onto the battlefield, silence gave way to the crump of exploding shells and the rattle of machine-gun fire. The slaughter of Canadian soldiers continued unabated, and as he looked on in fear and anger he saw his father lying dead on the ground. But there was no time to mourn his loss. Unless he put the machine gun out of commission, the entire Canadian offensive would come to an end!
Oscar crawled out over the lip of the crater and rushed forward, his rifle in one hand and a grenade in the other. Bullets whizzed by his head. A German soldier poked his head over the top of the sandbags protecting the machine-gun nest and looked at him. It was Clem. Clem was the German soldier who had just killed his father. He would recognize his long, thin, sallow face, his pale blue eyes, his hair-filled nose, his scraggly beard, and his disgusting yellow teeth anywhere! He lifted his rifle and shot him through the heart. Clem fell backward into the emplacement, cursing the day he had beat up Oscar’s mother, incurring the wrath of her son. Oscar lobbed the grenade in after him. There was blood and guts everywhere. Victory was assured, but he, Sergeant Oscar Wolf, the bravest of the brave, had been gravely wounded and would soon be dead.
4
A dog began to bark, jolting Oscar out of his fantasy world. Looking around, he hoped no one would come out from the nearby shacks to investigate. It would be hard to explain what he was doing outdoors at that hour when everyone else was in bed sleeping.
“Be quiet!” someone yelled, and the dog whimpered and was silent.
Maybe I should just go back to bed and let Jacob handle Clem, Oscar thought. After all, I’m not a warrior like the ancestors who fought the Iroquois for control of hunting grounds in the old days. I’m not a soldier in the Canadian 48th Highlanders like my father was before he was killed. Besides, those wars are over; I’m just a thirteen-year-old kid from the Indian Camp mad at a whole bunch of people.
But as he stared across the bay at the moonlit outline of the Amick, Oscar thought again of his mother and her laugh of ridicule when he told her about winning the book for being top student in the graduating class. He then thought of the bullies who had pulled down his pants and exposed his dick to Gloria Sunderland. That led him to think again of Clem, who his grandfather said had hurt his mother, and he shifted the anger he felt against his mother and the bullies to his already existing rage against Clem until he lost control of himself and decided to torch Clem’s boat.
His mind made up, he went to the barrel where Jacob stored the family’s coal oil supply, filled a two-gallon can to the top with the flammable liquid, made certain he had a pocketful of matches, and moved as fast as he could up the path from the Indian Camp to the gravel road leading to the government wharf. Although tall for his age, Oscar had not yet filled in, and he found the can heavy and awkward to carry. After going only a few dozen yards along the path, the wire handle began to cut into his hand, rendering it numb, and when the pain shot up his arm, he stopped, hoisted his burden up to his chest, locked his arms around it, and kept on going. Coal oil slopped out of the open spout, splashing against his shirt, soaking it, irritating the skin of his chest, dripping down onto his pants and running down his legs.
As he ran, Oscar returned to the world of his imagination, and he was no longer a kid bent on getting his revenge. He was Pegamegabow, the Ojibwa soldier from the nearby Parry Island Indian Reserve on Georgian Bay, the most decorated Native soldier of the Great War and hero to Native people everywhere for killing more than three hundred enemy soldiers with his sniper rifle. He was rushing up through a tunnel of overhanging tree branches on a mission to destroy an enemy machine-gun nest hidden in a floating grocery store moored to the government wharf. He had been shot in the chest and blood was gushing out of a painful open wound, wetting his shirt, soaking his pants, running down his legs, and dripping on the ground. No matter, he would carry on, whatever the odds.
A few minutes later, Oscar was standing at the top of the ridge that divided the Indian Camp from the white village, examining the lay of the land. Below him, in his imagination, was a German bunker in the shape of a supply boat occupied by members of the German army. That was his objective and he would destroy it. After lowering the can to the ground, he knelt beside it to catch his breath and to slow down his pounding heart. He rose to his feet and, keeping as low a profile as possible to avoid detection in the moonlight, half dragged, half carried the oil can across the bridge to the wharf and set it down on the planks some fifty feet from his target. Leaving it behind, he crept up to the boat like a Chippewa warrior in the old days sneaking up on the enemy.
There was a light coming from a porthole. Peeping inside, he saw German soldiers sitting around a table playing cards and drinking beer. From time to time, a German who looked like Clem said something that made the others laugh. Oscar was sure Clem was telling the others about beating up his mother and laughing about it and that made him all the more furious. But he would have to change his plans. Setting fire to the boat was now out the question since the Germans would catch him before he could complete the job and turn him over to the constable. He decided to burn down the general store instead. That would teach Clem a lesson since it was owned by his father, James McCrum.
Oscar began to have doubts about his project as he was carrying his burden from the wharf to the business section. And by the time he slipped into the shadows under a ground-floor window at the back of the general store, he was crying. White people had done bad things, but what he was about to do was just as bad, maybe even worse. And what if he was found out? He would be sent to jail.
Fighting his fears, Oscar dashed around the general store, checking to see if there was anyone about. All was quiet, and he returned to his place in the shadows. To make doubly sure, he left again, this time running along the lane behind the guest house, the butcher shop, the Bank of Nova Scotia, the hardware store, and the furniture and casket shop. There was no sign of life. He scuttled down the boardwalk in front of the buildings. There was still no one around and he had a free hand.
He returned to his spot behind the store, waited a minute to catch his breath, and set off again, this time in search of a scrap of lumber to pry open the window. But he couldn’t find anything to do the job. Getting down on his hands and knees, he felt around in the dark on the gravel laneway and came up with a handful of big stones that he hurled at the window, shattering it on impact and startling himself in the process. After waiting a few minutes to be sure no one was coming to investigate, he lifted the can up to chest level and rammed it through the broken window. Once again, the crash and clatter of breaking glass caught him by surprise, but this time he didn’t hesitate. He lit a match and threw it into the opening. A flash of light revealed the can lying on its side with coal oil pulsating out of the spout and flowing out across the wooden floor.
The match spluttered and died. He lit another one and threw it inside but it met the same end, as did a succession of others that flickered and drowned in the liquid fuel before the oil could ignite. Something was needed to hold a flame long enough to cause combustion. He scurried around to the front of the store and rummaged through a garbage can until he found a week-old copy of the Toronto Daily Telegram. He dashed back, crumpled a page into a loose ball, set it alight, and pushed it through the window. This time the coal oil began to burn.
Not waiting to see if the fire would spread to the supplies stored in the room, Oscar lurched to his feet and ran for the safety of the shack as fast as he could. At the entrance to the path to the Indian Camp, he stopped, suddenly afraid of entering the dark tunnel. What if Clem, his friends, and the constable had heard the sound of breaking glass and were lying in wait for him? What if a bearwalker was hiding on an overhanging branch, ready to jump on him and steal his soul? What if a witch was to materialize and consume him in a ball of fire? What if the devil was to spring up and carry him off to hell?
And so what if they were! He had had the guts to get even with everyone who had ever hurt him and his mother and his people! He stepped into the dark confidently,
