Who’ll remember me when I’m gone? I’ve no one left at home and I’d really like to have a family before I die, maybe a son to carry on my name.”
At first Jacob listened with fatherly indulgence as Amos spoke of his fears and hopes. He nodded his head sympathetically when Amos told him in the strictest confidence that although everyone thought he was outgoing and happy-go-lucky, he had always been shy around girls.
“I don’t know how to talk to them” he said. “They make me feel inadequate. I never get up the nerve to ask anybody out.”
Then one day in early June 1916, Jacob let slip that he had a daughter just a bit younger than Amos.
“Her name is Stella. After her mother died, I couldn’t take care of her and she’s been away for years at a good residential school learning to read and write and cook and sew and be a good wife for the right man. I’m going to get her at the end of the month and she’ll be home to stay after that. If you want, I could put in a word for you.”
Amos asked people on the reserve who had known Stella before she went away to residential school for their opinion.
“Haven’t heard of her for years,” was the general view. “Her mother was a strange, lost soul who died when her daughter was just a child. No idea what she’s like now, but if she takes after her father, she’s sure to be hard-working and reliable.”
Later that same month, about to be shipped out to Europe to join his regiment on the front lines, Jacob managed to get family leave. He arrived at the residential school dressed in his military uniform to bring his daughter home to meet Amos.
“She left last summer and didn’t come back,” the principal said when Jacob asked for her.
“What do you mean, ‘left and didn’t come back’?” asked Jacob. “Was she in some sort of trouble?”
“Well, you may not like what I’ve got to say,” the principal said. “She was a model student the first years she was here, but she never received mail from home and she spent her summers at the school rather than with her family. I am afraid she thought you had rejected her and she started to take her frustrations out on the other students and the staff. Matters came to a head last year when she was under the impression you were coming to bring her home for the summer. When you didn’t appear, she left the property without permission and we had to send the police to bring her back. She left again and we thought she had gone home. The police came later to say she had somehow entered someone’s home, trashed it, and attacked the owner. We never followed up, thinking it was for the best since we couldn’t handle her and she would have been charged with assault had she returned.”
“Where do you think she went?” Jacob asked. “I’ve got to find her and I don’t have much time before I go overseas.”
“Why don’t you try Toronto,” the principal suggested. “A lot of our female runaways hitchhike or ride boxcars down there and try to find jobs as maids, waitresses, or babysitters. The problem is Toronto is such a big place, it’ll be hard to locate her.”
But finding Stella was all too easy. When Jacob visited the downtown police station to file a missing person’s report, the cop on duty asked him to wait while he went to look for her name in the files in the registry.
“Your daughter is not missing, Mr. Musquedo,” he said when he came back. “In fact, she’s well known to us. We’ve had to bring her in for fighting, disturbing the peace, public drunkenness, and for soliciting on the streets. She moves around a lot but the last address we have for her is room 10, the King’s Arms Hotel, on Jarvis Street next to the Salvation Army soup kitchen.”
“Thank you, thank you just the same,” Jacob answered, not knowing what to say. “I’m leaving for overseas in a couple of weeks,” he told the cop who was no longer listening.
I should have brought her home for the summers, Jacob thought, as he walked toward Jarvis Street. I should have done something when I got her letter last year. Maybe she wouldn’t have disgraced herself and the family. Maybe there was nothing I could have done to help her anyhow. Nobody can blame me. I did what I thought was right for her, just like I’m doing for Canada by going off to war. Luckily, I’ve found a good man for her.
3
After the initial shock of meeting her father, Stella did not try to hide her disbelief when Jacob said he wanted her to come home with him and settle down before he went overseas.
“You’re a cold old goat,” she said. “You never wanted me when I was a kid, and now to make yourself feel good, you come around pretending you care about me. So go away and let me live my life as I want. Toronto’s my home now, not the reserve or the Indian Camp. The women selling their asses on the streets, including that bitch I was just fighting with, are my family, not you.”
Two days later, however, Stella pushed open the door to Jacob’s house on the reserve and walked in carrying her suitcase. “Don’t look so surprised,” she said to her father who was eating his dinner. “You knew the cops would come looking for me after the fight and I’d have to come back to the reserve to hide out for a while.”
The next day, Jacob invited Amos Wolf to drop by for a cup of tea. And Amos, who had been so well prepared by Jacob that he had already fallen in love with the idea of marrying his daughter before he met her, could not have been happier when he was exposed to her earthy humour, handsome good looks, and worldly self-confidence. There was no need, Jacob thought, to tell him that he had found Stella working the streets of Toronto. Why spoil his illusions when he might well be killed overseas anyway?
At the request of Amos, Jacob told his daughter that his friend wanted to marry her, but she said no.
“Why this sudden concern for me?” she asked. “There’s gotta be something in it for you.”
“Not at all,” said Jacob. “I just want what’s best for you. Besides, the government will send you half his pay when he’s overseas, and if he gets killed you’ll get a pension.”
Within a week, Stella and Amos were man and wife. Within two weeks, Jacob and the bridegroom left to rejoin their regiment and go overseas. Two months later, Stella was sitting in the office of the helpful doctor who was telling her that for a substantial fee he would get rid of her baby. But although she still didn’t want a child, she couldn’t bring herself to go through with the abortion. Seven months later, Oscar was born, and four months after the birth of his son, Amos was killed in action during the battle for Hill 70 near the town of Lens in northwestern France. It was August 1917.
Map
PART 1
APRIL TO JUNE 1930
Chapter 1
THE JOURNEY
1
Mary Waabooz, lovingly known as Old Mary to her friends and relatives, the oldest member of the Rama Indian Reserve,
