THE POLICEMAN WITHOUT A GUN

“Do you want the job?” Ken asked.

The tall frame fidgeted some. With a shy expression on his face, he said; “How about my traps, Mr. Godin?”

“Not to worry, we’ll give you the time, Joe,” Ken assured him.

And voice that was a whisper, said; “OK then, I’ll take it.”

They shook hands on it.

That’s how it happened. In the summer of 1957, the small mining town in northwestern Quebec hired its policeman. They had no police chief; they had no police car; there was no police uniform but, they had passed a town bylaw and they had their policeman—Joe Lariviere— Mayor Ken Godin had personally hired him.

Joe would work out of his house. And in order to give Joe some semblance of official authority, the town issued Joe a policeman’s cap—a nice deep blue cap with a shiny black visor. It had a gold badge with the Quebec Fleurs de Lis emblem embossed on it. It sat solidly atop the shiny visor. It was impressive.

Joe had the new job and he took to it with energy. The fancy hat made up for the little money he would be getting paid. When a call came, Joe would run first for the cap, and, with all the dignity he could muster, he would jump into his pickup and take off, spinning dirt behind him.

Joe was a native Indian living off-reserve: an Algonquin from Winneway. He was married with four children. He was considered one of the locals by now. Joe was lean, tall and good looking. He seldom smiled and the quiet about him gave him a certain aura. People paid attention when he so much as coughed. However, if Joe proudly wore the symbol of authority on his head, he lacked that most important piece of policeman-hood—Joe was not allowed to carry a firearm on his person! Joe had not attended a Police Academy.

Folks joked and laughed: they called Joe a school truant officer at worst, or a town bylaw enforcement officer at best. But, notwithstanding the giggles going on behind his back, Joe threw himself into the job with a verve and dedication that mystified the locals. He had the loungers and hangers-on outside of Paquin's Restaurant interrupt their conversations when he went by in his truck; their heads would follow him lazily, from left to right and then from right to left again, as he went back and forth.

Joe meant business: he issued tickets to poachers during the walleye spawning season. Folks who had made it an annual spring ritual to gather at night at the pump-house, so as to scoop up the fat-bellied walleyes lying in the pebbly shallows, got the fright of their lives when Joe started showing up in the dark of night and bark-out in his deep voice, “Here’s your ticket!” and then without ado, impound the long poles with the copper wire snares at the end; all Joe would say was, “I’ll take that from you now!” and that was it; he’d turn his back and leave the scene as furtively as he had come upon it. And he stopped the odd fight at the hotel or at the hockey games; he put a stop to drag racing on Main; and he enforced the town curfew—any kid on the street after sunset was terrified when he saw Joe’s pickup turn a street corner—Ronald peed his pants one night when Joe caught him coming out of Latraverse’s Confectionary with a bag of chips in his hand—Ronald said shamefacedly to Roger that Joe had fooled him by creeping up behind him with his headlights shut-off. And Ronald had wanted some revenge. Something had to be done to regain some of his lost dignity—he would squeal on big Lillie—Joe’s sixteen-year-old daughter.

Late one evening, Ronald had caught Lillie and Fernand Ayotte ‘fooling around’ in a darkened change-room kiosk by the lakeside. When Ronald threw rocks at the back of the structure, Fern and Lillie had come rushing out—she, brushing down her skirt, and him zipping up his pants. He would tell Joe what kind of a daughter he had. However, when Roger reminded Ronald that Fern was nineteen and that he was twelve, and that he could easily get a broken nose and two black eyes—he abandoned the vendetta. But he would lay awake late into the night, thinking of other nefarious things he could inflict on Joe.

“And,” Roger had said, “if big Lillie ever gets you alone in a back lane, she’s liable to beat the crap out of you any which way she wants!” Joe’s wife was a large woman and so were all her children. The boys were both twelve-year-olds. Ronald would turn thirteen in November, whereas Roger would have to wait till February to reach that milestone. Ronald was a tall and fiery red-head with prominent freckles on his cheeks and ears. His best friend Roger, was dark-haired, short and plumpish.

