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DARK NIGHTS OF THE SOUL

1

Reverend Lloyd Huxley was born in China in the last decade of the nineteenth century and spent his early years as the only child of missionary parents among wars, rebellions, famines, and human misery in Sichuan Province. When he was a boy, his father told him that death and suffering were God’s will and not to be questioned, and he had believed him. His father told him that it was God’s will that he become a Presbyterian clergyman when he reached adulthood, and he accepted his judgement. His father told him that it was God’s will that he become a missionary after becoming a clergyman and follow in his footsteps in China, and this he also promised to do.

But on his way back to Canada on the eve of the Great War to study theology at Knox College at the University of Toronto, Lloyd visited India, Mesopotamia, the Holy Land, Athens, Rome, Berlin, and London and developed a passion for foreign travel and international relations. He wanted to become a diplomat and make the world a better place and not a clergyman or missionary for which he had no calling. He wrote his father to ask his blessing to change his vocation, but the war intervened and he joined the army. During the fighting, he proved to be a skilled sniper, killing so many enemy soldiers that he lost count. At the end of the war, Lloyd returned to Toronto a decorated hero to find a letter from his father waiting for him.

“I believe in my innermost being that God wants you to bring the gospel to the heathen,” he wrote. “Please make your old father happy and become a clergyman and missionary.”

Lloyd did what he was told and enrolled in Knox College to train to be a minister, but he was plagued by flashbacks of the terrible things he had done in the war, and each night when he went to sleep he dreamed that something impure had taken root in his soul and he loathed himself.

How could someone so tainted with sin become a man of God? he asked himself. How can I find redemption?

He turned to prayer and asked God to forgive him, but felt no better. He looked for answers in the Bible, but had found none. Vague feelings of guilt, worthlessness, and a deep sense that life was cheap and had no purpose overwhelmed him. He went to see one of his professors, who had also been a soldier, and asked for his advice.

“Read the war poems of Wilfred Owen,” the professor said, “and come back and see me. Like the laments in the Book of Job, they contain insights into the workings of Divine Providence. They helped me; maybe they can help you.”

“Dulce et Decorum est” made the greatest impression on Lloyd, but he failed to see in it the workings of Divine Providence. It reminded him of the horrors he had just endured and provided him no way out.

Bent Double, like old beggars under sacks,

Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,

Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs,

And towards our distant rest began to trudge.

Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots,

But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame, all blind;

Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots

Of tired, outstripped Five-Nines that dropped behind.

Gas! Gas! Quick, boys! — An ecstasy of fumbling,

Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;

But someone still was yelling out and stumbling,

And flound’ring like a man in fire or lime.

Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light,

As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,

He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams you too could pace

Behind the wagon that we flung him in,

And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,

His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin;

If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood

Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,

Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud

Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues, —

My friend, you would not tell with such high zest

To children ardent for some desperate glory,

The old Lie: Dulce et Decorum est

Pro patria mori.

The war poems, Lloyd felt, were the poems of the victims and the innocent and he was neither. He had enthusiastically supported the war, had enlisted as soon as he could, had volunteered to become a sniper, and during his time in the trenches had crawled innumerable times across no man’s land to blow out the brains of dozens, if not hundreds, of German soldiers, men who usually had no inkling that the meals they were eating, the clothes they were washing, or the cigarettes they were smoking would be their last.

“You’re having a breakdown. It’s delayed shell shock,” the professor told him when he reported back. “You have to remember that you aren’t the only one around here who did appalling things in that war. We all did. We had no choice. Now grow up and get over it. You have God’s work to do.”

And as he had always done when faced with critical choices at other times of his life, Lloyd obeyed the voice of authority and continued with his theological studies. But the monster within his soul gave him no rest, and in time he began doubting the existence of the God of his boyhood and youth who now refused to answer his prayers. He nevertheless completed his studies in June 1923 and prepared to leave for China to join his father at the mission station. At the last minute, however, a member of the faculty approached him to say that the minister in Port Carling had retired. The process of finding a replacement would take some months and someone was needed to fill in on a temporary basis to serve the regular congregation and the tourists who attended church during the summer months. Could the newly minted Reverend Huxley help out on a temporary basis?

