have a little drink. You don’t belong with those snobs on Millionaires’ Row, and for that matter you don’t belong among the people of this village. The folks around here don’t really trust you. They think you’re a fake. They think there’s something phoney about your attempts to be one of them, as if it was all an act.”
“I don’t think Reverend Huxley feels that way,” Oscar said.
“As far as the Reverend and his friends go,” Clem replied, “you probably could play along with their plans and be one of them someday. But if you do what they say and become a missionary, you’ll spend the rest of your life going to church on Sundays, living in a house with white lace curtains, and spending your time with stuffed shirts who don’t smoke or drink. I’ve known from the beginning you set that fire back in 1930 and have been trying to make amends ever since by sucking up to everyone.”
“Maybe I’ll have a drink of your wine after all,” Oscar said, sitting up straight in his chair.
“I saw you peeking in the window of the Amick just before dawn early that June morning,” Clem said, as he poured a glass of homebrew for Oscar. “The sun wasn’t even up. One minute you were there, the next you were gone. Then all hell broke loose, the fire bells started to ring, and the old general store went up in flames. It had to be you. No one else was around at that time. You musta had your reasons, I thought, and you probably never figured it would spread like that.”
“I didn’t think anyone knew my secret,” Oscar said, after quickly swallowing a half a glass of wine, the first alcohol he had ever tasted.
“Don’t take me for a fool.”
“I wouldn’t do such a thing today.”
“I hope not. I wouldn’t let you off a second time.”
“There are a few things about what happened afterward, Clem, that I’ve wondered about over the years.”
“Like what?”
“Like why your father and Reverend Huxley have been so good to me.”
“I haven’t the slightest idea, Oscar.”
“Do you think they’ve been helping me because I’m an Indian and they stole the land of my people? Because they feel guilty?”
“What do you mean stole the land? There are only a few old-timers around who remember there was an Indian village here when they came to take up their land grants.”
“Then who’s to blame?”
“Why, nobody’s to blame. People in those days was just doing what they had to do to make a living. Nobody had any choice.”
“Somebody’s got to take responsibility.”
“Okay, let’s look at the matter a little more closely. The young people of today are not to blame because they weren’t around in those days. The settlers aren’t to blame because they just took the land the government gave them. The government in power at that time isn’t to blame because it was following the policies of the governments before them, taking the lands from the Indians to give to settlers to develop. The British aren’t to blame because they had turned over responsibility for the Indians to the Canadians when they pulled out. Christopher Columbus isn’t to blame since the kings and queens over there in Europe sent him over here. So who can you blame? You can’t blame nobody!”
“I still think your father and others are helping me to make amends for what the settlers did to my people,” said Oscar.
“Well, I don’t,” said Clem, “and I know them better than you. And they’ll drop you without a second thought if you ever step out of line. But now that I’ve given you some free advice, I’d like you to help me pay back the people around here who’ve shown me no respect.”
“I once tried to get even, Clem, and it didn’t turn out the way I wanted.”
“But this is different, Oscar. I’m not planning to burn down the village.”
“Whatever you say,” Oscar said, his mind now deadened from the wine. “You can count on me.”
“I got dynamite. Ever since everybody turned nasty, I’ve been quietly buying and storing lots of it. Things have come to a head and I want you to help me blow a hole in their goddamn road so big they’ll never be able to fix it. That’ll learn them not to mess with Clem McCrum.
“Did I ever tell you my story about the constable and the outhouse?” he asked, fetching a gallon jug of pickled eggs. “Help yourself,” he said after unscrewing the lid. “You shouldn’t drink dandelion wine without pickled eggs, and I made them myself.”
“The constable and the outhouse? I don’t think you ever did,” Oscar said, biting into an egg and almost gagging on the taste of the strong vinegar.
“The constable was always chasing after us kids and giving us a hard time when all we were doing was having a little fun,” Clem said, pouring both of them tumblers of wine. “And so one Halloween we decided to get him. We waited until after dark and snuck around to the back of his house and moved the old outhouse a few feet down the path, just enough to leave the hole full of crap unprotected. We lay in wait and held our breath, hoping just the constable and not his family would fall into our trap. Finally, the back door opened and out came the constable himself, puffing on his pipe, without a care in the world. And sure enough, just as he reached for the handle of the outhouse door, he fell into the hole. He was waist-deep in shit and not happy. You could’ve heard him yelling right down to the Indian Camp. His wife and kids came out and they got him madder by laughing. They couldn’t stop laughing, and neither could we. But we took off right away since we didn’t want to get caught. What made it worse for that poor guy was that the next day everybody in the village knew the story and kept rubbing it in. I think in the end he found out who the culprits were but he never came after us. He was too embarrassed.”
Clem then told dozens of other tales from his boyhood and youth and Oscar responded with stories about life back on the reserve when he was a boy, and about things he had had to do to keep Mrs. Huxley happy over the past five years that in retrospect seemed funny. By now firm friends, they laughed and joked and drank all night, staying up to witness the dawn chorus of seagulls, crows, and vultures sitting on dead tree branches and circling high over the burning garbage at the dump. They carried on carousing until mid-morning when the church bells began to echo throughout the village announcing the imminent start of Sunday services.
“We gotta get this done when everyone is still in church,” Clem said. “They’ll all be scared shitless when they hear the blast.”
They then made repeated trips to carry three dozen cases of dynamite from Clem’s cellar and stuff them into the culvert at the T-junction where the dump road joined the highway through the village. Clem swiped a match on the seat of his pants, lit a fuse, and he and Oscar ran for cover. The ensuing explosion rained rocks and stones down on the village, shattered windows for miles around, sent cattle and sheep grazing on nearby farms fleeing in panic, led dogs to howl, disrupted services in all three churches as Clem had hoped, splintered the expensive stained glass window donated to the church by James McCrum, and was even heard by the guests assembling for Sunday brunch at the Fitzgibbons’ summer home on Millionaires’ Row.
“How odd,” Hilda Fitzgibbon said to her husband. “It’s thundering out and there isn’t a cloud in the sky.”
“I
