Reparations

by Stephen Kimber

  Now, standing behind the sundial in the middle of the park, he made a point of looking down at the list of the names of Africville’s founding families, as if to show the young couple that really was why he was here. He cast a furtive glance back toward the parking lot. The SUV was leaving, passing a Lincoln Town Car on its way into the parking lot.

  “You’re sure about this?” Victoria asked again as she navigated Ward’s oversized vehicle around the departing SUV and into the parking lot. She would have preferred her Toyota, he knew, but its front seat wasn’t big enough for Ward and the portable oxygen tank that had become his travelling companion. He held the mask up to his mouth and nose. “That wind off the water is going to be cold,” she continued as she turned off the engine, already resigned to his going ahead anyway. “The last thing you need is to get a chill.”

  “I’ll be fine,” he said, pulling the mask away from his face, feeling the invisible weight on his chest again. “I just need help getting out is all.”

  She was already out of the car and hurrying around to the passenger side. He could see Uhuru approaching from across the field. Victoria opened the door then, took Ward’s hands, helped him swing his body around square to the door. He swung his legs out, let them dangle there while he reached out with his left hand and grabbed the door handle for support. Victoria put an arm on his shoulder to help him push forward. Until very recently, he’d insisted on getting in and out of the car himself; that he no longer did was a sign to both of them the end was coming.

  “Uhuru,” he rasped. “My wife, Vic—”

  “We met. At the church,” Victoria spoke over him, trying to save her husband the exertion. “Good to see you again, Mr. Melesse. And congratulations on the case. My husband says you were very impressive.”

  “Thank you,” he said. He wasn’t sure what else to say.

  Victoria broke the silence. “I’ll leave you two to talk but, please, Mr. Melesse, don’t let Ward tire himself. He doesn’t have much stamina these days.” Ward waved her off with his hand. “I’ll be in the car if you need me,” she said.

  Ward pointed to a bench near the edge of the park facing the harbour. “There,” he said simply.

  “You sure?” Uhuru asked. The bench was a hundred feet from where they were standing and they’d have to climb a short, steep hill to get there.

  “Sure,” he said, raising his right arm slightly from his side, indicating Uhuru should support him as they walked. “Not too fast.”

  They walked in silence, stopping every few yards so Ward could control his breathing. Uhuru wanted to ask him questions but worried Ward might try to answer. The questions could wait. When they finally reached the bench, Ward stood for a moment staring back into the park. “Not the same,” he said.

  “No, it isn’t,” Uhuru answered. “Not the same at all.”

  “Sit,” Ward instructed. And then turned and eased his own body down onto the bench, leaned back, slowed his breathing. Uhuru sat down too. They were facing the harbour, away from the park.

  “How are you?”

  “Some days better than others . . . mornings better than afternoons.” Ward smiled. “At least nobody’s won the pool.” When Uhuru looked shocked, Ward laughed, then coughed. “I know what goes on,” he said, hauled out his handkerchief and spat phlegm into it.

  They were silent again, neither seeming to know how to proceed. “Like Victoria said, I . . . was very . . . impressed by the . . . way you made your . . . case.” Ward was speaking in complete sentences, but rushing, stopping and starting, gulping for air so often Uhuru had to listen carefully to patch the meaning together. “Are you going to . . . celebrate?”

  “People have been in my office partying pretty much since the jury came back. Tonight, my—my associate and I are going to celebrate.”

  “Ms. Adams?”

  “Yeah.”

  “She’s very . . . bright. Attractive too. Are you two . . . ?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Good.” He was silent for a moment. “I sent a letter to the Chief Justice this afternoon . . . asked for immediate leave. I won’t be back . . . Not sure whether that will help or hurt at appeal . . . But you’ll do fine . . . You convinced me!” He laughed, coughed again, waited to catch his breath. “Remember Jeremiah Black? The . . . kid who tried to . . . beat me up?” Uhuru nodded. “I sentenced him . . . a couple of years back. For murder. I don’t think he even recognized me . . .”

