Turncoat

by Don Gutteridge

  “Not the dry goods man?”

  “That’s right. He come back here to run the farm after Jesse died.”

  Marc smiled. “And I take it that you are not a Tory?”

  Wicks laughed, and the tension in him dissolved. “I see that my good friend Constable Hatch has been praisin’ more than my ploughin’ techniques. In this province, once an American, forever a Yankee.” The laughter faded. “I’m more the fool for thinkin’ that’ll ever change.”

  “My quartermaster doesn’t distinguish between Yankee wheat and English corn,” Marc felt compelled to say.

  “That is quite true,” Wicks said, pouring them each another whisky. “And it’s one of the many reasons I’ve chosen to stay here and raise my family. Though I still have days when I wonder if I’m crazy to do so.”

  Marc shifted in his chair.

  Again, Wicks’s smile was as broad as it was enigmatic. “You haven’t been in this country long, have you?”

  “A year or so,” Marc said.

  “So far I bet you know mostly what you’ve been told by the self-serving grandees around you, includin’ a lot of lies and exaggeration about the Yankee settlers doin’ all the agitatin’, or secretly yearnin’ for the democracy they so foolishly abandoned.”

  “I’ve heard that kind of talk,” Marc said. “You think I shouldn’t believe it?”

  “I’d be astonished if you didn’t,” Wicks said. “But you’ve been given a chance—bein’ sent out here to the untamed countryside—to see for yourself. Which is somethin’ the Family Compact—with its rectors and bankers and lawyers—and the toadyin’ members of the Legislative Council in Toronto have never bothered to do.”

  Marc seized his opportunity. “I did see for myself only this morning the tragic effects of the Clergy Reserves policy—on the Smallman farm.”

  “You can multiply that by a thousand,” Wicks said, seemingly without rancour. “But since you are interested and may be young enough to learn somethin’ new, let me tell you a bit about the so-called Yankee troublemakers in this province.”

  “I would be happy to listen,” Marc said, barely able to contain his delight.

  “I was a Yankee born and raised up, like so many of us who came up here after 1815: free-spirited, happy-go-lucky, fearin’ no man and certainly no government, genuflectin’ to nobody. My parents had carved out a farm in the Ohio Valley and helped to push the frontier towards the Wabash. But when they died, what they left me was not peaceful fields and prosperous towns. They left me Indian wars and military service and all the horror and lawlessness that comes with social chaos and the seductive power of sudden riches.”

  Mrs. Wicks, detecting perhaps some sea change in the familiar rhythms of her husband’s speech, poked her nose around the partition.

  “I was forced to serve my three months with the Ohio Volunteers during the Indian wars. I was at the Battle of Frenchtown on the River Raisin. A slaughterhouse it was. I saw the great warrior Tecumseh up close before some tomahawk clubbed me unconscious. I was one of the lucky ones: I got dragged back with my unit when we retreated. Several hundred of our wounded were massacred later that night and their bodies tossed into the bush to be eaten by bears and coyotes. And later on, when we got a chance to get our own back, we did: I watched women and children hacked and slashed like butchered swine. I myself held torches to houses, some of them with people still inside, refusin’ to leave. I still wake up at night, screamin’ with the agony of it.”

  “War is sometimes an unpleasant necessity,” Marc said lamely.

  Wicks did not hear. He stared into the fire for a while, then said, still looking down, “Most of us came up here for a little peace and stability, a little law and order, and a chance to prove we could be good farmers and better citizens. When Governor Peregrine Maitland called us aliens and sought to have us barred from holdin’ office or a seat in the Assembly, we had no choice but to do the very thing most of us were tryin’ to escape: get embroiled in politics. For a time even our property rights were threatened.”

  “So you joined forces with the radicals in the Reform party?”

  “Who else was goin’ to look out for our rights?”

  “And so you met Jesse Smallman, who also had his grievance.”

  “And dozens of others—local-born, Scotchmen, Irishmen, a few fair-minded loyalists. And we got the alien question settled once and for all.”

  “But I’ve been told that a new petition of grievances is in the colonial secretary’s hands at this very moment.”

  Wicks had lit his pipe and was now puffing contemplatively at it. “I do read the papers, young man, including the Colonial Advocate . But my property is now secure. My two sons, who can’t remember any other home but this, are out doin’ public service on the King’s Highway. My own concerns are no more than the weather and the price of grain.”

