Reparations

by Stephen Kimber

  “Your Honour, I—”

  Gettings waved Uhuru off. “No need to answer, Mr. Johnstone. Perhaps it was an unfair question. But let me ask you one more thing. Was your father an intelligent man?” Calvin looked puzzled. “I ask that because, as you know, he was a part of the citizens’ committee that negotiated the terms of the relocation with the City. Isn’t that so?”

  “Yes, but—” Calvin knew he was being set up. Again.

  Gettings pulled out a photocopied page from a three-ring binder on the Crown table. “I have here a clipping from the Halifax Tribune dated August 12, 1970, that I’ll give to the clerk in a moment. But first, Mr. Johnstone,” he handed the paper to Calvin, “I wonder if you could read for the members of the jury the section highlighted in yellow marker.”

  Calvin pushed his glasses up on top of his head. “Ah, let me see . . .” He used his finger to guide his eyes along the column of type. “Deacon Johnstone dismissed criticism of the settlements between the City and residents. ‘This was a fair process and a fair outcome,’ he told the Tribune Tuesday, the day after the last resident was relocated. ‘Those who suggest otherwise are just making trouble. As God is my witness . . .’” Calvin stopped, wishing he didn’t have to continue, then did. “‘As God is my witness, this was an honourable outcome achieved by honourable men in an honourable process.’”

  “Thank you, Mr. Johnstone.” Gettings looked to the Judge. “That’s all I have for this witness, Your Honour.”

  Uhuru did his best to mitigate the damage in redirect. “Now, Mr. Johnstone, my friend had you read from a newspaper clipping indicating that, in 1970, your father supported the relocation. Did he change his mind about that?”

  Calvin looked relieved. “Yes, he did. In his later years, he became an outspoken critic of the settlement.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Johnstone.”

  There had been no salvaging Aunt Annie’s testimony. Uhuru and Shondelle had prepped Aunt Annie carefully, but it all fell apart the moment she was called to the stand. “I think she’s just a lonely old woman who realized she had an audience for the first time in a long time and decided to take advantage,” Shondelle speculated later.

  Annie referred to Uhuru as “Ray” and offered a familiar hello to the Judge that caused nervous laughter among the spectators. “You look like you’re wasting away, young man,” she said sternly to Ward. “you stop by my place and I’ll fix you lunch.”

  When Uhuru asked her how she’d come into possession of Lawrence Carter’s account of his encounter with Jack Eagleson, she called it “your daddy’s diary,” even though Uhuru and Shondelle had both cautioned her several times before she testified that she should refer to Uhuru’s father as Lawrence Carter. “I’m sorry,” she blurted out on the stand as soon as she realized her mistake. “I know you told me not to call him that, but I just keep forgetting.” That, of course, only made matters worse.

  Things went from worse to worst when Uhuru tried to get her to say that the relocation had led to greater poverty and more criminal behaviour among former residents and their children. Uhuru knew it was a tricky question. While there was truth to the argument, he also knew many former residents who’d done well for themselves resented that broad-brush characterization. That’s why he’d spent so long with Aunt Annie, rehearsing the question and answer.

  On the stand, it was as if Annie had suddenly decided the question itself offended her. “We’re good people,” she said, looking beyond Uhuru to the spectators, “no worse than nobody else.” Uhuru tried a couple of other approaches but none had the desired effect so he finally gave up and sat down.

  To crown his humiliation, Gettings got up, walked slowly toward Annie as if lost in thought, then turned back to the courtroom and smiled. “I have no questions,” he said.

  Gettings would, Uhuru knew, have questions for Jeffrey Jack Howe. They shouldn’t have put him on the stand. What was he thinking? But J. J. the Elder was the only witness who could describe, in a way that might shock the jury into sympathy for his son, the family’s personal history.

