Samuel Wedge: Memoir of Necropolis

By Kevin D. Annett

Like Salman Rushdies Joseph Anton, Kevin Annetts novel, through the scope and freedom of fiction, allows him to describe the trials of a man who seeks to oppose and bring to justice people in high places who are protected by the government, the justice system, and the popular media. The action ranges from Vancouver Island to Central Florida and spans some thirty years of the protagonists life. It is a human tragedy written with humor and compassion.

It is strictly for a mature and serious readership of all ages.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Jan 23, 2015
• ISBN: 9781496965127

Kevin D. Annett

Reverend Kevin D. Annett, BA, MA, MDiv, has lectured widely in Europe and America and has been a community worker, ordained minister, writer, filmmaker, and broadcaster. In 1992, as pastor in Port Alberni, British Columbia, he discovered a history of atrocity suggesting genocide in his church’s residential school that had taken place for more than a century. Such had been the case in 140 such “schools” across Canada, which have been run by the major churches. Refusing to remain silent, he was discharged by his church and defrocked. For more than twenty years, he has advocated and worked internationally toward justice for indigenous people, children and other victims of Church and State. In 2015, he was nominated for the Nobel Peace prize. Samuel Wedge is an autobiographical novel based on his story. Kevin Annett has produced and directed Unrepentant, an internationally award-winning feature-length film and has produced three nonfiction books, one of which, Love and Death in the Valley, was published by AuthorHouse in 2002 and is still selling twelve years later. He is a co-founder of the International Tribunal into Crimes of Church and State (www.itccs.org) and common law courts of justice in many countries.

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2015 Kevin D. Annett. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 02/02/2015

ISBN: 978-1-4969-6511-0 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4969-6512-7 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2015900867

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models,

and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

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Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Contents

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Epilogue

Based on a true story.

Dedicated to my children, naturally: all of them.

Prologue

She might just as well have been referring to me when she explained how the young man was never found again.

Down there, the tour guide had gestured for the fifth time that day. No one really approached the perilous overhang to look into the chasm and its dark river, taking her word for something they could never want to understand.

I remembered the incident later when Judy handed me a small dirty towel to dab off the spray settled on me like the years, and she asked me if I knew that nothing could ever be the same between us again.

Avoiding her as though she herself was a hidden outcrop downstream, I commenced to tell her the story of Ollie Craig and his final expedition in a second hand kayak, knowing that I’d described it to her a hundred times. That made her angry, and I lapsed into my memories as we sat together, but not within earshot of the thundering Somass river.

When I still had them and we lived in Port Alberni, I had also told my two young daughters of Ollie’s fate, even though the girls were only four and seven years old. The incident had been mentioned fervently in divorce court by my departed wife’s lawyer, years ago now, when we pulled at and tore apart our children. I still remember the carnage even while everyone else involved has long since forgotten.

People ask me why I keep going on about Ollie Craig when it only upsets the locals and scares the children. I told myself for a long time that it was because the man had been in my congregation and wasn’t faceless to me, but there has always been more to it than that.

You’re like an Ibsen character, a regular Enemy of the People now, you know that, right? my older brother had once observed from his fat cells, when he still spoke to me.

I didn’t plan any of this, I had answered him, inaccurately.

Chapter One

His wounds were so deep they took fifty years to finally kill him.

- A Commentary on the Life and Civil War Record of General Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain

The trailer home where my Dad once nursed his scotch rests a couple of miles from the Atlantic Ocean, past a strip of crumpled storefronts and the kind of cluttered foliage that jumps up even in Florida’s urban sprawl. It’s a clear ride down Walker Street to the Halifax River, and beyond that to the sea, unhampered except by the insults from the black kids in the local shit hole apartments, and the humvees that never stop for the lights anymore.

