The First Vision

 This short story was published in a little magazine many more years ago than I want to remember. We no longer have visions. Too bad.

 I first saw Anastasios' hands as we sat in a cafe in Old

Corinth, drinking gazeuse. It was not easy to see Anastasios'

hands: he so rarely kept them still. Generally they were

punctuating a sentence or emphasizing an apostrophe. But now they

lay still: a restive stillness as if they were ready to leap into

action at any moment, but at least I saw them clearly and felt

vaguely surprised. They were large strong hands, although

Anastasios was not a big man, and they were coarse, with large,

grubby fingernails, as if he had been digging with them. I wondered

if he did dig in the earth with them. He talked of digging. Of

late, he had talked a great deal about digging.

   "I saw a vision last night," he said.

   I raised my eyebrows. "So?"

   "Yes. It was my name saint who appeared to me, and St.

Constantine and his mother St. Eleni. I burned a candle to St.

Eleni last week in honour of my mother, and then one week to the

day later, St. Eleni appeared to me. She said, `Anastasios, you

must dig...'"

   "Where must you dig?"

   Anastasios looked at me craftily, though it was an open,

honest craftiness at that, and he surmised that perhaps I was a

student of archaeology. Yes, I said. I was. Had I often found buried treasure?

No, seldom buried treasure. Simply broken pieces of clay pots, and

the shattered foundations of houses abandoned a long time ago by people

who were Anastasios' ancestors. And sometimes too, a piece of

sculptured marble, still glistening faintly with its archaic

finish.

   "St. Eleni said to me, `Anastasios, you are a poor man.' `Pos,

sure,' said I, `you need not be a saint to see that.' `Anastasios,

I remember your mother," St. Eleni said, `and her name was Eleni

too, and she was just like the Eleni whom Paris from Troy of old stole from

the king of Sparta called Menelaus. Your mother was a good woman,

and she went on a pilrimage to Tinos once to ask the holy ikon of

the Virgin to cure her husband of a fever.' `Yes,' said I, `she was

a good woman.' `But the Virgin did not wish to cure her husband,'

said St. Eleni, `and so she gave her another husband who was good

to her.' Now that was not true, my friend, for her second hisband

was not good to her, nor to me, either, her son, but sometimes the

saints see less clearly than we do, for they are further away.

Still, it would be wrong to correct a saint. So I said nothing."

   Anastasios had once taken me down to the little cemetery at

Old Corinth, with its whitewasked wall and its cypress tress which

in summer, rose like dark exclamation marks on the brown landscape,

and I asked him where his mother lay buried. He said she did not

lie there. Or rather, she had lain there, but after three years, he

had dug up her remains and since they were well decomposed, as was

natural for a woman who had gone to heaven, he had disposed of them

and made room for someone else. I, with my North American primness,

was a little shocked, but Anastasios added that if the body had not

been properly decayed, it would have been worse. It would have been
a sign that the devil had taken his own.

   "And then," Anastasios went on, "Eleni said to me,

`Anastasios, you may be a rich man and live in Athens all the time

if you listen to me. You know the Turkish walls on the

Akrocorinth?'" Anastasios' hands became active again, and swept

towards the great hill which towers above the Roman ruins of Old

Corinth, which had once looked down on the Greeks worshipping

Apollo in the temple which is still marked by a few, thick columns

standing on broken foundations above the city. The walls of the fortress were purple, for

the sun was setting in the west. "`Years ago, there was a pasha

lived there, and he was wicked. But when the people rose, and drove

him from his palace, the pasha thought to himself, `I shall not

leave my treasure for these thieves. I shall dig a hole and bury

it. Now, Anastasios," said Eleni, `I shall tell you where it is

buried. When you climb up to the Turkish walls, you must enter the

fortress by three gates. Just inside the second gate the treasure

is buried.'"

   "Others have looked for the treasure of the pasha all over the

Akrocorinth," I said.

   "The others did not have a saint," replied Anastasios.

   "You will need St. Eleni," said I. For, I thought to myself,

St Helena may have found the True Cross, and for all I know, she

may be able to move mountains, but she will not move the

Archaeological Commission of the Kingdom of Greece to give

Anastasios permission to dig in the very middle of one of Greece's

national monuments. For that is what the Akrocorinth is. But I was

wrong. A letter came from the Archaeological Commission and it

said, Yes, if you have had a vision to dig, then you must dig. But

when you have dug your great hole, you just fill it in again. You

just do that whether or not you find a treasure.

   So twelve men went with Anastasios, and they dug a great hole

inside the second gate of the Turkish fortification. The priests

blessed the work, and Anastasios' lit a candle every day to St.

Helena. The two daughters of Anastasios would no longer be burdens

on their parents, for now Anastasios might give them a great dowry,

and they might make good marriages. People walked out from Old

Coreinth to see the wonder. I alone left, and returned to Athens.

   It was March when I came back, and the kapheneion at Old

Corinth had reopened for the season. Anastasios brought me my

coffee, and he looked no more wealthy than before.

   "What happened to the great hole on Akrocorinth?" I asked.

   "We filled it in," said Anastasios.

   "You found nothing?" said I.

   Anastasios sat down, and with the thumb and forefinger of one

hand, he fished in his pocket and brought out something, and laid

it on the table. It was a small oil cruet, made of buff-coloured

clay such as you may still see in the hills along the Gulf of

Corinth, and on it were hatched ornate birds, marching stiffly with

their dark plumage around its surface. It might have sat upon a

lady's dressing-table six centuries before Christ, and here it was,

intact.

