Canada

  At the end of the row of parked cars sat the black New Yorker—a two-door, dirty with road grit, and with its green-and-yellow Michigan license plate. “Water Wonderland.” I envisioned green-carpeted forests with expansive lakes on which someone—myself—could paddle a canoe. A thing I’d never done. I’d imagined there would be a boating club in the Great Falls high school, and a chance for me to paddle out onto the Missouri. I put my hand onto the Chrysler’s hood and it was warm, although cold was filtering down into it. This car came from America, from the place it had been made. It represented whatever my father (and I) associated with America. The melting pot. The world drawn closer. I advocated these values. My parents had instilled them in me and my sister. It made me feel again that Jepps and Crosley, and their mission in coming to Canada, were upstanding and right—though I didn’t want it to succeed and for Arthur Remlinger to go back to America to jail. I’ve already said it’s a mystery why we affiliate ourselves with the people we do, when all the signs say we shouldn’t.

  Yet, standing in the car lot, I experienced a great confusion. I might have been near the point of a breakdown of my own. My temples tightened and ached, and my chin and nose got numb (possibly with the cold). My hands tingled. My feet seemed unwilling to move. As odd as he was, and in spite of what I knew about him, Arthur Remlinger didn’t seem like a man who’d transport a bomb and set it off and kill someone. He seemed the last person to do that. Again, Charley Quarters could more easily have done it. Or the murderers in the old newsreels. In my view, Arthur Remlinger didn’t have “murderer” written on his face.

  What he had on his face was “eccentric,” “lonely,” “frustrated”; and also “smart,” “observant,” “worldly,” “well dressed.” All things I admired (though I’d denied admiring it). So that what I decided—which was why I was able to move, and feeling came back in my face, and my hands quit smarting—was that Arthur Remlinger was not a murderer. Possibly these two Americans, in spite of their names and their car and being from Detroit, were not who Charley said they were. This was my habit of mind. My mother had written in her chronicle that to me the opposite of everything obvious deserved full consideration. The opposite could turn out to be the truth. Given my recent personal experiences with the truth, it might’ve seemed obvious that sooner or later everybody committed crimes, no matter how unlikely a person was. But I wasn’t ready to believe it. I didn’t know where I would fit into the world if that was true—since I didn’t want to commit crimes, myself, and fitting in was the thing I wanted to do most. So I tried hard to believe that Arthur Remlinger was innocent of what he was supposed to have done—since in all ways it seemed better to think that.

  Chapter 60

  I performed my standard duties that day. I took a shorter nap because I’d lingered in the lobby, then gone out to inspect the Americans’ car. The days now held less light, and Charley and I went out nearer to five to drive the fields above the river and find where the geese were using, and instruct the Ukrainian boys to site the pits. These farm boys—two of them, brawny and large limbed—were brothers and kin by marriage to Mrs. Gedins’ deceased husband and were silent and unsmiling, as she was. They said nothing to me when Charley told them where to go and dig. They looked at me contemptuously, as if I was a privileged American boy who had no business even knowing them. I thought I wasn’t privileged at all, except that I had the strange privilege of having no real place and purchase on things and could leave, whereas they believed they couldn’t.

  Arthur Remlinger put in no appearance during the day. Typically I would see him pass around through the hotel. Occasionally, as I said, he would grab me and put me in the Buick on some made-up proposition, and we’d drive off down the highway to Swift Current or toward the west, while he talked on animatedly about his subjects. None of this happened. And in spite of what I’d “decided” using reverse-thinking while standing in the cold behind the hotel (that he wasn’t a murderer, etc.), I believed his absence was related to the Americans’ presence. I suppose I knew my reverse-thinking about the Americans was wrong.

