Free Incidents in the Life of Markus Paul by David Adams Richards Page B

I know—that’s why I’m here. So do you, sir, think this is a criminal case?”
    “My soul,” Amos said, and grinned and scratched his cheek.
    Then Amos spoke in his mild-mannered way, and looked up at the young man looking down at him. “Perhaps, in a way, we do not know yet,” he said. The old man knew that many people, no matter who they were, said they wanted the truth, and then wanted certain answers to fit what their idea of truth was.
    Max continued: “Some say it was another crime against the people here—that the dispute is really over fishing? That Hector paid the price because of this dispute between his brother and that man … his name … his name …”—here he looked at his notes—“Roger Savage, who was at the scene?”
    “I do not know,” old Amos said truthfully. He began tapping his stick and looking out toward the trees. This man had already made the connection between Joel and Hector, and Joel and Roger—and therefore Roger and Hector. That was a pretty good start, the old fellow thought, to get Roger in trouble. So after a time Amos simply did not answer Doran anymore. Doran would speak and Amos would blink.
    Doran sat down on a rock, and looked over toward the wood where Amos was looking. He spoke about the over-cutting of trees and the great pollution up at Little River, the ducks that had died. One hundred and thirty-two ducks. What did a First Nations man think of that? One hundred and thirty-two ducks.
    “A bunch of ducks, for sure. I don’t know,” Amos said.
    Doran spoke about the ship, the
Lutheran
, having left port, and the case now seeming stalled.
    Amos puzzled over this a moment but said nothing.
    Max opened his notebook again, looked at his five pages of notes and asked how old Amos was. Amos told him. Doran asked if he’d fought in the war.
    “Many,” Amos said, smiling and still tapping his stick on the ground.
    “And what is the one thing your people need?”
    “For all time?”
    “Yes, for all time.”
    “To be left alone,” Amos said. And he set about rolling a cigarette. He took his tobacco out and put the rolling paper on his knees and spread the tobacco. Then he rolled it carefully, with his tongue stuck in his cheek, and licked the paper. Then he snapped a match, and lighted it. Then he rubbed his ankle, which he had broken the year before, falling from his roof, and which still pained him. He was rubbing his ankle as Doran made his next comment.
    “I want to help you,” Doran said.
    “You do?”
    “Yes. You need to realize that. I am here to help—so what is it you need?”
    “I need a cold pack for my ankle,” old Amos said.
    Once last year, after Doran’s most famous article, about a mayor he had secretly taped, had been published, a young woman—a hairdresser—came up to him in the mall, and asked: “How can you do that to people?”
    But Doran had pressed on; he’d been certain of that story. And he needed no hairdresser to tell him what to do. Once, Max saw the mayor on the street and couldn’t help but tell him he had no hard feelings. He stuck out his hand for the mayor to take. Part of what he did was for himself, and part of it was to please his mentor, who egged him on, but part of it was to help pay his mother’s rent and the night nurse she now needed. He had never had a date, and except for a few older alcoholic journalists, he had never had a friend. His father had deserted him and then had died in New York ten years ago.
    “Come here,” Amos said now, and the young man walked with him to the edge of the field. When they were standing side by side, looking out over the dark edges of black spruce, Doran squinting expectantly, Amos said, “If I could, I would like to move my hunting camp from there into the boggin above the highway—beyond the Tabusintac and into the region where I went as a boy with my mom and dad. That is all gone now. Can you help me move my camp? If we do it one board at atime it will take most of