  Ward was talking now to keep talking, searching for the route to where he needed to go. “When I used to come down here . . . with you . . . when I was a kid . . . this place felt like home. Your father . . . treated me well . . .” He stopped, considered. “I was there the day Eagleson . . . offered him the money, you know.”

  “I know.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “It’s okay.”

  “How is he?” Ward asked.

  “My father? Dead. More than ten years . . .”

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”

  “What about yours?” Uhuru asked.

  “Eighty-seven. In a home in Antigonish. Crankier than ever.” Uhuru smiled.

  “I don’t think he liked me very much.”

  “It wasn’t . . . that simple.” Ward told him the story.

  “Fuck,” Uhuru said when he finished. “That’s fucking amazing.”

  “Have you ever wondered . . . what it would have been like . . . to be white?” Ward asked.

  “Once in a while. But I’m too black to imagine I could ever be white. It was never an option. But I’m sure things would have been different.” That high school guidance counsellor relegating him to the general stream. Jack Eagleson telling him he didn’t want him to think he was prejudiced, his words seared in some recess of his mind: I have clients who wouldn’t like it if we had a black man working for the firm. Yes, things would have been different.

  “Being black is pretty much all I think about,” Ward confided, inspecting a blade of grass on the ground in front of him. “I wouldn’t have . . . done very well . . . as a black man. I’m not strong. I just let things happen to me . . . things that wouldn’t have happened if I was black . . .” He stopped, corrected himself: “If people knew I was black.”

  They sat in silence again, Ward still looking for a way to say the rest of what he had come to say. Uhuru was the final person to whom he had decided he must make amends. Victoria already knew, of course. She’d known the facts since that night twenty-eight years ago when Ward had confessed everything—and she’d moved his clothes out of their bedroom. She knew the facts, but never the feelings. He finally told her those, too. A week after Jack’s funeral. The night of the interview with Moira. The day before she drove him to the nursing home to see his father. Telling her had been far easier than he’d expected, perhaps because she’d already assumed most of it, or maybe because none of it mattered in the way it once had. Looming death could have that effect.

  It had been Victoria’s idea for him to tell the children. “If it’s going to come out anyway,” she explained, with her usual impeccable logic, “they should hear it from you first.” Victoria had arranged for the girls to fly home from Toronto last Friday for a “family weekend.”

  The girls had been more understanding than he had any right to expect. Sarah’s new boyfriend, it turned out, was from Grenada. “I can’t wait to tell him, so he can tell his parents he’s going out with a black girl,” she joked. Even Meghan, the daughter who wanted nothing more than to fit in and who was now pregnant with her own first child, was far less upset than Victoria had feared. “Half our friends in Toronto are in mixed marriages,” she said. “It’s no big deal.”

  Rosa had been a bigger deal, of course, but Victoria had artfully orchestrated that conversation, leading Ward through his confession with gentle nudges and smoothing explanations, even a confession of her own.

 
“You remember Dr. Griffin?” she said to her daughters after Ward had stuttered through his own story. “I had an affair with him.” Ward had known about it but he’d never heard her say it aloud before. “Those were unhappy times for both of us,” Victoria explained, “but it was a long time ago, and it doesn’t change my feelings for your father.”

  Ward admired how carefully she’d said that. She’d guided him even more carefully through the story of the “terrible accident,” skating him around his drunkenness and his failure to report his involvement to the police. “That poor little boy was dead, it was awful, but there was nothing to be gained by ruining more lives.”

  Ward had tried to understand Victoria’s motives. Was she still the politician’s daughter, the judge’s wife, smoothing out life’s wrinkles for the sake of appearances? Or could this be . . . love? What was love, anyway?

  And what of his daughters? Did they really understand in the way they claimed to understand, or . . . or what? He wished he knew them better. Too late for that now. But not too late for this.

  “You know,” he said, not looking at Uhuru, “I’ve been rethinking my whole life . . . trying to understand what . . . being black really means. Did I feel at home in Africville . . . because I was black? Or because . . . it reminded me of Eisners Head? Were we friends because . . . we shared something we didn’t even know? Or just because? Was I in love with Rosa,” he lifted his head then, looked into Uhuru’s face, “because she was black—?”