  Charley Quarters, I knew, had led the Americans out to the Overflow House. Their suitcases were gone when I came downstairs, and their car was no longer in the parking yard. I thought Charley would make some remark to the effect that he’d been right in all he’d told me. But he had become tight-lipped and irritable, and didn’t say even the belittling things he routinely said—that I knew nothing; that I was feeble; that life was too difficult for me there; that I never would go to school again. The little he did talk in the truck that day had only to do with knowing about geese and shooting—the things he’d already said to me: that geese fly high with the wind but will sometimes fly under it; that they are smarter than ducks, though it wasn’t truly smartness but having good instincts; that Speckle-belly geese liked the wheat but snow geese didn’t; that a goose could fly a hundred miles in a night; and that you really didn’t need decoys—a “fat farm girl in a black dress” would do as well if seen from the air. I had the feeling that when Charley rehearsed these things, what he was saying had nothing to do with me, but was taking his mind off something he didn’t like to think about. I thought that had to do with the two Americans.

  I ate dinner as usual in the kitchen, then came out into the bar at seven to mingle with the Sports the way Charley had told me to and to listen to the jukebox and talk to the bartender, and to Betty Arcenault about California, where Berner was, and listen to her stories about her boyfriend who she said treated her cruelly. The Sports were drinking and laughing and telling stories and smoking cigars and cigarettes. Two of the groups were from Toronto, and one was Americans from Georgia. These men had accents like my father’s when he “talked Dixie.” The two Americans from Detroit were in the bar by then, seated at a table to the side of the room under the large oil painting of two bull moose locked in combat, their antlers tangled in a way they’d never escape. Their Fight to the Death, this painting was called. Above it was a black-and-white sign that said GOD SAVE THE QUEEN, which people had written profanities on. The painting was a favorite of mine—more than the dancing bear in the dining room. Once, years on, I saw this very painting, or one exactly like it, on a wall in the Macdonald Hotel in Edmonton, Alberta, and sat marveling at its mystery for hours.

  The two Americans stood out in the smoky roomful of hunters and railroaders and detail men. They each drank one beer apiece, which they sat beside the whole time they were there. They had on clean shirts and nice trousers and regular brogan tie shoes, whereas the Sports all wore their hunting clothes, as if they were planning to go straight from the bar to the goose pits. The Americans also seemed ill at ease, as if the younger Crosley’s nervousness had overtaken the older man. They talked only to each other and frequently looked around the room—at the tin ceiling, across to the lobby door, toward the kitchen, and at the closed door to the gambling den. Arthur Remlinger was who they were waiting for. They’d said for him to find them to talk about goose shooting. But he hadn’t appeared—which signaled something important: possibly that Remlinger wouldn’t allow himself to be observed and had run off—which would’ve meant he was who they were looking for.

  I stayed near the jukebox, watching, expecting Remlinger to stride in and begin circulating the way he did, joking and buying drinks around and promising everyone good shooting—behavior that never seemed natural to him. Florence’s car hadn’t been in the parking lot. I assumed she was away looking after her mother and managing her shop. Though conceivably Arthur didn’t want her there where the Americans were.

  I, of course, didn’t know what the Americans had planned once they laid eyes on Remlinger and had to make their conclusion. Possibly they would see him and—I’d wanted to believe—realize he was the wrong man to set off a bomb and kill someone. In which case they could drive back satisfied and forget about it all. Though if they decided he was the murderer, then what would be their plan of action? It excited me to be in the noisy bar, where the Am
ericans’ brains were teeming, and to know who they were when they had no idea I or anyone else knew, and to have that advantage over them. But there was also going to be an outcome to these events. Charley hadn’t said that, but it was clear he thought so, and that the outcome might turn out to be bad.

  I experienced a second strong urge to talk to the men—although it wasn’t my nature to do such a thing. It was as if I wanted to move close to something risky and dramatic. I wanted to tell them I’d been born in Oscoda, which might mean something to them. Whatever I’d felt when I’d stood beside their car and touched the warm metal—the sensation of satisfying solidness, even of liking the men (who I didn’t know), of sharing something secret with them—all that, I wanted to feel again and believed I could at no threat to anyone. I would never tell them what Charley had told me. And I still thought they might accidentally reveal something important about their mission—what they thought about Remlinger, what they hoped to do depending on what their observations of him made them think.

  But just at that moment, before I could bring up my nerve to speak to the Americans, Arthur came into the bar through the lobby door, and the two Americans seemed instantly to know who he was—as if they had a picture of him in their heads, and he looked exactly like they knew he would.