Every May when the real warmth returns, I tell myself this is the year I’ll swim across the Halifax inlet despite the lurking gators and manatees and rumors of escaped boas who could pull me under in a twinkling. Teetering on the knife edge of turning sixty gives me some kind of excuse for avoiding the plunge, when I need one. But I still linger by the water’s edge whenever I pass that way, hoping to catch a glimpse through the murk of a passing leviathan and let it tickle and test my fear.

There’s an ancient relic living in our complex who claims to be 99 years old, and nobody disputes him. He looks like a bald and crumpled version of my Uncle Pete, who killed himself at 39 for reasons known only to himself.

The old man owns a nearly spotless 1961 Lincoln convertible sedan that never gets driven but sits in his little carport under clear plastic and gets polished up every Saturday morning by some young Hispanic kid he hires for the job. At first I didn’t know the old man’s name, but when I pedaled by his place every morning trying to feel 50 again he usually glanced up from his perch at the front window of his trailer and without cracking an expression raised a thin claw at me, either as some kind of welcome or benediction.

Last week, when I ventured into the community center to see if any new blood had filtered into our retirement community, a heated conversation was going on in the lounge concerning the relic, whom I’ve decided to name Pete. One of the locals, a mountain of fat who snow-birds it every year from New Hampshire, commented between intermittent pulls at a long beer can,

The old fart doesn’t ever move from that spot of his‚ cause he can’t. Told Rico he’s got shrapnel or bullets or somethin’ lodged in his gut.

He a vet? somebody mumbled.

Either that or somebody shot ’im. Rico says he can’t walk too good.

How’d that fucking little spic get the job, anyway? remarked the somebody.

Look, how do I know? Will you let me finish?

I didn’t hang around to learn more, mostly because an even more heated argument had broken out between lard-ass and his adversary. But one of the lounge group spotted me and walked over.

Her name was Dolores. She’s my age and widowed, with a daughter who’s grown up. When Dolores was a hippie teenager, she abandoned Duluth to come south, and she never left the Daytona beaches after that. The very week the two of us first met eight years ago, long after both of us had known divorce, Dolores made a move on me that went nowhere. We still said hi occasionally and pretended we hadn’t hurt each other.

She and I tried chatting for a moment but we’re familiar enough to know that neither of us likes small talk. But I did nudge her about old Pete.

What is it with him and that wound of his? I asked.

Dolores blushed slightly.

From some war, right? I continued.

No.

Her eyes looked back at the others briefly. Then with a gentle touch that thrilled me, she guided me into a corner. It’s self inflicted. He did it to himself when he was young.

I waited for her to elaborate but her caramel eyes said the rest.

Sounds serious, I observed.

She’d had enough of the conversation or the imagery of Pete’s action, whatever it was. I wondered how she had the inside scoop on the guy and she must have noticed that I was about to ask her.

Carrie and the kids are coming down. Got to make them lunch, Dolores said. And then she left me again.

What got me down here as an exile from my own country and family was this thing of mine that can’t let go of a mystery. And the thing dogged me all the way home after Dolores was gone, and all that night when I tried writing and couldn’t, and even after I’d sat out under the moon on the warm, spiky grass and smoked a joint. So, perfectly in character as my Dad would have said, I ended up knocking and knocking on Old Pete’s door the next day, well after lunch, when I knew the guy was as up and around as he could be.

About five minutes later, the screen door opened to reveal Pete and his metal walker. He squinted at me, and then raised his hand with his usual dead pan gesture. The long oxygen tube running into one of his nostrils gave out a little wheezing that sounded louder than what was trying to escape from his mouth.

Hi neighbor, I said to him, with a smile.

His waxen face seemed incapable of movement. Pete nodded and beckoned to me to come in. The place smelled of disinfectant but had all the clutter of a lifetime in it. A large American flag draped the longest wall along with a dozen citations and plaques I couldn’t read. It took Pete a full minute to navigate across the room to what was obviously his best comfy place, a torn recliner with faded lace arm rests.

