The Republic of Nothing (40 page)

“I thought you said you were a pacifist, like Gwen,” I said. “It's me, Ian.”

“Jesus, Ian. Why didn't you say something?”

“Can I move?”

“Yes, you can move. The switch is inside. Besides, it's only 7500 volts at an amperage that would only feel like you stuck your toes in a wall socket. It will hurt but it won't kill. And to set the record straight, I said I approved of pacifism. I didn't necessarily say I was a pacifist. Violence has its place when it comes to self-protection. Get over here and tell me what's going on.”

Still a little shaken by the thought of electricity passing up my anatomy to my groin, I gingerly tiptoed to the back door. Ernie seemed genuinely happy to see me. “What are you doing out so late?”

“It's a little complicated,” I said, not quite ready yet to explain.

He changed the subject. “I was a young man once, too, you know. Complicated times. Hormones flooding through your system, your whole life ahead of you like an unexplored galaxy. Here, look at this.” He led me over to the TV screen he had been monitoring. I wanted to tell him it didn't have anything to do with hormones, but I was still a little reluctant to own up to an adult that my heart was set on vandalism.

“Interesting, isn't it?” he said. I stared at the dots of light on the dark screen. “Right there.” He pointed to one that was moving.

I shrugged. I couldn't see what the excitement was about.

“A comet passing close to the earth. I'm picking up its trail with my dish outside. I've been tracking it for days. It's now at its closest point to us.”

“That's really something,” I said, trying to sound impressed. But from where I stood, the little TV monitor could just have been any portable TV set tuned to a channel where the network had gone off the air.

“The important thing is that this comet has never passed through the solar system before and never will again. It's small and what detectable radio waves it does send off are on such a low band width and frequency that no one but me with this rig would pick it up. You are, my friend, privy at this minute to a phenomena that can be afforded only once in a lifetime — nay, once in the history of the earth.” And with that, the tiny dot of moving light moved off the screen and was gone. “Don't tell anyone you saw it. I'm not into sharing my discoveries.”

“Okay by me. Does it have a name?”

“Of course not. No one knows about it but us.”

“Can we call it Gwendolyn?” I asked.

Tennessee Ernie's face lit up. “You betcha. Comet Gwendolyn it is.”

I looked around at all the weird gear — the TV monitors, the electronic equipment, the row of car batteries along the
wall. Tennessee switched off the TV and looked at the can I was holding. “What's the paint for?” he asked.

After sharing the discovery of a previously unknown comet with this man, I felt a little foolish in telling him what the paint was for. “I want to let the uranium creeps know how I feel about them,” I said.

Ernie scratched his jaw. “Communication is an excellent idea, Ian. I agree. Just how
strong
a message did you have in mind?”

“I thought I might say that they weren't wanted on the island,” I said, still not sure how he would react to the rest. “And then I was going to punctuate the message by pouring sand into the gas tank of the drill truck.”

Tennessee raised his eyebrows, shook his head up and down like he understood, then looked around the room. “I'm not quite clear on exactly why you came over here to tell
me
this.”

“I guess I was looking for some company. I wanted to see if you wanted to come along.”

He looked a little confused. “Son, that is a very interesting proposition for a man like me. A man who has a few gripes, yes, against the nuclear industry but who has declared to his daughter and before her friend that, well, I approve of pacifism. But this, I must say, sounds like an act of vandalism — a destructive act, a hostile one even.”

“Yes sir,” I said. Maybe I had made a mistake by coming over. “But remember, you just said you
approved
of pacifism, yet you weren't a pacifist yourself.”

He turned to me now, a finger shaking at me. “That's right. You have captured the logic of the moment. And, like your father, I can see that you are, in essence, a politician, for this is indeed a political act. And while I cannot fully approve of your act of destruction, perhaps I can do what men of science have always done for politicians down through the ages.”

“What's that?”

Tennessee Ernie lit up into a smile. “Improve the weapons
of destruction without feeling any sense of moral responsibility whatsoever.”

I didn't understand what he was getting at.

“Sand is not a totally effective revolutionary weapon against diesel equipment. There are gas line and carburettor filters which would catch much of it. I have a better solution.” He pointed to the string of car batteries on the floor.

As we walked through the marsh to the drill truck, I held the plastic quart bottle of acid away from my chest, anxious that it would not eat through and burn my hands to bloody stumps.

“You see, Ian, it's very interesting what will happen once the acid is inside the piston chamber and that's why I think this is an excellent revolutionary tool.”

“I guess it'll really muck it up pretty bad, huh?”

“I'd say the operative terms are
corrosion
and
seizure.
Those are two very powerful words.”

I agreed that they were two powerful words and as we arrived at the truck, each of us carrying one quart of the revolutionary liquid, Tennessee jimmied opened the truck door, popped the latch on the engine bonnet and held a flashlight towards the engine block. “Take off the air cleaner and carefully pour each bottle down the carburettor. Keep your face well away; you'll not like the stench.” I emptied both bottles in, replaced the air cleaner beneath the beam of Ernie's flashlight and obvious approval. Then we lowered the hood.

“There's the punctuation,” Tennessee said, collecting the two plastic bottles to take home, “Now what's the message?”

I picked up the paint can, pried off the lid and stirred it with the brush. I had thought it over long and hard but wasn't quite sure of how to word it.

“Be direct and to the point,” Tennessee suggested.

I dipped the brush into the paint and began to paint the message: “Go Home!” I wrote. “Long Live The Republic of Nothing.”

Tennessee shone his bright flashlight on my awkward scrawl.
“I think they'll get the picture. Science and politics sometimes work well together hand-in-hand, don't they?”

