The Glass Harmonica by Russell Wangersky Page A

small yard, and started to read it again.
    To the Right Honourable Prime Minister and to the Justice Minister of Canada:
    First of all, in this case I am not the Instigator. I am not the cause. That is for certain.
    As Prime Minister, and as Justice Minister, you should both know that. You should both understand that clearly. I am not to blame, I am just a citizen of this country like anyone else, and I have the right to have the quiet enjoyment of my property, even if lying, instigating Chris Wheeler doesn’t seem to think so.
    I should say first of all that I have lived at 104 McKay Street for 47 years now, and during that time I have been no trouble to anyone. There is not one living person who would have said that I was any problem at all, not even the least bit of a nuisance.
    Live and let live, that is my personal motto, and it always has been.
    At least, until lying Chris Wheeler moved here with his blue Nissan Sentra—Newfoundland and Labrador licence RPN 3L3—and his huge car stereo, on which he plays loud music at night, and since his lying, instigating friends started spending so much time here, disturbing the peace with their foul behaviour.
    McKay Street in St. John’s, Newfoundland, is a good street. It is a quiet street, not a street where you expect to hear loud music all the time. It is part of a neighbourhood that’s been full of families for years, a downtown neighbourhood that was busy when driving was a luxury. Most of us are older now, and if anyone is to blame, it should be the City, because they gave Peter Kavanaugh permission to subdivide his house into two apartments and then move, lock, stock and barrel, out of town, leaving his property in the hands of a succession of tenants, none of whom could really be trusted.
    Leaving all of his troubles behind for the rest of us.
    Leaving us with lying Chris Wheeler.
    Lying Chris Wheeler, he is the worst tenant Peter Kavanaugh has had yet, the worst, laziest, most deceitful tenant yet, and Chris Wheeler has told so many people lies about me now that I swear I cannot go anywhere without people staring at me, and Heaven only knows what they are thinking.
    Even my friends look at me differently now, people who have known me for years and who should know better. People for whom I have never had a bad word, people I have gone out of my way to help. But instigator Chris Wheeler, he has dragged my name through the dirt, and I am sure he is the reason why everything has changed.
    I know there are those who will say that you shouldn’t listen to me, who will whisper, who will write their anonymous letters and say that you should ignore someone who has had a conviction registered against them already for disturbing the peace.
    Even the police might have something to say about me, might say “Listen, Prime Minister, we remember that man.” But they are not the only ones who remember things.
    Let me say that I remember them, Constable Peter Wright, badge number 432, and Constable Reg Dunne, badge number 881, and I remember that they didn’t even listen to my complaints, not even when my cat was killed and they wrote the things I said down in their black notebooks and then closed them up and forgot the whole thing.
    And later their fellow officers listened to the likes of lying Chris Wheeler and his lying skeet friends Roger McInnes and Rory Andrews and that quiet one, Alma Jones, the police listened to them when they said that they were just playing music and I came out for no reason, carrying a shovel and swearing and waving my fist, and that then I broke some of their beer bottles next to Wheeler’s precious car.
    The judge went further than the police, said it was “beyond a reasonable doubt” that I had struck lying Wheeler’s car with my shovel, because all three of his friends stuck to their made-up lying story, and the judge even ordered me— me —to pay Wheeler. Pay him for paint for his car—when I