   "It is beautiful," said I.

   "Do you think it would make me rich?" Anastasios asked?

   "Not rich," said I. "But it is beautiful. Many museums would

    be proud to have it."

   "Well, I shall not sell it," said Anastasios. "I shall keep it

    and look at it."

   "Good," said I. "It is a lovely thing."

   "Who knows?" said Anastasios. "Do you remember how St. Eleni

     had a vision, and she dug and found the very cross where Christ was

     crucified? So I had a vision too, and I dug, and I found this.

     Perhaps it was used by Aphrodite, or St. Paul, many ages ago."

   "Who knows?" said I.

   "And perhaps," said Anastasios sagely, "I shall have another

     vision. After all, that was my first vision, ever, and you cannot

     expect too much from these things until you've had practice." 

The Portland Vase

This story was published in a Christmas issue of the Atlantic Advocate, which was printed in Fredericton. The Atlantic Advocate has suffered the fate of too many  Canadian magazines.  The details are on the internet.

The Portland vase lived on the organ in the front parlour, and

when I was a child, the front parlour was a sacrosanct place.

Mother and grandmother would take the minister into it when he

made his visitations, and the minister, who was an Edinburgh man,

would lift his coattails and sit ponderously on a horse-hair sofa,

whole I crept into a chair in the corner and waited to be

catechized. The minister's eyes would sweep the room, sternly

appreciative, and when they lit on the Portland vase, he broke into

something approaching a smile.

   "What a lovely vase that is! Is it Wedgwood?"

   "Yes. I brought it over from home," grandmother would say,

with a curious note to her voice.

   "Home" was Ireland, where grandmother had been a pretty young

thing in her youth, so people said, though the grandmother I knew

was a grey-haired old lady, with a twinkle in her eye and a back as

straight as a ruler. Her family was landed gentry, none the less

proud because its pedigree was not really so very long. Grandfather

was a footman, with a handsome face and a strong body, who used to

drive grandmother to take music lessons once a week, and to church

sometimes on Sundays.

   It was natural enough that they fell in love, but it might

have ended there, with neither of them screwing up enough courage

to cross the boundaries of the class structure, had not the

carriage overturned in the ditch one day, pinning grandmother

underneath it. Grandfather, who was a powerful man, succeeded in

lifting the carriage enough the free her, and carried her back

gently to the house. But her family lost no time in making it clear

that a handsome face and strong muscles did not make grandfather

good enough for their daughter.

   They dismissed grandfather. It was a poor reward for saving their daughter, but that’s the way things were in those days.  Grandfather who went to Dublin, and 

Grandmother’s family sent her away to school. And three months later, they were

married. Grandmother's family had hardly finished congratulating

themselves on their success in breaking their daughter's

unfortunate attachment when they heard the news of the wedding. Her father sent her

passage money to Canada for a wedding-present, and declined to talk

about the matter any further. But her mother came to say goodbye,

and she brought a Wedgwood copy of the Portland vase with her. It was a family heirloom.

   "It will be nice in your home," she said. "Wherever that is."

   Two months later, grandmother reached Halifax with her new husband and the

Portland vase, and then came the journey inland to the lot of land which

grandfather purchased and cleared, where the Portland vase eventually came to

rest on the parlour organ.

   The years passed, and the Portland vase acquired a certain

aura of mystery and dignity. It stood first in the log cabin where

grandfather and grandmother set up their first home, grandmother,

a young bride of seventeen, and grandfather a heavy-set man of

twenty-seven. It looked on with classical, aristocratic calm while 

grandmother bore thirteen children and lost seven of them. When

grandfather built a stone house to replace the log cabin, the

Portland vase moved to the front parlour. Sometimes grandmother

would take us in and show it to us, and tell us how it was a exact

copy of the famous glass vase which was discovered in the tomb of

a Roman emperor, and how it was made in the famous shops of Josiah

Wedgwood.

   "There were beautiful things made over in the Old Country,"

she said, once.

   "Do you wish you could go back, grandmother?" I asked her.

   "Oh, there's nothing to go back to," said grandmother, "and

I've been away for so long that I've half forgotten. I'm too old

now."

   My two young brothers and myself were the children of

grandmother's youngest boy. Father took over the farm when

grandfather died of typhoid fever, and we were brought up in the

stone farmhouse, with its closely sealed front parlour. When we

were very small, we were not allowed in it, but after I grew old

enough to take lessons on the organ, I used to go in for an hour

every day, and practice my scales, pumping at the wheezing pedals

and staring at the Portland vase which swayed very slightly on the

organ case in front of me. I used to wonder, as I looked at it,

what grandmother’s fine relatives would think of us now, if they

could see us.

   When I started my music lessons, I ended an era for the front

parlour. It was no longer so closely sealed, and sometimes the

family gathered there to listen to me play, although father

preferred to read the newspaper in the kitchen. Sometimes

grandmother played herself, although her fingers were stiff. My

little brothers came in, and when my youngest brother Drake (we

called him that because his hair stood up on the crown of his head

like a drake's tail) got his pup, sometimes it came in, too.