Late the next morning, I watched from my vantage point up on the hill as the Mannheim/Atlanta men shouted at the drill operators who screamed back at them. When the shouting subsided, Bud Tillish could be seen walking out through the marsh in his city-slicker clothes and, when he'd had a chance to read my message, he started waving his fists up at the sky and using very foul language. I guess I was fool enough to think right then that it was almost over, that Mannheim/Atlanta would go away and that everyone would leave us alone. I was a fairly inexperienced terrorist and had high hopes for the politics of anarchy.

Instead, two hours later an RCMP car passed over the bridge and began making the rounds, asking everyone if they knew who might have wrecked the diesel engine in the drill rig. The Mountie, a square-headed man who introduced himself as Corporal Bellefontaine, caught up with me as I was walking home from a visit with Hants Buckler. “What's your name, son?” he asked.

“Ian McQuade, sir,” I said. I was feeling cocky in the great success of my first truly important act of vandalism. I had already decided I wanted to be an anarchist for life and that my first step beyond mere diesel destruction was to turn myself in and become a full-fledged martyr so as to drum up a ground-swell of support for the cause of preserving this beautiful island and liberating the Republic of Nothing from the Mannheim/Atlanta mining people.

“Jesus, are you the premier's son?”

“Yes sir,” I said. “Everett McQuade is my old man.” This was almost too perfect. I was ready to throw a wrench into the works of my father's political career and get myself busted for a good cause all in the same breath. If only Gwen could be here to see this.

But the cop had lost his cold, businesslike style. “I always kind of appreciated McQuade. He's okay. That free fish thing and then just sweeping into Halifax and showing up those other dickheads. I kinda like the idea of a premier coming from right here on the Shore. I hope he makes prime minister some day. Listen, you don't know anything about somebody vandalizing that drilling truck, do you?”

I swear to God, I was about to tell him the truth. The words were just getting all nervous and jumpy in the back of my throat like a pack of birds ready to get released from a cage. But then I saw something that made me stop. A pink and blue Volkswagen van was just driving over the bridge. As soon as it passed over onto the island, it stopped. Someone looked out the window, someone who clearly didn't like the look of the RCMP car. It was somebody with long hair, but I couldn't make out the face. It could have been a girl or a guy with really long locks. Whoever it was quickly veered left, down the old rutted lane towards Mr. Kirk's old place. The cop had noticed nothing in his rear view mirror. His radio was crackling and he hadn't heard the van as it pulled away.

“Never heard of any vandalism on the island the whole time I lived here and I've lived here my whole life,” I heard myself say.

“I must admit that, up until now, you're right. Shit, we never get a call to come out here. Wait till you get a bunch of them miners out here digging that ore they been talking about. Then you'll have a mess of fights and piles of trouble. Wait and see.”

“Sorry I can't be of more help,” I said.

“Let me know if you see anything odd, okay? And say hi to your dad for me. Tell him he's done real good work.”

“Sure thing,” I said as the Mountie turned his car around and drove back to the mainland. I couldn't get the image of the VW van out of my head. Whoever was driving seemed to know where to go, and I had the clear impression that the driver didn't want to get seen by the cops.

I had never seen a Volkswagen bus come across the bridge onto our island before. It represented an exotic
other
culture — the world of American hippies, protesters, a beautiful bag of mixed craziness and spiritual purpose. But today, to me, it meant only one thing. Gwen was back on the island. I had seen the license plate and had made sure that the Mountie was looking at me so he wouldn't see it head down the lane to the old Kirk house. As soon as the cop was across the bridge and out of view, I ran. I forgot about uranium and remembered my heart, the poor, busted up thing inside me that ached for this girl. I was tired of being half alive; she had come back to me.

Or had she? As I got closer I realized that she was not alone. There was at least one other person in the van. I stopped in my tracks and ran through the scenario — the awful, ugly possibility.
Gwen was back with another guy. She had found herself a new boyfriend, a lover.
I wasn't sure I could confront that. Not here, not now. Not ever. But what could I do? Disappear from the island? Go hide somewhere? I felt completely screwed. Yet I couldn't just stand there forever in the muddy rut and not know. So I walked to my execution.

As I approached the Kirk property, I saw Ben first. He was up on the boards of his roof, talking to someone on the ground. A girl in a long paisley dress. Her long light brown hair spilled out from under a leather hat down to the middle of her back. It was Gwen and, already, I could see that she was different. And yes, there
was
someone else sitting in the van. Definitely male. Something about him seemed dark and sinister. I expected that Gwen had taken up with the devil himself. It could only be appropriate.

Ben saw me and waved, nearly losing his footing. “Look who's back!” he yelled.

Gwen turned around and I could see how different she
really was. The hat. A pair of round, rose-tinted glasses, her long hair dangling down either side of her head. I forgot how to walk. Then I forgot how to breathe. I looked up at Ben who had a shit-eating grin on his face. He didn't understand. I looked at the sinister figure still huddled in the van. He was smoking something. A thin vapour trail rose up out from the window.
The devil smokes,
I thought.

Gwen hoisted her skirt, kicked off her sandals and began to run towards me. “Ian!” she screamed. I could see her teeth sparkling in the sun. I watched her lovely legs bounce from rock to rock along the path — that incredible skill we had learned as children running on the island. But she was not a child; there was no doubt of that. She flowed like a woman as she ran towards me; she floated as if in a dream.
Good news/bad news/good news/bad news? Breathe,
I instructed myself.
Damn it. You remember how to do it.
I let go a lungful of stale air and my throat automatically pulled in one good gulp of oxygen before she pounced on me.