3

Once Colonel Swiggert’s bones were discovered and it was established, beyond a doubt, that Atuk had eaten him, the Americans expected swift justice. Misinformed, as usual, they had not figured on the fresh spirit of nationalism that was rampant in the dominion. As for Atuk, it was reported that his only request was that his little brothers and sisters should be allowed to return safely to their natural habitat – the Bay he would see no more.

The afternoon of Atuk’s arrest the country – stunned – maybe even a little astonished by the nature of the Eskimo poet’s crime – was still. The giant of the north held its breath. Knocked back on its heels, Canada needed time. Fortunately, not that much time. For only a half hour after Atuk was incarcerated a series of man-on-the-street interviews carried by the CBC revealed that plain people everywhere were heart and soul with the Eskimo.

‘He has such a nice face,’ a Saskatoon housewife said. While a hospital dietician in Victoria said, ‘He must have been very hungry.’ A man in Calgary asked, ‘What was that Yankee blankety-blank doing in our arctic, anyway?’ Another, in Moncton, said, ‘Where were they in 1916 or ’39. Ask ’em that.’

One by one the people were heard.

‘Johnny Canuck,’ a CBC commentator said, shedding his horn-rimmed glasses and looking very severe, ‘has been roused from his slumber. From coast to coast he speaks. The accents differ, but the voice is the same.’ Frowning deeply, he put on his glasses again. ‘The voice,’ he said, ‘is an angry one.’

The Canadians spoke up.

A mechanic who had been fired by General Motors; a man whose Buick had broken down and another with a GE mix-master that didn’t work; a widow who had bought oil shares in a Texas swamp; another whose most unforgettable character had been rejected by the Reader’s Digest; a couple who had been asked for their marriage licence in a Florida motel; a retired army officer who, presenting a twenty-dollar bill in a New York restaurant, had been asked, ‘What’s this, baby? Monopoly money …’; people who didn’t like last week’s Ed Sullivan show or felt they ought to give Toronto a major league baseball team; some who recalled Senator McCarthy; a man whose claim against All-State hadn’t been honoured; a politician who had never made the Canadian section of Time; and more, many more, wrote to their newspapers, phoned their local television stations, and wired their MPs.

Only a hop, skip, and a jump behind came the intellectuals.

‘What sort of example,’ Seymour Bone demanded, ‘has, say, Charles Van Doren set for a simple Eskimo?’

A prominent sports writer recalled the Chicago baseball scandal.

‘This is not a banana republic,’ an important novelist said.

A University of Toronto psychologist pointed out, ‘Atuk’s act was one of symbolic revenge. Culturally, economically, the Americans are eating our whole country alive.’

‘The poet,’ a western critic said, ‘is essentially a childish person. You can’t apply normal standards of behaviour to the creative ones. Really, there’s no saying what they’ll do next.’

‘Like they killed Dylan,’ Harry Snipes said.

During the night American cars were wrecked by wandering hordes, Coca-Cola signs were ripped down, and copies of American books were burned on street corners. The CBC hastily cancelled a production of Our Town.

Alert producers dug into bottom drawers and hurried from place to place with pilot films for series to replace Wagon Train, The Defenders, and Ben Casey. Jimmy McFarlane of McFarlane & Renfrew ordered an immediate reprint of Eskimo Song, proceeds for the Atuk Defence Fund. By morning the fat was in the fire.

‘While we would be the last to condone cannibalism,’ the editorial writer on the Standard wrote, ‘we do feel that Atuk, a simple man, is a special case. US Army officers had no business in his land disturbing an age-old and time-honoured way of life. Flatly, pardon him. We’re passing the buck to you, Dief.’

The Post was even more forceful.

‘One of the most neglected, long-suffering, and tragic of our minority groups has suffered another blow to its pride. The noble Eskimo never complains. For help he asks us not. Freedom-loving, proud, he asks only to be allowed to hunt as his father’s fathers have before him. Unlike other minority groups we could cite he has organized no anti-defamation leagues. He sends no representatives to make long-winded speeches at that excuse for a debating club, the UN. Yet who is more entitled to aid than the original Canadian? What ethnic group are we more indebted to? None.

‘Yet we allow armed and ignorant foreigners to enter his land and meddle with his folk practices. Practices unfathomable to us, I gainsay, but sacred to our brothers in the igloo. The question, it seems to me, is not did he eat or not eat him. I wouldn’t. You wouldn’t. But live and let live has always been our policy. What the Eskimo does in his land is not our affair – and certainly not Uncle Sam’s. The trouble with the affluent society to the south of us is that they have been ruined by status-seeking and hidden persuasion and dream-merchants. They would impose conformity on all of us. Take back your minks, we say. Your homosexual playwrights can stay home. We don’t need your pipe-lines. But, above all, leave our Eskimos alone.’