2

Reverend Huxley interpreted the request as an order and immediately packed, put on his clerical collar, and left for Port Carling. James McCrum and the other church elders were waiting at the wharf when he arrived on a steamer late in the afternoon on the first Sunday of July carrying his battered suitcase. James insisted that he come home to meet his wife and eat a good home-cooked meal. It just so happened that Isabel McFadden, a cousin of James and a teacher at the elementary school, had been invited to the same dinner; Isabel, florid-faced, long-necked, flat-chested, skinny-legged, unmarried, opinionated, and ten years older than the guest of honour, was a granddaughter of a pioneer and loved Port Carling to distraction. She had spent a year in Toronto at teacher’s college after she graduated from high school and had been so homesick that she vowed that once back in Port Carling she would never leave again.

In honour of the distinguished guest, Leila brought out the family silver and porcelain dishes. Dinner was served in the dining room on a damask linen tablecloth spread over the solid top-of-the-line oak table James had inherited from his parents. They had ordered it, together with matching chairs and sideboard, from the Timothy Eaton mail order company in Toronto at the turn of the century. A large coloured print of “Good King Billy,” iconic figure of the Orange Lodge, defeating the Catholics at the Battle of the Boyne in 1690, looked down on the dinner party from one wall. On another was a black-and-white tintype photograph of James’s parents staring at the camera at a country fair in Gravenhurst in the early 1880s. Since it was a hot summer day, the door to the balcony looking down over the river was left open to catch the evening breeze.

Everyone bowed their heads and closed their eyes as James sought God’s blessing for the food they were about to eat. Leila then got up to bring the platters in from the kitchen: roast beef, nicely overdone as everyone liked it, gravy, baked potatoes with sour cream, Yorkshire pudding, and carrots, peas, and salad from the garden. Afterward, as a special treat, there would be home-made vanilla ice cream with wild raspberries.

Isabel, who was seated beside Lloyd, tried to get up to help, but Leila told her there was no need.

“She’s been helping me with the cooking all afternoon,” she said, addressing herself to Lloyd. “She’ll make someone an excellent wife someday.”

During the meal itself, after Lloyd told her he had been raised in China, Isabel, with becoming earnestness, said that ever since she had been a little girl she had been fascinated by China and all things Chinese. “When my thoughts turn to China,” she said,” I think of Confucius and gunpowder.”

“You have surprisingly good knowledge of China,” Lloyd answered politely.

“Why, thank you, Reverend Huxley,” Isabel said. “I’ve always been interested in other peoples and their cultures. When I was at teacher’s college in Toronto, I even got to know a Chinese gentleman. He ran a small laundry close to my boarding house and I used to take my things to him for cleaning. Although he didn’t speak English, he always smiled and bowed when I went in. I ate at a Chinese restaurant once, even though my friends told me I would probably be eating cat and dog disguised as chicken. I didn’t like the foreign sauces but the rest of the food was quite good, especially the rice.”

By the end of the summer, without being too sure how it had happened, Lloyd was the new resident minister of the Port Carling Presbyterian Church. And although he didn’t remember asking her, he found himself engaged to be married to Isabel, who had prepared her wedding trousseau many years before, hoping a man like him would come along. After she thoroughly inspected the manse, she concluded that all it needed to make it fit for her habitation were frilly white lace curtains on the windows.

When it took place the following summer, the wedding was a big affair. Reverend Huxley’s parents came from China and stayed with their son at the manse. The entire congregation was invited and all the members of the extended McFadden and McCrum families came. Clem arrived at the church drunk and slept through the ceremony, but nobody minded. The wedding reception was held at the Orange Lodge and was catered for a modest fee by the Women’s Orange Benevolent Association. Everyone had agreeable things to say afterward about the tea and coffee, the tasty egg salad and chicken sandwiches, the orange Jell-O with pieces of fresh fruit encased within, and the flaky crust of the apple and peach pies.

