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

spruce trees, saw it as if a conjurer had played a trick—that was the feeling Amos had when he first realized that the ship’s berth at the wharf was empty. He and Isaac stared at nothing—space and nothing else. It struck them almost as perverse, to stare at this empty wharf, while farther out in the water, as if to add insult to injury, the
Liverpool Star
was turning its engine over.
    “My God—it’s gone!” Amos said at last, in astonishment. He said this in astonishment because the fourth hold had not been filled, and he felt that the workers would have done this before they left. But they had left it the way it was, and took what they had in the other, larger holds. What would that do out in the sea, where these holds had to be balanced? This fact is what Amos had been relying on.
    Finally he looked at Isaac and shrugged and smiled. “They all ran away, Isaac. Look at that!”
    Isaac looked at Amos and said nothing. But his face was filled with a compressed rage. The incriminating load of logs was left on the wharf, as if perhaps the sailors thought it was bad luck to take.
    “Do you think I should take the logs?” Amos said.
    “How in hell should I know?”
    “Well, maybe I will take the logs, then,” Amos said. “What do you think? I mean, will they think I am stealing?”
    “We once owned a hundred billion tons of wood, and you worry about a few logs.”
    “I suppose you’re right. They might have thought they gave the ship bad luck. What do you think?”
    “How the hell should I know? All they ended up doing is running away!”
    Amos got out of the truck, and painfully and slowly loaded the eight-foot logs into his box, and got into the cab again. He looked at Isaac and smiled as if confused.
    “Yes, they left us,” he said, “but does that matter? We do not need them to figure this out. We are both very clever, you and I—and if we work together we can come to solve it ourselves.”
    But the compressed rage on Isaac’s face remained. He wanted nothing to do with this small fellow beside him.
    “Call the Coast Guard and have the ship pulled up,” Isaac said. “Do it now—they are still in Canadian waters. They haven’t even reached the last bell buoy yet.”
    Amos simply shrugged again. “What power do we have over the Coast Guard?” he asked quietly.
    Amos, who had finally got his chance to be chief, now realized the position he was in: although he had thought he would be having powwows and ceremonial meets, and exhibition hockey games against triple-A teams from around New Brunswick, a crisis was developing and he was in over his head. He remembered how many people had said Isaac should have run for chief when he came back from out west the year before. And now Joel Ginnish was out of jail and back on the reserve, his half-brother dead, and both Isaac and Joel were walking up and down.
5
    I SAAC WAS A FAR, FAR GRANDER-LOOKING MAN THAN TIRED little Amos Paul. Isaac wore his hair long, in a ponytail down his back; he wore a deer shirt with symbols. In winter he stood out against gale-force winds to protect a stretch of land for Micmac hunters—a photo of him in the local paper attested to his courage.
    Markus had dreamed that Isaac and Amos would join together and do wonderful things. But now little Amos Paul seemed outclassed and alone, hobbling around trying to keep things safe.
    On the night after Amos and Isaac had been to the wharf, Markus made his way to Isaac’s house just after dark, with the smell of gas inthe cool air and thin clouds beginning to form far away and the early croaking of frogs. The road stretched down between dilapidated houses and past unpaved streets running up against the hills into black shrubs and twisted windfalls.
    He was bothered by the thought of Hector, because of what he knew in his heart. No one had cared for Hector the way they should have. Not even Markus. They had all teased him for being skinny and tiny like a girl. And this is the one thing he