  J. J. himself could have told that story, but Uhuru and Shondelle had agreed months ago not to let him testify. “Too dangerous,” Uhuru said, and Shondelle agreed. So did Montague. It wasn’t just that testifying would open him up to a potentially devastating cross-examination. The shy young man Uhuru had met in the holding cells two years ago had come to believe his own press clippings and was eager to make the courtroom his pulpit. “Loose cannon,” Uhuru said, and Shondelle agreed. Luckily, J. J. had not insisted on his right to testify; he seemed to have lost interest in the case itself, spending most of his hours outside the courtroom meeting with the author who was ghost-writing his autobiography. But that meant J. J. the Elder had to carry the burden of the human side of the defence case.

  “Mr. Howe, can you tell the court your present place of residence?” Uhuru had begun his examination-in-chief as gently as possible.

  “Springhill.” J. J. the Elder blinked every few seconds, as if he were unused to the light. His eyes darted nervously about the courtroom.

  “When you say Springhill, are you referring to the medium-security institution in Springhill?”

  “The jail, yeah.”

  “What are you in jail for?”

  Howe thought for a moment, as if he couldn’t remember what crime he’d been caught for this time. “Armed robbery . . . I had a gun.”

  “Have you been in jail before, Mr. Howe?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “How many times?”

  Howe furrowed his brow, tried to calculate, gave up. “I can’t remember,” he said.

  “More than . . . half a dozen?”

  “Yeah, sure, more than that.”

  “Are you married, Mr. Howe?”

  “Married?” He was having trouble keeping up with the change in topic.

  “Do you have a wife?” Uhuru tried again.

  “Oh, yeah, sure.”

  “Do you know where she is now?”

  “Right now? No . . .”

  “When was the last time you had contact with her?”

  “The last time? Probably . . . you know . . . when I was sentenced.”

  “That would have been almost three years ago?”

  “Yeah. I guess.”

  “Is your wife a drug addict, Mr. Howe?”

  Howe looked at the Judge. “She gonna be in trouble?”

  “Don’t worry, Mr. Howe,” Ward Justice offered gently. “I think Mr. Melesse . . . is simply trying to establish . . . a history here.”

  Howe thought about that for a moment. “Okay, yeah, Jaina uses. “

  “Crack cocaine?”

  “That. Whatever’s around.”

  “Have you ever been convicted of a drug offence, Mr. Howe?”

  “Uh-huh.” He squirmed uncomfortably in the witness chair.

  “More than once?”

  “ . . . Yeah.”

  “When did you first start to use drugs, Mr. Howe?”

  “First time? When I was fifteen.”

  “Where were you living then?”

  “Then? Maynard Square.”

  “Can you tell us the circumstances the first time you used drugs?”

  “Well, it was just a bunch of us hanging around, you know, shootin’ the—uh, and some guy comes up, like, and he asks if we wanna joint.”

  “Was he a dealer?”

  “A dealer? He sold stuff if that’s what you mean.”

  “Were drugs easily available in Maynard Square?”

  Howe smiled for the first time. “Yeah, easy . . .”

  “Where were you born, Mr. Howe?”

  “Africville.”

  “How old were you when your family moved to Maynard Square?”

  “Fourteen.”

  “Did you ever do drugs when
you were living in Africville?”

  Howe laughed. “Not and live to tell about it. No.”

  “Can you explain what you mean by that?”

  “One of the Other Mothers see you doing somethin’ like that, they’d probably clip you ’longside the head and drag you off to your own mama so she could whup you good.”

  “Other Mothers?”

  “That’s what we called ’em. Other Mothers. They was somebody else’s mother, but they treated you like their own. It was bad when you done somethin’ wrong. But if you fell and cut yourself, you could always go to wherever was the nearest house and one of the Other Mothers’d fix you up. It was good that way.”

  “Do you remember seeing drugs when you lived in Africville?”

  “No, I wouldna even know what they were then . . .”

  “Were you ever get convicted of a crime in Africville?”

  “No. Not until later, after we moved to the Square.”

