Days by moonlight Read online

  seemed less grave, I began to wonder if the farts of strangers

  were harder to tolerate than those of our intimates. I eventually

  put it down to cuisine. Strangers did not eat as we did, so perhaps

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  their flatulence was more noxious to us. When I put this idea to

  my father, he was surprised that I’d spent so much time thinking

  about it. But he made things worse by asking me what would

  happen if we started eating the cuisines of others. Would we

  come to accept, say, Macedonian farting? I now know the answer

  to his question is no. After all, I sometimes find it difficult to

  bear my own gas, let alone that unleashed by others. But I spent

  quite a bit of time puzzling his question through.

  By further coincidence, no sooner had I recalled this conver-

  sation with my father than Mr. Henderson himself farted,

  brutishly and at length.

  – Christ! he said. That was a good one.

  That, you’d have thought, would confirm my negative impres-

  sion of the man. But it didn’t. Tall and heavyset though he was,

  there was something delicate and fine about him. It wasn’t just

  that he whispered, either. (Though this did make everything he

  said sound intimate.) His hair – greying along the sides, black

  elsewhere – stuck up in spots, so there was something untamed

  and vulnerable about him. Besides which, Mr. Henderson was

  as generous and attentive as Mrs. Kelly or the Flynns had been,

  making certain we had what we wanted to eat and drink. The

  more I knew him, the more I came to feel as if, on first impression,

  I’d mistaken a dancing bear for a marauding one.

  When the air had cleared, Professor Bruno turned to the

  matter that interested him.

  – What do you remember about John Skennen? he asked.

  – What do you want to know? answered Mr. Henderson.

  – Why don’t we start with his disappearance? said the profes-

  sor. Do you know anything about it?

  – Whose disappearance? asked Mr. Henderson. John’s? I

  don’t know why people think he disappeared or died or whatever.

  He’s around here all the time.

  Professor Bruno’s left hand made what looked like an invol-

  untary movement, twitching as if he meant to grab a glass that

  69

  wasn’t there. Keeping his excitement – if it was excitement – in

  check, he said

  – When was the last time you saw him?

  – Day before last, I think, said Mr. Henderson. He’s around

  from time to time. Of course, you won’t see him today. John

  hates the Indigenous Parade. He can’t stand the crowds or the

  stupidity.

  Having heard so much about the parade – so much that made

  it seem a bad thing – I was curious to hear how someone from

  Coulson’s Hill might describe it.

  – What, I asked, is the Indigenous Parade?

  And Mr. Henderson was kind enough to answer my question.

  As with so many things in our beautiful country, the Indige-

  nous Parade was the product of a committee. It was also the

  product of an era and a longing. Like most Canadians, the people

  of Coulson’s Hill sometimes noticed that the Indigenous popu-

  lations of Canada had been mistreated in any number of ways

  and for quite some time. Most felt it was not enough to simply

  notice this. Justice demanded restitution, even if only a symbolic

  one. So, when Councillor Bergin put forward the idea of an

  “amusing but serious” form of symbolic restitution, the rest of

  the town council were receptive. “What if,” the councillor asked,

  “we had a parade and allowed Indigenous people to throw toma-

  toes – or any soft fruit – at the country’s founding fathers?”

  When Bergin added that there is a Spanish town that holds

  yearly tomato fights, the rest of the council gave their enthusiastic

  consent, it being common knowledge that European traditions

  are generally prestigious.

  For the first Indigenous Parade, various townsfolk dressed as

  the “Fathers of Confederation” – John A. Macdonald, Adams

  George Archibald, et al. – and their families. These hundred or

  so people were distributed over twelve flatbed trucks and driven

  up and down the main road while the rest of the town’s population

  – and some who’d come from as far away as Markham – dressed

  70

  in “Indigenous costumes” – eagle-feather headdresses, ceremonial

  beads, moccasins, etc. – and threw tomatoes (largely) and rotten

  plums at “George Brown,” “Alexander Campbell,” and all the rest

  of those who’d betrayed the Indigenous population of Canada.

  The parade was, economically speaking, a great success.

  To begin with, it attracted tourists. It attracted so many that

  they taxed the town’s modest resources. A number of visitors

  had to go to Nobleton, Schomberg, or East Gwillimbury to find

  accommodations. For three days, there were lineups to get into

  Coulson’s Hill’s greasy spoon (Frank’s Charbroiled Grill) and

  its one pub (the Rebarbative Moose). There were lineups to use

  public washrooms. And stores sold out of Coulson’s Hill memo-

  rabilia – in particular, a T-shirt with a picture of a highway inter-

  section in the middle of nowhere, beneath which were the words

  “Coulson’s Hill, the Possibilities Are Endless.’