HANDS OFF THE ESKIMO, the Gazette headline demanded, and, on its editorial page, it recommended a sympathy march on Ottawa. Suddenly, as if by a sweep of Twentyman’s hand, march co-ordinators, group captains, bands, placards, Esky-Food trucks, and helicopter ambulances appeared in strategic areas. Snipes, of Metro, promised a Miss Liberation Contest. Newspapers all across Canada, from left to right, came out solidly behind Atuk, though none went so far as the communist weekly Tribune. IT’S A WONDER, the Tribune headline read, HE DIDN’T DIE OF PTOMAINE POISONING.

Atuk, with Rabbi Glenn Seigal almost constantly by his side, made only one short, simple statement.

‘Is much sadness for me here. Man against man. Ungood. Tell them back at the Bay, Atuk will try to die tall, even as the Old One taught us in happier hunting days.’

Only Jean-Paul McEwen came out fearlessly against the Eskimo. She demanded the death sentence for Atuk. But, as the Gazette pointed out compassionately in a later editorial, McEwen had relatives in the United States, and it was just possible that their safety had been threatened. Under a headline, NO COMMENT, the Post published a picture of McEwen shaking hands with an American lady senator. The columnist’s effectiveness was undermined, and the concept (shortly to become an alarming actuality) of the Committee to Investigate Pro-American Activities was born.

BZZZ … zzzz … zzz. . zz. . z. . z …

Singing, full of fight, the marchers moved on the jailhouse.

‘45.8,’ Rory said. ‘Good.’ He reached for the mouthpiece. ‘All right, Brunhilde. Zero in.’

Nothing.

‘Zero in, Brunhilde!’

All eyes were on the hatch. Clang! It seemed, oddly enough, like something had been jammed into place outside.

‘Brunhilde, will you zero in please.’

All the senior directors of Twentyman’s vast, interlocking pyramid of food enterprises were assembled in the board room, waiting.

‘Can’t understand it,’ Farley said. ‘Rory’s never been late before.’

Another director spoke up bitterly. ‘I don’t blame him for being late. I’ve never questioned Buck’s judgement before,’ he said, turning to the others, ‘but I don’t see how we’re going to get Esky-Foods off the ground. Do you realize that this puts us in direct competition with one of America’s largest, most deeply entrenched, go-ahead food combines?’

Nobody dared add that Twentyman, to the astonishment of all of them, had suddenly leased the rights to STICK OUT YOUR NECK to the same American combine. His arch-competitor in a new field.

‘I think this time Buck has over-stepped the mark in more ways than one,’ another director finally said.

‘Harry’s right. He’s created a Frankenstein. If Atuk’s pardoned, and it just looks like he might be, there’s no saying what in the hell he’ll do next.’

‘And if he isn’t the country will go hog-wild. A beast without a head.’

‘But Buck can—’

‘They’d never accept Buck as a leader. Let’s face it, he’s universally despised.’

‘Buck’s bitten off big pieces before and he’s never gone wrong.’

‘I think the trouble is he never figured on Atuk getting so much support across the country.’

‘Nonsense. Buck always figures every angle.’

‘Maybe, but this time, whatever happens, he’s in for trouble.’

It was almost time for STICK OUT YOUR NECK. Bette was escorted to a waiting limousine.

‘Easy does it.’

‘But Atuk’s in jail. How can he—?’

‘They’re letting him out under armed escort to appear on the show.’

‘Well,’ Bette said, ‘you have to give him credit no matter what. He’s certainly shooting for the bull’s-eye tonight.’

Rory seized his mouthpiece again. ‘Brunhilde, I know you’re out there. Now listen, listen carefully. I have an important appointment in town. This joke has gone far enough. Now will you please open up?’

But it seemed to Rory he heard a car, his car, drive off.

The marchers shouted, ‘We want Atuk! We want Atuk!’

Panofsky shielded his eyes from the brilliant light. ‘I’d like to help you, captain. But there were so many, so many names. It was all in the interest of scientific research, you know.’

Derm Gabbard skipped onstage before the cheering studio audience. ‘Hiya, folks!’

‘Hi, Derm!’

‘Folks, it’s time for …?’

‘STICK OUT YOUR NECK!’

An electronic button was pressed, a curtain lifted, and revealed was an enormous wire tub packed with a million in one dollar bills.

‘Ooooh!’

‘Wow!’

