Act of Injustice Read online

  When Leonard asked his father about the Indians who had once hunted and fished in the Beaver Valley, he got the usual settler reply that they had done nothing with the land and were a thieving, lazy lot, treacherous and none too bright. Leonard doubted his father was entirely correct in his measure of the red man, but he had no way of judging; natives were rare in the Beaver Valley and he had never spoken with one.

  Leonard often searched out a large rock or mound of earth where he could stand and recite poems or deliver speeches to his imaginary troops. One day, not a hundred feet from where Eugenia Falls thunders into the chasm carved by the Beaver River, he began to voice aloud the lines of his favourite poem. Where the pools are bright and deep, he bellowed, Where the grey trout lies asleep, and so on until he had recited all six verses of A Boy’s Song. It was a poem Leonard’s mother had taught him. His voice competed with the roar of the Falls but unknown to Leonard, he was not alone. When he fell silent, he heard someone speak behind him.

  “Who are you talking to, boy? The eagles that fly with the clouds, or the fish that swim in the river?”

  Leonard turned, shocked and embarrassed. He eyes fell on the first Indian he had ever encountered. The Indian wore his hair in a long ponytail and an eagle feather rose from the back of the leather band that ran around his head. His jacket was of deerskin and it was decorated with beads. He wore leggings from his waist to his ankles and moccasins on his feet. A black leather sheath holding a knife hung from his belt.

  “I was just practicing my verse,” Leonard said. With that, he slipped past the Indian, called to his dog, and ran home.

  Two weeks later, at a clearing on the riverbank, Leonard sighted a wisp of smoke rising into the trees. Curious, he went closer and saw a man crouched near a small fire, not far from a wigwam that had been set up in the shadow of a large cedar tree. The shelter was covered with sheets of bark. An animal hide hung over what seemed to be an entrance way.

  The Indian saw Leonard and beckoned to him.

  “I have just cooked a fine trout in clay,” the Indian told him as he rose from his haunches. “If you are hungry, come and share my meal.”

  After that, Leonard became an almost daily visitor to the Indian’s wigwam.

  “My father was Wahbudick, a chief of the Chippewa of the Saugeen,” he told Leonard. “He wanted me to learn the ways of the white man. He didn’t want me to be cheated and stolen from as he was. He sent me to Owen Sound to be schooled by the priests. They gave me the name of Louis Joseph. I told them I didn’t want any white man’s name. I go by what my people called my father, Wahbudick.”

  The story that Leonard heard that day was utterly different from anything he would ever be told about the Indians. It taught him a lesson he would long remember – that you have to listen to both sides if you want to get at the truth.

  “When our people first walked on earth,” Wahbudick said, “they called themselves Anishinaabeg. It means the ‘true people’ in English. When the white men arrived, they made up their minds to steal our land. My father, the chief, would never agree to sign the white man’s treaty, so they conspired with his enemies to push him aside. The new chief went ahead and put the mark of his clan, his doodem, on the treaty. We lost over a million acres of Indian territory. That is why we call it the Great Theft.

  “We were treated in this manner after giving corn and tobacco to the white man, teaching him how to tap the maple trees, and how to stop scurvy. What did he give us in return? Smallpox and alcohol.”

  The day after the first heavy snowfall of that winter, Leonard found Wahbudick and his wigwam no longer at the river. He assumed the Indian had retired to a reserve. He missed his friend and wished he could have learned more about Indian life. Leonard knew now that not all the wonders of the natural world could be explained by what he heard in church on Sundays or what his father told him.

  Leonard first set eyes on Rosannah Leppard the summer after he’d encountered Wahbudick. He had been rummaging around the site of Wahbudick’s wigwam, hoping to find a forgotten trinket when he saw a thin girl carrying a tin pail. She was barefoot and wore a pair of overalls that were now a washed-out blue. She had brown hair and freckles and Leonard guessed she had been picking blueberries.

  “I’ve never seen you around here,” Leonard said. The girl looked at him. “They’re not your blueberries, are they?” she asked. “I guess I can pick them if I want.”

