Chapter 11
James McLeod stared grimly at the man across from the table from him. “You don’t get it, do you? We need to do something, now, or things will just keep getting worse. It’s been what, twelve years since the American Occupation? What’s improved in that time, Kevin? Nothing. They work us like rented mules, pay us next to nothing, steal our resources, and then try to convince us that they are doing us a favor.”
The burly, dark haired man shook his head. “I can’t afford to lose my job, Jim. I’ve got kids. You’re young, still. I’m pushing forty. What you’re talking about is too dangerous.”
“Come on, Kevin! You know they took Barry and his entire family last week, right? You could just as easily be next...”
“And that’s why I’m not willing to do anything, damn you!” The other man slammed his hand down on the table, trembling in a mix of rage and frustration. “You think I’m not scared? I am. You think I don’t wish things were better? I do, but they aren’t going to be. Nothing you or I do is going to change that, McLeod. Get that through your thick skull. How long have the Americans been fighting the Brits and the fucking Russians? It’s been almost a decade, and the damn Yanks are just as strong today as when they started. We can’t stand up to that, Jim.”
James leaned back in his chair, watching the bigger man. James was by no means a small man, standing on the edge of six feet and weighing almost 200 pounds, but next to Kevin Hartford, everyone seemed small. With a growl, James ran a hand through his short blonde hair. “Kevin, just think about it...”
“We’re done, McLeod,” the big man rumbled, leaning closer and poking James solidly in the chest with a meaty finger. “Don’t talk to me about this crazy shit again. Maybe you and that pretty sister of yours can afford to be dragged away, but I won’t put my family at risk. You hear me? We’re done.”
Hartford rose and stalked away from the table to the bar and paid his tab. He glared at James briefly as he walked towards the door, and James shook his head sadly. Kevin would have been a good asset to have. He was big, and people listened to him. James stared morosely at the watery beer in front of him and ran through the other names on his mental list. It was a rapidly diminishing list, he realized. With Kevin went most of the other people he thought might be willing to stand up to the problems they were facing. Most of them had young families. Most of them worked in the relatively newly developed water extraction plants, the only jobs that really paid enough to get by on, and wouldn’t want to jeopardize their income, meager as it was.
With a soft curse he raised the glass and drained the rest of the beer, grimacing at the bitter taste. His father had told him about what beer had been like before the American Occupation, and this piss was a far cry from that. He banged a fist on the table and looked around.
He understood the reluctance so many felt. Compared to the Detention Center he and his family had spent a few weeks in, those first few weeks after they had been forced from the cabin, Calgary seemed like a paradise. The bars had reopened, stores carried a range of groceries again, and televisions were once again a common commodity, though they only played specifically designated programming, most of it pro-American bullshit or obviously tailored news broadcasts. While it was a far cry from what James vaguely recalled from before the war, the luxuries and amenities were theoretically there.
That was the trap. The only way you could access them was by either working for American water industries, or prostituting yourself to the Occupational government and working with the system to exploit Canada’s rapidly dwindling resources.
Even his father had fallen into the trap, albeit unwillingly, slaving at one of the water plants until he was killed five years earlier, along with several other workers, when one of the poorly constructed pipes at the plant had burst. It was, James had thought at the time, an ignominious way for him to die. He had always been the consummate survivor, and dying that way had seemed incredibly banal. James had been fourteen. His father’s death had been difficult for all of them; the idea of life insurance, worker compensation, or death benefits was laughable, and James had been forced to find work. He had chosen to try construction instead of industry, wanting to rebuild what he could of the city, but wages were low. Ultimately Brigitte and Alyse both had to get jobs as housekeepers for American government employees, the only people who received any kind of decent money.
The war hadn’t helped things.
Ostensibly, the attacks from the British and Russians against occupied Canadian cities had been an attempt to return Canadian autonomy. In reality, the Brits and the Russians just wanted a piece of the pie. It was all corporate interest. The drought that had ravaged North America for the last twenty years had hit Europe later, but with equally devastating results. The Russians had managed to obtain a toe-hold in the arctic, and used it to strike down at Edmonton and Calgary on a fairly regular basis while mining the mineral deposits in the Yukon and Northwest Territories. As far as James was concerned, the attacks were meant to keep the Americans fighting so that the Russians could keep up the pretense of being liberators instead of a second occupational force. From the infrequent news reports about the war, the ones that weren’t obviously censored, it seemed as though the British forces had managed to land a force in the Maritimes. They, at least, made a pretense of attacking American cities as well as Canadian ones, but fear of American retaliation against Britain by long-range missiles kept the British from doing more than light aerial attacks on locations of obvious strategic value and minimal civilians.
It was a farce. Anyone with any kind of learning should know that. Of course, the schools only taught what the American Occupational Government wanted them to learn, and then only until students reached twelve years of age. James had been fortunate that his father had insisted, before he died, that James spend most of his early years reading the books that had remained, untouched, in the house James had grown up in. The collection of books his father had accumulated was one of James’ personal treasures.
James considered buying another beer, but decided against it. The little money he had needed to be spent wisely, and using it on beer while idly reflecting on the past was hardly money well spent. He rose and walked over to the bar. The bartender, who was obviously the owner of the place, peered at him as he paid, and James realized that the man was likely an American sympathizer. He was a business owner, and Canadians hadn’t been allowed to own or run a business since the Occupation without special dispensation from the Occupational Government. Considering the topic of conversation James had been having with Kevin, the man was probably planning on reporting him. He grinned at the man and winked conspiratorially. Let the man ponder that, he decided as he walked out of the bar, smiling.