  “I’m most happy to hear it,” Marc said, rising. “Thank you sincerely for your hospitality and your frankness.”

  As Marc was buttoning his greatcoat at the door, Wicks said, “When you make your report to John Colborne, be sure and ask him how keen he’d be to repeat the carnage of Waterloo or Toulouse.”

  Riding away, Marc was still too flummoxed to notice Maureen Wicks’s angst-ridden face in her kitchen window, like a winter moon with all the harvest-blood drained from it.

  EIGHT

  Marc continued north along the Farley Sideroad towards the last farm before the serious bush began, though to someone not familiar with the Upper Canadian landscape this frozen twelve-foot swathe bordered by cedar, pine, and leafless birch would seem more like a logging road in a wilderness than a neatly surveyed thoroughfare. At the moment, the isolation and silence suited Ensign Edwards, who was deep in thought.

  He guided the horse through a gap in the evergreens and was astonished to see before him a very large area, perhaps a hundred acres, completely shorn of trees and seemingly of all vegetation. Not a bush or vine peeped above the rumpled counterpane of snow. At the far edges of the clearing Marc could see a ragged fence of uprooted stumps and charred limbs. Three buildings interrupted the horizon: a low, ungabled log house with oiled-paper windows; a ramshackle barn whose wings, ells, and jetties seemed to be patched together; and beyond that a sort of lean-to fashioned of cedar poles and layers of bark or wind-stiffened sailcloth. From the house a limp plume of smoke rose out of a crumbling chimney.

  Marc rode up to what he deduced to be the front door, dismounted, and, failing to find a hitching post or ring of any kind, wrapped the horse’s reins around one of the protruding log ends. The door itself drooped on stretched leather hinges and boasted a number of gouges and splinters where a boot or fist had met it in anger. Marc gave it a tentative rap, fearing he might knock it irreparably askew.

  A booming voice that might have been female answered from the depths inside: “For Chrissake, don’t just stand there pickin’ at your scab, open the goddamn door and come in!”

  Marc did as he was bidden. Seated in the centre of the room in a horsehair chair of princely proportions was a woman of ample dimension and extraordinary presence. Marc recoiled visibly, as if unable to take in the image of her all at once.

  “Cassie, get off your plump rump and take the gentleman’s hat! Buster, vacate that chair this instant or I’ll take a strip off yer arse and turn it inta a red bandanny!”

  The fire in the hearth, fitful and smoky, flung a dim glow through the almost windowless room. Cassie came meekly out of one of its shadowy corners: a young woman clad only in a shift and moth-eaten sweater, whose beauty was marred—or perhaps made more exotic—by a glassy walleye and a mole at the base of her throat. Staring at Marc, abashed, from her one clear, blue eye, she stretched out a trembling arm for his coat and shako cap. She continued to stare at his uniform.

  “You keep yer eyes on the floor, milady!” the girl’s mother—as Marc assumed her to be—roared with an accompanying guffaw that shook the room with the vehemence of a fart. “Young Cass
ie’s got a thing for soldiers. Come militia day, and we gotta lock her in the pigpen!”

  “Good day, madam. My name is—”

  “I know what yer moniker is, young gentleman. I’ve been forewarned, ya might say, and I know why you’re here. Take that chair by the fire. Buster, get yer greasy paws offa it! You get the loo-tenant’s uniform dirty and he’ll take you outside and shoot you silly with his Brown Bess.”

  Marc smiled reassuringly at young Buster, who seemed deaf to his mother’s entreaties and more intent on looking for any sign of said gun. Marc sat on the edge of the chair.

  “I’m Bella Hislop,” the woman said, “as I’m sure you’ve figured out already. You met Cassie, my oldest and prettiest—don’t blush, girl, beauty’s not a gift to be sneezed at, the good Lord only doles out so many talents—and Buster there, with the gawkin’ eyes and big nose, my eldest of the bollocked variety. And up there the other six are skulkin’ and tryin’ to keep outta my reach, aren’t ya, ya little buggers!”

  On this last note, Bella Hislop wrenched her thick torso a quarter-turn, which allowed her to gaze up into a huge loft that covered almost half the house at the north end. Several titters and much rustling ensued, and Marc could just make out in the gloom a row of dirty children’s faces peering down with curiosity and trepidation.

