoulders. “The friend standing in front of me is already a hero, okay? So don’t burn your draft card and end up behind bars to prove it. And anyway, who are you trying to impress? Strangers who don’t give a shit? Bob Dylan?”

  He stiffened, and I took my head in my hands. Only two days left before his life fell apart. Two days and he’d go to 39 Whitehall Street, and replicate David Miller’s courageous gesture. He’d disappear from circulation, in handcuffs. How could I convince him to change his mind?

  That’s when my eyes fell on an atlas like the one he had shown me the first time we met.

  “Moïse, get over here!” He turned to me, annoyed. “Come on, now.”

  Did he remember Rivière-du-Loup, the land of Kerouac’s parents? And Métis Beach?

  “Yes,” he answered, annoyed by my riddle.

  “You can go there. No one will follow you all the way to Métis Beach! You could take care of Dana’s house!”

  I hadn’t thought about it before, but for the first time in a long time, I felt hope. “Right!” I continued. “You can go to Métis Beach, until this goddamn war is over! We’ll say you’re Dana’s nephew. What do you think?”

  He looked at the map for a long time. “I don’t know, man.”

  4

  It was a tough blow, but hardly a surprise.

  I’d barely closed the door when Rosie appeared in the vestibule, her face drawn.

  “She wants to see you. Right away.”

  “More complaints from the boss, Rosie? Is that it?”

  She didn’t reply. I was in a joking mood, full of optimism. “Oh, Rosie! Don’t worry!” Rosie, a small, surly woman, with a strong odour of camphor around her, so small she had to go up on her toes to help me out of my coat. “It’s okay, Rosie, I got it.” But she insisted, pulling on my sleeves with impatience, as if filled with sexual urgency, and that image made me chortle. She stiffened. “Oh, Rosie! Smile! Finally things are looking up! Something good in my life, and Moïse’s life!”

  I was happy. Surprised I hadn’t thought of it before. The empty house in Métis Beach. Moïse could live in one part of it, insulate it, heat it. Not the greatest comfort, but Moïse wasn’t the pillow and comforter type. If you’d seen his East Harlem apartment in winter, you’d know that.

  Dana would say yes. Dana couldn’t say no. Why hadn’t I thought of it before?

  Poor Rosie! My good mood didn’t seem contagious. “Okay, Rosie, tell Her Majesty I’ll jump in the shower and put on some fresh clothes. I’ve got something to tell her. Something important.”

  She shook her head. “No, now.”

  Rosie raising her voice? I looked at her more intently. “Nothing serious, Rosie, is it?”

  She didn’t answer, sighed with annoyance, and my instinct told me something was wrong.

  Dana was waiting for me in the kitchen, her face hard. Burke was in the office; I could hear him speaking on the phone. Burke was spending more and more time at Harperley Hall, easily taking over the territory I was giving up. So much so that the whole apartment smelled faintly of his lemony Eau de Cologne. A bit like cat piss.

  “You need to leave, Romain.”

  I wavered. “Are you serious?” Of course she was. “You’re choosing to tell me this now? Two days before.…”

  “It’s terrible, I know. What Moïse is going through is terrible, nobody is denying it, but.…”

  “Exactly, Dana. About Moïse, I wanted.…”

  She cut me off, annoyed. “You’re twenty-one, Romain. You’ll be twenty-two soon! It’s time for you to become an adult. I’m not asking you to leave right away. In a few weeks. That’ll give us time to find an apartment and a job that won’t interfere with your studies, of course.”

  Become an adult. Anger filled me, as it always did when I didn’t have a good answer. “Moïse’s life is over in two days! And you … And you....”

  She ignored my despair and went on, “You need to pull yourself together.” She turned her eyes away from me, took a drag of her cigarette. “I don’t want to play mother to you anymore.”

  Adolescent laughter overcame me. “I can’t believe my ears! Play mother to me! Is that what you just said?” I choked with rage, “And what about.…” Without warning, her hand whipped through the air, slapping me across the face. I stumbled. Her eyes like burning embers stared me down, defying me to say another word about our little secret. Burke appeared in the kitchen. A dry smile on his face. A comical and awkward character, appearing in a tense scene to draw the crowd’s laughter. “Everything okay, here?” He pushed his glasses up on his nose and placed a small, veiny hand on Dana’s shoulder. Strangely small for a grown man. She patted it distractedly, without emotion.

  “Burke is moving in next month,” she said.

  Everything became clear — I was the third wheel. “Congratulations, Burke!” I said, as if he just won the lottery.

  Dana gave me a dark look, which Burke failed to notice. I moved onto the issue of the house in Métis Beach.

  “Not a chance! What made you think that would be a good idea?”

  “The house is empty ten months a year.”

  “It’s not even winterized!”

  “Moïse will figure something out.”

  “And what will happen next summer? Burke and I will be one big happy family with him?”

  “We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.”

  “No! No way! I’m not going to be an accomplice! You know what I’d be risking if I helped him be a draft dodger?”

  Tears welled up in my eyes, burning, painful. What would I tell Moïse now that I had begun convincing him to leave? Sorry, buddy. False alert. Back to the game plan.

  “You’d rather see him in prison?”

  “Let him go elsewhere!”

  “Where, elsewhere?”

  “I don’t know! It’s not my problem.”

  You disgust me! But the words stayed in my throat. I left, slamming the door behind me, forgetting my vest in the closet, too revolted to come back for it.

  5

  “What did you do?”

  I was horrified. I couldn’t believe it. Moïse lowered his head, wiped his eyes. It was freezing cold in his small apartment. An acrid smell flo
ated in the air, and the only window was wide open, letting cold wind in.

  The night before, Moïse burned his novel. After, he cleaned his apartment and packed his bag. Moïse, exiled from his beloved city, not knowing whether he might return to it one day. Deathly pale, he told me, “I have to mourn, man. A New York Tale was my photo album. It was too painful to keep.”

  What a mess. And Burke had promised to read it. Burke might have published it.

  “So what? If Burke sold thousands of copies, it wouldn’t change a goddamn thing. Can you imagine? A book written by a coward who abandoned his country. You really think anyone would read it?”

  He sniffed. He looked beaten. The wind slapped the drapes around and something rolled on the floor. A cold, heavy rain began falling on the city. Moïse got up and closed the window; when he returned, he put his coat on, “I’m ready.”

  We had breakfast in a diner on Seventh Avenue. The young woman serving us was so kind we managed to swallow two eggs and bacon, just so she wouldn’t ask what was wrong. Moïse, nervous and serious in his dark suit, bombarded me with questions about John Kinnear, whom I called in a panic in Métis Beach after my fight with Dana. We had stayed in touch despite the distance, and hearing his voice always put a smile on my face. He didn’t know anyone who could take in Moïse in Métis Beach, but he offered something better. He knew of a group called the Montreal Council to Aid War Resisters, and told me to call him back later once he had time to find out more about them. I felt a wave of relief, and left for Central Park. An hour later, after my walk, John gave me all the information I needed — the address of the committee, the name of its main organizer, and his phone number. John told me there was great sympathy in Quebec for draft dodgers, that they were welcome. “We don’t understand what the Americans are doing in Vietnam. It’s not a war for liberation like in ’39. It’s a useless war.”