I helped him sit down and placed his walker next to him. He nodded his thanks, and started coughing. One spindly finger gestured towards a side table and a pack of cigarettes. Noticing them, I remarked,

I’ve got asthma, do you mind?

Pete cracked a smile for the first time and slowly shook his head.

I figured I’d have to do most of the talking, but my new friend surprised us both, perhaps, when he croaked, Meant to give up those fuckin’ things years ago…

No time like the present, then, I replied.

He studied me with his pale blue eyes. You’re that preacher, he said.

Yes sir.

You do any Sunday services here?

No, no, I dont, not since the Wade funeral, I answered the old guy, worried that he might ask me to comment on scripture or pray with him. Look, I don’t even know your name.

John Hartley. From Wilmington, he said with a sudden firmness.

Sam Wedge. From Canada.

John (no longer Pete) nodded as I shook his hand. I heard about you. Other folks have too, I bet.

A lot of them won’t admit to knowing, especially if they’re Canadian, I answered.

The old guy started laughing then, and coughing. I fetched him a glass of water from his tiny kitchen.

Yeah, people are funny, aren’t they? he continued, after gulping some liquid.

Sometimes.

John didn’t need to have much explained to him. He silently weighed my words and perhaps what lay behind them.

So, you hiding out here like the rest of us? he asked.

Maybe. I don’t like to think so but you know how it is…

He did know. The man let out a quiet sigh.

What did you used to do? I inquired, lighting on the sofa.

Piss all.

I gestured up at the wall. Were you in the military?

He nodded but offered nothing.

Did you get hurt somehow? I said, and his eyes flicked with amusement when he saw my awkwardness. But he remained silent.

My Dad served at Fort Dix in an infantry replacement company, I continued, hoping to draw him out.

Oh yeah, when?

1952. But he missed out on Korea. The CID grabbed him to do office work. All his buddies were shipped out to Fecom, as they called it, just before the Chinese overran them and pushed them all south.

The Big Bug Out, John remarked quietly.

I nodded.

Dug-out Doug Macarthur was not only an idiot but a faggot, you know that, right?

I smiled and said, I never heard that one before.

All them macho rambo fuck heads are. I had to clobber my own master sergeant with my pistol one night to keep him offa me. He was the toughest marine I ever met, and a fairy.

I leaned closer. So you were a Marine?

John nodded.

Where…

You don’t want to know, he snapped at me.

I said nothing until he spoke again. I’m sorry Reverend, he began, as if some primeval vapor had seeped out of an unopened sewer and misted his eyes.

That’s okay, I replied.

It isn’t okay. It never will be.

Tell me what happened.

The four words that brought me here. I said the same four words to the first Indian who dared to enter my church. The words that changed everything.

At first, people like John and all those brown refugees need to believe that telling what happened to them will make a difference. And it’s not like they have much of a choice but to try to say something, since their guts are spilling out of every orifice and brain cell from the sheer force of what they’ve kept inside themselves all those years. But wanting and doing are as far apart as you and me.

It was that way with the Indians, and now, it seemed, with John Hartley, too.

Later, back in my hovel, I spent the hours before sleep came trying to figure out how John could have said so much that day without saying a thing. And like any survivor, he never did tell me how he got his wound.

…….

In his sermons, Sam used to refer to Jesus as a total nobody elevated into an unintended idea, which didn’t go down well with those in the congregation who’d bothered to ponder what he’d said. But Sam hadn’t rested on glib statements. He’d tried to show his listeners how it was only because the answer is always innocuous and not robed in light - that it is available to any one of us.

The anology to himself impregnated his words, especially the part about the crucifixion: The Romans were the best killers in history, but they didn’t have to execute Jesus, cause they knew the best way to get rid of someone is simply to ignore him to death.

But the pew crowd still didn’t get it.

