OLD PROFESSOR DYKES, HOLDING THE RUGBY PLAYER BY the arm, led the way. Albert pushed on as well, caught somewhere in the middle of the crush, and as he tried to manoeuvre others came behind him, and his sign said: Equality for Native peoples. Stay off our land. He slapped his Laplander white mitts against his white coat for warmth.
Nor could he see Ms. Sackville. Perhaps he didn’t know she had stayed home. She had started out with all the black-clad students and then her feeling of elitism took over and she slipped away into the coffee shop on the corner and then went home. She was reading a book at this time, by Anaïs Nin, and folded neatly on the couch with a glass of red wine.
Albert wanted to drop the sign, and yet he couldn’t; he was compelled by all of those singing and holding hands to go forward, to push forward toward Raskin works. The place he grew up and the place they all now hated.
At this moment he felt terrible and he realized he, more than others, was actually being used. He was on display—a Raskin. Looking at the others as they flashed their eyes his way, he saw a sudden triumph over him.
It was in a way like an army going forward until exhausted and not understanding why.
Really there were only twenty Native men and women, and two dozen students. There was McLeish, and there was Tracy McCaustere, and Raskin asked himself Are their faces now changed, are they somehow hilarious? Do they look frenzied, and why is that? Why is their smell so suddenly noticeable? Why do I feel like I am no longer a human being? For here I am in the midst of some mob.
And he thought that and wanted to get out, onto the side, to the edge where he could breathe. But others were pulling them along, demanding to tear things down, demanding that their grievances be heard. Ah yes, a grievance, and he looked and saw McLeish elated somehow, his small muscular body moving forward as if he was in a wrestling ring, and happy that there was a grievance, that there was an injustice, so he could partake in this, and with this vanity he strode.
“Yaahh,” he said, and Tracy McCaustere, whose arm McLeish held on to, looked at him and yelled, almost in elation, “Yahhh.”
And the young girl who had asked Professor Howl earlier that day if he was going to join the protest fell, and people began to trample her, but she was lifted up, and she yelled “Hurrah!” and moved forward, her shirttail out, her black coat unbuttoned, snow down her pants, and the wind howling against her young, impetuous face.
Albert found himself crying too, and the raw-boned men who had worked in the yard and had been fired were here now to make their case and people were led by them toward the statues. And one man seen earlier talking to the students, and because of the cold slightly squatting up and down on his legs as he spoke, with his hands in his pockets, Clement Ricer, who said he owned the land beyond, had moved to the far end of the field as if he was creating his own pincer movement. Here the snow was deeper, here Clement Ricer followed the shouts with shouts of his own, here he raised his fist in solidarity. Then he lighted his cattails, and his face took on an oily, hardened glow where his chin and cheekbones seemed smeared in red.
“Goddamn you!” he yelled, and then coughed and burst out laughing. He stopped a second, opened a pint bottle of rum, had a drink and continued on.
Except Albert had seen it before; he had seen it all before when he protested in Washington, when he went with Professor Dykes. Now he was forced on toward the statues, and already men seeing them were shouting, “Tear them down! Tear them the fuck down!”
No one had intended to tear them down until that moment. Now one could think of nothing else.
And already the women were shouting, “Native—land,” though in truth if this land was unceded, where they lived was unceded as well—but have them give up their land, their flower gardens and houses?
The mob no longer thought. Except some thought of the young girl who had fallen and was lifted up, and how her shirt was opened, and her breasts almost visible, in the flashes from lights and cattails, realizing this did she mind it now, her benediction toward proving some greater cause?
“Hurraaaaay!”
He looked around at all the dark howling and mesmerized faces, but when the crowd yelled “Yaaaah!” he did too. And he reached the young woman who had fallen earlier and putting his arm around her said, “Stay with me. I am here to protect you.”
“Hurraaaay!”
Dexter had said to the maid, “You can go now, dear. It will not help if you are here. Chester and I will dine alone tonight.”
“But what about your medicine?”
“We will take it.”
“What about the police?”
“We will phone them if we need them. They patrol here every night, so they will come sooner or later.”
“What about the letters? Did you get those letters? They will help you.”
“No, we did not. But you go now because it does not matter,” and then he added, “it does not matter, my dear.” And he patted her hand.
