A: All of us. I don't think the boys took it seriously [...].

Q: What about you?

A: Well, I didn't think she took it seriously. I didn't think she was serious.

On the trial transcript Yvonne writes over this: "All a lie. If I fight I say, 'Let's dance.' Or, 'I'll run up one side of you and down the other.' " And she also writes on Shirley Anne's statement to Bradley, where this quote also appears, "What can this really mean, death, or beating, what?" She comments on these words in her notes on the factum prepared by her lawyers for her appeal to the Appeal Court of Alberta: "These words are not in my vocabulary. I'd say, 'Let's dance.' "

It is clear that what Yvonne remembers is: if Chuck Skwarok was coming over and they accused him of molestation, she thought he would become enraged and they would have to fight him. Or, if he actually was a molester-perhaps even the man who was being talked about as stalking children in town-then they might have to rough him up and throw him out to let him know he was not welcome in their house. She was fiercely protective of her children, yes, but, as she had kept telling Shirley Anne, she barely knew Chuck and-with the possible exception of what Shirley Anne herself had set up that afternoon with Baby-all she knew of him and her children was that he had conspicuously avoided them. She thought of having to fight him if cornered-threats and fights and beatings were standard behaviour in her world-but she never once had the faintest thought of killing him.

And furthermore, Yvonne points out, if Chuck's two big cousins were coming over with him-as they all expected-was she "planning" to kill all three of them? Clearly, Shirley Anne's testimony was ridiculous as well as contradictory.

Nevertheless, Shirley Anne's four words at the trial, which she insisted were Yvonne's, made it appear as if a plan was being made to "do" Chuck "in." Then she tried to soften it for the rest of them by adding that neither Dwa nor Ernie nor she thought Yvonne was actually serious.

In her second "interview" with Bradley, Shirley Anne shifted and elaborated further on her "non-serious" state of mind regarding a man she was trying to convince the others was really and truly a child molester. She frankly admits she herself talked to him on the phone, and that "... I asked him over, and [he] said he would [come and] bring a couple of cases and he was bringing these cute guys with nice buns, and at the time all I was thinking about was the cute guys and more booze and partying a little bit and that's what I was looking forward to. I wasn't even thinking-didn't have killing on my mind. I didn't take it seriously [...]. I meet the deceased at the door, no guys and just one case of beer, and to be honest I was a little disappointed, that's how I felt at the time."

Yvonne remembers that her feelings at that moment had nothing to do with "cute guys with nice buns" and "partying"; Yvonne remembers: "I did not know what to do. I sat like a stone. It was Shirley Anne let him in."

A complex sequence of cause-and-effect actions followed Chuck Skwarok's arrival. From police and witness statements, trial records, and Yvonne's recollections, I have tried to clarify a logical strand of facts.

Three people sit on the couch set along the living-room wall: Shirley Anne at the end farthest into the room, Ernie in the middle, and Dwa beside a small end table. Out of sight under the couch lies a nonfunctioning rifle. Yvonne sits in the sofa chair with her back to the doorway into the kitchen; the end table and Dwa are on her left, a wider coffee table and lamp on her right. Beyond that, on her right, is the door to the children's bedroom. It is closed.

All four are drinking; the three on the couch discuss, interrupt, argue what to do when the men arrive. They are coming, that's that.

Charles Skwarok arrives. He is alone, not with his cousins as Shirley Anne had said he'd be. He carries a carton half full of beer and a heavy plastic bag. He does not sit in the other sofa chair in the living room: he puts his stuff down and goes into the kitchen and returns with a stacking chair whose thin metal legs are curved round at the back. He sits down directly opposite the three people on the sofa, a metre and a half away; Yvonne is within arm's reach across the coffee table on his left, and the door of the children's bedroom is immediately behind him. He opens a beer and digs into his bag and pulls out some magazines. He says Shirley Anne asked for them, to "spice things up."

Yvonne refuses to so much as look at them; she is thinking: Don't look at this dirt he drags into my house, be stiff, be cold and he'll leave, don't move, don't say a word.

Shirley Anne leans forward to stare at the magazine spread out in Ernie's lap, and she reaches under the couch. She asks Ernie: "Are there any pictures of small kids in there?"