  “Mr. Hatch has been here, then?” Marc said.

  “Indeed he has, the old crook. I damn near run him off the place.”

  “He has wronged you somehow?” Marc said, unable to hide his surprise or his irritation.

  Bella Hislop rose in her chair, lifting her heavy flesh into a posture of indignation and contempt, like an overweight marionette whose slack strings are suddenly jerked upwards with a singular flourish. Her voluminous dress went dangerously taut, threatening to burst. Her jowls quivered stiffly and her eyes blazed.

  “He merely swindled my husband outta twenty barrels of flour, that’s all. And us with eight mouths to feed and me still teat-feedin’ the young’un. ‘Full of chaff and tares,’ the bastard says to Orville, right in front of half the neighbourhood. That’s all he’s got to say for comin’ up twenty barrels short on our millin’, our whole summer’s harvest. Well, we got our pride if we got nothin’ else. My Orville just turns and walks away, real dignified, like the gentleman he was brung up to be.”

  “I’m sure the miller is not a man to cheat his customers,” Marc said.

  Bella gave him a withering look, then abruptly relaxed, her flesh and bones sagging thankfully back to their accustomed position. She emitted a thunderous chuckle. “You are a young man. You know little of the ways of the world and its thousand iniquities. All millers are cheats and mountebanks. If they were honest men, they would till the soil themselves instead of feedin’ off the sweat of their fellows. And what redress have we got anyways? You think my sweet Orville—as honest as Esau, as upright as Solomon—can trot along cap in hand to the constable to swear out a complaint?” She burst out laughing. “Is that bugger Hatch gonna arrest himself?”

  “There is a sheriff for the county,” Marc pointed out. “And a magistrate a stone’s throw from the mill.”

  “Randy-the-dandy MacLachlan, you mean!” she roared, and the shock wave made the peering faces in the loft bob. “I wouldn’t let my six-year-old Susan near him. And who do you think is a charter member of that faggots’ club up at the squire’s?”

  “I would be most pleased to forward any written complaint or petition on your behalf,” Marc said, not for a second believing Bella’s charge but nevertheless feeling some obligation to demonstrate the absolute objectivity and probity of British due process.

  “What makes you think Orville and me got any surplus to sell to the English army of occupation?” Bella said, and she pinned him with a stare.

  “That’s what I’m here to find out, ma’am. I’m merely an emissary.”

  “A papal legate, sort of,” Bella grinned. “You payin’ with cash?”

  “Pound notes only.”

  “None of that funny money, now, that army scrip yer betters palmed off on us last time. And no notes drawn on the Bank of fuckin’ Upper Canada.”

  Marc flinched, noted no reaction from the two eldest at the obscenity, and forged ahead. “We’re looking for pork as well as grain,” he said.

  “Our pigs aren’t doin’ so good this winter. Some kinda fever gettin’ inta them. The boar’s doin’ poorly too. Unfortunately, a boar is a necessity, ugly as it may be, eh? Like God and shitty weather.”

  “Is your husband at home, madam?” Marc said.

  “Jeezuz, I ain’t been called ‘madam’ since the time I stumbled inta a hooer-house in Syracuse lookin’ fer that arsehole that got me up the stump and had to marry me or take a load of buckshot in the underparts!”

  “I can return another time,” Marc said, starting to get up.

  “Siddown, for Chrissake, nobody’s tryin’ to scare ya off. Cassie, bring out the jar of hooch and pour a mugful fer me and Officer Edwards.”

  “Really, ma’am, I couldn’t—”

  “You call me ‘ma’am’ once more and I’ll toss ya headfirst inta the fire. Now unhitch yer high horse and relax. I got some questions I wanta ask you.”

  Cassie did as she was commanded, blushing fiercely as she served Marc and sensed his eyes upon her flimsy dress and what it inadequately concealed.

  “Pretty one, ain’t she?” Bella said, downing half her drink in one gulp. “Spittin’ image of me, though you’d hardly think so now. ’Course I had two eyes to see with back then and still ended up in this shit-hole.”

  “How may I help you?” Marc said.

  “I wanta know why you’re really here.”

  “But I’ve told you that … Mrs. Hislop.”