………

A distant, bourbon-washed relative of mine who like a lot of the Irish has been smashed in the face once too often recently referred me to a traditional tale from west Cork that takes place in a cemetery, among a bunch of wandering spirits. None of the protagonists realize they’re dead. It’s that Gaelic thing. Everything is fucked up and turned around in the story and nobody knows their real situation, but none of the ghosts seem to mind, or even notice. I like to think that’s because with typical Emerald Isle sagacity the characters know it’s all imagined anyway, when in truth it’s more likely that everyone has come to realize they simply have no way out.

Angst aside, I love that kind of story because it reflects the way things are with the same shattering realpolitick you find in the Book of Job, where not only is God exposed as a cold and calculating manipulator but poor, messed up and so very human Job rises above God as a moral being and proves better than divinity. Heaven’s on hold, if you believe Job’s author, and mortality is all we’ve got. And when any working mind realizes that’s the score, what can any of us do but wander through our own particular Necropolis, pretending that it will somehow make sense and work out in the end?

I found myself as a central actor in that kind of West Cork story even before I was aware of anything besides the coldness and the insanity of what had fallen on me. I suppose like all of the recently dead, when the blow descended, I immediately assumed that something had gone terribly wrong. God had made some kind of mistake, surely, to have plunged me into such pointless torture? Something would snap me out of the incubus. But then I noticed that nobody cared, simply because nobody was there, any more.

My newfound invisibility was kind of titilating, at first, harkening me back to those ten year old impulses to look up women’s dresses from a secure spot under the dining room table. And it did seem at first that I would eventually awaken from it all, and those who glided sluggishly past me and all that I had revealed would finally blink and awaken and shit themselves with self-recrimination and outrage once they could see again, and knew they were, if not to blame, at least sorry accomplices to the crime. But none of that has ever happened.

The big fade out of my family and my own daughters and soon the rest of humanity occured like that normally pleasant moment when twilight winks and becomes nighttime. But there was nothing gentle about my transition into the opaque. Suddenly, I became a ghost.

Elaine Fulcher was the only one of my hundred Port Alberni parishioners who had an inkling of what was upon us, probably because she stood so apart. During the worship service, she’d pray on her own and raise her eyes to the ceiling and hold personal audiences with the unseen. She never mingled at coffee hour, and when strewn with a banal remark from someone, she’d stare silently at the offender until he left. Unlike most church goers, Elaine was there on Sundays for a reason. And she finally showed me what that was.

Elaine’s screaming began soon after we sat down together in the St. Andrew’s sanctuary one evening for what was supposed to be a counselling session, it being unclear whether it was meant for her or for me.

I tried quieting her down, naturally, since all my early years of bellowing parents has left me unable to deal with loud noises, especially when they emit from women. That was irelevant to Elaine, naturally. Like all hysterics, she wouldn’t listen to reason or my pathetic pleas for her to be quiet. Elaine just kept screaming.

My main concern was not for the poor woman, but whether someone would hear her cries and assume I was raping her, or something. And wouldn’t my wife Anne have loved that bit of ammunition? So I stood up and was on the verge of clamping my hand over her gaping maw when she began to cry,

Oh God, all the wounds! All the blood on you! Oh Sam how can you stand it! Oh the cuts, the wounds, Oh God…

Her body gave an enormous heave and shudder, like a fish being shaken and tossed after being snagged, and something pushed her back into the pew and a sudden, blessed silence.

She seemed unconscious, at first, but then I heard her start to murmur in an oddly different voice,

Get out now, get out now while you can, get out, get out…

A door somewhere in the darkened church slammed shut at that same moment, and the sound closed a clammy chill around my guts. I stepped back from Elaine and actually ran from the sanctuary in the same fit of unthinking terror that had me when I was four years old and some idiot neighbour thrust a huge fake spider in my face one Hallowe’en night.

None of it made any sense to me as I cowered in my car in the rain-swamped parking lot across from the church, outside the 24 hour sex shop and porn video store. I didn’t try figuring any of it out, nor did I seek out Elaine, who for all