  In other ways, of course, the parade was a disaster. The use

  of sacred native symbols was roundly condemned by Indigenous

  people from around the country – or, at least, by the few who

  actually heard about the parade. But so was the idea that Indige-

  nous people should be the only ones allowed to throw tomatoes

  at the Fathers of Confederation. Where, for instance, was the

  restitution for the Chinese who’d died building the railroad across

  the country? Or the Japanese who’d been driven from their homes?

  And how could Coulson’s Hill, the town, say they ‘stood with

  the Indigenous’ while enjoying the privileges that had come from

  Confederation? Then, too, there was the uncomfortable – and

  entirely unforeseen – fact that the French Fathers – George-

  Étienne Cartier, Jean-Charles Chapais, Hector-Louis Langevin,

  Étienne-Paschal Taché – and their families were more vigorously

  pelted with tomatoes than were the English Fathers.

  Politically, the first Indigenous Parade was a debacle.

  But a committee with an altruistic and profitable idea is like a

  pit bull with a cloth mouse. The Coulson’s Hill town council

  chose to reform its parade rather than cancel it. So, during the

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  second parade, no ceremonial headdresses or symbols sacred to

  Indigenous people were permitted. Those who threw tomatoes

  wore buckskin britches and moccasins. Their tops were a variety

  of shirts and blouses. Space was made for those who represented

  other groups with legitimate grievances. Some wore blackface,

  there being so few Black people in the area. And those repre-

  senting “other grievances” showed this by throwing rotten fruit

  or cooked bok choy. More: those townsfo
lk who dressed as the

  French Fathers were not distinguished from the English Fathers.

  That is, there were no fleurs-de-lys on any of the trucks. And,

  finally, the consumption of alcohol was discouraged, the parade

  being about justice – even if it was only symbolic – not drink.

  This second parade was also a mercantile boon, bringing in

  as many tourists and as much money as the first. And, like the

  first, it earned the town serious criticism, at least some of which

  might have been anticipated. For instance, any number of

  Indigenous people were insulted by the idea that they would

  stoop to such childish violence or that throwing tomatoes at

  men, women, and children dressed in nineteenth-century

  costume was any kind of restitution. On the other hand, a

  dozen or so young men from the Curve Lake and Alderville

  First Nations did participate. Being Indigenous, they did not

  dress in any special way. And they seemed to enjoy throwing

  tomatoes at the costumed Fathers. This caused real anger among

  the white people dressed as the Indigenous. Though the idea

  of Indigenous people throwing tomatoes at the Fathers of

  Confederation was appealing, the fact of it, the reality of actual

  Indigenous men throwing real tomatoes at representations of

  the Fathers, was offensive to many in Coulson’s Hill. As the

  attack was no longer altogether symbolic, it brought out passion-

  ate – not to say violent – argument and passionate defence of

  the underappreciated Caucasians who’d done so much to make

  the country what it is. The Fathers of Confederation, when you

  thought about it, had made their own (posthumous) humiliation

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  possible. And that – the constitutional possibility of humiliation

  – was something worth defending.

  The least you could say about the Coulson’s Hill’s town coun-

  cil (largely Liberal) is that its members were persistent. Over the

  years, they tweaked or changed the rules to accommodate the

  criticism they’d got. For the third parade, for instance, signs were

  put up forbidding the participation of Indigenous people in the

  Indigenous Parade, unless they wished to dress as Fathers of

  Confederation. This led, a few years later, to the ‘baffling’ seventh

  parade in which a number of Indigenous elders, dressed in cere-

  monial costume, defiantly stood on the trucks meant for the

  Fathers of Confederation while citizens representing the Indige-

  nous apprehensively threw tomatoes at them.

  Many thought this seventh parade would bury the whole

  thing beneath its avalanche of meanings. But it didn’t. Coulson’s

  Hill’s town council persisted, and the parade we saw – the

  eleventh – was yet another refinement of the original idea.

  It was a beautiful afternoon. The sky was a consistent and

  unperturbed blue, looking like a postcard of sky. At the entrance

  to town, we were asked if we had tomatoes of our own or if we

  wished to buy some. We were politely frisked to ensure we had

  no Indigenous artifacts on us – moccasins, for instance. Mr.

  Henderson generously paid for a bag of rotten tomatoes and

  then we were given blue sheets with which to cover ourselves,

  blue being a sacred colour. The sheets, which descended to our

  ankles, had eye and mouth holes cut in them and they were held

  in place by bolo ties whose clasps were red plastic circles.

  Maybe it was the day – almost quiet enough to hear crickets

  – but I found the Eleventh Annual Indigenous Parade peculiar.

  At least, it was not what I expected. All along the main street, on

  both sides, men, women, and children – each covered by their

  own blue sheet – lined up on the sidewalk in front of the town’s

  stores and small businesses. I thought the spectators were unusu-

  ally silent, until I realized that their words were muffled and their

  73

  hearing partially impeded by the sheets they wore. Most of them

  held paper bags in front of them, filled, I assumed, with tomatoes

  or rotten fruit.