  “I always wanted to thank you for that,” Uhuru cut him off. There were things he needed to say too. “For taking care of Rosa and . . . the baby. I know you didn’t do it for me, and there were times I resented you and Rosa, but . . . I fucked up that whole situation. Badly. You gave her what I couldn’t, what I wouldn’t, for my own selfish reasons. So, thank you.”

  Ward knew this was the moment. Seize it. “There’s something you need to know,” he started, then stopped, trying once again to invent a reason not to say what he had to say. No! He had to. Now. Or it would never be said.

  “I killed your son.”

  Ward had jumped off his cliff of guilt. Into the abyss. Now what? He stared into Uhuru’s face. Uhuru stared back. Blank. Uncomprehending? Or unwilling to comprehend? Ward tried again. “Larry . . . I was driving the car . . . I didn’t know . . . I’m sorry.” He stopped. Now what?

  “My son? Larry was my son?” Uhuru’s voice was hollow. “Rosa would never tell me—”

  “I saw the birth certificate.”

  Uhuru turned away, as if he’d been struck. He stared, unseeing, past the green expanse of park toward the container terminal where a massive, black-hulled ship sat at the dock. Spider-like cranes scurried back and forth loading containers onto its deck. Ward turned and watched them too, waiting wordlessly for the condemnation he knew would come. It did not.

  “I knew,” Uhuru said finally, talking to himself, convicting himself of the crime of self-deception. “I had to know. But Rosa would never admit it, so I never had to. Maybe I didn’t want to . . . didn’t want to have to—” He turned back, met Ward’s gaze. “Why wouldn’t she at least let me help her?” he demanded. “Help my son?”

  Ward shrugged helplessly. What could he say? Had Uhuru even heard his confession?

  He had. But it was too much to process. It stuttered into his brain now in staccato bursts of comprehension. My son! Larry really was my son . . . And then: Ward? . . . Accident? . . . Ward driving the car? . . . Ward!

  Uhuru stood up. He didn’t, couldn’t, wouldn’t look at Ward. He felt the red-hot poker of hate stab his heart. Ward Justice murdered my son. He stared out at the harbour, his eyes refusing to focus. His son’s life that never would be flashed before his eyes. Saturday morning hockey games, shivering in the stands, watching, cheering, marvelling at the boy’s flash and grace. Did he get that from his dad? Africville Reunion Weekends, hot summer sun, water slides. Have you met my son, Larry? Doesn’t he look just like his granddad? Science fairs and graduations, girlfriends, college, career, marriage, kids, life . . . death. His son was dead. Before he could live. Ward Justice had killed little Larry. Uhuru Melesse/Ray Carter wanted to kill Ward Justice in return. Wanted justice. He could feel his fists clench, his muscles tighten, his shoulders knot, the rage bubble. He turned back toward the man who had murdered his son . . . and saw a broken old man sitting on a park bench, his shrunken face grey and sallow, his cloudy eyes pleading and rheumy—tears?—his body waiting for the blows to come. Uhuru exhaled, felt the hate mingling with his escaping breath, dissipating in the spring air. It was too late for hate. Too late for guilt, too. He sat down again.

  “What happened?” Uhuru’s tone held more curiosity than accusation. He just wanted to know.

  “I was drunk . . . I didn’t see . . .” The story spilled out, all of it, including how Eagleson had orchestrated his own appointment as a judge. “I should have said no . . . I should have gone to the police. Turned myself in. But . . . I was scared . . . I’m sorry . . .” He paused.

  “Does Rosa know?” Uhuru asked finally.

  “I don’t know,” Ward answered. “I hired a detective . . . to find her. I wanted to tell her . . . But she was already dead.”