  “I hear Monsieur Papineau and Wolfred Nelson’re kickin’ up shit in Quebec. Colborne, and his Tory ass-lickers think the same trouble’s about to start up here, don’t they?”

  “I am not at liberty to comment,” Marc said, swallowing his astonishment.

  “Aren’t ya, now. Well, that’s one of the things wrong with this province, ain’t it? The people in power don’t feel the need to be at liberty to say anythin’ by way of explanation to the wretches who’ve got no power of their own.”

  “The people here, I’m told, elected an Assembly in which the majority of seats are held by members of the Reform party.”

  “Well, you are up on yer politics, ain’t ya?” She polished off her “whisky” and waited until he had at least sipped his. (Jamaican rum, he was only mildly surprised to discover.) “What I am at liberty to say to you and yer limp-pricked major-domos back in Toronto is that my Orville worked as hard as any man to get Mr. Perry elected to the Assembly. He even escorted Mr. Mackenzie on his tour through this district in thirty-four—him and a dozen others, like Wicks and Stebbins and poor young Jesse Smallman that hung himself for grief over the state of affairs. That don’t make my Orville a revolutionary. His grandpapa, now there was a true revolutionary. Fought side by side with George Washington at Valley Forge and got his left leg blown to kingdom come. Folks up here don’t know chapter one about real revolution.”

  “I assure you, madam—”

  “We got more assurances from your bigwigs than we could use to paper a privy.” Her mammoth breasts heaved above the stretched waistline of her dress, but it was the flare of her eyes that held Marc spellbound. “If it was up to me, I’d’ve organized a posse of Minutemen, marched on Toronto, and done what my countrymen did to it in the War of 1812: jam a stick of dynamite under it and blow it inta Lucifer’s parlour.” She sighed extravagantly, like a basso profundo at the end of an aria.

  “That’s treasonable talk, madam.”

  “Lucky fer you I didn’t, eh? You’d have no toy soldiers to play with. But I’m only a woman, and Orville ain’t what he useta be.” She chuckled softly. “Poor Orville wasn’t ever what he useta be.”

  “Your husband is ill?”

  Bella guffawed, sending a spray of
spittle past Marc’s knees. “Not as ill as he oughta be! He can still get it up, if that’s what you’re inferrin’.”

  “Madam, there are children present.”

  “Don’t I know it. I got eight livin’, all of ’em in this stinkin’ room. But I’ve had twelve all told. It’d’ve been a goddamn good trick if I could’ve organized a revolution between the ploughin’ and the begettin’, wouldn’t it?”

  Marc got up and pulled his coat on quickly before Cassie could arrive to assist him. Buster meantime had sidled up to him and was stroking the brushed wool as if it were ermine or beaver, or a pet that would purr in gratitude.

  “I hear tell the new governor ain’t a military man,” Bella said, still wedged so firmly in the big chair that if she were, on a whim, to have stood up it would have come with her like a monstrous bustle. “That should be an improvement right there.”

  “Mr. Hislop is not here?” Marc tried again.

  “Mr. Hislop is out in the barn somewheres or else skunk-drunk in a snowdrift. Mr. Hislop don’t spend much time in his house these days, or nights.”

  Cassie looked ready to interrupt her mother; her lower lip trembled and tears sprang into her eyes.

  “Don’t you shush me, girl,” Bella hissed at Cassie. “I’m all you got in this world, and don’t forget it.” She turned back to Marc, who now stood rooted to the doorjamb. “I’ve had all the babies I’m ever goin’ to. I’ve made that perfectly plain to his nibs.” She reached under the horsehair cushion and produced a menacing pair of tin-snips. She snapped the pincers together with an ominous click. “If he so much as breathes on my bed with his hoe-handle at half-mast, it’s snip, snip—good-bye and good riddance. And he’ll get some of the same if I see him within spittin’ distance of my Cassie.”

  Just before he shut the door behind him, Marc slipped a shilling into his young admirer’s grimy palm.

  As he walked to the corner of the house where his horse was tethered, Marc noticed a male figure scuttling in his direction. It seemed to have emerged from between the barn and the lean-to beyond it. The figure stopped, appeared to take its bearings, then hailed him. Marc dropped the reins and strode out, not without curiosity, to meet, he presumed, the treacherously sweet Orville Hislop.