Chapter 5
Chapter 5
Despite knowing that war had been declared and that missiles were falling on the major centers across the country, killing thousands of innocent people, the next week was one of the best that Justin could remember.
He and James had taken stock of what had been accumulated at the cabin over the years, and the discovery of an old aluminum canoe chained to a tree behind the cabins, a couple of fishing rods and boxes of tackle, and a pellet gun with several tins of pellets had transformed what could have been a difficult, tense week into a father-son retreat unlike any he and James had ever had the chance to share. They spent the crisp autumn mornings in the canoe, where Justin told James stories about when his own father had taught him to fish. They didn’t manage to catch anything for the first couple of days, but once they found a good spot, they had fish for dinner most nights. In the afternoons they explored the woods around the cabin for a while before returning to the cabin to split wood and prepare for colder weather. To give James something to do while he was working, Justin showed him how to shoot the pellet gun at the empty soup cans. In the evenings, before the light faded, Justin would read to James from one of the old, coverless books that sat on the home-made shelves in the cabin no one ever really used. When the sun went down, they played cribbage by the light of an ancient kerosene lantern that had been stored in the back of one of the sheds beside an equally ancient, rusting container of kerosene.
They didn’t bother using the generator more than once a day, as they listened for updates on the various radio stations. The stations were often little more than the emergency broadcast, but once in a while an announcer would come on-air and provide a glimpse into what was happening. It was pretty much what Justin had expected.
Ontario was faring the worst; the US had pummelled it mercilessly in the first few days, taking out the bases at Kingston, Trenton, Ottawa, and Petawawa, as well as the Houses of Parliament and the major airports in Toronto, Ottawa, and Hamilton. Several of the other major centers in Ontario had been slammed in the first few hours by aerial strikes rather than by missiles. Of the major centers, however, Toronto was being hit the hardest. Quebec had fared almost as poorly as Ontario, with the bases in Montreal, Saint-Jean, Saint-Hubert, and Valcartier being utterly devastated. The attacks had been swift, particularly on armed forces locations, and the descriptions of the chaos was terrible to listen to. Alberta, too, had suffered heavy attacks, both on the bases in Wainwright, Edmonton, and Cold Lake, and also on Calgary and some of the secondary cities. Vancouver and Victoria had the dubious honor of being the targets of the US Pacific Fleet, and they had seen heavy attacks from the Carriers that had moved into the region from where they had been practicing manoeuvres just north of San Francisco. In the Maritimes, the only major strikes had been against military bases in New Brunswick and Newfoundland.
Justin did his best to explain the situation to James in terms the boy could understand. His Canadian geography was a little rusty, as it wasn’t part of the high school curriculum any more, but he drew a rough map of Canada for James and showed him the cities that had been hit after each broadcast. He talked to his son about tactics, and why certain locations were being targeted instead of others. His son was quick to understand the basics, and the conversations they had were remarkably complex considering his son’s age.
Each night, Justin would tell his son stories to help him sleep. Unlike Lisa, Justin had no repertoire of Disney tales to draw from, so he talked about historical figures like Napoleon, Julius Caesar, Hannibal, and Alexander the Great. They would lie down on the bed James had chosen as his own, a double bed that sat against the central partition of the cabin, and stare at the ceiling in the flickering light of the kerosene lamp. Old posters and calendars from the end of the twentieth century dotted the walls, and invariably Justin would glance at the poster that hung beside the bed; it was a classic reprint of James Dean in his leather jacket, leaning casually against a brick wall, his eyes cold and unyielding. The poster was starting to show its age, but it remained impressive.
“Who is that?” James asked one night, pointing to the old poster.
“An actor,” Justin replied. “He was pretty famous before he died. That’s from one of his best known movies.”
“What was it about?” James asked softly.
“I don’t really know,” Justin laughed. “It was before my time. People got pretty worked up about it, though. People wanted to be like him, a rebel.”
James frowned as he looked at the poster. “What’s a rebel?”