“But they called you monsters in the paper and that isn’t fair,” she said. She started to cry. “What a thing to say. It is not fair.”
“I have discovered in this life that nothing is.”
“I can’t just abandon you.”
“That is so brave of you, my dear, because everyone else has. But you go home.”
The lights were on outside and snow had drifted up against the porch, and a very cold moon shone, its light like splinters against the window, and the chimes in the back tinkled briskly and the inordinate muffled sounds of people came from somewhere beyond the trees. They wanted to show that they were happy, so as Chester said, they were “hamming it up.”
Dexter did not know if they were, if they were hamming it up. He just hoped, prayed a little, that Albert wouldn’t be among them. Would not have given in to it all.
There was nothing wrong with having a protest. People had been protesting against them since they became independent enough to buy their own socks. They had fired more men over the years than most companies had ever employed. They had made more money than most too.
But now they were sick and old, and they told the maid to go. She left, but first she laid out their pills, Dexter’s on one side of the table and Chester’s on the other.
They knew who they were going to face; they had faced men like this before. They knew there would be no pleasing the Native men and women against them no matter what they said or signed or did not sign.
The nurse as well they told to leave. She said she wouldn’t but as far as they could tell she too had gone.
“What do they want?” Dexter said when he heard the noise approaching and saw the lighted torches.
“They want our blood,” Chester said. “They might say they do not, and pretend that they don’t.”
“Ten years ago a hundred men would have put a stop to this.”
“Yes.”
“But now there is no men…How many men do we have now?”
“No men, really.”
“No men?”
“No, the men are gone. The place is shut. We have ourselves.”
“Well then, we must go meet them.”
“Yes. We must go out and meet them.”
Both these men had fought at Vimy, both had suffered wounds, both had received commendations. And so when they dressed tonight, long after the maid had left, they put on their suits, and ties, and jackets with the Order of Canada, the Order of Merit and the Royal Victorian Order, pinned exactly alike on both men. They sat down to the soup that had been prepared, both of them supping with a large spoon, with three crackers beside each plate and a glass of sparkling water.
They then sat in the dark and waited, both ruffled up a bit, while they heard the crowd gather. Both of them stood, each of them took their canes and put on their woollen hats, but they went to the window and waited.
“You’d better take your pills, Chester. I took mine.”
“Are you sorry about the letters?”
“No, I am no longer sorry about anything I have ever done. I will when my end comes stand on the fuckin principle of being a man.”
She, Eva, had entered the field at the back, and saw the mob ahead of her. She moved along the perimeter to catch up but slipped over bared branches and fell. She stood, realized the pistol had been cocked and one bit of pressure on the trigger would have shot her through the groin. She had a terrible urge to shoot now—like someone who sees game in the distance—but she knew she was far too far away.
But then she began to trudge across the field itself, moving diagonally to the men and women. One of the women from the reserve had a blow horn and was yelling: “This is not Raskin property! This is our land—been our land for three thousand years!”
“Five thousand,” one of the other women corrected her.
“Five thousand,” the woman said. “You have poisoned our land and our people.”
Then someone who was standing beside Albert yelled: “Kill all the Raskins!”
And all the students joined in, even the girl whose shoulders he protected.
The great surge of men and women pressed ahead. There were lights on everywhere it seemed now—from old cattails that had been lighted, to flashlights, to the floodlights of Raskin, to the television camera that seemed to come out of nowhere, interviewing Tracy McCaustere who stridently moved along as she spoke, her long thin legs in high black boots. Beside her was a man she did not at all like but was desperate to show off at the moment, Albert Raskin, and she put her arm through his, as he with his other arm about the young half-naked woman.
McLeish like a pit bull had run ahead of McCaustere, had bullied people out of the way with his strength, and now seemed in competition with the tall, raw-boned red-headed man Clement Ricer who was striding in with a few stragglers from the far side, yelling now and then as he held his cattails aloft.
Really, if one thought of it, McLeish he had no connection to this place, went back home every April to Scotland where he spent his summers hiring out his prize bull and making light of the primitive Canadians, had never spoken to a Native man or woman until four years before, had never had one in his house, nor ever hunted game with one. He knew nothing of the internecine battles that went on, on the reserves, the fights for power among band members, the misuse of money. He knew not a thing of this.
