Women and children from the Indian Camp joined him, not finding it strange on this night of surprises that he was soaking wet and distraught. An hour later, he heard the people around him say that Jacob had died a hero. In less than two hours, the entire business section was reduced to smoking ashes. Fire brigades from nearby towns arrived, but left shortly afterward, seeing that the fire had run its course and they were not needed. Tourists who had heard the exploding ammunition and gasoline barrels from their bedrooms and seen the great black smoke plume rising over the village from their cottage docks, arrived in their boats to inspect the damage.
James McCrum climbed up onto the back of a wagon and made an announcement.
“Today, our community has suffered greatly. The business section as we knew it is now gone forever, but I will rebuild it bigger and better, and everyone should be back in operation by next summer. Fortunately, we saved the Amick and I’m going to use it as a temporary store to serve my customers. Lily and Jacob we can’t bring back. Both were the innocent victims of some arsonist’s pleasure, for the fire would not have spread so fast if it had not been deliberately set. I feel so sorry for Jacob’s grandson who is standing over there, grieving his grandfather’s death. I promise that young man today, as God is my witness, that no matter how long it takes, I will find some way of paying him back for his loss!”
Too ashamed to face people who might come up to shake his hand and express their condolences, Oscar returned to the Indian Camp. Afraid of his mother, he hid in the bushes and watched the shack, trying to find the courage to go and try to explain why he had set the fire. She came out and went to the home of a neighbour who later returned with her to the shack. A half-hour later, the neighbour came out carrying the suitcases filled with the handicraft his mother had planned to sell to tourists over the summer. His mother reappeared carrying a packsack and started walking up the path toward the village. She had sold her handicraft to the neighbour and was leaving for the reserve.
Oscar left his hiding place and ran after her, determined to explain himself. Hearing someone behind her, his mother turned. “I want you out of the shack by Labour Day and I don’t care where you go or what you do. And if you ever try to contact me back on the reserve, I’ll tell the cops what you did and you’ll go to jail for a long, long time!”
“But I did it for you,” Oscar said.
“Did it for me! Burned down the entire business section and killed your grandfather for me! I never wanted you and knew from the moment you were born you’d be trouble, and I was right.”
After her initial outburst, Stella said nothing further and walked away deeply troubled and blaming herself for her son’s rampage. Her neglect had turned him into something as monstrous as she was. She wanted even less to do with him than before, because together they would destroy each other. As far as she was concerned, he was now on his own.
5
Oscar watched from a distance as his mother boarded the steamer that would take her to Muskoka Wharf Station to catch a train to the reserve.
Maybe she’ll change her mind, he thought. Maybe she’ll change her mind and say she’s forgiven me and ask me to come on board with her and leave Port Carling and all its problems behind.
But the crew threw off the mooring ropes and pulled in the gangplank, there was a clanging of signal bells, a blast from the whistle, and the steamer left the wharf and headed downriver. Oscar waited throughout the afternoon, hoping desperately that it would turn around and come back for him. When it didn’t, he walked slowly back to the shack and sat down on a stump outside the door. He now accepted that his mother had never, and would never love him, whatever he did to try to win her over. And through his own stupidity, he was responsible for the death of his grandfather, the only person, other than Old Mary, who had ever cared for him. He was now alone and didn’t know what to do.
Friends and neighbours came out of the surrounding shacks and tried to console him.
“Jacob was a courageous man,” some said. “Not many people would have gone into the building to try to rescue the girl. Your mother has gone off and left you, but that’s nothing new. She’s always been doing crazy things.”
”Come home with us,” others said. “Take your meals and live with us as long as you want. You shouldn’t stay by yourself in Jacob’s shack. You’ll miss him too much.”
Not believing himself to be worthy of such kindnesses, Oscar declined the offers, and the neighbours, thinking he needed time to grieve, left him alone.
Clem was the next to arrive.
“You poor little guy,” he said, staring at him unblinkingly with his pale blue eyes and chewing a wad of tobacco. After spitting a stream of yellow juice into the bay and wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, he said, “You must really be feeling bad. Me and your granddad knew each other really good, you know, and not just here in the village, but overseas as well. We didn’t always get along, but I respected him. He was a brave soldier, not chicken-shit like me. He was one of the best.”
“Where’s your mother?” he asked, “I need to see her.”
“She’s gone,” Oscar said. “And I don’t think she’s coming back.”
“That doesn’t surprise me,” Clem said. “Probably left you alone to look after yourself. Look, kid, I may be the village drunk, but if I can ever give you a hand, just come see me. You won’t regret it.”
6
Clem had first met Oscar’s mother in the early summer of 1918 after being invalidated out of the army for shell shock — at least that was what the army medics had said, although he had another name for it. He had joined up in 1916, two years after war was declared, after convincing himself that his duty lay in fighting for King and Empire instead of staying at home and being husband to the wife he had married six months before. The army sent him in early 1917 as a member of a group of reinforcements to replace fallen and wounded soldiers in the trenches of northwestern France, where the men of the 48th Highlanders were located. As luck would have it, he ran into Jacob, who was a sergeant by that time, as well as a lot of the guys from the Indian Camp he’d known since he was a kid. Jacob was anxious to do what he could to help the son of his boss back home and asked his son-in-law, Amos Wolf, a smart, tough soldier, to stick close to him during the big offensives. The two men were the same age and they got along okay despite Amos being Indian and Clem not having any use for Indians before the war. Amos told Clem about meeting and marrying Stella, and when he got word she was pregnant, he was really happy.
Then one day, Amos said he’d had a dream in which the spirit of one of his ancestors had come to tell him that he would soon be killed and he was to ask Clem to go see his wife when the war was over. The spirit didn’t say why, but Amos thought it was important that she know how he had been killed and have someone to comfort her.
“Why me?” Clem asked. “Why not Jacob? He’s her flesh and blood, and he’s here with you.”
“Listen, white man,” Amos said. “I don’t question messages I get in dreams. If the Creator wants you to do the job, that’s up to him to decide.”
So Clem said okay, not wanting Amos to get mad. A lot of the Indian guys had been turning to their old beliefs during the tough-going. Who was he to say they were wrong? He didn’t believe in churches and things like that anyway. So he agreed, never thinking he’d have to do anything. Not long after that, the big battle for Hill 70 took place and Amos and Clem went over the top with the members of the regiment. They hadn’t gone far when a big shell came down not too far away. When Clem came to, Amos was just sitting there all glassy-eyed. The others probably thought they had been killed and had gone ahead.