A Quality of Light (40 page)

“Oh, don’t fuss, fellas. He’s a preacher, all right. What’s the parish, Joshua?” Nettles asked.

I replied sternly, “St. Geronimo’s parish of Our Lady of Perpetual Land Claims.”

Nettles cackled and the line of men in front of us grinned uncomfortably.

There was a long moment of silence that rattled me a little, and then Brian Dodge began to review the overnight developments. There would be no forthcoming representation from either provincial or federal government, although the Calgary mayor had volunteered any assistance he might give, which was negligible. Local native groups had moved in to surround the building in a show of solidarity, but they’d been found to be an unaffiliated group from a local cultural school and posed no real threat. They’d been joined by a left-wing group of environmental slash race relations slash New Age crystal gazers working group. They were highly vocal but content to be photographed and quoted. Local media were hot on the story with splashy headlines in both local papers, and there’d
been huge reaction to a radio phone-in show the previous evening that largely denounced the government over the Oka conflict and praised the irony of Johnny’s action. Public support, it seemed, was high. The tactical unit was working on a route to the boardroom but it looked doubtful. There’d been no answer yet from technicians on the bomb squad over verification of the explosives taped to the doors, one of the female hostages was five months’ pregnant and one of the men was on medication for clinical depression which he’d been without since day one of the affair. The perp had no identifiable kin, no known affiliations with known agitators or militant organizations and no ties to the Warriors behind the barricades in Oka. Unpredictable. Seemingly volatile. Handle with caution. Dodge rattled all of it off in an officious, military manner and then asked Nettles for updates of additional information.

He transformed before my eyes. The bumpkin was replaced by a consummate professional who gave a stern and disciplined reiteration of everything he’d been able to discern from what I’d told him. He was sharp and thorough.

“Subject is the product of a non-nurturing home. Alcoholic father, emotionally absent mother. Transient home life in developing years. Settled in rural southwestern Ontario by age ten. Prior to the friendship formed with Reverend Kane at that time there were no intimate relationships, no normal bonding patterns with family or community. Above-average intelligence with marked isolationist tendencies. Subject formed an attraction to Indians in early grade school years that bordered on obsession. Displayed fits of volatile temper. Acquitted of assault as a juvenile offender, served remand custodial time awaiting trial. While incarcerated he formed a friendship with a young militant which became the breeding ground for his politics. Following a normal high-school career subject immediately left the family and the community and traveled with the militant friend to various militant organization meetings and activities. Know affiliation with the American Indian Movement, degree unknown. Movements in last sixteen years unverifiable. Only known contact through letters to Reverend Kane, infrequent, transient. The letters reveal the mechanics of
motivation to politicize. Off-the-cuff analysis: he’s smart enough, motivated enough and tough enough to make things difficult but not impossible. We’re fortunate to have Reverend Kane here. That’s it.”

“Profile?” O’Fallon asked.

“None,” Nettles said. “All we have is a guy who’s symbiotically attached to Indians. Thorough knowledge of politics and history with strident overtones but not fanatical. No nutcase. No loony. Rational. Competent. A little misinformed on the realities of political probability but overall a candidate for compromise. Provided.”

“Provided what?” Hager asked.

“Provided the friendship factor with Reverend Kane here is as tight as it appears. They had a couple heated political and cultural disagreements. The reverend’s approach has always been more linear, direct, simplified. Gebhardt’s been more emotive, strident, personalized but adopted. But he never let go. They fought, he split, but he never let it go. There were the letters. Something in that friendship stayed with him and
provided
Joshua can get in touch with that, compromise is entirely possible.”

“And if not?” Carleton asked.

“If not, we’re off to the races,” he said grimly.

“Okay,” Dodge said, “so where do we touch down here? We got the phone line open, Gebhardt’s waiting for contact with the reverend. How do we play this?”

Nettles coughed. “He wants to go in.”

“No way,” Dodge said. “We’ve got enough lives hanging in the balance here. I won’t put up another one.”