Ernie stares up at Chuck directly: "Do you like men, or little boys? Their tight buns?"

Voices are rising, Shirley Anne is asking questions now, too fast to wait for answers. Chuck tilts back on the rounded legs of his chair with his gut stretching his T-shirt above his pants, a bit puzzled at first but seemingly not at all concerned. Finally he says to the two men, "Sure ... sure, some men have nice buns. I was gonna go fishing with a couple today, but they left, so...."

He shrugs, relaxed, the biggest guy there with a slit of stomach exposed, and suddenly Dwa, on the couch in his summer-white shorts, hunches around and crosses his bare legs.

"Stop staring at my balls," he says to Chuck.

There is a shift of feeling in the room, like a sliver of winter wind. Ernie and Chuck are talking very loudly now, not listening to each other. Shirley Anne is scrabbling her arm under the couch and mouthing at Yvonne, "Ask him now, ask him now," so eager to prove herself right.

"No!" Yvonne exclaims, thumping her empty bottle on the coffee table and jerking to her feet. Chuck reaches his long arm down and pulls up a beer from his carton and offers it to her and she says "No!" again. The room is so crowded, she is standing directly against his legs and she won't look at him. "I don't want anything from you!" She is hemmed in; how can she get past him and the coffee table into the open space of the kitchen? "I get my own beer in my own house!"

But she is trapped by his body and the loathing of who he may be, and directly behind her Shirley Anne shouts, "Tell them what you told me, your wife hauled you into court, you were molesting your own girl, tell 'em, you fucken kiddy fucker!"

Chuck tilts upright on his chair, his body moving forward against Yvonne, suddenly huge, his face almost in her chest.

"Move, please!" she says, loudly but terrified. He is peering at her, his body thrusting forward onto her, yelling something at the others. She never has anyone to protect her-"Move!"-she lashes at him with both her fists.

He tips backwards on the rounded legs of his chair, crashes against the bedroom door. It bursts open, and he falls back flat.

Now Charles Skwarok is halfway inside her children's bedroom. Yvonne hears one of their voices, waking up, and breaks into total panic. She grabs across him for the door knob. "Get out of there, get out!" jerking, jerking, but his head and shoulders block the doorway. She bangs the thin door against him till he twists, curls himself around, and she can finally slam it shut. He kicks some space for his feet, uncoils himself upwards in front of her, his fist comes up and he smashes her; she explodes backwards, head over heels, across the coffee table, knocking the lamp onto the floor beyond and crashing down with it.

Yvonne is crouched on the floor between the coffee table and sofa chair; she knows by instinct what she must do. She must remain small, tiny; she cannot permit herself to be beaten senseless, her children are in the next room; she must remain conscious and extremely small, her bare feet flat on the floor, her thighs resting on the backs of her lower legs, her upper body and head bowed low, and her hands quietly cleaning the shards of the light bulb aside so she will not cut herself when she has to leap up.

There is shouting, shrieking above her, Chuck bellowing, "You fight like a man, you take it like a man!" and "I never did nothing, you cunts," and Shirley Anne, "You told me what you did, you kid fucker," and Ernie, "Fucken skinner," and Dwa sitting there completely quiet, in six years Yvonne has never heard him yell. Stay small, fake it till you have to make it.

Chuck swings from side to side, poised to handle them all, and stringing curses he turns, walks into the kitchen. In three, four strides he'll be across it and out the door.

But Shirley Anne will not be denied, she won't allow it to end. She leaps after Chuck, grabs his hair and yanks him to a stop. He tries to tear her loose, fights her kicks and shrieking; he is sliding on the cork floor in his stocking feet; she has him bent over as he slowly drags her towards the door, straining low, but she knows hair fighting-she has him good and tight and he slips, falls to his knees, she is kicking at him and he reaches up, he has fists big enough to drive her through the wall.

"You stupid cunt, let go!"

And Yvonne makes the mistake of her life: she wants nothing but Chuck out of the house, and she straightens up, she jumps in to separate them so he will go, be gone, vanished.