  By the time he sat down, Uhuru Melesse had convinced himself Jeffrey Jack was a better witness than he’d feared. Gettings proved him wrong.

  “So, you were a perfect child back in Africville, and Maynard Square turned you into a criminal. Is that what you’re saying, Mr. Howe?”

  “I ain’t saying I was ever perfect.”

  “That’s good, Mr. Howe, because I think the record will agree with you on that. During what Mr. Melesse has painted as your idyllic childhood in Africville, I take it that you went to school? Is that correct?”

  “School? Yeah. Richmond.”

  “What kind of student were you?”

  “Okay, I guess.”

  “Okay? I happen to have the records in front of me—I’d like them marked as Crown Exhibit 41, Your Honour—and they indicate that you failed grades one, three, six and seven before you dropped out entirely. Is that so?”

  Uhuru was on his feet. “Relevance, Your Honour? What has failing in school got to do with anything?”

  “With respect, Your Honour, in the light of the broad scope Your Honour has allowed my friend in these proceedings, I believe I should be permitted to explore some avenues my friend prefers to ignore, avenues that raise doubts about the argument he’s making. If you’ll allow me to develop this line of questioning, I believe the relevance will be apparent.”

  “I’ll allow it . . . for now, Mr. Gettings,” Ward Justice said. “But we aren’t here to discuss . . . Mr. Howe’s academic achievements. I’ll expect you to . . . get to your point . . . quickly. Proceed.”

  “Thank you, Your Honour. Now, Mr. Howe, did you attend school regularly?”

  J. J. Howe was wary now. He didn’t want to be caught again. “Most of the time, yeah, I went.”

  “Well, again, Mr. Howe, let’s see what the record says.” He glanced at the page, more for dramatic effect than to remind himself of what was written. “According to School Board records, you were absent without excuse 123 days—more than half the year—in grade six. And that doesn’t count the fifteen days you missed because you were suspended for striking your teacher. Does that sound familiar?”

  Howe looked down. “I guess,” he mumbled.

  “Now, my friend makes the point that you were never convicted of a crime while you lived in Africville. My question to you is this: Were you ever charged with a crime while you lived in Africville?”

  “Uh, I don’t remember.”

  “Well then, let me refresh your memory, Mr. Howe. According to the pre-sentence report on the first occasion when you were convicted of a crime—which was, indeed, when you were sixteen years old and had been living in Maynard Square for less than a year—it says you had also been charged as a juvenile on three previous occasions for a variety of offences. Let me see here . . . break and enter, vandalism, arson, public intoxication . . . all while you were living in Africville, but that those charges were dropped when you agreed to provide statements implicating other, older boys in these acts. Is that correct?”

  Howe’s voice was barely audible now. “Yeah.”

  Gettings paused again. Waited long enough to make Jeffrey Jack twitch nervously. “Mr. Howe, tell me . . . are you high right now?”

  “Your Honour!” Uhuru was on his feet to object.

  “Can I take the fifth?” J. J.’s father turned to the judge.

  Ward Justice held up his hand before Uhuru had a chance to object. “No need, Mr. Melesse. You’re out of line, Mr. Gettings. Move on.” He turned to the witness, smiled an understanding smile. “And, no, Mr. Howe, unfortunately . . . for you, there is no . . . fifth amendment right against . . . self-incrimination in Canada. I think you’ve been watching . . . too many American TV shows.” More sternly, he stared back at Gettings. Silently.

  “My apologies, Your Honour,” Gettings offered quickly, but he did not sound apologetic. “I have no further questions of this witness.”

  “Your duty now is to weigh all the evidence you’ve heard,” Ward Justice wrote carefully on the legal pad in his lap. “It is up to you to decide which facts to believe, which facts to emphasize and which to ignore. It won’t be easy. Perhaps the most difficult—” Ward scratched out the beginning of that sentence, tried again. “One of the important questions you must ask yourself is how much weight to give to the evidence the defence offered purporting to show that Mr. Howe was justified in doing what he is alleged to have done.” Justice drew a stroke through “purporting”; he needed a better word, but what was it? He had barely begun and already he was exhausted.

