The head of the selection board, afraid that Oscar might make a fuss, called on the undersecretary of state for External Affairs, the top-ranking official in the Department and a personal adviser to prime ministers going back for decades, to seek his views. The undersecretary, a man with a conscience who thought it was high time Canada began to practise at home the values it preached abroad at the United Nations, found a way around the regulations to let Oscar join the Department without renouncing his birthright.
2
When Oscar left the Indian Camp, he decided to call on the Huxleys, but when he went to the manse and knocked on the front door, nobody answered. However, the curtains parted and someone looked out at him. It was Mrs. Huxley and she did not look happy. The curtains closed, he heard footsteps retreating into the interior of the house, and then all was silent.
James McCrum greeted him coolly when Oscar dropped in to see him at the general store.
“What can I do for you today, sir,” he said, glancing up from his desk as if he was meeting Oscar for the first time.
“Just thought I’d come in and say hello,” Oscar said. “It’s been a long time.”
“Don’t have time to talk, Oscar,” he said, returning to his paperwork. “This is my busy season.”
Oscar asked him about Clem.
“Oh, he’s no better or worse than he’s ever been,” McCrum said, not looking up. “Spends his time drinking wine with that crazy mother of yours at his cabin on the Dump Road. He’s still the village drunk.”
Oscar was shocked at the changes in Clem when he went to see him. His face and eyes were yellow, his hair was sparse, his face was thin and haggard, and he limped when he walked.
“It’s been so long, it’s been so long since I seen you last,” he said, wiping away with his hand the brown tobacco juice mixed with spittle that drooled from both sides of his mouth. “Why didn’t you come back to see me, or at least write?” he asked, his eyes filling with drunken tears.
“I’ve got no excuse,” Oscar said. “I should have. I was out west for years. I was in the army, and then at university.”
“You Indian guys were always good soldiers, Oscar. I’m happy for you, I really am. But I’ve had a tough time, Oscar, since I seen you last. Honest to God, it’s been tough. When I was in jail, they sold off all my pigs. I bought some more and when I couldn’t keep up the fences around their pens and when they escaped they slapped the biggest jeezily fines on me you couldn’t never believe, Oscar, again and again and again, until I used up all my money and had to go out of business. I looked for work but no one would give me a job, not even my own father. Then the war came along and our guys took so many German prisoners from downed planes and sinking ships in the Atlantic and Mediterranean there wasn’t enough room in England to hold them. They turned the old TB sanatorium at Gravenhurst into a prisoner of war camp and started shipping them over here. They put out a call to Great War veterans to work as guards and I got taken on. But I felt sorry for those German fellows. I could tell they were homesick by just looking at them and so I started slipping them chewing tobacco to cheer them up, but I got caught and was fired. They said I was fraternizing with the enemy and that wasn’t allowed.
“So they brought me to my knees, Oscar. I needed you, and you weren’t there for me,” he said, reaching for a tumbler of chokecherry wine. “The old ticker’s been acting up and I use this as my medicine.
“Excuse me,” he said, after taking a drink, “I should’ve offered you a glass.”
“That’s okay, Clem,” Oscar said. “I’m not in the mood.”
“Your mother and I have been drinking all day,” Clem said, “and she‘s sleeping at the moment. She’s a big-hearted woman, makes my meals and shares her pension cheques with me. Just wait a minute; maybe she’ll want to say a few words to you.”
Although he had seen her around the village often enough during his high school years, Oscar hadn’t spoken to his mother since she had come to the door of the manse looking for him when he was living at the Huxleys. He hadn’t wanted to have anything to do with her then, and he wanted nothing to do with her now.
“Don’t go to the trouble, Clem, I’ll see her some other time.”
“But it’s no trouble, Oscar. It’s no trouble at all,” Clem said, getting up and going into the bedroom.
“I’m sorry, Oscar,” he said, coming back few minutes later. “She doesn’t feel well enough to see you. Maybe she’ll be her old self after when she’s had a little more sleep. Why not come back later? Maybe have something to eat with us?”
“I’m sorry, Clem, but I can’t stay. I’ve got to make it to Ottawa today. But before I go, do you have any idea why everyone around here is giving me the cold shoulder?”
“I think they know you started the fire, Oscar. Might even be my fault. I sometimes talk too much when I’m drunk. But they got no proof and they can’t do nothing to you. They aren’t about to make accusations they can’t back up against a war hero.”
Seeing Oscar’s look of alarm, Clem blundered on.
“Actually, I’m not too sure what I said. It was after I got out of jail and found out they had sold off my pigs. I had a lot to drink and went downtown and told anyone who would listen that I had blown up their road because I wasn’t going to let them push me around. I might have said that you had once done something like that. I might have mentioned that you torched the business section to pay back the villagers for stealing the land of your ancestors. The first thing I knew the constable was up at my cabin to take a statement. But I wouldn’t make one. ‘I say lots of wild things when I’m drinking and most of it’s lies,’ I said. And so they dropped the matter. I sure hope I haven’t caused you any trouble.”
“No, Clem, you didn’t mean to cause me any harm. I’ve paid my debt to society through my service in the war and nobody has come after me in all these years.”
“That’s because they don’t have a leg to stand on. The word of a drunk won’t hold up in court. Your problem is the people around here don’t like you as much as they used to. But that don’t matter, because you still got me as a friend.”
Two weeks later, a letter addressed to Oscar Wolf, Foreign Service Officer, Department of External Affairs, Parliament Buildings, Ottawa, and postmarked Port Carling, Ontario, was sitting on Oscar’s desk when he came to work in the morning.
Dear Oscar,
I am sorry I wasn’t home when you dropped by the other day. Isabel said you came to the door and she didn’t answer it. James McCrum has also told me that he sent you away when you went to see him. And everyone in the village is talking about how you were turned away at the Legion. You must feel hurt, but people who rejected you feel betrayed. I am sure you are aware by now that after you left Port Carling in the mid-thirties, a lot of rumours were spread about your possible connection to the Great Fire.
I want you to know that whether or not there is any truth to the rumours, I will stand by you. Everybody makes mistakes in life, sometimes big ones. And I for one made more than my share. I’m certainly not happy at the things I did in the war, killing Germans who were just doing their duty for their country. I hope God forgives me someday for I know I never will. It’s something I’ll carry to my grave.
Please come and see me sometime. We’ll talk and it’ll do the both of us a world of good.
Your Friend,
Lloyd Huxley
P.S. I understand that you have been accepted into the Department as a Junior Foreign Service Officer. I am so happy you managed to accomplish what I never managed to do.
Oscar