With a deep breath, Justin leaned back against the head board of the bed. “Well, that’s a good question. A rebel is someone who stands up against authority, who doesn’t do what other people expect him to do.”
“Can we be rebels?” James whispered, his eyes fluttering.
“Not yet, kiddo,” Justin answered quietly, staring at the image of the ghost on the wall.
*
The autumn was short-lived. The first snows came just over two weeks after they had settled in at the cabin. Luckily, Justin had made sure they had a decent supply of wood for the stove. His concern wasn’t warmth, but food. While Lisa had bought a huge number of cans of vegetables, chili, and soups, he knew that they probably wouldn’t last the entire winter without additional food. He’d started rationing their food from the start, which was why the fish had been such a welcome bonus, but he knew that sooner or later the canned food would run out.
He thought long and hard about leaving James behind when he went hunting, but he finally decided against it. While he doubted anyone would come to the cabin while he was gone, he wasn’t willing to risk the possibility. So on James’ seventh birthday, just after the first snow, around when the hunting season would normally have opened anyway, he bundled his son up in the camo gear he’d picked up, locked the cabin up, and the pair of them set out just before dawn.
It was an eye-opening experience for Justin. He’d thought that James would be too young, that his son would be terrified or miserable, but James took to hunting like he seemed to take to everything else. Pellet gun in hand, James followed after Justin with silent determination, mimicking everything his father did. Justin silently pointed out signs of deer, from tracks in the snow to the scrapes and rubs that indicated a buck in the area. James studied each sign carefully, frowning in concentration, before nodding to his father to continue.
Justin spotted a young buck near the end of the day, about an hour before the sun set. He dropped into a crouch and glanced back at James to find his son already hunched down, his eyes riveted on the deer at the edge of a clearing, barely a hundred yards away. Justin turned his attention to the deer, carefully steadying his rifle. The powerful scope brought the buck into perfect clarity, and he felt his heart begin to hammer in his chest.
The buck was oblivious to them and was presenting a perfect shot. Taking slow, careful breaths to try and calm himself, Justin flicked the safety off. The sound was minimal, but it was enough to cause the buck to glance up, suddenly alert. Justin remained absolutely still, his heart pounding. It was always like this for him, the adrenalin and excitement threatening to throw off his shot. He waited, forcing himself to breath as normally as he could. The cross-hairs of the scope, which had been bouncing around when he first took aim, steadied.
The shot rang out in the silence of the late afternoon. The deer lurched forward a single bound, and then collapsed to the ground. Justin chambered another round, but remained where he was, his sight on the fallen deer. When he had first started hunting, years before, he had made the mistake of approaching an animal he’d shot too soon. The deer had staggered to its feet and fled, forcing him to chase the wounded animal for nearly four hours before he could finish the poor animal. While he was certain that this had been a perfect shot, that the deer had been killed virtually instantly, he wasn’t the kind of person to make the same mistake twice.
He glanced back at James, who had begun to rise after the shot, and shook his head. “Not yet,” he mouthed, and James settled back down, staring at where the deer had fallen.
They remained there, silent and unmoving, for a full fifteen minutes before Justin finally rose and moved quietly across the field to where the deer lay. The shot had been perfect, and the deer lay exactly where it had fallen, its eyes glazed with death, its tongue lolling lifelessly from its mouth.
This was, Justin realized, James’ first brush with death, and he watched his son carefully as they knelt down beside the fallen animal.
James reached a hand out and touched the deer. He looked sad, but glanced up at his father. “You only had to shoot it once,” the boy commented.
“That is always the goal,” Justin answered. “No animal should have to suffer.”
“Why did we have to wait?”
“In case I hadn’t hit it in the right place. Animals can do some pretty amazing things when they are scared or hurt. You always want to wait for at least that long, just in case. Some shots can be deadly, but the animal doesn’t always realize it. If the shot doesn’t kill it right away, they often get up and run a little ways before they have to settle down. If you follow too soon, you will scare it into running again. Better to wait and make sure.”
