“The constable and the outhouse? I don’t think you ever did,” Oscar said, biting into an egg and almost gagging on the taste of the strong vinegar.
“The constable was always chasing after us kids and giving us a hard time when all we were doing was having a little fun,” Clem said, pouring both of them tumblers of wine. “And so one Halloween we decided to get him. We waited until after dark and snuck around to the back of his house and moved the old outhouse a few feet down the path, just enough to leave the hole full of crap unprotected. We lay in wait and held our breath, hoping just the constable and not his family would fall into our trap. Finally, the back door opened and out came the constable himself, puffing on his pipe, without a care in the world. And sure enough, just as he reached for the handle of the outhouse door, he fell into the hole. He was waist-deep in shit and not happy. You could’ve heard him yelling right down to the Indian Camp. His wife and kids came out and they got him madder by laughing. They couldn’t stop laughing, and neither could we. But we took off right away since we didn’t want to get caught. What made it worse for that poor guy was that the next day everybody in the village knew the story and kept rubbing it in. I think in the end he found out who the culprits were but he never came after us. He was too embarrassed.”
Clem then told dozens of other tales from his boyhood and youth and Oscar responded with stories about life back on the reserve when he was a boy, and about things he had had to do to keep Mrs. Huxley happy over the past five years that in retrospect seemed funny. By now firm friends, they laughed and joked and drank all night, staying up to witness the dawn chorus of seagulls, crows, and vultures sitting on dead tree branches and circling high over the burning garbage at the dump. They carried on carousing until mid-morning when the church bells began to echo throughout the village announcing the imminent start of Sunday services.
“We gotta get this done when everyone is still in church,” Clem said. “They’ll all be scared shitless when they hear the blast.”
They then made repeated trips to carry three dozen cases of dynamite from Clem’s cellar and stuff them into the culvert at the T-junction where the dump road joined the highway through the village. Clem swiped a match on the seat of his pants, lit a fuse, and he and Oscar ran for cover. The ensuing explosion rained rocks and stones down on the village, shattered windows for miles around, sent cattle and sheep grazing on nearby farms fleeing in panic, led dogs to howl, disrupted services in all three churches as Clem had hoped, splintered the expensive stained glass window donated to the church by James McCrum, and was even heard by the guests assembling for Sunday brunch at the Fitzgibbons’ summer home on Millionaires’ Row.
“How odd,” Hilda Fitzgibbon said to her husband. “It’s thundering out and there isn’t a cloud in the sky.”
“I wouldn’t worry about it, my dear,” Dwight said, and he resumed providing his views to Claire on the studies 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