The 53rd Parallel

by Carl Nordgren

  “Wouldn't this all be so much easier if you'd just ask me to marry you? We'd get rid of the expense of maintainin' the partnership and just put everythin' in your name.”

  “I thought we agreed we'd only talk about that topic with a drink in hand, to cut the edge of me sayin' no again to the lovely woman's offer.”

  “I can't accept you don't want to marry me.”

  “We're preparin' our grand openin' of Eden, an' now we launch our bush plane operation in partnership with our Dutchman who seems true to his word an' a good man to be workin' with. We've got nearly thirty guest nights booked at camp. Why mess with what we got, is one way of lookin' at it. An' I never said I didn't want to, only I can't, is another.”

  “We could be havin' heroic fucks.”

  Brian sat up and Maureen smiled.

  “Which I offer to you as a third way to be lookin' at it.”

  “Now look here, Lady Girl, you can't be talkin' like that in this man's office an' then be pushin' me away when—”

  “I think I could just about guarantee our weddin' night would be sometin' very much like a heroic fuck.”

  The solicitor walked in, smiled, sat at his desk with his files, and returned to his study of them.

  “An' so doesn't that mean we'd want to do it a lot?”

  “It sure hain't my idea to be waitin' on that.”

  “As long as we're business partners, I'm tellin' you as long as all we are is business partners, I'm not riskin' my stake in what we are doin' here by becomin' your whore.”

  The solicitor's attention was pulled away from his study. He stole a quick glance at his two clients and saw them sharing a smile so he returned to his documents.

  The Ojibway cleared the snow from a wide section of the frozen lake, close to camp. They chipped a hole in the thick ice sheet to allow them to insert first one saw, then another. Referencing the hole as the corner, Old George and Albert sawed away at a 90 degree angle.

  They were cutting thick sheets of ice for the fishing camp's use in the summer.

  Each of them would take a turn sawing the rock-hard ice, and while they waited they stood together in the bright sun, protecting each other from the cold wind.

  As Joe Loon took the saw from Old George he turned to Simon and Mathew.

  “If the men from the white man's school come before we have left Grassy Narrows, we must have places for the children all to hide. You show the children the best places you have found.”

  “Why is it we do not say no to these men, Grandfather?”

  “They send men with guns who take the children if we say no.”

  “I have heard the boys on the Reserve talk of playing games at the schools.”

  Albert was the only one there who had spent time in a residential school.

  “The games we played were not dances of joy. The games I played with boys from White Dog and Red Lake were streaked with anger.”

  As soon as the ice was gone in front of their dock and office on Lake of the Woods, Dutch would fly Maureen and Brian to Innish Cove to see what was to be seen there. They were at NOA's office on a sunny afternoon. Dutch and Brian were up on the roof, hammering the new NOA sign to the frame, and Maureen was smiling below.

  “Hey Dutch, last week you predicted the ice would be gone before the week was out.”

  “You'll be surprised how fast it goes when it goes, especially if we have a few more days this warm. I said it would be Wednesday or Thursday, and I'm sticking with that… most times the waters up there are a couple of days behind us here anyway, so don't be surprised the day we can fly out here we still can't land there.”

  “I got a feelin' we'll find 'em waiting there for us, don't you, Bri?”

  “I find myself eager to see Joe Loon.”

  Dutch started collecting the tools. “How do you do it, Brian?”

  “Do what?”

  “Get these Indians to work for you, for both of you. You see 'em dead drunk around town, beating their wives, kicking and fighting each other. Everyone knows you can never count on Indians to do what they say they're going to do; it's not nice to say it but plenty do, and worse, I know, but it's the truth. Yet they sure seem to enjoy working for you two.”

  “Best I can tell is we showed up at a time they seemed to be expectin' us.”

  Maureen called up to them.

  “An' they see our camp as somehow honorin' their sacred place. It all ties together; I'm still tryin' to figure it out.”

  “Just know that when I tell folks about what I saw last summer, folks who only know Indians from what they see in town, they look at me with total disbelief. And they predict you are in for a big disappointment at some point.”

