the rehearsal of a massed choir, accompanied by an organ, singing Handel’s Messiah, and when a soprano began to sing “I Know That My Redeemer Liveth,” he felt a divine presence in the music. He turned to the poetry he had studied at the mission school in China and found spiritual meaning he had not understood before. Soon he was reading Shakespeare, Donne, Wordsworth, Newman, and Mansfield. T.S. Eliot’s “Ash Wednesday” best reflected his new outlook.
Because I do not hope to turn again
Because I do not hope
Because I do not hope to turn
Desiring this man’s gift and that man’s scope
I no longer strive to strive towards such things
(Why should the aged eagle stretch its wings?)
Why should I mourn
The vanished power of the usual reign?
Music and literature had replaced the Bible as Reverend Huxley’s sources of spiritual insight. God, in his own way, had answered his prayers, forgiven him, and given him peace of mind. And now, as he walked over the ridge back home after meeting Oscar, he felt elated. Perhaps there had been some divine purpose to the fire and to the deaths of Jacob and Lily. Perhaps it was to give him, Lloyd Huxley, the possibility of atoning for his war crimes by helping a luckless Indian teenager and giving him a chance in life.
3
The funeral service for Jacob, the most imposing held in the village since the ones for Reg and Wilma McCrum more than a decade before, took place at the Presbyterian church on the Tuesday following the fire. At ten fifteen, a church elder entered the vestibule, took hold of the longer of the two ropes hanging from the belfry, and, as he pulled it downward in long fluid movements, the bells began tolling slowly and mournfully the death knell for Jacob, giving notice to the public that the service would soon begin. At ten thirty, two dozen war veterans, twelve white and twelve Chippewa, all wearing their service medals, filed past the Union Jack flying at half-mast on the flagpole near the entrance, entered the church, and took their places. At ten thirty-five, the school principal and a procession of students and teachers marched up and formed a guard of honour on both sides of the walkway leading from the street to the church. At ten forty, the local members of the provincial and federal legislatures arrived in black limousines and were ushered in. At ten forty-five, the mayors and reeves of the surrounding municipalities took their places. At ten fifty, the mayor and councillors of Port Carling went in. At ten fifty-five, James McCrum and his wife, who were paying the funeral costs, entered and took their places at the front in the family pew.
The church was now almost filled to capacity, and the people from the Indian Camp and the villagers, together with a smattering of curious tourists, waited respectfully outside. At ten fifty-eight, a big black hearse arrived and a solemn funeral home employee wearing a black suit, black tie, and white shirt got out and opened the door at the back. Six pallbearers, three Chippewa and three white, all veterans of the Great War, stepped forward, seized the brass handles of the mahogany casket, and at ten fifty-nine, marching in step, carried it to the front of the church and placed it on a catafalque. Another solemn black-clad funeral home employee stepped forward, produced a Union Jack, carefully draped it over the coffin with his white-gloved hands, and placed on top of it Jacob’s medals for valour in the war. At precisely eleven o’clock, Reverend Huxley, who had followed the coffin up the aisle, began the funeral service.
Oscar, who had entered with Reverend Huxley and Mrs. Huxley and taken the place assigned to him beside James and Mrs. McCrum, wept throughout the service. He was crying, everyone assumed, because he missed his grandfather, and that was partly true. But he was also weeping because the minister said Jacob had gone to a better place, and he now knew that was not the case. He was sobbing because Reverend Huxley said that God had seen fit to take Jacob home, and he knew that he, and not God, was responsible for his death. He was distraught because the Bible reading, chosen and read out by James McCrum, raging at the unknown arsonist like a fiery Old Testament patriarch chastising the Children of Israel, was Vengeance is mine sayeth the Lord. He was in utter misery because when he closed his eyes during the prayers, he heard only meaningless words. And when he tried to sing “Amazing Grace,” the words left his mouth in a hollow whisper.
He was certain that God was punishing him for causing the deaths of Jacob and Lily and convinced that the appearance in his dream of a fierce, unforgiving Jacob was a message from the beyond, telling him he would go to hell after he died. Frightened, he prayed loudly and passionately, begging God for forgiveness for his sins. He had often heard the minister back on the reserve say in his sermons that the grace of God would wipe clean the slates of offenders and let them begin their lives anew. God always forgave sinners, the minister used to say, if they were sincerely sorry when they asked for it. Perhaps, however, he was not sufficiently sorry for setting the fire. He was certainly sorry for causing the deaths of Jacob and Lily. He was sorry for thinking ill of Clem. But try as he might, he wasn’t sure that he was all that sorry for paying back the boys who pulled down his pants. Nor was he really sorry for punishing the villagers whose fathers and grandfathers stole the land of his people.
He glanced up at the stained glass window donated to the church by James McCrum in memory of his parents a decade before. In the past, whenever he attended church services in Port Carling, Oscar had found the engraving of a smiling Christ with a lamb in his arms knocking on a door in a garden comforting. This time, however, the eyes of the Saviour were fixed on him and he looked mad. That was the confirmation of his worst fears. That was confirmation that his sins were so bad they were beyond divine forgiveness. He was destined for prison. He was destined to be shunned by all honest people. He was destined to wander after death in emptiness until the end of time, just as Jacob’s shadow had said. Unable to contain his tears, he burst out into such loud and convulsive sobbing that Leila McCrum took him in her arms and hugged him. The choir began to sing and he joined in with such inconsolable fervour that Reverend Huxley and James McCrum exchanged glances and nodded their heads.
When the service was over and the medals and Union Jack removed from the lid of the coffin, the pallbearers once again took hold of the brass handles and, marching in unison, led the mourners outside to the hearse. Oscar whispered to Reverend Huxley that he wanted to go back to the Indian Camp. Reverend Huxley took him by the elbow and steered him to his car, whispering back to him that he had to go to the cemetery, that he had no choice. Opening the back door, he guided Oscar inside, then joined his wife in the front seat.
“You have to honour your grandfather,” he told Oscar as he drove behind the hearse to the cemetery. “He was a hero in war and in peace. And if you aren’t at the burial service, you’ll regret it all your life.”
It was only when they arrived at the cemetery that Oscar remembered that it had been built on land donated years ago by Reg McCrum from property taken from the people of Obagawanung. Jacob, he knew, with his need to be always accommodating, would not mind being buried among white people. But Oscar’s heart told him it was wrong for his grandfather‘s final resting place to be among the pioneers who had expelled him from his place of birth. Bursting out once again into tears, he wrenched open the car door and ran to the Indian Camp only to realize when he got there that Jacob’s evil shadow now occupied the shack and he could never go home again. And with nowhere else to turn, he reluctantly went back to his room at the Huxleys’.
4
“I’m worried about him,” Reverend Huxley said to James McCrum who had returned home with him after the funeral to discuss Oscar’s future. “His mother didn’t seem like a very responsible person when I spoke to her on the telephone the other day. She said that it didn’t matter to her who buried her father as long as it wasn’t her and that she definitely didn’t want her son back. I must admit she sounded as if she had been drinking. The Indian agent,