His son nodded thoughtfully, and then glanced back down at the deer. “It’s pretty.”
Justin nodded. “They are.”
His son studied the deer for a moment, and then looked at his father again. “Did we have to kill it?”
“We need to have the meat if we want to make it through the winter,” Justin replied, placing one hand on his son’s shoulder.
James tilted his head to one side as he looked down at the deer. “It’s kind of sad,” the boy whispered. “But I understand. What do we do now?”
If Justin thought that field dressing the deer would faze his son, he was mistaken. James watched him work in silence, and when the process was done, he moved to try and help carry the deer. Justin smiled at that. “I take the deer. You take the guns. First, check to make sure my rifle is unloaded.”
James walked over to where Justin had propped his rifle against a tree. Before Justin could begin to tell him what to do, he’d drawn the bolt back three times, ejecting the ammunition still in the gun. Justin grinned and bent to pick up the cartridges. “There’s an easier way, kiddo. Just drop the clip next time.”
James watched as he demonstrated, and then he frowned. “But won’t that leave one in the gun?” he asked.
“Yes,” Justin laughed. “But you won’t have to hunt for the fallen cartridges in the snow. You eject the last one carefully. Then make sure the safety is on, just in case.”
James took the clip and rifle from his father. He picked up his own pellet gun, carrying both rifles awkwardly in his cradled arms, and glanced at the deer. “It’s a long walk home,” he observed.
“It always is,” Justin agreed as he hauled the deer up and over one shoulder, grunting at the effort.
It was well past dark when they reached the cabin. He got Justin into bed and went back outside to deal with the deer. He hung it from the rafters in the second cabin, which had never been insulated. The cold weather and the concrete floor made it a perfect cold room. He spent the next hour skinning it. By the time he was done, he was utterly exhausted. He left the meat to hang for a few days over the tarp, and stumbled into the cabin to sleep.
He woke to James shaking his shoulder in the first hints of sunrise.
“Daddy,” James whispered. “I saw people.”
Despite knowing that war had been declared and that missiles were falling on the major centers across the country, killing thousands of innocent people, the next week was one of the best that Justin could remember.
He and James had taken stock of what had been accumulated at the cabin over the years, and the discovery of an old aluminum canoe chained to a tree behind the cabins, a couple of fishing rods and boxes of tackle, and a pellet gun with several tins of pellets had transformed what could have been a difficult, tense week into a father-son retreat unlike any he and James had ever had the chance to share. They spent the crisp autumn mornings in the canoe, where Justin told James stories about when his own father had taught him to fish. They didn’t manage to catch anything for the first couple of days, but once they found a good spot, they had fish for dinner most nights. In the afternoons they explored the woods around the cabin for a while before returning to the cabin to split wood and prepare for colder weather. To give James something to do while he was working, Justin showed him how to shoot the pellet gun at the empty soup cans. In the evenings, before the light faded, Justin would read to James from one of the old, coverless books that sat on the home-made shelves in the cabin no one ever really used. When the sun went down, they played cribbage by the light of an ancient kerosene lantern that had been stored in the back of one of the sheds beside an equally ancient, rusting container of kerosene.
They didn’t bother using the generator more than once a day, as they listened for updates on the various radio stations. The stations were often little more than the emergency broadcast, but once in a while an announcer would come on-air and provide a glimpse into what was happening. It was pretty much what Justin had expected.
Ontario was faring the worst; the US had pummelled it mercilessly in the first few days, taking out the bases at Kingston, Trenton, Ottawa, and Petawawa, as well as the Houses of Parliament and the major airports in Toronto, Ottawa, and Hamilton. Several of the other major centers in Ontario had been slammed in the first few hours by aerial strikes rather than by missiles. Of the major centers, however, Toronto was being hit the hardest. Quebec had fared almost as poorly as Ontario, with the bases in Montreal, Saint-Jean, Saint-Hubert, and Valcartier being utterly devastated. The attacks had been swift, particularly on armed forces locations, and the descriptions of the chaos was terrible to listen to. Alberta, too, had suffered heavy attacks, both on the bases in Wainwright, Edmonton, and Cold Lake, and also on Calgary and some of the secondary cities. Vancouver and Victoria had the dubious honor of being the targets of the US Pacific Fleet, and they had seen heavy attacks from the Carriers that had moved into the region from where they had been practicing manoeuvres just north of San Francisco. In the Maritimes, the only major strikes had been against military bases in New Brunswick and Newfoundland.