Life would have been good had Reverend Huxley not had ongoing nightmares about the war. In them, he saw himself climbing over the top of a trench in the middle of the night and carefully making his way to a secluded place in no man’s land — a tower in a derelict church, a ruined house, a partially destroyed barn — anything with a view over the enemy’s front line. At first light the next morning, he would begin looking for potential targets, almost always catching someone unawares, someone who thought he would not die that day. He would take one shot — never more than one to avoid giving away his position and drawing down hostile artillery fire — and another German soldier would be dead. For the rest of the day, he would lie concealed under a pile of mouldy hay, under a heap of rubble, under anything that would keep him from the enemy soldiers searching the area for the man who had killed their comrade. That same night, he would creep back to his own lines, call out the password, report to the sergeant, have something to eat, rest throughout the day, and go out after dark to kill again. And when that nightmare ended, it would repeat itself endlessly in his head until dawn.

As the years went by, and as he slept in his bed beside his innocent Isabel in peaceful Port Carling, his eyes in his dreams began to focus on the faces of the men he had killed. During the war he had shot the same man over and over again. The man might well have been smiling, crying, laughing, or scowling; he might have had a fat face or a thin face; he might have been clean-shaven, bearded, or moustached. But he always shot the same man. And he always shot him in the same place, in the forehead. It had always been so easy, so simple to do. He would gently squeeze the trigger, the face in the scope would explode, like a pumpkin or maybe a squash when hit with a round from a Ross rifle. But as he relived those moments in the years after the war in Port Carling, his dreams unearthed details from his memory about each man that he never remembered recording, turning the universal target into individuals with hopes and fears and a wife just like Isabel.

Isabel would shake him awake when he moaned and tossed in his sleep and he would say, “It’s just the war. The war makes me do that.”

On the surface, Reverend Huxley was well-balanced and cheerful, a model husband who loved his wife, who was loved by her in return, a pastor who cared for his parishioners, and who was liked and respected by them in return. But on the inside, he was living an empty existence, pursuing a profession he had never wanted to follow, racked by guilt for crimes he had committed in the war, his soul taken by the devil, preaching a gospel he did not believe in to a people in a community where he did not want to live, and married to a woman he liked but did not love. All because he hadn’t been able to say no to his father, to his professor, to James McCrum, or to Isabel.

But then, one day, during a trip to Toronto, he went into the Metropolitan Presbyterian Church in the downtown to wait out a rainstorm. He sat down in a pew and listened to 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, when I spoke to him, said his grandfather had already made plans to send him off to residential school until he was sixteen when he could look for a job. And although those schools apparently do a lot of good for Indian children, I’m not sure he would get the nurturing and attention he needs after the traumatic events of the past several days.”

“My father always had a soft spot for Indians,” said McCrum. “I must admit that I once had my doubts about them, but I changed my mind years ago. Maybe because I got to know his grandfather so well at the guest house and he got along so well with the other employees and the guests. He was a returned soldier just like Clem, but he became a sergeant and came out of the war in better shape. And I want you to know that I was serious when I told everyone the day of the fire that I want to help that young man in any way I can.”

“It may just be an intuitive feeling,” said Reverend Huxley, “but I think he could become a fine Presbyterian minister someday. He’s the only child from down at the Indian Camp who has ever attended Sunday school and church here in Port Carling. And you should have seen how passionate he was during today’s service. I think he may have a vocation.”

“I noticed that as well,” said McCrum.

“I’d like to have him stay with me and my wife from now on and go to high school here in the village. I’ve already spoken to Mrs. Huxley. We don’t have children and have plenty of room. If he does well, we could look into helping him study to become a missionary.”

5

Mrs. Huxley couldn’t understand why her husband had been in such a rush to take in the Indian boy. The day of the fire, he had gone to the Indian Camp to see about the funeral arrangements for old Jacob and that tourist girl, Lily Horton, and had come home to say he had invited Jacob’s grandson to stay with them for a while, and he hoped she didn’t mind. And after she reluctantly agreed to let him stay for a few days, Lloyd had said they should let him live with them until he finished his high-school education in five years’ time. Maybe, he had added, they could adopt him, seeing as how his grandfather was dead and his mother, it seemed, didn’t want him. It would be an ideal opportunity to help someone who was in deep trouble through no fault of his own.