   One evening I was playing while grandmother and mother

listened. It was one of those sad songs that were composed during

the Great War, as we called it, where many young Canadian boys had

died, and girls who had looked forward to marriage found themselves

lonely spinsters. Mother and grandmother listened quietly, and I

could tell by the look in grandmother's eyes that she was not

thinking of the war that had ended in 1918, but of a more distant

time and place. But I guess the silence was too much for Drake, for

the door burst open, and he tore in, with the pup at his heels.

   "Drake!" mother cried. "Drake!"

   It was too late. In his excitement, the pup leaped on my lap

as I sat at the organ, and with a flick of his tail, he toppled the

vase which rolled to the floor, and smashed into a dozen pieces.

The aristocratic beauty lay broken on the floor. For a moment, we

were all too stunned to say anything

   "It's broken," mother said, at last.

   We were all still, even the pup.

   "Yes, it's broken," said grandmother, in a catch in her voice. She

would like to cry, I thought, but she won't.

   "Timothy," said mother (that was Drake's real name) "how many

times have I told you not to come in here like a hoyden with that

dog? Now look what you've done. I'll spank you well for this. Now 

stop blubbering." Drake was beginning to rub his eyes with his

little fists.

   "Don't spank the boy," said grandmother, in a curious,

controlled voice. "He didn't break it. It was the dog."

   "But your lovely vase is broken, grandmother. You'll never get

another like it."

   "It's not that important." She bent over the wreckage, and

began to pick up the pieces, slowly. "See, I could almost glue

these pieces together again if I wanted to."

   "Maybe we could gather them all up in a box," I said. I felt

sorry for Drake. He was the picture of contrition, struggling with

his tears.

   "Timothy," said grandmother, "find me a box in the kitchen

like a good boy, and I'll put these pieces of the vase in it. I

should have put this old vase away long ago."

   So we gathered the fragments of the vase together, and put

them in the box, which Grandmother shoved into a drawer in her

bureau, and never spoke of it again.

   Yet no one forgot it. I missed its aristocratic beauty as I

practiced my scales. Drake hadn't forgotten, either. He seemed to be

too good at doing odd jobs around the house, and whenever father

offered us a nickel to go to the village for the mail, Drake was the one who

wanted to go. It was two miles to the post office and back, which

was a long walk for a little boy, even though he was paid a nickel.

I began to wonder what he was up to.

   Christmas was always a great festival at our house. We hadn't

many toys, but Santa Claus always left us oranges, and grandmother

used to knit socks and sweaters for us all. And of course, we

always had a goose for dinner.

   We children had a hard time finding presents to give, although

mother generally gave us a quarter each to buy some gifts with. But

the Christmas after the Portland vase was broken, Drake wrapped up

a big present for grandmother and put it under the Christmas tree.

   "Oh, Drake," I said, "what is it?"

   "Never mind," said Drake, flushing red. "You'll find out."

   "I'll bet it's something stupid."

   "It is not," Drake replied, hotly. "Stop your teasing!"

   So I just looked superior. I had embroidered tea towels, and

was giving a pair to mother and another pair to grandmother.

   We opened the presents Christmas morning. Santa Claus had left

us each an orange, as usual. Mother was pleased with my embroidered

tea-towels, and said she would put them away for me, when I got

married myself. Grandmother had knitted three sweaters for her

grandchildren. Then Santa Claus, who was really our Dad, brought grandmother Drake's present.

   It was a big parcel, poorly wrapped. Drake hadn't much idea

how to do up a parcel. The wrapping almost fell off.

   The present emerged, and it turned out to be a great vase,

about the size of the Portland vase, but a gaudy and infinitely

ugly thing. I had seen its mates in Woolworth's. But it was as

large as the old vase had been, and it was an expensive purchase

for a boy like Drake.

   "Do you like it?" asked Drake, anxiously, for the expression

on grandmother's face was curious.

   "Oh, Drake, child," said grandmother, " you should never have 

spent your money on this."

   "But I wanted you to have another vase like your old one."

   "It's very, very beautiful," said grandmother.

   "I tried to get a vase just like your old one," Drake

explained, "but I couldn't find one. But this one is just as

pretty, don't you think?"

   "Every bit as pretty, Drake," said grandmother, turning the

ugly piece of crockery from side to side in her hands. "We'll put

it on the organ where the old vase used to be."

   "I think it's even prettier than your old vase. And besides,"

added Drake, sagely, "this vase is new, and the old one was old."

   "Yes, Drake," said grandmother, putting her hand gently on his

shoulder, "and that is very important. Old things not so much"  

Fog

 This story was read by John Drainie in his CBC radio program, “John Drainie tells a Story.” 

Fog. Nothing but grey-green, blinding fog, creeping through the

hatches, snaking down the passageways and blanketing our ancient, rusty ship from bow to stern. It covered us, insulated us and

left us motionless, transfixed as it were in space, scarcely able

to see the deck, much less the water beneath us, though we could

hear it languidly lapping the hull, as if it too, had lost its way

in that infernal fog. Somewhere to the west of us was the Nova

Scotia coast, and somewhere to the north, Cape Breton Island, which

we had touched a week before, but in the fog, they might as well

have been on the other side of the world. We were alone, isolated

in this grey, fluffy monstrous mist, with only a compass to guide us. The cook ticked off 

days on his calendar in the galley and worried about his

diminishing stores. September the fourth, 1932.