Justin did his best to explain the situation to James in terms the boy could understand. His Canadian geography was a little rusty, as it wasn’t part of the high school curriculum any more, but he drew a rough map of Canada for James and showed him the cities that had been hit after each broadcast. He talked to his son about tactics, and why certain locations were being targeted instead of others. His son was quick to understand the basics, and the conversations they had were remarkably complex considering his son’s age.
Each night, Justin would tell his son stories to help him sleep. Unlike Lisa, Justin had no repertoire of Disney tales to draw from, so he talked about historical figures like Napoleon, Julius Caesar, Hannibal, and Alexander the Great. They would lie down on the bed James had chosen as his own, a double bed that sat against the central partition of the cabin, and stare at the ceiling in the flickering light of the kerosene lamp. Old posters and calendars from the end of the twentieth century dotted the walls, and invariably Justin would glance at the poster that hung beside the bed; it was a classic reprint of James Dean in his leather jacket, leaning casually against a brick wall, his eyes cold and unyielding. The poster was starting to show its age, but it remained impressive.
“Who is that?” James asked one night, pointing to the old poster.
“An actor,” Justin replied. “He was pretty famous before he died. That’s from one of his best known movies.”
“What was it about?” James asked softly.
“I don’t really know,” Justin laughed. “It was before my time. People got pretty worked up about it, though. People wanted to be like him, a rebel.”
James frowned as he looked at the poster. “What’s a rebel?”
With a deep breath, Justin leaned back against the head board of the bed. “Well, that’s a good question. A rebel is someone who stands up against authority, who doesn’t do what other people expect him to do.”
“Can we be rebels?” James whispered, his eyes fluttering.
“Not yet, kiddo,” Justin answered quietly, staring at the image of the ghost on the wall.
*
The autumn was short-lived. The first snows came just over two weeks after they had settled in at the cabin. Luckily, Justin had made sure they had a decent supply of wood for the stove. His concern wasn’t warmth, but food. While Lisa had bought a huge number of cans of vegetables, chili, and soups, he knew that they probably wouldn’t last the entire winter without additional food. He’d started rationing their food from the start, which was why the fish had been such a welcome bonus, but he knew that sooner or later the canned food would run out.
He thought long and hard about leaving James behind when he went hunting, but he finally decided against it. While he doubted anyone would come to the cabin while he was gone, he wasn’t willing to risk the possibility. So on James’ seventh birthday, just after the first snow, around when the hunting season would normally have opened anyway, he bundled his son up in the camo gear he’d picked up, locked the cabin up, and the pair of them set out just before dawn.
It was an eye-opening experience for Justin. He’d thought that James would be too young, that his son would be terrified or miserable, but James took to hunting like he seemed to take to everything else. Pellet gun in hand, James followed after Justin with silent determination, mimicking everything his father did. Justin silently pointed out signs of deer, from tracks in the snow to the scrapes and rubs that indicated a buck in the area. James studied each sign carefully, frowning in concentration, before nodding to his father to continue.
Justin spotted a young buck near the end of the day, about an hour before the sun set. He dropped into a crouch and glanced back at James to find his son already hunched down, his eyes riveted on the deer at the edge of a clearing, barely a hundred yards away. Justin turned his attention to the deer, carefully steadying his rifle. The powerful scope brought the buck into perfect clarity, and he felt his heart begin to hammer in his chest.