  The red-cheeked, round-faced toupee man—the former policeman—immediately said something to the younger Crosley, and nodded and looked at Remlinger, who was talking noisily to a table full of Sports. Crosley turned and looked and seemed suddenly very serious. He nodded and turned back and put his hands around his beer bottle, and said something brief. Then the two of them sat facing each other in the coarse bar light, under the clashing-moose painting, and didn’t speak.

  Remlinger had on the brown felt fedora he often wore, and one of his expensive Boston tweed suits that made him look strange in the bar. His reading glasses were hung around his neck. He was wearing a bright red tie, and his tweed trousers were pushed down in the tops of his leather boots. I didn’t know this at the time, but later I understood he was dressed like an English duke or a baron who’d been out walking his estate and come in for a whiskey. It was the kind of disguise to prevent the people he’d been expecting for fifteen years from recognizing him—even though he hadn’t changed his name, and anyone could know him who wanted to. Possibly he wasn’t even hiding, only distracting himself while he waited for this day to come.

  Crosley watched Remlinger as he worked his way through the bar. Jepps didn’t turn to see, only sat and stared across at Crosley, as if he’d begun calculating something. As if he’d become a policeman again—friendly at first, then unfriendly. I wondered if they were carrying their pistols, since Charley said they owned them.

  Remlinger saw me by the jukebox. “Well. There’s Mr. Dell now,” he said, and smiled and waved a hand indifferently. In a moment, he would come to the two Americans’ table. I wanted to be there to observe that. I wanted to know what would happen when the three of them met, with Arthur Remlinger knowing exactly who they were, but they not knowing he knew, and the Americans needing to decide if he was a murderer. Anybody would’ve wanted to see that. It possessed the possibility for danger—if they all three had their pistols and had decided this could go no further.

  I saw Remlinger’s eye fall on the two men and stay on them a moment, after which he went back talking to the table of Sports from Toronto. One of these men put his hand beside his mouth to say something, as if he was telling a secret. Remlinger looked at me quickly, then leaned toward the man, who whispered something more that made them both laugh. Remlinger looked at me a third time as if they were discussing me—which I didn’t think they were. Then Remlinger turned toward the two Americans and moved in their direction.

  The nervous one, Crosley, got immediately up on his feet, wiped a hand against his trouser side, smiled broadly, and extended that hand toward Remlinger, as if he was relieved for this moment to finally take place. I heard Arthur say his own name as he shook hands. I heard “Crosley” spoken. The older man, Jepps, got up and shook hands with Arthur and said his name and something else that caused them both to laugh. I heard Jepps say “British Columbia,” and “Michigan.” Then Arthur said “Michigan,” and they all laughed. Arthur was like an actor playing the part of the last person you’d suspect to detonate dynamite and be a murderer. In most ways I don’t believe things like this are true, but his entire life in Canada must’ve been a rehearsal for this moment. If he was successful—as he thought he should be, since he believed he’d suffered enough—then all would be fine and life would go on. If he wasn’t, and he was identified as a murderer and had to face even the thought of going back to Michigan, then no one knew what would happen, but we would find out.

  I couldn’t hear what else the three of them said. The two Americans sat down. Arthur pulled a chair to their table and sawed at his trouser legs and sat straddling the chair in an unnatural way but did not take his hat off. I was sleepy from being up most of the day, and from feeling apprehensive about the Americans. But I stayed where I stood. Remlinger sat and talked animatedly to the two of them for fifteen minutes. He ordered them beers, which they didn’t drink. He looked toward and past me several times as he talked. The Americans smiled a lot about whatever they were saying. At some point Remlinger—in a manner that wasn’t like him—said, while laughing, “Oh, yes, yes, yes. Yeeees! You’re right there.” They all three nodded. Then Remlinger sat up straight and extended his arm and seemed to stretch his back and said, “We’ll get this all set for you men tomorrow.” Which I believed referred to goose shooting and nothing to do with recognizing him as a murderer. I felt the Americans may have individually arrived at the conclusion that he was not the man they were seeking. Or, if he was, that he’d become so unrecognizable he should be left out on the empty prairie at peace. (I’ve already said I was experiencing great confusion about what was happening, having had no experience like this in my life. I should not be faulted for not understanding what I saw.)