   The Great Depression was in full cry, and we were a motley crew

of survivors, brought together by one common bond: we could find

work nowhere else. The cook was a Scotsman from Glasgow via

Halifax, and his native parsimony governed the size of our

rations more and more as the days dragged on. There was a medical

student from Alberta, interrupted in his studies, a couple of Cape

Bretoners, big, solid men, slow of speech, three hands from Quebec, and

a large black who sat in the bow and hummed melancholy tunes to

himself.  The captain, named

McAskill, was a little man with a great mustache, and the mate was

Simeon McPherson, with enormous arms covered with tattoos. A brutal

man he looked, but he was almost gentle, and sometimes I would see

him breathing hard and clutching his chest, his face contorted.

  "What's the matter?" I asked him once.

  "It's all right, thank you just the same," he replied, and he

straightened his back and walked away.

  I mentioned this to Jack, our medical student, and he was knowledgeable as usual.

  "I wouldn't be surprised if it was his heart," he said wisely."Angina, I think."

  "If you know what's wrong with him, " I said, "why don't you tell

him?"

  "I did, once."

  "What did he say?"

  "Nothing. He gave me a dirty look as if I was some sort of wise

guy and set me off to swab the deck. So I keep my mouth shut."

  But it was the fog that ruled our lives. We cursed the rusty old

tub that held us prisoner, cursed the cargo of pulpwood that we carried,

cursed the meals that were getting leaner and leaner, but most of

all, we cursed the fog.  Joe, the black man, hummed his doleful melodies in

the bow. One of the French hands named Pierre Deschambault had an

abscessed tooth and crept about looking almost as grey as the mist

itself. The cook ticked off the days on his calendar. September the

fifth, 1932.

  That was the day it happened first, though we didn't realize the 

danger at the time. I was sitting near the stern and Jack was close by, but

we weren't talking to each other. The fog separated us. We stared

into it blindly, and as we stared, we heard a grunt, a muffled cry and a splash.

  We were all sightless in the mist, but somehow, from all

parts of the ship, the crew gathered at the spot where the sound

was heard. Someone was saying - not shouting - "Man overboard!", as

if the mist that surrounded us had muffled his voice. We got a boat

lowered and fished about in the fog until we found something. It

was the black man from Halifax. We got the poor fellow back on deck

and tried artificial respiration, but it was no use. He was gone.

  "We bury him at sea, I guess," said someone. The captain cleared

his throat, uncomfortably. Reading the death service was not a

prospect that made him happy. Reading anything was a chore.

  "There's a nasty welt on his head, sir," said the first mate. And

there was; a cut ran down his scalp, over his face and down his

neck. "Now how the hell would he get that?"

  "It would be an easy thing to get when he fell," said the

captain, but there was a trace of doubt in his voice.

  "It's an ugly business," said the mate, shaking his head, his

great arms folded over his chest.

  The captain cleared his throat again as if he had made up his

mind. "There's no use making a mystery out of it," he said,

briskly. "In this fog, it's easy enough to fall and get hurt. Poor devil. We'll

do right by him."

  So we buried him in the fog - pushed him into it, and heard his

body splash into the water below. And then we returned to waiting;

sitting and waiting for the infernal fog to lift. September the

sixth, 1932.

  The next day, it happened again. I heard only a splash. The fog

enclosed us. You could barely see beyond the tip of your nose, and the boat could find no body, but one of the Quebeckers was missing.

Somehow it was all the more terrible because we couldn't find him. He must

have drowned without a trace. Which was odd, for he could swim. I

was sure of that. Why was there no cry, no alarm?

  The captain cleared his throat and turned back to his cabin

without a word.

  "It's an ugly business," said the mate.

  "What's he mean by that?" asked Jack, beside me. Is that all he

can say?"

  "It's just all ugly, I guess. The mist. These deaths." I could

not see the mate's face, but the foreboding was unmistakable. I

thought I knew why. We have a madman on board.

  We crept away, and the fog came down between us again. Each of us was an isolated island. But now there was suspicion too. Just the

beginning of suspicion. The blinding fog conducted it, like an

electric current. Jack sought me out first.

   "There you are," he said. "Keep your voice low. There's no

telling who could hear us."

   "O.K.," said I.

   "There's a killer on this tub."

   "How can you be sure?"

   "How?" His voice rose, and then he regained control and hushed

again. "I don't. But all of us suspected this afternoon. This damned fog has driven one of us mad. The mate knows. He's just not saying anything."

   He's badly frightened, I thought. He's frightened for himself;

so he can't be the killer. 

   "I could believe this old tub was haunted, you know," he went

on. "We're all of us thrill of fear.

   "God only knows. Could be Deschambault. His abscessed tooth is

driving him crazy. This damn " He laid his hand on my arm as if he were

looking for a solid human being he could touch. "All I can say is,

don't go walking alone on deck in this fog. There's no telling what

could happen."

   We sat together and talked for a long time, he of Edmonton and

his abandoned career, and I of Fredericton, which was a little

place back then with elm-lined streets. And the fog. September the

seventh, 1932.

   We half expected it to happen again, and it did. There was a

gurgle, a splash, and the crew materialized magically by the rail.

We let down the boat and poked around in the fog, and at last we

found a body. It was Pierre Deschambault. Poor Pierre. His

abscessed tooth would pain him no more.

   He was dead, and there was a deep gash on his head. The fog

veiled our faces, and it was just as well. We looked at the captain

and the captain cleared his throat.

   "This is bad business," said the mate. He was breathing

heavily.