Naturally enough, she had not been all that happy. Not that she had anything against Indians. After all, it would not do for a minister’s wife, especially in a small place like Port Carling, where everybody talked and where everybody knew everyone else’s business, to be prejudiced in any way, even if she believed Indians could never become fully civilized, however hard they tried, no more than tigers could change their spots. There was something wild, animal-like in their souls that set them apart from white people. You just had to look at them up close and see those black, unfathomable eyes. And Lloyd hadn’t consulted her before inviting him to spend a few days in her home, although she was the one who would have to cook his meals, change his bedding, and wash his clothes. He probably hadn’t ever seen a bathtub and wouldn’t know about the need to make one’s bed in the morning.

This Oscar boy apparently did well in the few months he spent at the village school each year. But he never smiled or said hello when she saw him coming from the Indian Camp in the mornings, and he didn’t seem to have any friends among the other students. What did anyone know about him anyway? Maybe he was dangerous. Maybe he would steal the silver that had come to her from her grandmother who had brought it all the way from County Armagh, and run off and sell it somewhere if he took a dislike to them. She really didn’t want someone like that around on a long-term basis. But Lloyd had said that ministers and their wives were expected to show Christian charity, if only to set an example for the other people in the community. He was so set on letting the boy stay with them, and seemed so happy with the idea of it, that she had agreed to let him stay until he finished his high school. But, she told Lloyd, the boy would have to help out around the house, bringing in the wood, taking care of the furnace, cutting the grass, putting on the storm windows in the fall and taking them off in the spring, and shovelling the snow in the winter. And others in the community would have to pitch in and do their share, especially James McCrum, who made such a fuss over him right after the fire.

And as for adopting him, she told Lloyd that she could never agree to adopt anyone that old. Maybe they could adopt an Indian baby, if he was so determined to have an Indian in the house. Baby Indians were cute and cuddly, but then all babies were cute and cuddly. And cute and cuddly Indian baby boys grew up to be great hulking, dark-skinned, black-eyed, black-haired, sullen, unpredictable teenagers, just like Oscar.

6

Oscar was worried when Mrs. Huxley knocked on his door and told him that Reverend Huxley and James McCrum wanted to see him in the study. They know I set the fire, he thought. Why else would they want to see me? The constable’s probably on his way to take me to jail.

He entered the study and stood quietly by the door until Reverend Huxley saw him and pointed him to a chair. Oscar sat down, lowered his head, and stared at the floor like a guilty prisoner awaiting sentencing from a panel of hanging judges. No one spoke and he could hear the slow ticking of a grandfather clock from across the room and the buzzing of a fly, which he imagined had flown into the room by mistake and was now trying desperately to find a way out. He could hear the carefree shouts and laughter of boys playing softball in the schoolyard across the street drifting in through the open windows. It was obvious that they had not burned down the business section of the village and killed two people.

Why didn’t they say something? He could take it! He could take the bad news!

He could stand the tension no longer. What was happening could not be real. He gasped for air as his tongue grew thick and he found himself floating high up in the room close to the ceiling. He looked down and saw James McCrum and Reverend Huxley hunched forward in their seats, earnestly talking to someone who looked exactly like him, someone who obviously was his double. They were saying things that made no sense: “difficult time … the Lord works in mysterious ways … destiny … much good will come from this.”

Reverend Huxley, he then saw, turned to McCrum and said, “Stop, stop, it’s too much for Oscar to absorb. Just look at his eyes. He’s totally confused.

“Now Oscar,” he said, “we are trying to tell you that the two of us want to be your benefactors and provide for your high-school and possibly for your university education. You have suffered a great loss and have no one to take care of you. Do you understand what I’m saying, Oscar?”

When Oscar’s double did not respond, Reverend Huxley said to McCrum, “I’m sure he understands. He is an intelligent boy, but he’s probably still in a state of shock from his grandfather’s death.