But when she tries to get between them, Chuck explodes into a frenzy; he forgets Shirley Anne yanking his hair and kicking him, and instead hammers Yvonne. Instinctively she hits him back. Chuck has his fist in her hair as she falls under him, he's bent under Shirley Anne, and they are sliding on the kitchen floor. Yvonne shouts at Shirley Anne and Chuck to stop, for Dwa to come and break this up, and finally she hears Dwa yell, "Let go of my wife!"

Dwa is there, yanking at them, and then Ernie too, but punching, all five in a tangle and skating into chairs, slamming table, kitchen counter, walls, corners. They are ripping and beating each other into the tight space where the closed outside door and basement door stand at right angles to each other. They are one big ball of fighting now, with Yvonne at the bottom.

In that tiny square they slam and rebound heads, body edges, feet against the fridge, the two doors, and suddenly the basement door bursts back off its breaking latch, opening like a gigantic maw, steep steps slanting down into blackness. And inexplicable to Yvonne, she is still at the bottom of the pile and can see nothing, as they struggle to untangle themselves from each other, even as they seem about to break apart, it is Chuck who is on the lip of the top step of the basement. Who topples over, and falls. Disappears into the ominous thuds of his falling.

Three men beating each other always make a lot of noise, but contained in a short, narrow basement it is even louder. Ernie has charged down after Chuck, yelling to Dwa, who has followed. But Yvonne wants no part of this, she wants it gone; maybe it will vanish if she pulls the basement door shut. So she does that.

Shirley Anne is shadow-boxing around the kitchen, punching air hard each time a heavy slam or grunt sounds through the floor. "Yeah! Hit the fucker."

But sometimes there is silence below, an ominous space of ... nothing ... and Yvonne is afraid. It seems more likely that Chuck is giving it to Dwa and Ernie; she has no faith in either as fighters. Out of such a sudden silence Chuck may suddenly jerk the basement door open, loom up into the kitchen.

Shirley Anne sees her and stops her silly boxing; she disappears into the living room and returns holding the rifle across her chest like a movie soldier.

"That's useless," Yvonne says. Shirley Anne looks at her without comprehension.

"It's a gun, eh?" As if, if she holds it, it must be power.

Chantal appears behind Shirley Anne, frightened. Yvonne goes quickly to her. "Don't come out now. Watch your brother and sister but don't ask questions now. Go, sweetheart."

And she goes, quickly obedient as always, back into the bedroom. There may be heavy thuds and shouts and crashes in the basement, but that small room with most of its floor covered by mattresses for sleep or play must hold only quiet breath. The block letters of the alphabets they pasted to the wall begin just above the middle mattress, Chantal's, and rise like a mountain to the brightness of the T lit by the streetlight shining through the frilly curtains, and turn the corner of the room on U to Z by the window. Straight across, the ABCs begin again, slant down until M disappears into the closet doors folded open. The three children asleep.

There is no sound from below, nothing. With a jolt Yvonne cannot remember since when there has been no sound, and she is deeply afraid. Silently-her feet are bare-she walks past Shirley Anne by the sink, listening too, open-mouthed, and leans towards the basement door. The door catch has been torn out. There is a slight creak, and slowly she pushes against the door. Inch by inch the steep steps appear beneath her, empty.

And then Chuck's sudden face is below her. Surging up out of nothing, hard, fast, raw, a face and wide shoulders enraged and already eye-level with her bare feet and in a second he will be nose to nose with her again, will tower over her, and she jerks the door back, he has beaten down Dwa and Ernie and now he will do whatever he pleases, but his big hand out of nowhere grabs the bottom of the door and she jerks harder, she cannot break his grip, she has no space in her terrified mind except, no, no, not up into the house, knock him loose, knock him back down. There is only their desperately silent struggle, both the boys must be out cold and there is no one left but she has to keep him away from the bedroom. She cannot break his grip on the door rim and his other arm is going high, reaching for the knob, and without a thought she slams the door back on him. Stay out of my house! And the edge of the door hits his face, blood wells as the skin of his forehead dents and bursts.

She has drawn blood. A fight to the blood is very bad.

