John Swinburn

Liam felt the blade of the knife rip into his left shoulder. The experience was not what he expected, if in fact he ever expected to be stabbed. There was no pain, just the sensation that his skin, and then the tissues beneath his skin, and finally the muscles underneath, were being pierced and separated from their natural places above the bones in his arm. It was as if the physical destruction of his flesh was happening in slow motion, with pain sensors turned to their lowest levels; the knife attack was an educational video being replayed in freeze-frame. Pain interrupted the stuttering staccato of the frames as they moved forward, but the pain was distant, as if it weren’t his pain but, instead, the pain he imagined would be felt by a character in a movie. But, then, suddenly it become immediate, real, excruciating.

Liam yelped as the knife twisted in his upper arm. He swung his right hand, holding a three-pound bar bell, hard into the left temple of the man with the knife. The man’s skull offered resistance for an instant, but gave way almost immediately to the weight and speed of the metal cudgel as it shattered bone and proceeded into the soft matter beneath. The attacker slumped and fell to the ground, the metal weight having permanently reduced his dangerous rage to warm pulp, remnants of a brain with no enmity left to deliver.

“Good god, what the hell happened?” Liam asked himself as he looked at the corpse on the ground in front of him. Blood sprayed from the wound with every beat of his heart and his shoulder hurt like hell. The attack, albeit brief, confused him; he wasn’t able to fully process the experience right away. As he scrambled to stem the flow of blood, though, his brain allowed his thoughts to catch up to his experience.

“Jesus, the bastard wasn’t kidding.” The body beneath his feet was Roger Cameron, his wife’s lover. Everything Cameron said a few moments earlier became more immediate. The man’s words rang in Liam’s ears: “Either you give her the divorce—uncontested—or your sordid fling with your court clerk will hit the newspapers. And if that’s not enough to convince you, you son of a bitch, know this: I’ll kill you if you get in our way!”

Liam recalled his own response to Cameron: “Be my guest! Tell the goddamn newspapers whatever you want! You’ll have to kill me if you want to get your hands on anything of mine!”

And, then, Cameron’s rage exploded into full fury, a sharp knife appearing in his right hand for a fraction of  a second before Liam felt the blade in his shoulder.

Micah Blaine’s childhood in Lafayette, Louisiana was typical of Acadiana, at least it was typical of Acadiana of the last quarter of the twentieth century.  By the time he was born in 1972, Cajun French was not as widely spoken as it had been while his parents were growing up. But he spoke Cajun French, albeit with an accent informed by Dan Rather, Peter Jennings and Tom Brokaw. His fluent Acadiana English—a mellifluous mix of charm and criminally ungrammatical patter—spoke of his roots and his upbringing.

An influx of Laotians, Vietnamese, and Cambodians after the Viet Nam war had changed the character of the fishing industry in the region from pure Cajun to a rich cultural stew. But the area retained its distinct identity, even as it morphed from acutely parochial to bewilderingly cosmopolitan.

Gladys Mellencamp, his eleventh grade civics teacher, was the first to notice signs that something unusual was going on with Micah. Responding to a question she posed regarding the difference between the political systems in the U.S. and Canada, Micah said the U.S. system was deeply divisive and antagonistic, whereas the Canadian system was “all about compromise.” It was his pronunciation of “about” that struck Gladys; he pronounced it the way Canadians pronounce the word. She laughed at what she thought was his cleverness and appreciation of dialect. Micah didn’t understand.

Next, Tender Matthews, Micah’s distractingly buxom biology teacher only six years older than he, corrected his spelling of ‘colour’ in a paper describing how chameleons manipulate chromatophores to send messages or convey a change in mood. Tender was the object of Micah’s private and deeply held sexual crush. Later, he made a not-so-subtle pass at her, saying “You’d like my French toast, Ms. Matthews. What say you come over Friday night and I’ll fix you some for breakfast on Saturday morning, eh?”

She required him to write a letter of apology for his actions. He wrote, “I am very sorry for my behaviour toward you. I recognise it as inappropriate  and promise to practise restraint.”

In spite of his aberrant speech and spelling, and despite his inappropriate lust for his biology teacher, Micah’s grades were among the highest in his high school graduating class. His parents, Barley and Virginia Blaine, rewarded his academic achievements by offering to pay for a trip to Europe the summer after graduation if he maintained his grade point average. Micah expressed appreciation for their offer, but asked, instead, for a trip to Montreal. Perplexed, the Blaines agreed to his request.

Unbeknownst to his parents, Micah had applied and been accepted for admission to McGill University. His trip to Montreal was, in part, a job-hunting expedition, the success of which would determine whether he would begin school there in the fall. Another purpose of the trip was to introduce Tender Matthews, who had since more than forgiven his overture, to the wonders of Canadian life with a younger paramour.

[More to come, later…much later.]