  “Course you can,” Leonard said. He asked her if she was alone and when she said she was, he told her he was surprised her mother would let her wander around in the woods. “I go anywhere I want,” she answered. Leonard told her his name and said he lived on the Beaver Valley Road. Rosannah gave her name and asked him why she had not seen him at school.

  “My mother teaches me at home,” Leonard said. “I’d like that,” Rosannah answered, “but there’s so many children at our house I don’t think my mother could ever get around to that. Anyway, she can’t read or write.”

  Leonard wondered what else he should say to this girl. More than anything, he thought she was too thin, but he did like her eyes, which were brownish and sparkled when she looked at him. And she smelled nice, unlike most people who seldom washed the sweat from their skin. As he was having this thought, he saw something in the dirt and knelt to pick it up.

  “I used to know an old Indian who camped here,” Leonard said. “He must have left this behind, it’s an arrowhead. He taught me lots of things. Told me how to make tea from cedar tips. Cures headaches and stops coughing. If you mix the tips with wood ashes and the gall bladder of a bear, it will make your teeth white and cure bad breath.” Leonard also told her the Indian had said the concoction made a man strong with a woman, although he didn’t understand the exact meaning of this.

  Rosannah laughed. “I think you’re making that up. There’s no Indians around here.”

  “Not anymore, but there used to be,” Leonard said. He told her other things about Wahbudick and offered to help her pick berries. After they’d filled Rosannah’s pail they sat on the riverbank and talked some more. They told each other they would meet again. Leonard watched her carefully before she headed off, lest he forget what she looked like. He saw her only once more that summer, when a fresh crop of blueberries had ripened, and then only for a few minutes. But he remembered her tiny toes, the pale eyebrows over her eyes, and the way her hair hung down her back. He thought about Rosannah a lot, especially about how he wanted to kiss her. He was seventeen and he had been thinking about the time he and Tom had kissed. He was sure it would be different with a girl.

  Rosannah had told him the coming school year would be her last. She was thirteen now and her mother needed her at home. One evening that fall, Leonard decided he would slip out of the house and walk to the Lerppard place. Rosannah had given him rough directions and when he got there, he realized it was a much poorer place than Vandeleur Hall. He crouched behind the split rail fence, hoping to catch a glimpse of Rosannah. Children ran in and out of the house. As dusk fell and the sky darkened, he saw Rosannah come out by herself. She was carrying a basket. She stopped at a line strung from the house to a shed and began to lift clothes from the basket and pin them to the line. He watched as she tucked her hair behind her head before stretching her arms to reach the line, revealing bare knees and the swelling of a girlish breast line. Once she’d emptied the basket, she returned to the house. Leonard stayed for another half hour but saw no one else. He went home, dodged his father who was reading in the sitting room, and snuck into bed. He thought about Rosannah until he fell asleep.

  Leonard knew he should not spy on Rosannah but his desire to see her overcame any sense of guilt. He went back to the Leppard place for the next three evenings but saw Rosannah on none of them. On the third night, his father caught him slipping in through the back door and Leonard had to make up a story about noises in the barn. He decided it would be safer, and that he’d be more likely to see Rosannah, if he went to the Leppard place in daylight
. He made his next visit late in the afternoon. After only a few minutes crouching at the fence, he saw Rosannah come out of the house and go to the shed. She came out carrying a rake. He whistled to get her attention. She smiled and waved, and came to the fence and asked him what he wanted.

  “I just wanted to see you,” Leonard said. “I liked it when we picked berries together. I wish I was in school so that I could see you every day.”

  “Well, you’re not,” she laughed. “And I don’t think you should hang around here. If my mother sees you, she’ll run you off.”

  They sat crouched on one of the limbs of the split rail fence and talked. Leonard could feel the warmth of her breath as she spoke. He told her he liked to read books that his mother received from England, and said he would read to her some time. Rosannah said they had no books in their house and if they did she wouldn’t have time to read them. Helping her mother care for her sisters and brothers took all her time.