Ronald’s gnawing desire to execute revenge festered like an open wound full of hurt and fever. Unbeknownst to Joe, now commenced Ronald’s tireless crusade to get even and regain his self-esteem. So began an avid search for opportunities to apply what was to his mind, the proper punishment to be meted out to Joe—something commensurate with the indignity perpetrated on a twelve-year-old’s sense of honour.

He enrolled Roger. They would bide their time and wait for opportunities to present themselves. And it did not take long. At the start of the school year, Ronald was quick to disseminate the salacious story about Lillie to anyone in the school yard willing to listen. And the Sisters told Father Pelletier. That weekend Father was seen visiting both households—the Lariviere’s and the Ayotte’s—and Lillie was grounded till Christmas! Nothing happened to Fern.

The juvenile antics became downright harassment; Ronald and Roger would take turns in calling Joe’s house in the middle of the night, changing their voices and fabricating nonexistent emergencies. This went on for a few weeks, sending poor Joe running all over town in the wee hours of the morning. And then the cold winds of October brought in Halloween—Joe’s truck was plastered with eggs, windshield and all.

Now, at about this point, Roger suggested that they take a break—call Joe’s debt paid in full. His conscience was beginning to bother him. Meeting Father Pelletier in the confessional was getting to be a very stressful exercise. When asked if he had any other sins to confess besides that of stealing loose change from his older brothers’ trouser pockets, he had to say, “No”, which of itself was a lie…which also became a sin. It all became terribly complicated.

“Just one more stunt,” Ronald pleaded. “Just one more!”

“No.” Roger replied. “You’ve had your revenge. Joe’s had enough.”

“Look, I only need you to be the look-out—I’ll do everything else.”

“And what is it you’re going to do?” asked Roger, perking up.

“Gonna go and take the air out of his tires,” said the brazen red-head.

“Okay, but this is the very last prank!—promise?”

“Promise.”

The lake had started to freeze; snow was coursing the streets. They picked a Saturday night. The house was covered in darkness. By the time Ronald had crouched behind the back wheel on the driver’s side, the sled dogs at the back of the house had started to growl. Ronald’s hands were cold and shaking; he pressed the flat blade of the screwdriver against the valve and a hissing sound came out. The tire went flat quickly.

But Joe was no fool. He’d been alerted by the dogs and he’d kept the lights turned off in the house so as to have a clearer view of what was going on outside. By the time he made his way to the front window and parted a sliver of curtain, Ronald was bent double at the waist and making his way around to the other tire. Joe saw everything. He even saw Roger trying to make himself thin behind the hydro pole. Joe did not run outside, or tap against the window. He knew them. They were otherwise good kids. He may go and talk to the kids’ parents later, and then again he may not; he may talk to the kids themselves, but he would rather not.

Someone was coming up the street; Roger gave the owl hoot twice, and both fled to the blackness of a back lane and thence to their individual houses without a word being said.

As winter slowly crept in, the water at the edge of the lake lost its warmth and a thin sheet of ice started forming. It would be one solid mass over a foot thick by Christmas. By late November it was safe enough to skate on if you stayed within fifty yards from shore.

Early that morning, when the sun had just started to break the hoar frost, Joe was busy harnessing the sled dogs to the long sleigh. He was going to do a quick run around the lake and check out his trap lines. Beaver, ermine and rabbit pelts were fetching a good price on the North Bay wholesaler’s trading floor. It kept his family fed and clothed and with a good harvest he would deposit the left over money in his credit union account.

As Joe was getting the excited dogs ready, Ronald and Roger were just stepping out of bed. They had made plans the night before and they also, were excited. They would take their hockey sticks and a few pucks and scrimmage awhile before coming back in for breakfast.

They laced up their skates at the edge of the lake, setting up their boots as goal posts a hundred feet distant at opposite ends. And they started to play; cutting left and right, zigzagging this way and that, now and then braking hard and letting the ice shavings fly. The only sound in the cold and still morning air was that of their hard breathing and the crisp cutting of the blades gouging the ice.