  He looked up from the pad of yellow foolscap on his lap. On the TV screen across the room, the Talking Heads—Moira had called them that—were still talking. He shouldn’t be watching; he knew that. But how could he not?

  Tonight they were trying not only to summarize and characterize two weeks’ worth of testimony in just five minutes but also to predict what the jury would have to say about it all. And how long it would take them to say it.

  “I think it’s going to depend on what the Judge says in his instructions to the jury,” Talking Head Two said. “If he explains the law and says the other evidence isn’t relevant, I think this will be all over in a few hours. If he says they can take into account all the other evidence, it may take a little longer.”

  “But,” interjected Talking Head Number One, “the outcome will be the same no matter what, right?”

  “Right.”

  “Okay,” the interviewer segued into the segment wrap-up, “so what are you predicting the verdict will be then?”

  “Guilty,” said Talking Head One.

  “Guilty,” said Talking Head Two.

  Ward reached for the remote, pressed a button and the Talking Heads disappeared. He looked at the paper, took up his pen, began to write again.

  “The Crown would like you to believe this is a simple whodunit,” Uhuru Melesse said as he began his closing argument, addressing himself directly to the jurors now, ignoring the Judge, the Crown and everyone else in the courtroom. “Decide ‘who done it,’ the case is closed and we can all go home.”

  Moira looked at her watch. Henry Gettings had taken just half an hour this morning for his final pitch to the jury, rehashing the facts of the crime as he’d laid them out in the evidence, reading jurors the wording of each specific section of the Criminal Code J. J. was charged with breaking, and showing them the connection between the law and the facts. He dismissed the defence’s justification argument as a smokescreen “to make you believe this case is about something it’s not. Ladies and gentlemen of the jury,” he finished with a flourish, “your duty is clear. I am confident you will do your duty.” He did seem confident.

  But then, so did Uhuru Melesse, Moira thought. He’d probably talk longer; he’d need to get the jury thinking about more than the facts. An hour, say. And then the Judge’s charge to the jury. It would be brief, she guessed, because of his health, but then—also given his
health—it would probably still take him close to an hour to deliver it. Two hours would take them to lunchtime. And then, who knew? The jury might even start deliberating this afternoon. How long it would take after that was anyone’s guess.

  “But if that was really true, none of us would have to be here today.”

  Moira checked her tape recorder. She hoped it was working. She was having trouble concentrating. That didn’t surprise her. It had been an exhausting two weeks. But she’d been right; the trial had become much more interesting after the Crown had made its case and the defence had slogged its way through its initial parade of expert witnesses. Once the former Africville residents had begun to testify, her own daily stories had begun to write themselves. And to appear on the front page.

  “I can’t believe some of this stuff actually happened,” Michelle marvelled one morning after complimenting Moira on her latest article. Moira knew her actual contribution that day had been modest; the story was mostly stitched-together snippets of Everett Dickson’s testimony about the fire that had killed Uhuru Melesse’s mother. “The fact the City wouldn’t give them water, that’s bad enough,” Michelle continued. “But for the fire department not even to show up for an hour? That’s criminal. I mean, they still might have saved that woman. It makes Halifax sound like the American South. Anyway . . .” She paused just long enough to change subjects. “What’ll you have for us today?” Michelle was no longer fretting about whether Moira should continue to cover the trial. “Oh, and by the way,” Michelle interjected before Moira had a chance to outline what would be happening in court, “I forgot to mention that Morton’s excited. We’re getting incredible reaction on this. Phone calls, letters, e-mails.”

  “For or against?” Moira was curious.

  “Mostly for, at least if the question is whether people think the residents got a raw deal. But a lot still believe your accountant guy should go to jail. On the guilty-or-not question, I’d say it’s about fifty-fifty. But it changes every day.”