“You have to,” I said.

“What?” Dodge asked sharply.

“You have to,” I repeated. “Johnny won’t have it any other way.”

“Pardon me, Reverend,” Hager threw in suddenly, “but who gives a shit what he will and won’t have? We flew you all the way out here on his request. You’re here, the phone’s there, he’s waiting. Let’s dance!”

I could feel their tiredness. I sensed the weight of the stress of
being the guardians of thirteen lives, the self-righteous anger that smoldered under their efficient ordering of movement, and I could appreciate the light they regarded Johnny in.

“I appreciate your concern and the way you’ve handled everything up to now. But I know Johnny. I know that if there’s going to be a resolution here it’s going to have to come his way. And his way is face-to-face. I need to go in there. I need to sit with him in council. He’s likely got a pipe. I need to sit and smoke with him. Then we’ll talk. He won’t do it any other way. We have to respect his respect of ceremony. And mine,” I said.

“You’re joking, right?” Carleton asked.

“No,” I said firmly, “I’m not. For all intents and purposes, Johnny’s a warrior. He’s a whiteman but he’s still a warrior. He’s got the warrior creed and he’ll only negotiate out of that. We might not understand that but we have to respect it. We show respect to him and he’ll show it back, it’s that simple. I go in or I fly home. I won’t be responsible for the outcome if you refuse to respect the tradition behind everything here.”

“He’s serious?” Dodge said to Nettles.

“Oh, yeah, Cap, he’s serious.”

“Then I guess he goes in. I don’t agree. But if he’s willing to take the risk, I’ve got hostages I need back in the daylight and a bad guy I need in custody. Dave, you’re our phone guy. Reverend, I have to tell you, my concern is that Gebhardt just wants to even the score with you by taking you out with him. But, if you feel it’s the only way, it’s the only way.”

I thought of our solemn oath. “Johnny won’t hurt me,” I said.

“I wish I had your faith,” he replied.

“So, we make contact,” O’Fallon said. “Tell him you’re on your way. Get him to crack the downstairs doors. But if we have a shot, do we take it?”

The officers looked gravely at each other.

“No,” I said suddenly. “I won’t be used as a lure. I won’t be a tool for assassination.”

“But you know that this all might boil down to us having to do that, Reverend?” Dodge asked.

“Yes,” I said, sadly. “I know. But he wanted me here for a reason. A reason bigger than simply being his mediator. Once we find out what that reason is, I believe we’ll be able to disarm this whole thing.”

“It still might be simple revenge,” Hager stressed.

“Yes, it might. I’ve considered that, perhaps, I might be a symbol. That taking out, as you say, a sell-out preacher is an unimpeachable statement. But I don’t think so”

“Your faith has some pretty iron balls, Reverend,” O’Fallon said with a grin.

“Yes. The Holy Kahoonies, they’re called,” I answered to laughs all round.

Nettles and I moved to Dodge’s office where we outlined the process for the negotiations. Nettles would maintain a phone contact with me while I met with Johnny. Because he had not requested a helicopter or a car, the police were assuming he did not plan to come out alive. They’d chosen to treat the situation as if Johnny was prepared to sacrifice everyone, himself included, and now me as well. While we were talking, the tactical team would still be shopping for an avenue of approach. I would not mention this, because if it came down to saving all the hostages’ lives at the loss of his, Johnny would be eliminated. When the team had achieved an access route, Nettles would tell me the code words “No one has to die.” Until then my focus should be on maintaining Johnny’s composure and using the threads of our friendship to maneuver him to surrender. Any requests for money, cars, helicopters or whatever would be handled through Nettles and they would be prepared to consider anything for the safe release of the hostages. When there were no questions remaining, Dodge shook my hand firmly, wished me luck and we went back into the squad room.

“He’s on the phone, Bri,” Carleton said, holding the receiver towards me.

“Go ahead,” Dodge said, laying a hand between my shoulders. “It’s take-off time.”