   "There's more here than just an accident," said the captain,

with unexpected resolution, "and we all know that three men would

not take their own lives like this." There was a growl of assent

from the crew. "Now, if any of you know more about these, uh,

happenings, let him speak up."

   We were silent as a tomb. The pitch of the captain's voice

went higher.

   "Now if this happens again, there'll be no sidestepping the

truth and there'll be no getting away with it. If any of you know

anything, let him speak out."

   We all remained quiet. No one replied. The mate stood with his

great arms folded on his breast; the two Cape Bretoners looked at

their shoes. Farther out in the fog, I could feel rather than see,

the rest of the crew. I think the captain would have preferred to

believe the murders were done by a ghost instead of one of his men.

Jack stood beside me, breathing a little unevenly.

   If this happens again, the captain said. It was what we all

feared. We were afraid to be alone, and yet afraid to stay with our

neighbours.

   "Just think," said Jack, who was still at my side, "it could

be you."

   "That's not funny," I growled.

   He laughed shrilly, and I struck him sharply between the

shoulder-blades.

   "Get hold of yourself," I commanded. "You sound hysterical."

   "No, no," he replied breathlessly. "I've got to trust someone,

and it might as well be you. If you're the killer, that's my tough

luck. But I can't suspect everybody. It goes against the grain."

   "Thanks," I said, with a wry smile, but I felt a little  

relieved. What could we do? Pray for Sherlock Holmes?

   The long day faded; night fell, and the next day dawned. The

cook ticked it off and calculated that the supplies could last

only two more days. We were half-starved as it was, and the fog

still blanketed us. September the ninth, 1932.

   We waited for it to happen again, frightened, avoiding the

deck as much as we could, and it came, but not as we expected.

There was a cry and the sound of a scuffle. We rushed on deck. I

seized a boat hook. It was the best weapon I could find. I thought

we might find two men locked in mortal combat.

   But the fight was over. The mate lay on the deck, breathing

heavily, and the thews of his neck stood out in agony. Over him,

clutching his arm, stood one of the Cape Bretoners.

   "I heard a noise behind me," he said, "and I swung round.

There was the mate, with the look of the devil on him and that ugly

iron in his hand. I ducked in time, but he got those arms of his

around me, and nearly squeezed the life out of me. Then, all of a

sudden, his arms go weak and I knocked him over like a kitten." He

had never talked so long before at one stretch, and he was quite

out of breath.

   "It's his heart," said Jack.

   The captain swelled out his chest, and looked sternly down at

the mate.

   "Is this so? Are you responsible for the murder of these three

other men?"

   The mate was breathing more evenly now, but he was still. His

eyes moved restlessly from face to face, but they betrayed nothing.

   "Madness, madness," said the captain. "Take him below. Like as

not, we'll bring his corpse to justice."

   "Look!"

   It does not matter who said it. Like a great plague departing

from the earth, the fog was beginning to lift. Up and up; the

grey-green malignant fog which had blinded and cursed us and

half-starved us for two weeks was beginning to leave. As if it were

a new world we saw the sea again and the waves, and away in the

distance, the dim outline of land. Jack embraced me, and we started

to blubber like children.

   The captain cleared his throat.

   "Away to your places, lads," he said, almost genially. "We'll

make for Halifax now."

   But we hardly heard him, for it was as if we had glimpsed a

new life.

The Bear Walker

This short story first appeared more than 60 years ago in ‘Canadian Forum ‘, a monthly that is still remembered for its elegant contributions to Canadian intellectual discourse. The story is fictional, but the main character is based on a residential school survivor with whom I shared a room while I was working at the lodge on Manitoulin Island. The nomen ‘Indian’ has now been reclaimed by East Indian immigrants but a half-century ago, it meant an indigenous person – a ‘native’ of Canada.

As luck would have it, I was the first to meet Elizabeth Laird

Williams at the  Manitowaning dock. There was a curious pointed

look about her; her hair-line dipped to a sharp widow's peak; her

nose terminated in a point and there were sharp little points are

each corner of her mouth. For a moment, when I first saw her, I thought of what that

little pointed mouth might become in twenty years. Little lines

would gather on the upper lip; the lips would grow thinner,

slightly disapproving. But I am getting ahead of myself. I had driven down to the wharf where the old Normac had just pulled in, to see if there were any passengers aboard who might want accommodation. The lodge where I had a summer job needed customers. I found only Elizabeth.

   "Maybe I can help you?" said I, for she was looking up and

down the wharf as if she expected a taxi to materialize suddenly

 from behind the warehouse at the water’s edge.

   "I suppose," she said, "that everyone here just walks up to

the town." She stared without pleasure at the steep road that led up from the

wharf to the village.

   "Well, those that walk down here, do" I replied. 'Were you wanting

to go up some other way?"

   "It's my luggage," she said. She had three suitcases, and as she looked at them with a trace of despair, she appeared a trifle more helpless and feminine than before.

   "Well, there's my old jalopy," said I.  A Dodge pick-up truck,

originally black, with J. Nimmo, Prop., Indian Point Lodge, stenciled on the door. He was the man

I worked for, the proprietor of the Indian Point lodge.  Elizabeth gave the old truck a look of greater

appreciation than it had received for a good many years, and said

something which was probably polite, but a caterwauling blast from

the Normac's whistle jammed her wavelength.

   "Huh?" I asked, when the soundwaves had stopped battering our

eardrums.