About that time Joe was picking up the last of his rabbits. He’d had a great pick-up on his wet traps, now he was cleaning up on his land snares. The dusky sun was rising above the tree line when the dogs made the last bend. The smoking chimneys were coming in sight. He saw two boys on skates playing on the lake, and then he put his head down to meet the biting wind and paid no more attention to the common sight of kids skating on the lake.

As he made his way closer to town, the dogs picked up speed as they were wont to do when they smelled the closeness of home. Over the noise of the runners, Joe heard one or two shrill cries coming in the direction of the boys at play, but he gave it little attention; kids always shouted and screamed while playing hockey. However, the second volley of screams got his attention; it carried the scream of horror and not that of playful exuberance.

He looked out where he had spied the boys earlier and he could not see them. He slowed the team down and shaded his eyes against the sun. He could make out the boots, some stray clothes piled on a snowbank, but no sight of the boys. When he brought the dogs to a complete stop, he heard another sharp scream. He scanned out away and towards the open lake, and that’s when he saw something. He turned the dogs around and snapped them to a hard run.

In their play the boys had raced each other in order to retrieve an errant puck that had passed beyond the goal post and skimmed across the ice some twenty yards towards dangerously thin ice. Ronald, the taller and leaner of the two, had quickly outdistanced his friend. When Ronald broke through, he went straight down and disappeared momentarily, then he burst back up through the frigid waters, gasping and coughing, arms thrashing, screaming for help. And every time he made a grab at the ice in front of him, it broke or his mittens slid off the edge. Roger had stopped some twenty feet away when he saw his friend break through. He now slowly made his way forward. When he got close enough, he leaned forward and extended his hockey stick so Ronald could take a hold of it and pull himself out. As soon as Ronald grabbed and pulled, disaster struck a second time—Roger was brought down crashing through.

When Joe got to where the boys were, Ronald was already in the throes of hypothermia; if not for Roger holding his friend’s head above water, Ronald would have gone under and disappeared. Joe quickly turned the dogs around so that the back of the sled faced the boys and the dogs faced the town. He was silent, and he worked fast and efficiently. He took a long rope and made a large loop about four feet in diameter. He tied the free end to the back of the sled and gave a command to his leader—the only words spoken yet—in the Algonquin dialect, Joe said to Rex: “TA-AKWE! TA-AKWE!” which meant “Stay!” or “Don’t move!” in the Algonquin tongue. Then Joe spread his long, lean body on the ice and crawled towards the boys, dragging the rope with the wide loop behind him. With his weight evenly distributed he crept closer and closer to the open water, and when within ten feet of the shivering boys, he spoke for the second time;

“Both of you get inside the loop,” he ordered. “Squeeze it under the armpits tight and hold on hard!”

When Roger had secured his friend, Joe gave Rex another one-word command, and this time again it was not in English, nor was it in French; but it was in the language of his Indian tribe—“MADJA! MADJA!” he shouted, which meant, “Go!” in the Algonquin tongue. And Rex did the rest: he rose to his feet and the team followed his lead; he lurched forward and the team followed.

Joe did not say one word as he brought them to the safety of their homes.

When the snows melted, and the ice melted, and the spring of the year was well set, Ronald and Roger were at Joe’s house every day; bringing left over scraps from their tables with which to feed the dogs, helping Joe stack-up the green stove wood outside and the dryer pieces in the shed, raking the yard, and washing Joe’s truck; they even bought Lillie a present—funky sunglasses from Ronald, and the latest Elvis Presley record from Roger.

Ray A. Vincent is a retired social worker; City of Sudbury Welfare Department (1966-2003); with an Honours BSW from Laurentian University (1974). The previous publications to his credit; a 'Memoirs' published Oct. 2018, by Adelaide Books of New York City, and two novels (A Matter for the Heart), released January, 2021, and (Mr. Anderson), October, 2023 also by Adelaide Books.