“Now, Oscar,” he repeated, “I want you to listen carefully. Mrs. Huxley and I have agreed to let you live with us for the next five years while you attend high school here in Port Carling. You would be expected to help out around the house like any other boy your age and get a summer job to help with the expenses.”

“That’s where I come in,” said McCrum. “You can start Dominion Day working for Clem on the Amick. If all goes well, I’ll give you a job at the general store when it’s open for business next summer. And if your marks are good enough, when the time comes, I’ll pay your tuition and living expenses at university. We should never forget,” he added, “that the Lord works in mysterious ways. He caused that fire that took the lives of your grandfather and Lily Horton and drove away your mother for a purpose. And that purpose was to deliver you into our hands so we could help you fulfill your destiny. And your destiny is to become a missionary and take the word of the Lord to the Indians up north!”

“Do you understand what we are telling you, Oscar?” asked Reverend Huxley. “Have we made ourselves clear? Do you understand?”

Oscar at first did not understand. No one had mentioned the constable or jail. And was he really being rewarded for destroying the business section of Port Carling and causing the deaths of Jacob and Lily? That seemed to be the case.

“Thank you. I would like to be a missionary. I’m ever so grateful, ever so grateful,” he heard himself saying. He then drifted down to become one with his double and to shake the hands of his benefactors who came crowding around speaking at the same time, saying “you are credit to your people … take a few days off before starting work … tired, you look tired … go upstairs and get some rest … yes, go upstairs and get some rest.”

“Thank you, I would like very much to be a missionary … it’s always been my secret dream … I’m ever so glad … I’m ever so grateful … ever so grateful,” he said, before excusing himself and going to his room.

7

That night, Oscar lay awake in an unfamiliar bed, in a strange bedroom just down the corridor from people he scarcely knew. Although relieved he had escaped the constable, flashbacks of the fire tormented him when he drifted off to sleep and he woke up sobbing. Desperate to ease his conscience and bring his suffering to an end, he decided to go back to the shack and seek the forgiveness of his grandfather’s shadow. Although afraid of what he might encounter, he slipped out of bed and hiked over the ridge to the Indian Camp, taking up a position in the dark under the cover of the white pines a hundred yards from the shore. From where he stood, he could see the moonlight shimmering on the water, and on the other side of the bay the outline of the Amick, moored as before to the government wharf. Other than the gleam of coals from a campfire left to burn itself out on the shore by a family that had gathered around it the previous evening to cook fried pickerel and bannock for their dinner, there was no sign of life in the sleeping community.

A dog barked, and someone yelled “Be Quiet,” and the dog whimpered and was silent. For a moment Oscar was transported back four nights and he was standing on the shore looking across the moonlit bay trying to decide what he should do to get back at Clem and all the people who had ever harmed him and his people. A whiff of smoke and wet ashes returned him to the task at hand, and he crept up to Jacob’s shack and looked into the window. At first, an impenetrable blackness confronted him. But then he made out a vague form, darker than the surrounding gloom, stirring in the obscurity of the interior. To his horror, the foul and appalling thing that had threatened him the night of the fire came into view, assumed the fire-scarred anguished face of his grandfather, passed through the glass, and came after him.

Oscar turned, his mouth open, too paralyzed by fear to cry out for help, and fled through the Indian Camp, back up the trail over the ridge, past the school, and up to the manse. The fiend kept pace with him, moaning and crying out in pain and anger. He pushed open the front door in a panic, slammed it shut behind him, ran up to his room, knelt down, closed his eyes, and began to pray.

“I’m sorry, God, for starting the fire that killed Lily and Jacob. If you could only forgive me and give me peace of mind, I promise I will never do a terrible thing like that again. Besides, it wasn’t really my fault. The boys who pulled my pants down should share the blame. So should Gloria Sunderland who laughed when she saw my dick. And how was I to know that Clem wasn’t to blame for beating up my mother. And please, please tell me that the shadow of Jacob was wrong and that the heaven of the Christians is real, just like my Sunday school teacher used to say. And tell me Old Mary was right when she said the souls of my people travel over the Milky Way to spend eternity in the Spirit World. I am terribly afraid of being punished for setting the fire and killing Jacob and Lily. I don’t want to go to Hell after death or wander forever through time in spiritual emptiness. So please, please send me a sign, any old sign will do, to indicate that you have heard my prayers and have forgiven me.”