   "Thank you very much," she said, and stood back, waiting to be served. I loaded her luggage

into the back of the truck.

   On the way up from the wharf to the town, which stands on a

bluff overlooking Manitowaning Bay, I learned her name was

Elizabeth Laird Williams and she learned that mine was Jack

McBride. She was an assistant professor of

anthropology from Rochester who had come to Manitoulin Island to research

First Nations customs, and she learned that I was an undergraduate from

Toronto working here for the summer. Two weeks later, I was calling

her Liz, and she called me Jack without sounding like my

mother, but that is getting ahead of myself.   

   I deposited her at the lodge, and left her to enjoy the

amenities of that establishment, while I went back to the wharf to

load an unforgiveable amount of cargo addressed to J. Nimmo Esq.

From what I heard later; she had scarcely installed herself in a

room when she began her research. She discovered an Indian of

indeterminate age sitting on the steps of the post-office and

pounced on him. How was he? The Indian greeted this interest in his

health with some surprise, but he guessed he was O.K. Would he have

a cigarette? He would, thank you. And finally, she supposed he had

a great deal to tell about tribal rites among the Indians?

   "Only what I see in the movies," he said. "I don't get to read 

much."

   "There is a tremendous interest in Indian customs nowadays,"

said Elizabeth, by way of explanation. Which was an exaggeration.

Back then Indians could not vote in Canada, and the "tremendous interest" did

not extend as far as the nearest politician.

   "Well," said the Indian, who thought her thirst for knowledge

was not entirely to be condemned, "there's a bunch of professors

down in Tranna who know a lot about Indians and things like that.

Just ask them anything. They'll tell you."

   Oh, he was a cunning one, that Indian, and he had met

professors before.

   Elizabeth's second conquest was the village idiot, who was

always on hand to greet newcomers. She examined Elizabeth with a

watery stare at first; then she sidled up to her and gurgled,

   "Manit'waning beat Little Current last night."

   A native of the town would have greeted this overture with an

indulgent smile, or said "You like baseball, my dear?", but

Elizabeth met it with a blank stare which the poor soul mistook for

deep interest, and she gurgled until she began to froth at the

mouth.

   "A week ago," she added, "Little Current beat Manit'waning."

   "Oh," Elizabeth managed. "Where were the Mounties?"

   "You like baseball?" asked the idiot, by now nearly rendered

incoherent by a flood of saliva.

   "Baseball? Oh, you were talking about baseball!" said

Elizabeth, with sudden comprehension. "Yes. Tell me. Do you know

any Indians who are willing to talk about their native customs?"

   But the idiot was out of her element there, and although she

tried to divert Elizabeth back to baseball, the conversation

petered out.

   Personally, I didn't know how she was getting along with her

research. The Indigenous folk have a reputation for being taciturn, which

is not entirely deserved. I spent one entire morning listening to

a recital of the matrimonial vicissitudes of a middle-aged Indian;

he related the misadventures of his ex-wife without passion, but he

did seem to derive an unholy satisfaction from the fact that no

other man had been more successful at keeping her faithful to him

than himself. But the Indian veils his superstitions and beliefs

from the laughter of the white man. Two centuries of Christianity

have not vanquished the ancient gods, but they have taught them the

arts of dissimulation.

   So, when I got a chance, I introduced Elizabeth to Allan

Smith. That was the nondescript name his priest had given him, and

he wore it in his encounters with the white man. He was a handsome

chap, with a lithe body and smooth black hair, which glinted in the

sun with a steely blue tint. He had gone to a Jesuit-run residential school

at Spanish River, where pupils were sent to Confession every week, and, he said, with a laugh,  ‘we didn’t have enough time to commit enough sins in a week and so we made them up”. But his intelligence had so impressed the

teachers there that they thought him university material. But his interest faded. School was claustrophobic and

foreign and the food was bad. And then, his father died of pneumonia. He left the

academy without matriculating and returned to the reserve on

Manitoulin Island, where he lived with his mother and worked his father’s few acres off and on.

      Yet there was something about him that marked him off from the 

other Indigenous folks I met. It was partly the way he used the English

language: not always grammatically, but with a well-developed feeling for

style. English was a foreign instrument on which he played his own

peculiar rhythms and produced his own effects. Elizabeth's eyes

flickered with sudden interest when I introduced her to him. 

   "How do you like our island?" he asked, politely.

   "It's beautiful," she said. "The scenery here is very nice if

that were all I came here to study."

   "Well, what did you come for? To fish?"

   She told him that she had come to research Indigenous customs, but

so far, she had made less progress than she had hoped. "The Indians

here a rather a glum lot if you don't mind my saying. They don't

open up."

   Allan laughed, a little self-consciously.

   "Well, after all," he said, "suppose an Indian were to do

research, as you call it, on the customs and practices of the Roman

Catholic church? What would happen then?"

   "Then he need only apply to the nearest priest, and he would

get everything he wanted. Probably more," said Elizabeth.

   "But you know a good deal about us already," he replied. " A

couple years ago, a professor came up from Toronto, and he knew

more about Indian customs that a lot of us did."

   "It's too bad these customs are dying out."

   Allan looked out across Manitowaning Bay toward the

reservation on the other side, and I could sense his withdrawal.

Perhaps he was thinking of how the white man had so ruthlessly

misunderstood these very customs which they mourned in a very

academic way now that they were passing.  Or perhaps not. Allan

learned the code of the paleface; he could rub shoulders with them

unashamed, with his faintly ironic smile on his lips, but behind

his black eyes there was a dissidence I did not quite understand.