  Uhuru let out a soft moan. Rosa too. In some recess of his mind, he had fantasized, without foundation or action on his part to make it reality, that he would find her again one day, or that she would find him, or that somehow, magically, mysteriously, mystically, they would find each other, and that he would have the chance to tell her he was sorry, she would forgive him, and they would live happily ever after. The fantasy had sustained him, restrained him and constrained him for more than thirty years. And now it was over. Rosa was dead. He was alive. Was it too late to live?

  “I loved her,” Ward said.

  Uhuru looked over at Ward. “I know,” he said finally. “We both did.”

  It had been said. And there was nothing more to say.

  Chapter 14

  Spring 2005

  “This is a true story, or as true as I can make it.” Moira Donovan reread the words she had typed on the screen. “It began to take shape in my head the first day I interviewed Ward Justice. It’s been changing shape ever since”—Moira stared at the blinking cursor and the expanse of emptiness beneath it. What now? she thought.

  She hadn’t set out to write a book. She’d initially envisioned a kind of “gotcha” front-page newspaper story in which Ward Justice, confronted with her assembled storehouse of documents, tapes and knowledge, would crumble and confess. Or—perhaps better—try to lie, fudge, obfuscate or wriggle his way out of all the traps she’d set. Either way: Snap! Crackle! Gotcha!

  She hadn’t been nearly as eager as that made her sound. When she’d asked him for the interview at the funeral, it was because she’d expected—hoped—he would say no. His willingness surprised her. She hadn’t intended to ask the questions she’d ended up asking, either, but it was almost as if instinct took over. Perhaps her father had been right; she was a reporter and couldn’t escape her fate even if she wanted to.

  Ward Justice hadn’t expected her to know about his previous relationship with Uhuru. In truth, of course, she knew much less then than he thought she did. She’d had to stifle the urge to shout “Yes!” as he stumbled through his non-answers. By the time he began to bumble his predictable those-were-different-times defence of his racist jokes at the press gallery dinner, she was writing the lead in her head:

  “The judge in the controversial J. J. Howe reparations case not only told racist jokes at a private dinner for journalists in the seventies, he also met secretly with RCMP Security and Intelligence officers in late 1970 to tell them all he knew about a former friend named Raymond Carter. Carter, then a black radical, is better known today as Uhuru Melesse, J. J. Howe’s defence lawyer.”

  She’d made a quick note on her steno pad to make a list of those she’d need to ca
ll for comment. Melesse, of course. The Mounties . . .

  How should she handle the most explosive bit? A paragraph right after the lead? “Ironically . . .” No, scratch that, too fluffy, too cutesy. “Incredibly . . .” The desk would excise that—no editorializing. “Surprisingly . . .” Morton hated starting a sentence that way. Fuck it. Straight ahead: “Justice Ward Justice is himself black.” Black? Afro-Canadian? Which one did the stylebook say to use? And was calling him either correct? How about: “. . . of mixed race. His grandfather was an African-Nova Scotian.” That worked. Then: “Justice Justice confirmed his ancestry, which had been previously publicly unknown, in an exclusive interview with the Daily Journal Friday.” Followed by a confirming quote from Justice.

  New paragraph. First response from Melesse. Anger? Disappointment? Would he finally demand that the judge recuse himself? What about a mistrial? She’d have to check the finer legal points with the paper’s lawyers—

  Whoa . . . She was getting ahead of herself. And then, even further ahead. Imagining the night she would receive her first National Newspaper Award. Who would she thank? Her father? Absolutely. He could be her guest at the dinner. Point him out in the audience.

  This feverishly imagined future had fallen apart moments after she showed Ward Justice a copy of the photograph David Astor had given to her. “The photo was taken by an itinerant photographer named Pyke who passed through Kingville in 1928 and must have done a family portrait for the Justices,” Moira explained to Ward as Astor had explained to her. “See, there’s Desmond, seated. He would have been about twelve. That’s his mother and father behind him. His father’s name was Ward Justice. When you compare the face in that photo with your own face, the resemblance is remarkable, don’t you think?” She’d stolen a quick glance at Ward Justice’s face looking at his own face staring back at him from the photo. His real face was a train wreck. He hadn’t known!