They would then talk about the good times on the road. About kind-hearted small-town cops who let them sleep overnight in the cells and gave them big breakfasts in the morning as long as they cleared out and didn’t come back. About lonely wives who they claimed invited them in for a little lovemaking when their husbands were away at work. And about drinking cheap wine in hobo jungles and having the time of their lives.
But they had left home as boys and had returned as men with hard eyes as if they had seen things they didn’t want to talk about, or done things for which they were ashamed. While they pretended they could hardly wait to go back on the road, you could tell they just wanted to stay home and get married and settle down like their fathers had done when they were their age back when times were good.
Oscar would then join the others slouching up the steps to the high school as if they were proceeding to their executions rather than to the singing of “God Save the King” and the start of the school day. But Oscar’s reluctance was just an act. It was something designed to help him fit in and stay in the good graces of his classmates, many of whom were just putting in time until the Depression ended and the boys got jobs and the girls found husbands. In fact, Oscar loved school, and year after year was the outstanding student in his class. He was the only one who grasped abstract concepts easily, who had a feel for Latin and French, and who was able to talk intelligently to the English teacher about the books he was reading from the village library.
In time, his classmates began to treat him with wary respect; only Gloria Sunderland, embarrassed because she had laughed when the big boys had pulled down his pants so many years before, never spoke to him. He found it harder to establish good relations with Mrs. Huxley, who had made it clear to him from the outset that she wasn’t fond of Indians and had not been pleased when her husband brought him to live at the manse. He did everything he could to make her like him, handing over his wages to help run the household, cheerfully helping out around the house, escorting her to church on Sundays, sitting beside her in the family pew, getting down on his knees and praying passionately and insincerely at her side, and, with eyes uplifted, joining her in singing the great old hymns, especially “Shall We Gather at the River,” which through some buried memory always brought tears to his eyes.
At first Mrs. Huxley remained immune to his efforts, but one day she heard a knock on the front door followed by the sound of a woman speaking to Oscar.
“I’ve come to tell you that it wasn’t your fault, Oscar, and you shouldn’t blame yourself for Jacob’s death. I’m to blame. I should’ve been a better mother, but I was afraid of what might happen if we got too close.”
It was Oscar’s mother talking nonsense, and Mrs. Huxley moved quickly to deal with her.
“I’m so sorry, Mrs. Wolf,” she said, stepping in front of Oscar and naturally being as polite as a minister’s wife could be. “But you’re not welcome here. Please go away and don’t come back.”
“But Oscar’s my son,” Stella said. “I need him and he needs me.”
“I doubt that very much,” Mrs. Huxley told her, noticing the white flecks of spit on her lower lip and her lopsided smile — sure signs, in her opinion, of alcoholism. “Oscar doesn’t want anything to do with you. And you’ve been drinking and don’t know what you’re saying anyway. You abandoned him just after he lost his grandfather in that terrible fire and we are taking care of him now. He’s a lovely boy who needs the type of care only we can give him, so please go away.”
“Tell her she’s wrong, Oscar,” Stella said to Oscar who was standing behind Mrs. Huxley in the hallway. “Tell her she’s wrong. I wasn’t always a good mother to you when you were small, but you’re my baby. Come home to Mama.”
But Oscar, whose mother had been dead to him ever since she had turned her back on him and boarded the steamer the day of the fire, and who was embarrassed by her display of drunken tears, turned and went upstairs to his room.
“See,” Mrs. Huxley told Stella. “He doesn’t want you. He doesn’t want to live the same awful life you lead. Now please leave before I call the constable.”
That was when Stella became really rude.
“Call the constable if you want,” she said, shouting and using a lot of bad words unfit to repeat. “Stealing my son, and you a minister’s wife! You probably can’t make a child of your own. Call the constable if you want and I’ll tell him what really happened the morning of the fire. You won’t think Oscar’s such a lovely boy then.”
Mrs. Huxley decided that she had heard quite enough and closed the door without saying goodbye, even if it wasn’t good-mannered to do so. There was no point in trying to argue with someone who had had too much to drink. “People like that are liable to say anything,” she told Oscar when she went to comfort him in his room.
Afterward, Mrs. Huxley couldn’t do enough for Oscar, for in rejecting his mother he had proved to her satisfaction that he had left behind his savage nature and was now almost as civilized as a white person. In the mornings, when he came downstairs for breakfast, she would be waiting in the kitchen with a cheery smile to serve him bacon and eggs, fried potatoes and tomatoes, toast and Seville marmalade, Port Carling–style oatmeal porridge mixed with salt and pepper and melting butter, and English tea steeped to perfection. Every Monday, she would lay out on his bed for the coming week freshly pressed pants, shirts, socks, and underwear. In the evenings, when everyone gathered around the radio in the living room to listen to Amos and Andy and Jack Benny, she would make popcorn or homemade fudge and pass the tray to him before handing it to Lloyd. She even felt more comfortable discussing questions of religion with him than with her husband.
To tell the truth, it was a relief to have someone other than her husband to talk to. Although Lloyd must have known that he had told the same boring stories dozens of times, he wouldn’t stop talking about his trip back to Canada on the eve of the Great War, when he travelled through the Middle East and the capitals of Europe. Sometimes, especially after he received letters from friends from the old days who had gone on to become diplomats, he gave the impression he was sorry he had become a minister and didn’t believe in what he preached.
From time to time, Mrs. Huxley woke up in the middle of the night to the sound of weeping followed by laughter coming from Oscar’s bedroom. She asked Lloyd what he thought might be happening. He said Oscar was probably just having bad dreams, and that was to be expected, given what he had gone through.
Oscar thus had his life in order and was happy, at least most of the time, for every so often, whatever he was doing — answering a question in class, reading a book, or eating fudge with the Huxleys in the evenings — he would remember that he was living a lie, even if he was just trying to fit in as his grandfather had wanted.
2
In his final summer at Port Carling, after he had finished high school and before he was scheduled to leave to attend Knox College, Oscar became close friends with Claire Fitzgibbon, a tourist girl from Forest Hill, Toronto, and a recent graduate from an exclusive girls’ private school. They had first seen each other when Oscar was a thirteen-year-old working during the summer on the Amick when it called at the Fitzgibbon’s summer home on Millionaires’ Row to deliver groceries and other household supplies. He was on the top deck and she was standing with her brother on the dock. He looked at her and she looked at him, and both then turned to other things. To Oscar, she was just another overweight white kid, with braces on her teeth, light brown hair, pale blue eyes, and freckles, no different than the dozens of others he had seen over the years walking down the path from Port Carling to the Indian Camp shopping for souvenirs. Claire’s eyes remained on Oscar somewhat longer, for it was not often that she saw someone with such black hair and dark brown skin.
When Claire went by motorboat with her mother the following summer to stock up on supplies at the newly rebuilt general store in Port Carling, she saw and remembered Oscar. During the next two summers, whenever she went shopping, she could not keep her eyes off the tall, exotic-looking Indian teenager