   I wondered if Elizabeth was aware of it. She saw a good deal

of Allan in the next few weeks. She once informed me with the

certainty of someone who had passed Introductory Psychology with an

"A" that Allan was schizophrenic; in one part of himself he

belonged to his Indian background, but at the same time, he was a

product of the white man's education. I think she forgot that he

had given up his education.

   "Tell me, Allan," she asked once, " do you find much prejudice

against you as an Indian by other people?"

   "No," he said, but he didn't mean it.

   "But do you?" she persisted.

   "It's not open here," he explained. "But you feel it. Indians

are different. We can't help that, but white people don't really

like it. We are not to be trusted with our own lives. We are

treated like children."

   "It would make a difference if you had the right to vote,"

stated Elizabeth, for all this happened five years before Canada

extended the franchise to native Indians.

   "Do you think so?"

   "I'm sorry," she said.

   "You needn't apologize," he replied with a short laugh. "I

don't blame you."

   "But I feel ashamed," she said. She leaned across the table.

We were having coffee in a restaurant which, by an attraction of

opposites, called itself the Waldorf. She put her hands close to

his. "I want you to know this. I don't have any of that feeling

towards Indians."

   He laughed, embarrassed, but his hands closed over hers.

   But there was a vast gap between them, though Elizabeth would

not see it. It appeared one day when we were discussing the curse

of the bear walker. This is a superstition which many of

the Manitoulin Indians accept. When misfortune strikes a man, he

blames it not on bad luck, but on a bear walker who has cast a

curse on him. The bear walker is generally an old woman, innocent

enough in reality, I suspect, except that she might take an unholy

satisfaction out of the powers that were credited to her. But there

is only one way for a man to free himself from the bear walker's

curse, and that is murder. The bear walker must be killed for her victim to be freed.

   It is, I suppose, a variation of the werewolf legend that must

be common to half the countries of the world. An obsolete notion, Elizabeth thought, but possibly a good subject for a dissertation. 

   "But there are some odd things happen over in that reserve,"

said Allan. "They're hard to explain."

   We allowed that they might be interesting, but we would not

put any stock in them.

   "But suppose," said Allan. "I know of one story. There was a

young man I know very well. He was the only son, and he had some

education. At least, he was not stupid. But a bear walker put a

curse on his family after a quarrel and first his father's horse

did, and then his father took pneumonia, and after a while, his Dad died

too. His mother knew it was the bear walker, and she told her son,

`You must kill this woman who is the bear walker, or we'll all die.'

But the son did not want to kill, and he didn't know what to do."

   "But surely, if he had an education, he couldn't believe in

the bear walker at all," said Elizabeth.

   "Why should education matter?"

   "Well, with education you know these beliefs for what they

are," said Elizabeth.

    “Yes, but his mother was growing weaker, and she – and her family too –expected him to do something. We have lived a long time with our customs.”

   "But what happened, " I broke in. "Did he kill the bear

walker?"

   "No," said Allan.

   "And did the family all die?"

   "I don't know," he replied. "I never heard."

   The movies came to Manitowaning once a week, and we three went

together. The show was an epic titled Only the Valiant, all about

Indians and the U.S. cavalry, and in the finale, an impressive

number of extras in Indian dress were mowed down by a Gatling gun,

and European civilization was saved once again. The captain of the cavalry

squadron which had defended the pass against the savages for a day

and a night was solemnly complimented by his commanding officer,

and assured of a promotion which would allow him to marry his

commander's daughter. Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed

Elizabeth sitting in embarrassed silence, and Allan watching her,

his lips twitching with suppressed amusement.

   Elizabeth was to leave the island on the next sailing of the

old Norgoma which called at Manitowaning on her voyage from the Soo

to Owen Sound. But she cancelled her booking and reserved a

stateroom at a later date. I began to suspect something was up. 

Allan, I knew, could take sex as casually as meat and drink, but

towards Elizabeth he maintained a respectful reserve. Yet he found

something in her that attracted him. It was not the lure of

forbidden fruit: yet to this day I would hesitate to say that he

was in love with her.

   They began to see a good deal of each other. They went for

drives in Allan's pickup truck, or for rambles in the countryside.

It was at Ten Mile Point that the affair came to a head.

   "Allan," said Elizabeth, as she adjusted her lipstick,

"There's one thing I want you to know. I have never felt any

prejudice against Indians. I have always accepted them as they are.

   "Good," said he, with a trace of humour.

   "If I were asked to marry an Indian, the fact that he was an

Indian would make no difference to me. Not if I loved him. In fact,

I would be proud to be the wife of a full-blooded Indian."

   Allan looked out over the water. The view from Ten Mile Point

could hardly have changed since his ancestors came to the island to

worship the Great Manitou, and the continent was young. I imagine

that he smiled his slow smile and that his eyes veiled a mixture of

feelings, one of which was cynicism. But he put an arm around her

shoulder.

   "I'm sorry I'm not full-blooded," he said. “You see, Davy

Crockett and company were a promiscuous lot. You know, we used to say that HBC meant ‘Horney Boys Club’ not Hudson’s Bay Company. But you can be about seventy-five percent tolerant, if you wish."