Chuck's face may be bleeding but he is too strong for Yvonne. With one hand he keeps the door open and with the other he grabs her ankle and jerks. She slips off the floor onto the top step, loses her frantic balance and falls forward, headlong into the stairwell. Her desperate hands hook onto the small cupboard she built onto the wall opposite, above the stairs, and she catches herself there, hanging with her full body length stretched out above the bloody, enraged man. He roars to pull her loose, dragging down on her left arm, but she has the strength of terror. If he can throw her aside he will certainly climb up and do whatever he wants in the house. She contorts herself to anchor her right leg on the concrete ledge of the foundation and he clamps onto her hips with both hands and pulls down with all his strength, all his weight. Shirley Anne is kicking at him from the top stair; Yvonne is gasping for help, she knows her backbone will snap. And then at last both Dwa and Ernie are coming at Chuck from below. Cursing, they haul at him, stupidly they add their weight to his on her bending back!

She is breaking, she cannot hold. She manages to scrape one leg free, to get her foot against his chest and shove, hard. And he flies down the stairs against the men to crash into the washer and dryer; even as she falls after them.

Within seconds Shirley Anne is down there with them. All five are now in the tight concrete basement; scrambling to their feet on its concrete floor. From above the kitchen light gleams on Chuck's bloody head.

10.

If I Gave You a Gun, Would You Shoot Me?

In this case you are exposed to people who are obviously very different from you and me. That's reality. It would be nice if all the Crown witnesses to a murder were bank managers and accountants, but the cold hard truth is that Chuck [Skwarok] and Yvonne Johnson and Ernie Jensen don't hang out with those people. They hang out with Shirley [Anne] Salmon and Lyle Schmidt, people who drink wine at 11 o'clock in the morning. The point of all that is not whether they are people who do things like that, it's whether you accept what they told you about what happened.

Crown Prosecutor J. Barry Hill, Address to the Jury, Wetaskiwin, 18 March 1991 STREETS LEAD AWAY from Yvonne's house in three directions. The south is a dead end blocked by Parkside School. The door clicks behind her, the autumn air innocent as the corner streetlight, not a sound or motion. Her Dodge van stands in the drive where it belongs; she can walk around it and open the door and get in and twist the key and back onto the street easily and she'll be facing away, every road leading away.

The engine roars as the cold pedal hits her bare foot. Move, move. The van swings back, left, and leaps forward. For an instant as she runs under the streetlight at the corner, her eyes draw left, she can't stop them, and Chuck's dark Hornet hatchback sits there beside the sidewalk under the trees of her lot. Her thoughts rip like the flash of the streetlight across the back of her mind.

Maybe nothing happened maybe he was just out cold and limp when we wrapped him in the tarp so limp when we shoved him in the hatchback and slammed maybe he'll wake up and kick off the tarp and drive to the hospital maybe he'll drive and get his two big cousins and come back and beat us all up maybe nothing happened maybe She thrusts a tape into the player, concentrating on play! And George Thorogood's Destroyers' guitars clang, then Thorogood wails, "I come in last night ... wouldn't let me in, move it on over ..." and she flicks that up to blare, her head rocking into beat. The van drives, turns by itself.

At the Wayside Inn there's a big bus with blocked-out windows in the parking lot, which means Ladies' Night, no women allowed except strippers. Music so loud you can't think. Yvonne just wants a case of beer from Off Sales and she'll be gone, away, and the bouncer says, Okay, ya gotta wait for intermission. She stands in the space between the two padded doors of the bar, slumps, and hits the pay-phone. The kids-someone will have to take care of the kids now. But Mom has no phone at Red Pheasant; this time of night there's only Dad in Butte.

The stripper music crashes to a stop as she's dialling and the bouncer sticks his head between the doors, Okay, quick. Yvonne approaches the Off Sales desk. One case. Her hand comes out of her jean pocket not with the twenty Dwa just gave her but bills, bills-the cheque she cashed earlier-so she says, "Three, no four cases, four."

Someone comes up behind her, some huge lunk, talking loud like he owns the world. "Hey, Bud, you can't serve her, she's barefoot!"

But both she and the bartender ignore the bossy bugger; she hoists the four cases of beer to her chest and is out of there. The kids. She stacks the beer on the entrance floor beside her cold feet.

"Dad," she says fast, "Dad!" interrupting the long-distance collect operator saying her name and will you accept-into his muttered waking-up.

"Vonnie?"