  Leonard asked Rosannah what she would do when she no longer had to go to school.

  “Help with the kids and look for a husband, I guess,” Rosannah said. “Then I can have my own place and children of my own.”

  Leonard thought that was normal, because that’s what he expected girls to do. But for himself, he knew he wanted to see other places besides Vandeleur.

  “That’s fine for you but I’ll probably go to Toronto,” Leonard said. “Of course, I’ll have to come back someday to take over from Father. I expect to do some exciting things before then.”

  Leonard wanted to kiss Rosannah but he wasn’t sure how to go about it. He was surprised when she asked, “Would you like to kiss me?”

  He didn’t answer. Leonard pecked her cheek, and Rosannah turned her face so that he could kiss her on the lips. When their lips touched he saw that Rosannah had closed her eyes. He closed his, and in a moment felt the wetness of her mouth. He wanted to keep the kiss going but Rosannah pulled away from him.

  “I know about men,” she said. “Something happened to me a little while ago. Maybe I’ll tell you about it sometime. But one kiss, that’s all you can have. Now you have to go.”

  Chapter 9

  A DIFFERENT KIND OF GIRL

  June 14, 1872

  It was on Leonard Babington’s eighteenth birthday that he decided to become a teacher. Never having been inside a school, his idea of a classroom was constructed out of idle remarks collected from village children and of comments he’d overheard from adults. Becoming a teacher, he reasoned, would give him his best chance to free himself from his father’s control. His choice led to a serious rift between them, which was surprising given Erasmus’s insistence that Leonard be raised with an appreciation of learning. In the years since Leonard had become lost in the forest, Erasmus lived with the fear he could lose his son for good. He wanted him to stay at Vandeleur Hall and live the life of an English gentleman on the frontier, rather than launch himself on a path that might take him God knows where, with possibly unknown consequences.

  “What harm can come to me in a schoolhouse?” Leonard asked of his father. “It’ll be a lot safer than staying here on the farm where any kind of accident can happen.”

  “At least when you’re at home I can keep an eye on you,” Erasmus said. “I don’t want you running off again like you did that time in the bush.”

  Leonard considered his father’s fears ludicrous. He was determined to take the examination that was given every year to applicants for a teacher’s position. His mother encouraged him to sit for the school board test.

  Sherman Bailey, the superintendent of School Section Eleven, conducted Leonard’s examination. It took place in the little Vandeleur log schoolhouse after the teacher and the children had left for the day.

  The superintendent extracted a folder from an inside pocket of his coat. He looked over his glasses at Leonard. “The first thing you have to do,” he said, adjusting his glasses as he glanced at the paper, “is to show you can intelligently and correctly read a passage from any common book. You’ll find one on that desk. Read me a bit from it.”

  Leonard went to the desk and picked up the book. He saw it was The Luck of Roaring Camp, by the American writer of western stories, Bret Harte. He flipped it open and began to read: “We were eight, including the driver. We had not spoken during the passage of the last six miles ...”

  “That’s enough Leonard. I see you can read just fine. Now, spell out the words from this sentence: ‘The world is an enormous place and it is filled with opportunity for any man who is a British subject.’” A few seconds went by as Leonard circled the table, repeating the sentence and spelling out its words as he walked. Mr. Bailey followed him with his eyes.

  “You can sit down, you know.” Leonard had spelled each and every word correctly. He didn’t want to admit he had been too nervous to sit.

  “You must also be able to write a plain hand,” the superintendent told Leonard. “Go to the desk and copy something from that book you were just reading.” He wrote in a flowing hand, free of smudges or errors, finishing with a swirl that marked his signature and the date. Leonard handed his sheet to Mr. Bailey and awaited his reaction. The superintendent nodded, smiling.

  Next had come a series of questions on arithmetic and a discussion of the elements of English grammar. There was a brief lecture by Mr. Bailey on the importance of maintaining discipline, followed by an admonition to be seen in church each Sunday and to lead a pure, moral life.

