copies of the lives of Tecumseh and John Brown, and his illustrated copies of Swiss Family Robinson and Treasure Island were still there, he saw to his relief. So, too, were the two used volumes of the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica and his collection of books written by veterans on the Great War. Nothing had been touched. He pulled from the woodbox a copy of the Toronto Star dated August 1, 1929, its fading headlines still proclaiming “Stock Market Crash, Dozens Jump to Their Deaths on Wall Street,” stuffed it into the stove, added dry kindling, and lit a fire.
Jacob returned to the canoe, retrieved the lake trout and cleaned and filleted it on the shore, tossing its guts to the seagulls that came swooping in, crying raucously to be fed. By the time he returned to the shack carrying the fillets, Oscar had unpacked the food supplies brought from the reserve and put the kettle on to boil. He picked up the heavy, fire-blackened cast iron frying pan that had been in the family for generations, placed it on the stove, scooped a big tablespoon of lard from its can, and spread it with his fingers over the cooking surface. While he was occupied with these tasks, Jacob rolled the fillets in flour and eased them into the lard that had started to boil and spit. Oscar quickly cut two boiled potatoes into slices and dropped them into the simmering mix. A short while later, grandfather and grandson, wearing their coats at the table, drank their tea and ate their breakfast in silence. Jacob then glanced at his pocket watch and left for the guest house, looking forward to meeting his friends from the village whom he had not seen since the previous fall.
“Don’t worry about making dinner,” he said as he went out the door, “I’ll pick up a few things at the store and I’ll see you when I get back from work.”
Oscar finished his meal, washed the dishes, and took a seat by the window. In a few minutes, he would trudge up the hill through the snow on the north-facing ridge and go down the sunlit slope on other side to the four-room combined elementary and high school, each with its separate entrance. The big boys from the high school would be standing just outside school property by the gate leading to their entrance, their shirt collars turned up against the cold. They would be shifting their weight from foot to foot, smoking roll-your-own cigarettes or chewing tobacco and spitting the wads on the ground as they waited for the bell to ring calling them to class. The big girls would already be inside their classrooms combing and brushing their hair, gossiping and organizing themselves for the day ahead.
In the playground of the elementary school, the girls would be skipping rope and chanting a rhyme they repeated endlessly at this time of the year.
Down by the river, down by the sea,
Johnny broke a bottle and blamed it on me.
I told ma, ma told pa,
Johnny got a spanking so ha ha ha.
The boys would be horsing around, playing marbles and kicking a soccer ball, but they would not invite Oscar to join in. He would go inside and ask the teacher if he could attend classes for the rest of term. The teacher would say yes, as he always did when Oscar appeared at his door at this time of year. He seemed to like Oscar, but, with a mocking smile never called him by his name, always addressing him as Chief. The kids called him Chief, as well, but never with a smile. To them, he was the outsider, even if most of them treated him with good-natured tolerance. Several others, big raw-boned members of an old pioneer family, however, called him a dirty Indian and had been bullying him for years. Once when he was a seven-year-old in grade two and fought back, they had ganged up on him, threw him to the ground, and pushed his face into the dirt.
“Say ‘I’m a dirty Indian,’” they said, “and we’ll let you go.” But Oscar refused to give in, and his tormentors yanked him to his feet, and, as two of them held his arms, a third pulled down his pants to show off his underwear.
“Wanna see this Redskin’s dick?” the older of the two asked the kids who had gathered around.
“I would,” Gloria Sunderland, the butcher-shop owner’s daughter said with a smirk. And after the big boys pulled down his underwear, Oscar ran back to the shack at the Indian Camp in tears to tell his grandfather what had happened. He expected Jacob would immediately go up to the school to tell those kids never to touch his grandson again or he would teach them a lesson they would never forget. And if their fathers got mad and came down to the Indian Camp to complain, his grandfather would pull their pants down to let them know how his grandson had felt when their sons had done that to him. After all, Jacob had killed Germans with his bare hands and was a war hero and had the medals to prove it. Dealing with the fathers of a couple of bullies in Port Carling shouldn’t be all that hard.
But his grandfather took him by the hand and led him to the shore and sat down with him on a piece of driftwood. “I have seen and learned a lot of things in my life,” he said. “To avoid torturing and poisoning myself with feelings of hatred, I banished from my heart the bitterness I once felt toward the people who expelled my people from Obagawanung. I discovered that the best way Indians can survive in the world of the white man is to fit in and wait for better days. I sent your mother to residential school so she would learn to fit in; I joined the army and fought the white man’s war so I would fit in; and to fit in today, I smile and say nothing when youngsters half my age call me Chief at the guest house. That’s why I think you should say nothing when the white children give you a hard time at school. Just remember: keep your heart free from anger, fit in, and wait for a better day and all will be well.”
Oscar would never forget his grandfather’s words, but as he grew older and listened to Old Mary’s stories about the deeds of the ancestors in past wars, and to the veterans talking in the evenings around the campfires at the Indian Camp about their exploits in the Great War, he grew more and more ashamed of his grandfather for not coming to his defence. If his father were alive, Oscar was sure that he wouldn’t have let anyone push his son around. And he vowed to get even, not just with the two white boys and Gloria Sunderland, but with everyone in the village, no matter how long it took.
Chapter 2
THE INDIAN CAMP
1
In the dark of the early morning before sunrise, Stella pushed open the door of the shack, stepped across the sill, and stood for a minute just inside, a lit cigarette dangling from her lips. Although she couldn’t see her father and son in the black interior, she could hear their calm, regular breathing. Good! They were asleep, and if she was careful, they wouldn’t wake up as she went to bed. Not that she cared what either one of them thought, especially Oscar, who would say nothing but stare at her reproachfully for coming in so late. Her father, however, would be sure to take her to task for spending the night drinking, and she didn’t want to waste her time arguing with him.
But despite her best effort to cross the room to her bed quietly, she bumped into the cook stove and hurt her leg. Swearing softly under her breath, she bent over in pain before straightening up and hobbling over to the table in front of the window facing the bay and collapsing noisily into a chair.
“Are you all right?” asked Jacob, getting out of bed and lighting a coal-oil lamp.
“I don’t want to talk about it,” she said, stubbing out her cigarette in a saucer and massaging her aching leg.
“Looks like someone hit you a good one,” he said, holding up the lamp and taking a close look at her. “It was Clem, wasn’t it? That drunk was hanging around the Indian Camp all week until I told him to go away. He laughed like a madman as usual when caught in the wrong but he wandered off just the same.”
“Leave me alone,” she replied, taking another cigarette from its package and lighting it. “I don’t need an old hypocrite like you to tell me how to live my life.”
2