Unfortunately what had started here two years before as just, was perhaps no longer so.
Onward they went.
Now everyone realized that they were here seeking to tear the eroded statues down, and it had turned blisteringly cold. Now they picked up their pace to get to the statues first, pushing ahead of one another, and others pushing back.
Here was Dan Fournier, part First Nations, and Giles Mallet, First Nations and Acadian, both of whom had been fired for vandalism. What they could not believe was that so many students were with them tonight;
“Tonight we are the professors, we will teach you tonight.” And they smiled at this brashness, and Dan Fournier felt vindicated for all past losses, tests that he did not know, and grades that he did not pass. He moved toward the statues with the students suddenly and spontaneously yelling: “Tear them down! Tear the statues down!”
When they started yelling “Tear them down!” it seemed as if this was the only reason they had trudged across Bloody Field in the wind. “Tear them down, tear them down!”
Standing under the grand floodlights in front of their industry, in the howling wind and under the cover of large pine trees, were the two old men, off a little to one side watching the people approach, their Distinguished Service Medals and the Order of Canada on their lapels, the medals from the First World War on their chests, standing amongst people who no longer knew their world and some who didn’t even know there was a First World War.
Eva made it to the front just as they started mocking the sculptures, jeering and laughing, swearing and calling names like children do.
The old men, however, walked toward the statues, and turned to face the mob. Eva was five feet from them, looking in astonishment at all the people. Her nose was bleeding from her fall, her hair was wet with snow and sweat, and still her face held beauty and innocence looking awestruck at all those coming toward her. Yet nothing seemed strange to her, even the young girl with her shirt opened and one of her breasts visible. At the moment this did not matter.
Eva kept looking at all the faces, but as Tracy McCaustere had ordered when they had turned the cameras on, “Cover your faces—cover your faces!” and so, so many had done so on her behalf.
“Old white bastards!” the white students were yelling now. “Old white fuckers!”
There was a ringing in her ears, a buzz that did not go away. Far down the hill two RCMP cars were approaching, but even coming onto the property would take time. Looking at the young woman whose breast was visible she thought of the bra that Clara had bought. Strange how that had started it all, she thought.
People stood around the old men yelling; the old men stood their ground with their last bit of strength, stood solid on their canes. For a moment or two everyone and everything became quiet. It was as if in their presence the mob did not now know what to do.
The two old men searched the faces, and looked at Albert and simply passed on to others.
“Spit on them,” someone finally said. But far from making the old men turn or run, or whatever might have been intended, they stood side by side, seeming in their feeble stances more determined than an army. Then two or three men from the mob of men and boys started to rock the statues back and forth. One wearing woollen gloves slipped and fell on his back, others yelled that someone had hit him. Albert went forward with McLeish and Fournier because he must.
He looked at his uncles and saw in them more dignity than he had ever seen before, and tears from the bitter wind came to his eyes. Suddenly both statues fell. They simply fell and people were yelling “Hurrah!” and others were saying, “Let them fall. Let the statues fall.”
And Chester bent over to pick Dexter up, as men and women rushed about them. He grabbed the hand of his brother like he had on the second day of Vimy Ridge when they were going up the hill attacking the place the Canadians called “the Pimple,” and Dexter managed to stand just like he did that day almost seventy years before. Out from the left rushed Clement Ricer, his cattail gone out, his gloves damp and his floppy hat covered in snow.
And then the gun went off. Three shots went off and people began to run.
McLeish screamed: “They have a gun! They have a gun!” And he began to run over people to get away. He knocked McCaustere down, and the young girl who had earlier fallen, and ran. McLeish was halfway down the field by the time the echo from the gunshots faded. He had fallen three times and his hat had come off. The rugby player ran as well, leaving old Professor Dykes stunned and alone, turning in circles as people rushed by him.
Eva wasn’t trying to save the statues, as was later stated by people. She was trying to kill Albert Raskin. But she missed him and killed the raw-boned man, Clement Ricer, who had said he owned the property.
They said it was her ultimate act of revenge perpetrated on Clemet Ricer. They said she had a long-standing affair with Shane Stroud.
“Of all people,” they said.