But as he prayed, he once again felt he was just mouthing words into the void and he felt as alone and forlorn as ever. However, he refused to give up, and he prayed and prayed all night long, pleading, begging, arguing, and bargaining with God. It was his dark night of the soul, but when the first light of dawn appeared in the eastern sky, instead of spiritual release, he felt as solitary and lost as he had been when he started praying. There was only one thing left he could do: follow the lead of the Indian people who had travelled and lived since the beginning of time on this part of Turtle Island, and seek the guidance of the Manido of the Lake.

When the Huxleys came down for breakfast at seven o’clock, Oscar was waiting for them at the bottom of the stairs.

“I’m going fishing,” he said. “I want to bring you a fish to help repay you for what you’re doing for me.”

The Huxleys raised no objections, but after Oscar left the manse, Mrs. Huxley told her husband she was concerned.

“How can someone who has just suffered such a grievous loss go down the river on a pleasure trip? Doesn’t he have any feelings? Don’t Indians mourn the death of their loved ones like decent white people?”

Reverend Huxley interrupted his wife to say she was worrying unnecessarily.

“Different people mourn in their different ways. He’s gone off somewhere important to him to try to come to terms with his loss.”

“I find that hard to believe. I know Indians, and they don’t act like that. I think he might be running away because he did something wrong. Maybe we were in too much of a hurry in deciding to take him in and in encouraging James McCrum to support such ambitious plans for his future. And if he does come back, I’m sure it will only be to sponge off all of us. And what are we to do if that mother of his comes around? She has the reputation of being a wild woman and a drunk. There are limits to Christian charity.”

Friends and relatives crowded around Oscar when he went over the ridge to the Indian Camp to prepare himself for his visit to the Manido of the Lake. They were sorry about Jacob, they said, but it was comforting to know he had died a hero and gone to a better place. Some people wanted to know why Oscar had slept outside the night of the fire, saying they had checked on him from time to time to be sure he was all right.

“You could have stayed with any of us,” they said.

Others asked him how long he would be living at the manse. Someone asked if the Huxleys had a bathtub and if he had used it. What did the Huxleys eat for breakfast, lunch, and dinner? Someone else told him he was lucky to have been taken in by rich white people and asked him if he would be going to the Port Carling high school. “If you do,” the questioner said, “you won’t find it easy to get along with the white kids, but anything is better than being sent to a residential school. Your mother went to one of those schools and that’s why she turned out the way she did.”

Oscar didn’t say much in reply. Reverend Huxley and his wife had asked him to live with them, he told them, and he had agreed. In the meantime, he was going to take Jacob’s canoe and go down the river to do a little fishing and try to make sense of what was happening. But he didn’t want to go inside the shack to get his grandfather’s fishing gear. “Too many memories,” he said. “Can someone go in and get it for me? And his pipe and a package of pipe tobacco as well?”

No one questioned Oscar’s request. Although the people at Indian Camp were by now mostly Christian, they also believed in ghosts and witches, and they understood that Oscar was afraid that the old shack was haunted. At first, no one would enter, but eventually an old woman, who, behind her back, people said was really a witch and able to cast spells on people she didn’t like, went in and returned with the things Oscar wanted.

“Well, did you meet any ghosts?” someone asked her, joking.

“I did,” she said gravely, but she didn’t provide the details.

8

Oscar pushed off from the shore and began his journey downstream toward the mouth of the river. Smoke still rose from the ashes of the business section, but teams of workers were already at work clearing away the debris, the first steps to rebuilding. The Amick, it seemed, was doing a good business, judging by the number of shoppers on the wharf waiting to go in to make their purchases. All along the shore, summer residents were sunning themselves on their docks or going about their business in their motorboats. Crows and seagulls circled leisurely in the sky, on the lookout for the carcasses of fish and animals to eat. And when he emerged from the river and paddled out onto Lake Muskoka, Oscar saw children playing on the shore below the hidden grave of Jacob’s grandfather. Life was returning to normal.

