The Cast Stone Read Online Free Page B

sister in the city and I have a new life to figure out. I’m alone and I have time to think again. And do you know what I think about for the next twenty years?”
    â€œNo.” Ben shook his head.
    â€œI wondered what happened to the pictures.”
    â€œWhat pictures?”
    â€œThe pictures of Father Lambert. What other pictures?” Rosie waited for an answer.
    Ben did not have an answer; he sat back and took the time he needed. Three years he had been home. Rosie came over almost every day; she drank tea, nibbled cookies, told stories and retold stories, offered to sew buttons back on, made him moccasins and a beautiful pair of gauntlets covered with otter fur and she never asked, or talked about that summer. He had relaxed, maybe she would never ask, but now there it was; the question.
    â€œThere are no pictures, never were; I stole the camera from the school, but there was no film.”
    â€œYou bluffed him?” Her face changed, serious Rosie dissolved into everyday Rosie. “You bluffed a priest with an empty camera.” She shook her head in disbelief. “You always had that, that something.” Rosie did not have the words to describe Ben’s inherent sense of absolute justice, his determination, his sense of self and place that overwhelmed less aware people.
    â€œI’m sorry, Rosie.”
    â€œNo. No don’t ever say that. If you apologize then you did something wrong and I can blame you, and I don’t ever want to blame you. It wasn’t you. All you did was ask me to put on my little sister’s red dress and go play in front of the church. He did the rest. When you came with the camera you saved me from him. It wasn’t your fault for what he done.”
    â€œI’m sorry, Rosie, I’m sorry because I didn’t think you would get there so quick. By the time I broke into the school and got the camera and got back, well . . . ”
    â€œBut you did get back, and he saw you with the camera, and he never touched me or any other kid on this reserve again. I don’t blame you Ben. I’m proud of you. You took on a priest and beat him. You forced him off the reserve and now I find out the camera was empty. Well, in a way that’s a good thing. Nobody will ever see my shame.”

    Ambrose Whitecalf never went to university along with the others, his brothers, his classmates. Red dutifully finished grade twelve, honoured his parent’s wishes, attended the graduation ceremony that was for them, not him. He didn’t care. It wasn’t important. It simply marked the end of an era. Graduation was the signal of freedom, freedom to go back to the land, to enjoy the earth.
    Red was law-abiding. But it was his law that he abided. Red’s law wasn’t much different than that written in criminal codes. The principles were the same. Respect others, take care of your family, don’t interfere. Red’s law imposed upon him a duty to help anyone who asked. He had no desire to change the world, not even to push the Americans back across the old border. They were part of a world that had no impact on him; they didn’t matter. Their rules and regulations and imposed security were meaningless in the forest.
    Their economy was not Red’s economy. He cut a bit of firewood for people who still burned firewood, took the bit of money they gave, sold a bit of fish and a bit of moose meat occasionally. Sometimes in good years he sold some of the rabbits he snared to people who remembered eating rabbit but were too busy trying to earn a living to take the time to go to the forest, cut a few young tender pine and scatter them around until the rabbits came to feast. He pitied and loved those people, the ones who remembered how it was, the ones who smiled at their memories as they reached for the stringy meat that would go into their soup. They paid with big, happy smiles, not caring that the price per pound, if calculated, would bring