There was a morning when Wolfe was a child of…three? Four? Maybe five or six. He was in a trance brought on by the multitude of petals on the apple tree outside his bedroom. Their scent was faint, yet it invaded him—I smell it now—every pistil and stamen was surrounded by lit pollen. His mother, Henrietta, shouted up the stairs, summoning him for some task to do with his shoes….I forget whether she wanted him to put them in the hall or give them to Betty for cleaning….They were his blue shoes with real brass buckles. He put the shoes away, or he did something with them, and when he returned to his lit-up blossoms, the tree drooped, a sudden storm slashing it—and he saw the petals all stuck like dead moth-wings on the grass.

—

THE PLAINS MUSEUM HAS OPENED. I go in and wash my face in the public restroom, then ask the attendant my question: Will there be a reenactment of the battle of the Plains of Abraham here, today? To mark the anniversary?

I point at my coat. “I have experience participating in such events.”

But the attendant, a young man, florid of face and having a strangely baby-like, milky expression, replies that there will be no such thing.

I press him. “Today is the thirteenth of September, is it not?”

“Oui.”

“I know it’s not—I mean, Quebec City is hardly, I suppose, going to celebrate…but…”

He lets me go on like this for some time before pulling a paper from under a stack of loose-leaf and perusing it with apparent reluctance. “There will be, today, at one o’clock, a reenactment just outside the main door….”

“Oh?

“On the meridian between the parking lot and the plains.”

“Really? Is there any chance I might—could they need someone to play the part of…of General Wolfe?”

He looks down his nose at me and says no, this thing is a foregone arrangement planned for educational purposes and is out of his hands—he knows nothing more about it than what he has already told me. In fact, he is not sure if it will really happen.

“But if it does, then you think I’m too late to be hired? Perhaps, if someone fails to materialize…I could step in as a last-minute remplacement?”

“Non—if it happens at all they will hire nobody. It is not a paid event. It is educational.”

“Might there remain any work to be had in…in setting up for the event? I have resorted, at Wolfe’s birthplace in Westerham and in other reenactment sites at other times, to this kind of…auxiliary role—anything to be part of the proceedings….I see there are no chairs outside—perhaps you have folding chairs you’ll need carried out? For the audience?”