  “A good schoolmaster must serve as a model of rectitude for his students,” he added. “And must never hesitate to use the strap.”

  Mr. Bailey appeared to be pondering what he had told Leonard. He mashed his lips together, frowned, and replaced the folder he had withdrawn from his coat.

  “Your answers are exemplary, Leonard,” he said. “I’ll notify the Board and you can expect to start in September. Twenty dollars for the school year.”

  Mr. Bailey had one more thing to say to Leonard:

  “Most folks around here can‘t read or write. We’ve got to do a better job in raising up our children. We’ll be counting on you to see to that.”

  The single room in the Vandeleur school was filled with six rows of desks in various sizes, designed to fit children from tykes to strapping teen-age boys. The room contained a globe, a pull down map of the world showing the British Empire in red, and a blackboard that ran along one wall. A Waterman & Waterbury stove stood at the back of the room. In cold weather, it was the job of one of the older boys to keep it supplied with wood. On wet days, clothes and boots steamed away their dampness beside it. There was much excitement when mice, seeking a warmer home than the woodshed fastened to the side of the school, ran into the classroom and darted among the desks. There were outhouses for boys and girls at the back of the property.

  Leonard welcomed two dozen children of varying ages that fall. Enrollment dropped off to fewer than twenty during the winter. Not many had warm clothes and sometimes children stayed home because they had no shoes.

  He took care to arrive home each winter night by dark. If marking papers kept him late, his father hounded him as to where he had been and what he had done. “I have my responsibilities,” Leonard told him. “I can’t come home until I’ve marked the students’ papers and prepared the next day’s lesson.” Erasmus’s attitude infuriated Leonard. He tried not to show disrespect.

  It was not long before Leonard learned that a schoolroom could offer distractions to a young man such as he. Every few days, one of the older girls would try to get his attention by letting their bodies touch when they passed by him.

  In his first year, it was most often Abigail, a younger sister of Rosannah, who did her best to fascinate Leonard. But it was Rosannah, who returned to the school from time to time to collect her sister, who held his interest.

  Leonard knew he had grown up a good-looking young man. He was tall, with long limbs and slim fingers. When he looked in the mirror, he saw a pleasant face with clear blue eyes and a hig
h forehead. His light brown hair was parted on the left. He shaved faithfully every day – not many in Vandeleur did – and he did his best to dress with care. Leonard knew that his most distinguishing physical characteristic was seldom noted, for which he was thankful. He had a sunken chest, an abnormality which caused him to sometimes suffer heart pains. A side effect was that he was often chilly. Fearing ridicule, Leonard took care to camouflage these aspects of his make-up. His compulsion to do so gave rise to empathy for those who were unable to disguise more evident handicaps.

  Leonard indulged in petting and kissing with a number of girls by the time he was sixteen. He lost his virginity during a stroll with the visiting niece of the local storekeeper. They made love cradled by a tree that stood not more than twenty feet from the edge of Eugenia Falls. The sound of rushing water drowned out their tentative cries.

  Leonard was caught by surprise when Rosannah invited him to a Leppard family picnic in the spring of his second year of teaching. As he considered what she had said, his eyes scanned a face that showed traces of freckles, but one that liked to laugh. He smiled and said he would like to come.

  When Leonard arrived at the river he found Rosannah was alone. “There’s lots of food,” she said. “Nobody else could come.” Leonard noticed Rosannah had brightened her lips with some kind of colouring. He felt a pleasurable anticipation of what the afternoon might bring.

  Leonard had carried his fishing pole with him. It gave him the chance to divert their conversation in an innocent direction. He noticed a large tree had fallen into the water. “Come, that looks like a good place to fish,” he said. Together, they clambered onto the log and lay, face down, staring into the water. They watched fish swim beneath the overhanging branches, in water so clear they could see the pebbles on the bottom. Leonard pointed out the profusion of flowers blooming on the river bank: hepatica, the white trillium, Lady’s Slipper, crimson bloodroot, adder’s tongue, and others.