The buck was oblivious to them and was presenting a perfect shot. Taking slow, careful breaths to try and calm himself, Justin flicked the safety off. The sound was minimal, but it was enough to cause the buck to glance up, suddenly alert. Justin remained absolutely still, his heart pounding. It was always like this for him, the adrenalin and excitement threatening to throw off his shot. He waited, forcing himself to breath as normally as he could. The cross-hairs of the scope, which had been bouncing around when he first took aim, steadied.
The shot rang out in the silence of the late afternoon. The deer lurched forward a single bound, and then collapsed to the ground. Justin chambered another round, but remained where he was, his sight on the fallen deer. When he had first started hunting, years before, he had made the mistake of approaching an animal he’d shot too soon. The deer had staggered to its feet and fled, forcing him to chase the wounded animal for nearly four hours before he could finish the poor animal. While he was certain that this had been a perfect shot, that the deer had been killed virtually instantly, he wasn’t the kind of person to make the same mistake twice.
He glanced back at James, who had begun to rise after the shot, and shook his head. “Not yet,” he mouthed, and James settled back down, staring at where the deer had fallen.
They remained there, silent and unmoving, for a full fifteen minutes before Justin finally rose and moved quietly across the field to where the deer lay. The shot had been perfect, and the deer lay exactly where it had fallen, its eyes glazed with death, its tongue lolling lifelessly from its mouth.
This was, Justin realized, James’ first brush with death, and he watched his son carefully as they knelt down beside the fallen animal.
James reached a hand out and touched the deer. He looked sad, but glanced up at his father. “You only had to shoot it once,” the boy commented.
“That is always the goal,” Justin answered. “No animal should have to suffer.”
“Why did we have to wait?”
“In case I hadn’t hit it in the right place. Animals can do some pretty amazing things when they are scared or hurt. You always want to wait for at least that long, just in case. Some shots can be deadly, but the animal doesn’t always realize it. If the shot doesn’t kill it right away, they often get up and run a little ways before they have to settle down. If you follow too soon, you will scare it into running again. Better to wait and make sure.”
His son nodded thoughtfully, and then glanced back down at the deer. “It’s pretty.”
Justin nodded. “They are.”
His son studied the deer for a moment, and then looked at his father again. “Did we have to kill it?”
“We need to have the meat if we want to make it through the winter,” Justin replied, placing one hand on his son’s shoulder.
James tilted his head to one side as he looked down at the deer. “It’s kind of sad,” the boy whispered. “But I understand. What do we do now?”
If Justin thought that field dressing the deer would faze his son, he was mistaken. James watched him work in silence, and when the process was done, he moved to try and help carry the deer. Justin smiled at that. “I take the deer. You take the guns. First, check to make sure my rifle is unloaded.”
James walked over to where Justin had propped his rifle against a tree. Before Justin could begin to tell him what to do, he’d drawn the bolt back three times, ejecting the ammunition still in the gun. Justin grinned and bent to pick up the cartridges. “There’s an easier way, kiddo. Just drop the clip next time.”
James watched as he demonstrated, and then he frowned. “But won’t that leave one in the gun?” he asked.
“Yes,” Justin laughed. “But you won’t have to hunt for the fallen cartridges in the snow. You eject the last one carefully. Then make sure the safety is on, just in case.”
James took the clip and rifle from his father. He picked up his own pellet gun, carrying both rifles awkwardly in his cradled arms, and glanced at the deer. “It’s a long walk home,” he observed.
“It always is,” Justin agreed as he hauled the deer up and over one shoulder, grunting at the effort.
It was well past dark when they reached the cabin. He got Justin into bed and went back outside to deal with the deer. He hung it from the rafters in the second cabin, which had never been insulated. The cold weather and the concrete floor made it a perfect cold room. He spent the next hour skinning it. By the time he was done, he was utterly exhausted. He left the meat to hang for a few days over the tarp, and stumbled into the cabin to sleep.
He woke to James shaking his shoulder in the first hints of sunrise.
“Daddy,” James whispered. “I saw people.”