I closed my eyes and murmured a quick prayer. The phone felt
like a sodden weight and as I raised it to my ear I caught Nettles’s eye. He flashed me a thumbs-up and picked up another handpiece to listen.

“Johnny?” I said, rather shakily.

There was a small chuckle over the line and I had a flash of the reed-thin boy of twenty-five years before.

“Hey,” he said.

“Hey.”

“Bottom of the ninth here, Josh.”

“Yeah, I guess.”

“I had to go to the bull pen.”

“Yeah, well, no shame in that. Everyone needs a good closer.”

“Yeah. You comin’ in?”

“Hey, wouldn’t miss it! You want I should bring anything?”

“Nah. Well, yeah. They probably know about Mr. Svenson’s medication. Bring that and maybe something for headaches. There’s a few people here complaining about stress. See what you can do.”

“Sure. I should be over fairly soon. You’ll meet me at the doors downstairs?”

“Check. Actually, I’ll send one of the others. Don’t wanna give the boys the benefit of an open shot, you know?”

“Suggestion?”

“Suggest away.”

“Let the pregnant woman open the door for me. Then let her walk. I’ll reseal the door if you tell me how.”

“Sounds fair. I didn’t know she was expecting, otherwise I wouldn’t have kept her. Deal.”

“Good. See you in a few.”

“Check,” he said and disconnected.

The officers looked at me with a new respect. Dodge clapped me on the back and Nettles just grinned.

“Nice move,” he said. “That’s one less life we have to worry about.”

“Two,” I said.

“Yeah. Two.”

“He agreed easily enough,” I said.

“Yeah, he did. That’s a good sign. You got any more you wanna tell me before we sink our choppers into this thing, Joshua? Now’s the time.”

“Yeah,” I said, leaning back in my chair, “maybe just a couple things.”

“Fire away.”

I unfolded the last letter I’d received from Johnny.

W
e are the children of someone else’s history. We are born and we die under the shadow of a foreign sense of time. We carry within us the infertile seeds of promises sewn by the hands of greed. Withered and dried, they are lodged in our breasts like arrows, oozing their poisons, singing their histories.

Those are his words, not mine. I could never come up with anything that poetic or profound, could never touch the heart of the struggle in that way. All of us carry our woundings around within us like arrows.

I’ve just come out of the mountains. I spent the entire winter up there. I can’t tell you exactly where but it’s a special place, an alpine meadow high up in the Rockies. In the Long-Ago Time the People would come to celebrate the powers of nature. All nations would gather and the Great Hoop of the People would form in that meadow to restore itself through ceremony and prayer. Great stories were told, and even now you can feel the incredible power that resides there. Above it, the sky is a tremendous bowl, like a pipe bowl, the universe gathered within it. The mountains stand around it in a huge circle like a medicine lodge with all the natural world nestled between its ribs. The land veritably pulses with energy. I stayed in a teepee through the whole winter. I wanted to know how it felt to have your life so connected to the power of nature. To have nothing but a hide between yourself and the world. To have nothing but a fire, burning the wood you gathered, cooking the meat you hunted, for security and warmth. To have only your need for survival to lean on when the winds howled and the snow deepened around you. To feel the
real power of this universe. To try to see and feel myself in the face of that power. They all said I was crazy but I needed to know what it was I was fighting for. Conflict isn’t fighting unless you carry the weapons of belief and the tangible sense of the heartbeat you’re fighting to protect. If you don’t have that, all you have is politics, anger and bravado. Anger isn’t courage. That’s another thing he said once. Courage is born in humility, a humility born of the land. After this winter I’m starting to know what he meant.

There was always a thick bed of spruce boughs and hides on the floor to keep away the frost and the fire kept the inside warm and comfortable through even the deepest chill. I’d brought a pile of books and a small sketch book. My friends had helped me gather a few elk and moose hides that I wanted to work, so I had plenty of projects to occupy my time. Most days I would chop wood, rig a snare, hunt or just head out across the meadow on snowshoes or on foot if the snow wasn’t all that deep. Most of the time it was.