she should follow when she registered at the University of Toronto during the week to come.
Although two hundred yards up the road, Oscar and Clem were lifted off their feet by the blast and thrown to the ground. Both got up unhurt and laughing. “That’ll show those bastards they can’t tangle with me!” Clem yelled.
Deaf from the explosion, Oscar could only guess at what Clem was saying, but he didn’t wait around to learn more. A stupendous cloud of dust was rising hundreds of feet into the air, obscuring a crater blasted out of the ground fifteen feet deep and twenty feet wide. All that remained of the trees for a good fifty yards into the bush were their trunks, sheared off ten feet above the ground. Oscar fought his way through the debris of broken branches around the hole and made it to the highway as the fire bells of all three churches began clanging, summoning the volunteer firemen to assemble at the fire hall.
Reverend Huxley, James and Mrs. McCrum, and the other parishioners of the Presbyterian church had evacuated the building and were outside looking up the street in the direction of the blast when Oscar came into view, his shirt-tails hanging out, covered in dust, his head down, and walking fast.
“Oscar, Oscar, what’s going on?” James McCrum called out as he drew near.
“Were you hurt in the blast, Oscar?” Reverend Huxley shouted to him as he went by. “Was anyone hurt, Oscar? Stop, Oscar, come back and tell us. We need to know.”
Oscar paid no attention. His ears were ringing, he was drunk, and he just wanted to find some place to lie down and sleep in peace.
2
The next morning, Oscar woke up shivering, covered in dew and lying on the ground in front of his grandfather’s shack where he had hid out until he was sober enough to go back to the manse. His head was aching, the taste of sour homemade wine and pickled eggs polluted his mouth and breath, and he had a thirst no amount of river water could quench.
“Where were you?” Mrs. Huxley asked him when he walked unsteadily through the door of the manse. “Why didn’t you come home last night? Didn’t you know we would be worried? In case you hadn’t noticed, we’re responsible for you.”
“I don’t think we have time to get into all that, Isabel,” Reverend Huxley said, interrupting his wife.
At the breakfast table that same morning, she had surprised him by the virulence of her remarks about Indians and Oscar.
“You can take these people out of their shacks and help them live like civilized white people,” she had said. “But they revert to type sooner or later. I bet he’s going to walk away from the chance of going to university despite everything we’ve done for him. And in these hard times it wasn’t always easy.”
While not as outraged at Oscar’s behaviour as his wife, Reverend Huxley was deeply disappointed and told him so on the drive to the railway station.
“Everyone was looking forward to your attendance at church yesterday,” he said. “I had a special sermon prepared to bid you farewell as you embarked on your new life. James McCrum was going to speak. The choir was going to sing “Shall We Gather at the River.” That was all ruined. Why didn’t you come afterward and tell me what you had done and say you were sorry? Why didn’t you come home last night? Maybe you were trying to pretend nothing had happened, but you didn’t fool me. I was a soldier and I know a drunk when I see one.”
As Oscar resisted the urge to vomit out the window, Reverend Huxley said that he had forgiven him. “And James McCrum, after much thought and prayer, has forgiven you as well. He is a true Christian who believes in the power of forgiveness and redemption and has faith that you will do great things with your life despite this setback.”
In fact, Reverend Huxley had found it hard to calm McCrum down.
“Clem has once again disgraced the family name,” McCrum had said. “And to think I once thought he would take over McCrum and Son! But he will pay the price for his vandalism with a spell in jail. Oscar, however, has thumbed his nose at us by behaving like any ordinary drunken Indian.”
It had taken all of Reverend Huxley’s powers of persuasion to persuade McCrum to honour his promise to fund his university education.
“I’m now inclined to think there was some truth to rumours that he and that Fitzgibbon girl were sneaking around drinking and up to no good all summer behind your back,” he told Reverend Huxley. “But for his grandfather’s sake, I’m prepared to give him one last chance.”
Oscar slept all the way on the train to Union Station in downtown Toronto and took a streetcar to the University of Toronto where he joined the lineup of students waiting to register for their first-year courses. An envelope containing a money order from James McCrum, made out to the university to cover his tuition and residence costs for the year, was in one pocket; in another pocket was the ten dollars Mrs. Huxley had let him keep for spending money after he had handed over the wages he had earned working at the general store over the summer. He looked around the room hoping to see a friendly face, ideally another Native student who wouldn’t reject him if he were to walk up and extend his hand and say, “I’m Oscar Wolf and I’m new here. I guess you’re new as well. Let’s be friends.”
But there were no brown faces in the room, or for that matter any black or yellow ones. Instead, a mass of anxious eighteen- and nineteen-year-old white high-school boys with a sprinkling of white women the same age milled around clutching their acceptance letters in their hands, looking for the right line to join to register. Those with sunburned faces and red necks, he guessed, were probably the sons and daughters of farmers. Others, with their pale complexions, he supposed might be the offspring of small businessmen, clergymen, doctors, lawyers, and teachers. One group stood out from the others by the elegance of their clothing, by their perfect tans, and by their self-assurance. Claire, he saw, was one of them, and although she stared directly at him, she gave no hint she knew him.
I don’t want to do this, Oscar thought, looking away. I don’t want to be subjected to constant brush-offs from Claire. I don’t want to be humiliated again by the students who were at the Fitzgibbon’s brunch. I don’t want to spend the next three or four years of my life here with no friends and as the only Native student on campus. I don’t want to spend the money of someone whose store I destroyed. I don’t want to keep up the pretence that I have a religious calling when I’m not sure I believe in God. Clem told me I shouldn’t try to be something I wasn’t by trying to fit into the white man’s world. It’s time I was honest with myself. I’ve got to return to Port Carling and confess my crimes and betrayals to my benefactors and beg their forgiveness. And since they like me so much, they’ll forgive me and I’ll be free to leave and do whatever I want.
But as he walked back to Union Station to take the train back to Muskoka, Oscar had second thoughts. Confessing everything and accepting the consequences of his misdeeds would certainly be the honourable thing to do, but what if Lily Horton’s family was to learn of his confession? They would be forced to relive the grief they suffered when they first learned of their daughter’s death. What if his benefactors were not to forgive him? What if the Hortons and his benefactors were to call the police? The police would charge him with arson, manslaughter, and murder, and he would be sent to jail for many years; he might even be sentenced to death and be hanged in the district jail.
Stretched out on a hard wooden bench in the waiting room in Union Station,