  Brian called down to Maureen.

  “I was thinkin' about how Joe Loon handled our request to build there and wondered what would happen if we brought him home to Ireland an' let him speak his peace to the lot of them thugs who claims to be IRA now.”

  “They ain't all thugs, Bri, an' I wish you'd stop sayin so.”

  Chapter 19

  The Quiet Men

  It was early in the morning, spring 1951. It was still dark when Eamon Burke awakened ten-year-old Patrick and told him to get dressed, then fixed him a cup of tea with plenty of cream and a slice of bread thick with butter. In the past year the boy had begun to grow out of the worst of his sickly and fragile childhood, but he was still slight, certainly less than robust, and still subject to incapacitating spells. Eamon got him out for long and steady walks every morning he could.

  They headed down the road to Eamon's nearby field where he kept a few head of cattle. A calf had been born the night before. Eamon attended to the birth, returned to sleep a couple of hours, and was eager to show the newborn beauty of it to Patrick.

  When they arrived, the calf was sleeping on a sweep of straw under the small shelter of stones and posts and sheets of tin. The cow was eating hay. Patrick approached the calf and Eamon stood behind him, then crouched down over him, and spoke soft and low, whispering to the boy that he should love the sight of her as the calf awoke.

  “Look at her, lad. She's so new, so fresh.”

  “Her eyes look like they're liquid.”

  “Watch the gentle breath comin' in… an goin' out. Comin' in… an' goin' out. Feel my chest, breathin' in… an' breathin' out. Now you fill yourself up, nice an' easy but as full as you can… then let it out. Fill your lungs, make your chest work, lad, good, an' as you do, take the young strength of her into you with your breath an' hold it deep… before you let it out slow an' easy sayin' thanks be to God.”

  Eamon heard the car's roar from the road behind them and then the stone wall in front of them shone bright in the headlight beam. The calf tripped on her own legs as she jumped to her feet.

  Eamon turned with a frown for the driver, and his frown became a scowl as the big black touring car roared in its approach, slowed as it passed, and then stopped to back up, and when it did Eamon took bold strides towards the rock wall between him and the road.

  The man driving the car was the movie actor, Victor McLaglen. Next to him sat John Wayne. They had arrived in Cong the day before for the filming of The Quiet Man and were on the road early to spend a couple of days in Dublin engaged in a bit of publicity work and pub crawling while final production details were sorted out.

  McLaglen had a great smile as he tapped his traveling companion on the shoulder and gestured towards Eamon.

  “Jaysus, Johnny boy, there he is.”

  “There who is?”

  “Well, there you are, Johnny boy, there you are. When I saw him I thought I'm sitting in a motorcar with Johnny Wayne but there he is walking across the field. He's your double, your body double. Your stand in.”

  “Ya think so? Well then, let's go check 'im out.”

  Eamon's fists tightened when he saw the car doors open, then relaxed when he recognized one of the two big men who got out was Victor McLaglen. He checked Patrick, who had a hand upon the calf's hind leg,
studying her as she nursed eagerly.

  When Eamon met the actor, they shook hands across the rock wall and then Eamon turned to point out the scene behind him.

  “Now that's how you should open your film. Let everyone know we're not just raisin' sheep an' fightin' the Brits.”

  “That's the intention of this one, best I can tell, to show the pastoral splendor.”

  “We'd all heard the Magnificent McLaglen had arrived. I've seen a number of your filims, an' loved each one.”

  “Well, then, good morning to you, and how do your friends call you?”

  “I'm Eamon Burke. Had a calf born last night, just checkin' on her. That's my nephew there, young Patrick. He's…” Eamon turned back to the actor. “Ah now, The Informer. What a grand bit of storytellin' that was.”

  “It was good work, and we've got us the same director for this one, Mr. John Ford himself.”

  “That's who you are then, Mr. Ford?”

  “No, no. No. I'm John Wayne.”