The door from the bar swings ajar; someone, a man, peers out at her, stands there, trying to listen? And she twists sideways, the receiver jammed into her ear. She's in Butte, Montana, the little crammed house.

"Vonnie, I can't hardly hear you, I--"

"Dad, I'm in bad trouble. Can you get hold of Mom, to come get the kids. Something really bad--"

"Where are you? I can't hear, just noise ..."

"I'm between the doors in a bar, I ..."

"Where? You in Alberta? Vonnie?"

"Yes! Yes!" she shouts. On the phone she trusts him. He'll tell her what to do and she'll do it. "In Wetaskiwin, the house's okay but something really bad-Dad, a guy keeps peeking out at me. I'll phone right back, some other place; I'll phone right back!"

She hangs up, and the man is there again; he must have been listening. "Yvonne?"

It's the loudmouth at the Off Sales, and she's seen him before, plenty, always hanging around, she can't stand him. "What's wrong? Hey, you're soaking wet."

"Nothing!" She's got two cases under her left arm, grabs the third by the handle, and tries for the fourth but she can't hold it, it drops to the ground, so she leaves it and swings around to knock the outside door open but it jerks away and she almost falls against two RCMP officers coming in. They back up a step, staring at her.

The biggest one says, "Hello, how's it going ... Yvonne."

He's grey-haired and smiling slightly. The cruel cop game of smile and arrest, maybe they've already got the guys. She can do nothing, just play the game as long as it plays.

"How do you guys know my name?"

He laughs, points, so friendly he'll be the worst. "Right there, on your jacket." And of course it is, her old Butte, Montana, sports jacket; her mom made it. The shorter cop is staring at Loudmouth.

He says, holding the dropped beer, "Yvonne here forgot one."

"I can't ...," Yvonne says, "carry it all. I'll get it, okay?"

"That's a lotta beer," says the shorter cop. "Big party?"

Yvonne's fear cuts deeper. She steels herself to be normal. "Yeah, home party, just two blocks to go," and slips past them. She cannot let them smell her breath; any second they'll yell, "Stop!" But she hears nothing. The hardest thing is to walk normally. She's across the lot-their cruiser is parked right in front of her van-she's got her door open, she climbs in with her cartons. The ominous cruiser with its bar of flashers is shoved up wide against her radiator. She stacks the beer beside the seat; she is bent down as low as possible. Go, go.

The passenger door opens-Loudmouth. Past him, under the hotel-door light, the two cops stand, still looking at her. She can't start and drive away because they'll see she has only one headlight, they'll be after her in a second, and then they'll smell her and haul her in for impaired too. The guy hoists up the beer carton and leans into the van.

"I brought your beer. Hey, something wrong? Your old man beat you up, who were you calling there? Look, there's blood on your pants ... you get raped?"

"I got in a fight, I gotta go."

He laughs, one foot inside the van now. "You look fucken great," he says. "What does the other guy look like?"

She doesn't know his name but he's always hanging around town, always staring at women.

"If it's rape," his voice lifts, drawls the word like it feels good in his mouth, "tell it to them cops. They'll get the bastard."

This is worse than a nightmare. Her van is her safest place on earth; in it she is surrounded by all the familiar steel which can move her away, away from anything-and now she cannot move it an inch on the busted pavement of the Wayside Inn! This snoop is hooked over her passenger seat and those two cops are staring at her- "I'm going." The motor starts with a touch. "Get out!"

But he doesn't get out; he's scrambling in and her mind flips over, "Okay," she tells him, "you brought the beer, you can have it. I'll drop you anywhere you want to go."

He's yapping, yapping, but she swings the van back from the cruiser and around before she switches on the single light and she's driving slowly, carefully towards the street. No flashing lights behind her. She cranks up George Thorogood, The sky is crying, look at the tears roll down the street ...

Loudmouth leaning towards her, yapping because he senses something's the matter. Something bad.

She's looking for her smokes; he finds them and passes her one. And she sees the booth by the dark Shell station.

"I gotta make a call."

"Who you gonna call, eh?"

Yapping on, trying to find out. She corners in quick, leaves the Destroyers wailing even louder.

Shielding her voice around the plastic phone: "Dad, I think ... maybe ... somebody's dead. I'm in a phone booth, but the kids--"