  There was a kind of excitement as the trucks came into view.

  The flatbeds were identical – fifty feet long, eight feet wide –

  with white aprons. On each of the twelve flatbeds: six tall figures

  in blue sheets, six short figures in blue sheets. Those on the

  flatbeds were meant to represent the thirty-six Fathers of Confed-

  eration, their wives, and their children. Not all the Fathers had

  had two children. Most had had more. But, in parades past, the

  crowds had thrown more tomatoes at the families with greater

  numbers of children, on the understanding that the French had

  had larger families than the English in the old days.

  The spectators, beneath their blue sheets, enthusiastically

  threw tomatoes at the blue-sheeted people on the flatbeds. The

  tomatoes – a local variety known as Medicine Heart – left their

  bright red pulp in a kind of low wave along the hems of their

  sheets, few of the tomatoes hitting anyone on the trucks above

  the knees. Then, the trucks turned around and passed through

  town a second time and, once again, the blue-sheeted figures

  were pelted with tomatoes by blue-sheeted celebrants.

  And that was the Eleventh Annual Indigenous Parade done.

  After we’d sat down in the Rebarbative Moose, we were told

  that this was the best parade the town had ever held. More than

  that, most of those in the pub were convinced that this parade

  proved them morally superior to the people of Nobleton who,

  for entertainment, endangered women and children. I myself

  had a difficult time judging the relative moral densities of Noble-

  ton and Coulson’s Hill. Was it virtuous to burn down poor

  people’s homes, having given them homes in the first place?

  Was it noble to wear blue sheets and throw tomatoes at people

  who also wore blue sheets? Both events – the parade and the

  house burning – were founded in notions of justice, but both

  seemed perverse.

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  – John would agree with you, said Mr. Henderson. He calls

  both of them displays of power, not goodwill.

  The Rebarbative Moose was done up in the faux-English or

  faux-Irish style of pubs across the province. The bar was stained

  wood, as were the bar stools and most of the tables. Behind the

  bar, there was a picture of Prince Charles and his consort, Camilla.

  Beside the picture was a clock that looked like an owl with its

  eyes wide open. The pub’s name was meant to suggest England.

  At least, it sounded English to its owner, a Flemish immigrant

  who was convinced the word rebarbative was Shakespearean.

  We – Mr. Henderson, Professor Bruno, and I – sat at a table

  near the centre of the Moose. All around us, men and women

  drank a local cider known as “amber mole” – so named because,

  according to the waitress, “if you drink too much of it, you won’t

  care what hole you’re in.” Her words brought cheers from the

  tables around us. Mr. Henderson paid for our pints. But when

  the cider came, Professor Bruno p
ushed his glass toward me.

  – I’m sorry, he said, but I’m not allowed alcohol. My kidneys

  are giving me trouble. Alfie’s young. He’ll be happy to drink mine.

  He smiled at me, and, in that moment, I understood that it

  wasn’t the alcohol that troubled him but, rather, the cider itself.

  The professor had evidently tasted it before. And after my first

  mouthful I understood why he didn’t want to repeat the experi-

  ence. The cider tasted as if apple juice had been strained through

  dirty socks.

  – How do you like it? Mr. Henderson asked.

  – That’s hard to say, I answered.

  – Well, drink up, he said. I can’t stand drinking alone. It

  reminds me of my ex-wife.

  I couldn’t decide how to drink the cider. The faster I drank,

  the faster I’d get over the unpleasantness. But when I drink

  quickly, I tend to get drunk, which makes it harder to turn down

  more. The thing is, I didn’t want to get drunk, because the Moose

  had an unpleasant atmosphere. It felt as if all the pub’s patrons

  75

  were aware of our presence and weren’t happy about it. I drank

  slowly, though this meant, with every sip, I was haunted by the

  thought of someone rubbing their socks in my face.

  As it turned out, our presence was irritating to the Moose’s

  patrons. Professor Bruno resembled a person who was disliked

  in Coulson’s Hill: Bob Grenville, a man from Nobleton who’d

  seduced and impregnated a number of young women in the

  town. The seduction and impregnation were not what people

  held against him. What they couldn’t forgive was that Grenville

  had, in a drunken rage, burned down the town’s post office – a

  nineteenth-century wooden manse that had been lovingly

  preserved – because he resented that the constant demands for

  child support he received inevitably bore the stamp of the Coul-

  son’s Hill post office.

  Still, all went more or less well until, after drinking a few

  pints of cider, Mr. Henderson went off to the washroom. As

  soon as he’d gone, a man approached our table.

  – The hell you doing here? he asked.

  The pub was quiet.

  The man, who wore a red baseball cap that said Massey Fergu-

  son, swore at the professor.

  – You piece-a-shit building burner, he said. Go back to

  Nobleton.

  – I’m from around Nobleton, said Professor Bruno, but I’ve