It was the first time Oscar had travelled on the lake since the trip he had made just two months before with Jacob from Muskoka Wharf Station to the Indian Camp, when a fierce cold wind had rattled the ropes of the flagpoles at the deserted summer homes on Millionaires’ Row. At that time, the Manido of the Lake had been massive and forbidding in the cold light of early dawn. Now, in the bright sunlight and calm waters of the late June morning, it had turned into a sad, helpless old deity, no different than the rock from which it had arisen, out of place in the modern world ruled by the white man.

“Oh Great Manido,” Oscar said doubtfully, throwing a pinch of tobacco onto the water and raising his arms in supplication as his grandfather used to do. “In trying to get even with the white man and gain the love of my mother, I brought about the deaths of Jacob and a white girl. Jacob’s shadow then came to me in a dream, cursing me and telling me that after death there is neither heaven nor hell, nor a spirit world beyond the Milky Way. Send me a sign, Oh Great Manido, to let me know that it was mistaken.”

The deity stared at him, sluggish and indifferent to his appeal. Oscar threw more tobacco into the lake and repeated his prayer, but the statue remained unmoved.

Maybe, Oscar thought, after waiting in vain for a response, the Manido is really just a piece of rock and its powers come from people who want to believe it’s a god. Maybe Jacob’s shadow, which came in a dream with its message of hate and which chased me back to the manse after I went to it seeking forgiveness, is just a figment of my imagination. Maybe all Native devils, shadows, ghosts, and witches are just inventions people made up years ago to scare children. Maybe the Christian God, the Devil, and the saints are man-made imaginings.

In a moment of epiphany, Oscar realized that if neither God nor the Creator nor all the panoply of lesser spirits existed, then he needn’t fear spending eternity in Hell. He wouldn’t have to pay for his earthly sins in the hereafter. He decided at that instant that Old Mary had been wrong, his Sunday school teachers had been wrong, the Presbyterian ministers on the reserve and in Port Carling had been wrong. There was no such thing as Divine Providence. There was no need for him to fear the wrath of God and Jacob’s shadow.

“You don’t exist, you never have. Now leave me alone!” he shouted out angrily at the sky. But as he did so, he understood he would never receive divine help to deal with the sorrow and guilt that plagued his waking and sleeping hours. But when he turned his canoe and began to paddle away, he heard the Manido of the Lake laughing, and when he put his line in the water, he caught a fish.

Later that afternoon, Oscar raised his four-pound pickerel up into the air and received the congratulations of the people who had come out to greet him.

“You take after your father,” said an old man who had known his father before the war. “You’re a lucky young man, since the family of a good fisherman never goes hungry.”

“Did you make an offering to the Manido of the Lake?” someone else asked.

But rather than answer, Oscar walked up to the shack and went in. His bed and that of his grandfather were unmade, just as they had left them the night of the fire. His mother’s ashtray, overflowing with cigarette ashes and butts, remained undisturbed and reeking of stale tobacco on the table. The supplies of tinned foods and packages of spaghetti, macaroni, and rice were in their place. Jacob’s winter coat still hung from a nail on a stud, and his shirts, work pants, socks, and underwear were still neatly folded and stored on shelves in an open-faced orange crate. His wallet, where his grandfather kept his pay, which he always left beside the water pail, was missing, taken by his mother, Oscar assumed. Everything was in order and there was no monster in the shack.

A silent crowd was waiting when he emerged carrying a backpack filled with his clothes to take back to his room at the manse. Everyone wondered why he had refused to enter Jacob’s shack in the morning but did not hesitate to do so in the afternoon. Something must have happened during his visit down the river that had made him change his mind.

Finally, someone asked, “Is Jacob’s shadow still inside the shack?”

Oscar refused to answer.