   So they became engaged in a semi-formal sort of way. Elizabeth

sent letters to her friends in Toronto and Rochester, and letters

came back from Toronto expressing surprise that she should be

marrying an Indian, and from Rochester marveling that she had found

an Indian to marry. Elizabeth went ahead with plans for a wedding,

and Allan showed a rather absent-minded interest in them. Had she

been an ordinary woman, she might have wondered how well she

understood her man, but she was not ordinary woman. When he

hesitated to introduce her to his family, explaining that his

mother was ill, she understood. He was probably shy and a little

ashamed of his parent, for his mother spoke no English. Elizabeth

understood. She was studying for her doctorate in cultural

anthropology, and prided herself on understanding her husband all

the better because he was a native. Her research continued at a

slower pace. But we still discussed Indian customs over coffee at

the Waldorf, Elizabeth interpreting them and Allan listening

silently. Once we returned to the bear walker superstition. Or

perhaps it rose itself among us, like some primeval desecrated

spirit half-buried on the island.

   "Suppose you had bad luck," Allan said," and you believed that

a bear walker had thrown a curse on you and was causing the bad

luck. What would you do then?"

   "Kill the bear walker," I said.

   "A normal person," said Elizabeth, "would just not believe in

the bear walker."

   "But suppose he did."

   "Once the basis for these superstitions is understood," said

Elizabeth, " then there is no fear."

   "All right," said Allan. "Suppose you don't believe yourself.

But other people round about you do believe that your bad luck is  

caused by a bear walker. What then?"

   "Well, I don't see that that's much problem," said Elizabeth."If you don't believe, well, that's all there is to it."

   Allan looked baffled.

   "It's just that I was wondering what the right thing to do

would be," he said.

   "Well, surely there can't be any question of that," Elizabeth

replied.

   "It's a funny thing," said I. "Perhaps what we're calling

superstitions belong here. They seem to fit the lakes and the woods

somehow, better than we do. Maybe we are the intruders."

   Elizabeth suppressed a sniff, but conveyed its meaning all the

same.

   "That's sophomore talk," she said.

   "I wonder," said Allan, irrelevantly, "if ever these

missionaries who go to places, like Africa, to civilize the

natives, ever end up getting converted themselves? That would be

funny!"

   "It would be fair," I said.

   Allan left soon after, saying his mother was ill, and he had

to return home. I saw Elizabeth back to her hotel. She was very

quiet.

   "Cold feet?" I asked.

   "Cold feet? No, the night is warm"

   "The marriage, I mean."

   "Oh, no," she replied. "It's just that sometimes - sometimes

I feel so distant - so out of contact with Allan. He is wonderful

when we are together. Very gentle. But I think  he might forget

me if I were out of his sight for two weeks!"

   I laughed. "A convenient way to live."

   "Not for me. And enough people have told me that I'm making a

mistake without you hinting at it too. Good night." She turned to

enter the hotel.

   "Elizabeth," I said. "You can press him too hard."

   She paused as if she would reply, and then, thinking better of

it, she went in and closed the door.

   I walked home through the night, and beyond the range of the

few streetlights, the darkness crowded around me, ancient but not

unfriendly. The water in the bay lapped sullenly on the shore. The

island seemed waiting to reclaim its own: the island with its

strange, musical names: Manitowaning, Mindemoya, Sheguindah,

Wikwemikong. I wondered if Elizabeth could have understood that.

Perhaps she did: understood and rejected, and maybe that was a

greater sin than never to have understood at all.

   The marriage was to take place in Rochester, some two months

after Elizabeth left the island. She talked about teaching in a

university once she had received her doctorate, and she made

plans for Allan to enter college as an adult special student. Allan

did not discuss the future at all.

   Saturday night the stores stay open in Manitowaning, and the

farmers come in from the country, and the Indians came from their

reservation to shop in the few emporiums which the village boasted,

or at least, to gossip on the street corners. Saturday nights in

the summer are a time to watch the world go by. People gather in

little knots, and the RCMP officer and the local constable parade

up and down, but they get little business. Manitowaning was a quiet

town. No liquor for sale, for there was no telling what an Indian

might do. Sin was kept behind locked doors. So the commotion on the

street the night before Elizabeth left the island attracted me

immediately.

   I hurried to join the crowd in front of the post-office steps.

An old woman lay there, thin and exceedingly ugly. I had seen her

before on the reservation: a scrawny, malodorous  creature with

malevolent eyes, who seemed to enjoy the suppressed repulsion she

inspired in those who met her. But now she looked merely pitiful,

for she was dead.

   An RCMP officer had been lounging in the hotel opposite the

post-office. Allan could scarcely have chosen a worse place to kill

the old woman if he planned to escape. That is, if he wanted to.

   I saw Elizabeth at the door of the hotel, and I went to join

her.

   "What's happened?" she asked

   "An Indian woman has been killed. She was a bear walker."

   The Mountie had put handcuffs on Allan and was leading him

away. As he passed, he saw us and grinned at Elizabeth,

half-apologetic, half-defiant.

   The pieces fell into place. "I guess that was the bear walker

that was going to kill his mother," I said.

   I shall never know if she ever really loved him, but something

in her was deeply wounded. It was not, I think, that she was

carrying Allan's child, but that he was her research project: the

man she had planned to remake. She turned away without a word.

   "Would you like to go out for coffee later, Liz?" I asked.

   She paused a moment at the hotel door, thought of it,  and said with

finality,

  "Not tonight, Jack. I leave tomorrow."