war bride, whom he secretly belittled, that he was interested in, and Rosa he made pregnant. At the end of November she fled with him, her room emptied only of one suitcase, her childhood toys left behind.
“Charlie thought he would get my money—because of you—you were his ACT OF REVENGE upon the Chapmans he accused without proof of killing his father, your grandfather. He NEVER would get my money—and so he left her and you, to try his hand in Montreal again. He died in 1971. There is a photo of him during the October Crisis. He is screaming at the soldiers on the street. He was a Quebec nationalist at that time, and gloating over the idea that Canada would be no more. This, I think, was his last great lashing out at us.”
This was all that was revealed about where Alex came from and who he was. A picture of a man at the back of a crowd of five thousand, some arms raised against a black October sky.
There was also a long, detailed, and painful document on his father negotiating for money from Jim and Muriel if he allow “the boy to stay with you.” This was written in his father’s own shaking hand; at that time he could not have been much more than thirty-six or so. The arrived-at price for this boy, this Alex Roach to become and remain Alex Chapman was $4541.11. There was a check written out, not to his father but to a woman called Samantha Debelshoult. His last known address was Laval.
So Alex had not been Micmac after all, and now nothing remained of who he might have been. He knew nothing about this sad, angry man or his family. So was doubly orphaned. He trembled all that night as he sat at the table. Muriel came in and hugged him, and he flinched away from her, his lanky, thin body frigid. She had known and had not said anything.
He trembled all the next day as he sat in class. Half of his teachers would have remembered his father and mother, and never had said a thing. Even Eugene Gallant, who had been so kind to him, would have known, and had said nothing to correct this love for a French-Micmac father who wasn’t.
He knew his mother must have been used as a pawn in this act against Jim Chapman—and he too—and over the years details would come to the fore and be remembered by him about that long ago time.
For two months he did not speak to anyone. Then he went once to his real grandfather’s house—near the South Talon Road off Arron Brook, in back of Minnie Patch’s. There a doleful paddock and singed fence. It was autumn and the sky was furious, and one lame horse walked, and snow started, and he was alone. (The house would be left abandoned and then burn five years later in the Lean-to Creek fire—the fire that Alex himself had to beat back with a broom from his own small place.)
Afterwards, when his uncle looked at him, Alex trembled, and his uncle said nothing, except: “Don’t worry, boy—don’t worry. It ain’t so bad to be a Roach or anything else. And he was a sad man at the end to jump from the Jacques Cartier Bridge.”
This was something Alex did not know. He sat stunned, and couldn’t respond.
Then one day the documents were removed from his room, and he never saw them again.
“Don’t worry about your heritage, boy—you make your own,” the old man said.
He sat in desolation another few days, and then recovered. And in a way this is what he decided: He would tell people he was whoever he wanted, if he wanted to, and continue on the way he was.
—
H E DID NOT KNOW WHAT TO DO ABOUT M INNIE T UCKER . He was still in love with her, deeply, when a missionary visited his aunt—because she was bound by a wheelchair, and Jim Chapman asked him to go down and cheer the girl up and give her communion. The idea that this priest was a special priest gave Jim a grand feeling of elation, and a look of piety when the priest spoke out in the dooryard to him. Piety of the kind always associated with privately violent men.
So the priest came in, through the doorway of the house
“Charlie thought he would get my money—because of you—you were his ACT OF REVENGE upon the Chapmans he accused without proof of killing his father, your grandfather. He NEVER would get my money—and so he left her and you, to try his hand in Montreal again. He died in 1971. There is a photo of him during the October Crisis. He is screaming at the soldiers on the street. He was a Quebec nationalist at that time, and gloating over the idea that Canada would be no more. This, I think, was his last great lashing out at us.”
This was all that was revealed about where Alex came from and who he was. A picture of a man at the back of a crowd of five thousand, some arms raised against a black October sky.
There was also a long, detailed, and painful document on his father negotiating for money from Jim and Muriel if he allow “the boy to stay with you.” This was written in his father’s own shaking hand; at that time he could not have been much more than thirty-six or so. The arrived-at price for this boy, this Alex Roach to become and remain Alex Chapman was $4541.11. There was a check written out, not to his father but to a woman called Samantha Debelshoult. His last known address was Laval.
So Alex had not been Micmac after all, and now nothing remained of who he might have been. He knew nothing about this sad, angry man or his family. So was doubly orphaned. He trembled all that night as he sat at the table. Muriel came in and hugged him, and he flinched away from her, his lanky, thin body frigid. She had known and had not said anything.
He trembled all the next day as he sat in class. Half of his teachers would have remembered his father and mother, and never had said a thing. Even Eugene Gallant, who had been so kind to him, would have known, and had said nothing to correct this love for a French-Micmac father who wasn’t.
He knew his mother must have been used as a pawn in this act against Jim Chapman—and he too—and over the years details would come to the fore and be remembered by him about that long ago time.
For two months he did not speak to anyone. Then he went once to his real grandfather’s house—near the South Talon Road off Arron Brook, in back of Minnie Patch’s. There a doleful paddock and singed fence. It was autumn and the sky was furious, and one lame horse walked, and snow started, and he was alone. (The house would be left abandoned and then burn five years later in the Lean-to Creek fire—the fire that Alex himself had to beat back with a broom from his own small place.)
Afterwards, when his uncle looked at him, Alex trembled, and his uncle said nothing, except: “Don’t worry, boy—don’t worry. It ain’t so bad to be a Roach or anything else. And he was a sad man at the end to jump from the Jacques Cartier Bridge.”
This was something Alex did not know. He sat stunned, and couldn’t respond.
Then one day the documents were removed from his room, and he never saw them again.
“Don’t worry about your heritage, boy—you make your own,” the old man said.
He sat in desolation another few days, and then recovered. And in a way this is what he decided: He would tell people he was whoever he wanted, if he wanted to, and continue on the way he was.
—
H E DID NOT KNOW WHAT TO DO ABOUT M INNIE T UCKER . He was still in love with her, deeply, when a missionary visited his aunt—because she was bound by a wheelchair, and Jim Chapman asked him to go down and cheer the girl up and give her communion. The idea that this priest was a special priest gave Jim a grand feeling of elation, and a look of piety when the priest spoke out in the dooryard to him. Piety of the kind always associated with privately violent men.
So the priest came in, through the doorway of the house
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