The Cast Stone by Harold Johnson Page B

look.
    â€œPPCLI” Elsie responded.
    The look deepened.
    â€œPrincess Patricia Canadian Light Infantry, defending Toronto.”
    â€œYou’re a widow.” Benji didn’t know what else to say. He felt a tinge of guilt. The man died defending his city, died defending him, defending the school where they had gathered and waited, cringed at the shriek of sirens.
    â€œI never think of myself that way. Bert never even got to see his daughter.” Elsie read his guilt. Offered a gentle explanation to ease what she thought was concern. “He was home on leave, we got together, I got pregnant, then the Americans came. I hardly knew him. But I am thankful to him. He left me a bit of himself, a gift.”

    The food served at the Elder’s table ran over the paper plate in front of Ben, deer meat stewed in its own juices until it fell apart, pan fried pickerel, baked bannock, fried bannock, a little scoop of dry pounded meat placed carefully on the edge of the plate where it wouldn’t get soaked by the juices from the deer meat; it should be dry, eaten with fingers and dipped in butter, and of course, every wake needs potato salad, lots of potato salad.
    â€œBet you didn’t eat like this at that university, eh Ben?” Roderick nodded toward Ben’s plate as Ben tried to keep the blueberries thickened with cornstarch from running off, with a flimsy plastic fork.
    â€œCan’t say I did.” Ben decided to just eat what was there instead of trying to dam the flow that was defeating him.
    The talk during the meal was general, “Who shot the deer?”
    â€œIt was Red who shot the deer, of course.”
    â€œThat Jemima sure can cook.”
    â€œYou bet, taught by her mother, still knows how to make pounded meat, don’t see much of this anymore.”
    Then when the plates were nearly empty, a few bits of bannock remaining, too much for old men to eat who didn’t work hard all day anymore, a young woman served hot tea from an overlarge black enamel tea pot, black tea that smelled of the handful of muskeg leaves thrown in ‘just for the Elders’, poured into white Styrofoam cups.
    Leroy stirred a second plastic spoonful of sugar into the tea. “So, Ben,” he leaned back into the hard chair, stretched old muscles, “What you make of this Treaty process that’s goin’ on?”
    â€œHaven’t followed it too close, I’m a bit out of the loop.” Ben talked around the bit of baked bannock dipped in the blueberries he had saved for the last.
    Roderick said something that he had repeated all his life, something his father had repeated to him: “Can’t change the treaties; doesn’t matter what, we can’t change the Treaties.”
    â€œTreaties were with Canada. There is no more Canada.” Leroy set the agenda for the coming discussion.
    Roderick remained adamant. “Treaties were with the Queen. Queen is white. I take it Treaties were with white people, Canadian or American shouldn’t matter.”
    â€œAFN don’t seem to think so. They’re negotiating as we speak,” Leroy invited.
    â€œWho said AFN could speak for us.”
    Ben joined, “That’s the thing, isn’t it. Who negotiates for us? If we are a Nation, if we really are Moccasin Lake Cree Nation, then we should be the ones who are at the table.”
    Roderick stood firm, “There shouldn’t be a table. We’ve been saying now for as long as I can remember, Treaties are sacred. If that really means something, then we have to act like it and not run to suck up to whoever has the power right now.”
    Leroy moved the discussion forward, “There’s talk of moving all the Cree onto one reserve, a big reserve like they got down in the States, instead of all these little ones.”
    â€œCan you imagine, eh, living beside Plains Cree and Swampy Cree — and where would everybody hunt? Won’t