  “John Wayne the actor? Of course you are, I can see it when I picture a cowboy hat an' a vest an' all… sorry, but it's English filims that mostly gets shown, if any.”

  Wayne punched McLaglen on the shoulder. “That's the third time since we arrived they've known you and not me.” He turned to Eamon. “You see, we've got a little problem here with our Irish film, and we were thinking maybe you can solve it for us. Let's go sit in the car where it's warm and we'll tell you about it.”

  “Sure, of course. Let me grab my boy. He won't recognize either one of ya.'”

  Katie helped her aunt lay out the breakfast, and as the four of them settled in Eamon told his wife about meeting the movie actors.

  “An' so as our American cousins say, they get right to it. They're lookin' for a body double for Mr. John Wayne to do his stunts for him an' his ridin', an' they figure I'm the man for the job.”

  “Ah, Eamon, how grand. I've been told they're payin' wonderful wages.”

  “We're to meet when they return from Dublin so they can introduce me to John Ford. He directed Victor in The Informer.”

  “Did you hear, Katie? Your uncle Eamon is callin' him Victor.”

  Eamon's wife slipped the last sausage off her plate and onto her husband's.

  “Another servin' for the true quiet man.”

  He thanked her with a pat on her back and carved a piece.

  “What I find interestin' about this…” Eamon was quiet as he chewed. He took another bite, and everyone at the table could see he was shaping his thoughts, so they ate in silence.

  “I just think it's interestin'… It was two days ago that I found myself thinkin' about Brian. I don't know what it was that brought him to mind. Maybe I saw Jimmy earlier in the day an' that triggered my memories of bailin' Brian out of trouble. An' so I was thinkin' about whether he ever got his fishin' lodge built… the Great Lodge at Innish Cove, that's what came to me first actually, I just suddenly thought of the name an' then startin' considerin' if it was built, an' it must have been because earlier I had seen Jimmy at the market.”

  Katie moved her chair closer to Patrick at the mention of their father's name so she could put her arm around his shoulders.

  “An' sure he's my cousin but ya' know when we was growin' up he as more like my little brother, yeah. So I do think about him from time to time… Not very often. It's a surprise of sorts that I don't think about him for months… But then somethin' from our past stirs up a memory an' I find I can't get him off my mind for days.”

  He ate another bite of sausage. That released his wife to get up to clear the table, and Katie led Patrick outside, told him to stay there, and then returned, standing inside the door. “Because you know, mostly the memories of him are good ones… So suddenly I have these thoughts of Innish Cove an' for the past two days I have been thinkin' about him an' now I am John Wayne's body double. He calls me his close companion.”

  As she worked his wife listened closely, and now showed confusion on her face.

  “One of his best ideas, everyone thought so, was once he gets set up, once he knows he can operate a fishin' lodge, he would invite famous American outdoorsmen to come as his guests, for free. He always said he'd invite Ernest Hemmingway but the last time I heard him tell the story he swapped him out for John Wayne.”

  When he stopped they were all quiet in the face of what he might say next. He took the last bite of sausage and it was Katie who spoke next.

  “Just don't let him get too close to Patrick.”

  “What's that?”

  “If you invite him to come, if he returns, just don't let him hurt Patrick again.”

  Joe Loon was carrying one last bundle through dusk to the freight canoe outfitted with his 5-hp motor. This big canoe was beached on shore where it was just a thirty-yard walk from their winter camp cabins at Grassy Narrows Reserve. When his people first spent the winter on the Reserve four years earlier, they chose these cabins at the edge of the Reserve, right on the River, and the others honored their claim.

  They loaded their belongings and supplies into the three big canoes and the fishing boat Brian left for their use. They kept Nigig free of supplies.

  They planned to leave the Reserve early the next morning, to set up their village camp at Innish Cove.

  Joe Loon froze when he heard the rifle shot echo through the trees. He imagined the rifleman working the bolt, ejecting the shell, chambering a second round, lifting the rifle to his shoulder to aim at the high trunk of a tree, and pulling the trigger. At that moment, he heard the second shot.