Derm dived into the tubful of money, threw a shower of bills in the air, giggled, and dived again as four guards released the safety catches on their sub-machine guns and stepped closer to the audience. Derm came up again, his eyes crossed. He sang, ‘It isn’t raining rain, you know … it’s raining GOLD! SILVER! DOLLARS!’

Another electronic button was pressed, another curtain rose, the Calgary Coyotes struck up ‘For He’s A Jolly Good Fellow’, and for the first time the audience saw the contestant, Atuk, his head locked in a guillotine.

‘Come on, folks,’ Derm demanded, ‘let’s have a great big hand for Atuk.’

Everyone applauded.

‘Is he a good sport?’

‘Yes.’

‘You said it, Derm!’

‘I want you to know, folks, that this is no phoney-style American quiz show. Have you been given any hints, Atuk?’

‘No, sir.’

‘Have you been coached?’

‘No, sir.’

Derm winked at the studio audience. ‘Nervous?’ he asked, grinning.

‘Yes, sir.’

‘You betcha. You betcha life he is! Whoops, time for the commercial.’

The message from the frozen food combine, one of the largest in the United States, had been filmed in New York.

Twentyman waved and smiled. Atuk smiled back. Above, the blade gleamed.

‘Watcha going to do with all the loot, if you win?’ Derm asked.

‘Build a hospital for my people on the Bay.’

‘Waddiya say, gang? Isn’t he terrific?’

Cheers. Whistles.

‘Well, folks, you all know the rules. Two warm-up questions and then the question and then he …?’ Derm leaned toward the audience, cupping his ear. ‘He …?’

‘STICKS HIS NECK OUT!’

‘Righty-ho! If he’s right the million smackers are his but if he’s wrong …’ Derm made a sweeping gesture. ‘KER-PLUNK!’

Cameras cut to nurses and male attendants as they assumed their places among the audience. A doctor and two nurses, the latter wearing black tights and net stockings, appeared onstage. One of the nurses stooped, kissed Atuk’s head, and placed a basket underneath it. The other wound a strap round his arm. Atuk winked at Goldie.

‘What’s his blood pressure?’ Derm asked.

‘High-ish.’

‘You betcha life it is! Pulse?’

‘The same.’

‘Whoops. Time for a word or two from our sponsor. Back in a mo.’

Niagara Fruit Belt Jr and Best Developed Biceps of Sunnyside Beach stood watch in the shadows. Doc Burt Parks’s instructions had been clear. Nobody on board must be allowed to molest her. And there were drunken flirts everywhere.

Jock pulled his shawl more snugly round his shoulders and looked out to sea. It was lonely, so bitterly lonely, without her. What did all those stars, the moon’s enchantment, a closet full of ravishing gowns, mean to him without Jean-Paul. Who did he dress for, if not Jean-Paul. And yet, and yet, if he did win the Miss Universe contest, wouldn’t she be proud? Col Smith-Williams too. Why, it would be another first for the force. An historic first.

‘Okey-doke,’ Derm said. ‘Your category of questions Atuk, is HOCKEY!’

‘Gevalt!’

But Twentyman smiled discreetly and gave Atuk the V for Victory sign.

‘Who won the Stanley Cup last year?’

‘Mm.’

‘Tempus fidgets, tempus fidgets, Atuk.’

Twentyman flashed a little card in the palm of his hand.

‘The Montreal Canadians?’

‘Kee-rect!’

‘What’s the name of the first man to score fifty goals in a regular season?’

‘Rocket, em, Richardson?’

‘Close. Very close, but—’

Again Twentyman flashed a card.

‘Richard!’

‘Kee-rect. And now, Atuk, you …?’

‘STICK OUT YOUR NECK!’

‘For a million bucks, Atuk, can you tell me the total number of third period goals scored by Howie Morenz in regular season play and how many of these were slap-shots, how many rebounds, and how many were scored when the opposition was a man short … Atuk, STICK OUT YOUR NECK.’

Atuk turned confidently toward Twentyman, but his seat in the first row was empty. He had gone. The drums rolled, the studio clock began to tick, and a man in a black hat stood ready to draw the cord.

 

‘There’s been a mistake, sir. I—’

KER-PLUNK!

‘Tough luck, Atuk, next week, folks …’

On the square outside the prison where the thousands stood with their torches and placards, Twentyman mounted the platform, stepped closer to Snipes, and whispered something in his ear. Snipes nodded. He approached the microphone and called for silence. Slowly the singing, the shouting, died; the crowd quietened. Snipes tugged at his baseball cap, looked scornfully into the television camera, and rubbed the beard that was just beginning to grow.

‘Atuk is dead.’ He told them how, where, and pointed out the country of origin of the show’s sponsor. ‘Friends, Canucks, countrymen,’ he went on, ‘use your noggins …’