  These last thoughts comforted me when I climbed the stairs to my room under the eaves and locked the door and got in my cold bed with the red Leonard sign tinting the air. My shack in Partreau had had no locks, and I was happy to have them, with people roaming the halls at night. I thought everything would be fine now. Arthur had seemed relieved to meet the two Americans. He’d been hospitable, as if the Americans were not who they were, but were the goose hunters they pretended to be, and would leave for British Columbia once they’d had their morning of shooting Charley and I would provide. I understood why Charley had said Remlinger was “deceptive.” He’d deceived the Americans by not acknowledging who they were. But I’d already concluded being deceptive was necessary in the world. Even if everybody didn’t commit crimes, everybody committed deceptions. I’d been deceptive when I failed to alert the Americans I knew who they were. I’d hidden the money from the police. I’d committed a deception about my identity from the moment I crossed the border and sat in Mildred’s car and said nothing. The person I was now was not the person I would’ve been in Great Falls—even though my name was the same. It was unclear if I would ever be that previous boy again, but would just go on deceiving all my life, since I felt I would soon go to Winnipeg and start a whole different and better life there, with everything including the truth left behind.

  As I drifted to sleep, I tried to picture a young, tall, blond, awkward Arthur Remlinger putting a bomb in a garbage can, in some place I imagined to look like Detroit. But I couldn’t make the thought stay in my mind, which was my way of detecting if something was important. (I couldn’t imagine, for instance, what a bomb looked like.) I tried to think of a conversation between the Americans and myself. I pictured us walking down the main street of Fort Royal, not in the cold, batting wind of October, but on a sunny, blue-sky day in late August—the way it was when I arrived. Jepps had his large hand on my shoulder. They both wanted to know was I related to Arthur Remlinger; was I an American; why was I all the way
in Canada, and not in school where I belonged; where were my parents; what was this Remlinger about; was he married; did I know his background; did he own a pistol.

  In my last wakeful minutes, I didn’t think I knew the answers to these questions—except for the pistol—and didn’t worry about them. And, as often happened to me, I was asleep but didn’t believe I was asleep for quite a while. Though late at night I suddenly “woke up” and heard cows in the abattoir pen, groaning and waiting for morning, and a truck growling and downshifting at the traffic light in front of the hotel. All things seemed as they should be. I went back to sleep for the few hours I still had.

  Chapter 61

  The next day, Friday, the fourteenth of October, will never seem like anything but the most extraordinary day of my life—for the reason of how it ended. Much of it, however, happened the way other days happened in that period of time. All morning, I thought about the Americans out in the Overflow House, and later of them being in Fort Royal, wandering through the cold day during which it snowed, then rained, then snowed again. The wind slapped against the hanging traffic light and ice crusted the curbs and citizens stayed indoors if they could. I had no idea what the Americans would be doing, or what would take place. In the red-smudged light of early morning I completely gave up on my reverse-thinking—that they were not who they were, or that Remlinger was not who he was (a murderer), or that the Americans would give up their mission to identify him as the fugitive, and then act on that. I didn’t know whether, in one fifteen-minute encounter in a crowded smoky bar, they could make the determination they wanted (see if “murderer” was written on Remlinger’s face, or if it wasn’t); and then decide what they should do. I remembered Charley saying the Americans didn’t expect Remlinger to be who they were looking for. So, likely they didn’t specifically know what they should do if they believed he was guilty. They might’ve been trying to decide at that very moment. Charley had implied—at least I’d thought he had—they might decide to kill him and had brought pistols for that; or abduct him back to face a Michigan judge. But that didn’t seem to fit with their natures and the goodwill the three of them had shared in the bar. None of this made a clear picture, though I thought about it constantly during that day. The thought set a continuous whirring going in my stomach and up under my ribs, which let me know it was significant, and I should pay attention.