  He pulled the bundle from the freight canoe and dropped it on the ground. He quickly shifted other bundles into the canoe and the fishing boat. He started one outboard, and then the other, looking towards the cabins in the forest, as if he expected someone.

  At the second rifle shot, Simon bolted from his cabin to dash between trees to the neighboring cabins. He pounded on the doors and called to the people inside.

  “All the children. To the River. Now. Run.”

  After he warned those closest, he headed further inland to the next cluster of cabins where Albert and Mathew and their family stayed that winter. He could hear voices, then shouting, but it was getting dark and the forests were thick there, and he couldn't see anyone.

  As he drew closer, he could tell it was a white man's voice that he heard.

  “Hold him. Hold him!”

  Two young girls ran through the trees towards Simon and he urged them on to the River.

  “Don't stop. The canoes are ready. Run.”

  He drew near to the cabins and crouched when he saw Albert was being held back by two men in bright-red Royal Canadian Mounted Police uniforms. An old grandmother beat on one uniformed back. Other women called out to the three Ojibway boys being led away by two more Mounties and a man in a suit.

  Two of the boys were very young. The third was his cousin, his Big Brother, Mathew.

  They disappeared in the forest. Albert was quiet. The women wailed.

  Simon stayed low and circled the cabin clearing then headed into the trees in a quick trot. The path the Mounties followed led to an old logging track cut in the forest that led to a narrow paved road, but the path took many turns to get there, and they would have trouble navigating as night began to fall. Simon's course was direct through the forest.

  More light penetrated the forest as he neared the paved road, and Simon got to it first. A small panel truck sat with its back doors open and two Mounties stood guard over the Ojibway children already inside. Two RCMP cars were parked behind the truck.

  Simon removed his knife from its sheath and held it between his teeth. On his hands and knees he crawled to the edge of the thick underbrush of Juneberry bushes that grew closest to the road, near the front of the truck. The Mounties had their backs to him and were telling each other stories of chasing these children through the forest.

  “It's the little girls that surprise me. I've never seen my daughter's friends run so fast.�
�

  “It's the looks on their faces. You'd think we were here to hurt them.”

  Simon crouched low and crawled out from under the bushes to the front of the truck. He dropped to his belly and snaked under the front of the truck. Underneath, he slowly inched his way to the back, without a sound, where he was in easy reach of both Mounties.

  He took his knife in his hand, and one by one, practiced the cutting moves it would take to slice through their boots and sever an Achilles tendon of each one. He had used this knife to cut through plenty of tough moose and deer sinews and tendons, and he thought about how hard his cut must be to disable each Mountie, to cut through boot leather and tendon.

  Then he practiced the motions again, faster this time, first the Mountie on his left, then the one to his right.

  The Mounties stepped forward when shouts from the forest announced the approach of the next captives. Simon scooted back under the middle of the truck. He saw the feet of his friends and relatives and heard their footsteps above him as they were loaded into the truck. There was a crash of someone falling, and one of the Mounties laughed, and another cursed.

  The truck doors slammed shut. Car doors squeaked open and slammed closed.

  Simon inched over to the left rear tire and began to drill a hole in the rubber with the tip of his knife. When he heard the air escaping, he shifted over to the right rear tire as, one by one, the truck and car engines started. The two RCMP cars began to roll forward slowly. The knifepoint cut chips and curls of rubber tire, and Simon felt it penetrate. The blade stabbed deeper into the tire than he planned just as the truck began to move. The knife was ripped from his hands, stuck in the tire. He grabbed for the knife in the turning tire, and the blade cut his fingers just before he flattened himself for the truck to pass over him. As soon as it did, he jumped to his feet and dashed into the bushes. If the men saw him, they were satisfied with their full load and let him go on into the dark woods.

  Simon hid behind a tree to pull off his shirt and wrap his hand tightly, for it was bleeding steadily. He watched the cars lead the truck holding the children. Their headlights came on all at once to glaze the trees with a brilliant edge. Once they were gone, he returned to the spot where he had laid and looked for his knife.