He headed up the street to the tiny, box-like apartment building that he had called home since the Occupational Government had seized the old house shortly after his father’s death. They had claimed the place was no longer inhabitable. They had done the same with virtually all of the homes that had been reclaimed, unless the owners chose to pledge allegiance. Those houses had been deemed structurally sound. The property owners who lost their homes were granted possession of “appropriate alternative living accommodations”.
The old house now belonged to an American colonel, who seemed to find it quite inhabitable.
The stairs creaked as he plodded slowly up to the third floor and opened the door of the two-bedroom apartment he shared with Alyse and Brigitte. While it was nothing fancy, it sufficed.
Alyse had aged considerably since his father’s death. She glanced up from where she sat in a threadbare recliner, watching the news. Her face was lined, and her dark eyes no longer had that spark of vitality that James remembered from his youth. Even so, she remained an attractive woman. James walked over and kissed her gently on the cheek. “How was work?” he asked softly.
She rolled her eyes. “That old hag decided that the floors weren’t cleaned well enough with a mop. I spent the day on my hands and knees while her husband sat in his leather chair and stared at my ass all day. Otherwise it was splendid.” She grinned at him, a hint of her old self shining through in her eyes. “Did you see Brigitte while you were out?”
James shook his head. “She said this morning that she was going to have to work late to clean up after a party.”
Alyse frowned and studied him for a moment. “She’s found a man, hasn’t she?”
Laughing, James tossed his jacket in the closet. “No, Alyse, she hasn’t. She had to work late.”
“That’s the same excuse I always told my mama when I wanted to spend some time with a boy. I may be old, but I’m not stupid, you know.”
“You aren’t old, Alyse, and I know you aren’t stupid,” he chuckled. “Let her have her little fictions. She needs a little happiness in her life.”
Alyse huffed for a moment, and then glanced at him with a wistful smile. “And you, James? Have you found a girl that has been keeping you out late?”
He grinned at her. “Of course. Lots of them.”
She grimaced. “Oh, James, tell me you weren’t out trying to recruit more fools to your crazy little cause.”
Walking into the kitchen, he opened the rickety old fridge and peered inside. He grabbed the bread and butter. “It’s not crazy, Alyse. We need to do something, or things will just get worse. The days of sitting around grousing about how good things used to be are done. We need to change things, not just complain about them.”
“You know what your father would say,” Alyse told him.
“Blah, blah, blah,” James grumbled. He spread the butter thinly on the bread. Bread was cheap. Butter wasn’t. “Look, Alyse, Dad always said that things would get worse before they got better. They’ve gotten worse. It’s time to try to make them get better. I don’t care if I have to yell it from the rooftops. Things have to change.”
“And when the government comes knocking on our door to arrest you for sedition, what do I do?” Alyse asked quietly. “You know how dangerous it is...”
“I know, Alyse,” he murmured around a mouthful of bread. “That’s why things have to change. Look at the people outside and you can’t miss it. They are terrified that anything they say will end up killing them. That’s not right. We shouldn’t be afraid to speak the truth.”
Alyse turned away, blinking tears from her eyes. She stared hard at the television. An ad was playing, reminding citizens that crime rates had increased and cautioning them to report any suspicious activity in their neighborhoods. “How long before someone reports you, James? I couldn’t bear it if I lost you, too. Why can’t someone else do this?”
James finish eating and walked over to crouch down in front of her, reaching one hand out to tilt her chin up. “Alyse,” he said quietly. “I can’t promise nothing will happen. I’m no optimist. But don’t conjure up problems before they happen. This war can’t last forever, and sooner or later the US will back down. I can’t imagine it’s popular in the States. When that happens, someone else is going to take over. The question we have to ask is what kind of changes will there be? If we’re not careful, things will get worse. If we don’t start demanding change now, whoever comes into power might decide that we don’t need change at all. If that happens...” he paused and took a deep breath. “If that happens, Alyse, we’ve condemned ourselves. We won’t be able to blame it on anyone else.”
Alyse shook her head. “You sound like your father, only your father had the sense to realize that he couldn’t change the world.”
“Dad was a survivor, Alyse. I need more than to just survive.” He gestured at the room around them. “This is what survival looks like now, but what will it look like to my children? To my grandchildren? Will it be better or will it be worse? If what I do can help to make it a better place instead of a worse one, how can I not do it?”
“And if what you do makes it a worse place?” Alyse demanded, her voice strained. “Or if it means that you never have children?”
James rose to his feet. “At least I’ll know I tried,” he said sadly as he walked towards his bedroom.
“That will be small comfort if you are dead,” she called out to his retreating back.
“If I die with the truth on my lips, maybe someone will finally listen,” he replied and closed the door behind him.
He lay down on his narrow bed and stared at the poster on the wall beside him. Somehow it had managed to survive everything that he’d gone through. It was tattered on the edges, and covered in dirty fingerprints that wouldn’t wipe off, but it had managed to survive. It was the only decoration in the room that was his. Brigitte had various things on the walls above her bed, things she had drawn, a picture of her with some of her friends from school, a travel poster for some tropical paradise, that kind of thing. For him, though, the poster was enough. He’d discovered the name of the movie years before, and he often felt as though it could be him in the poster. While he had a cause, it seemed like he was the only one who could see it.
He shook his head sadly. After a moment, he sat up and pulled one of his father’s books from the small shelf at the foot of his bed. He’d read all of them before, many times, so which one he picked didn’t really matter. Many of the books were dense texts on political science and history, a few dealt with philosophy. His father had had specific tastes, which made sense considering his education. The one James grabbed, however, was a novel about the American Revolution. It was ironic, he decided, that he had first found inspiration to rise up against the Americans from reading about their own history. Smiling slightly, he settled in and started reading.
The burly, dark haired man shook his head. “I can’t afford to lose my job, Jim. I’ve got kids. You’re young, still. I’m pushing forty. What you’re talking about is too dangerous.”
“Come on, Kevin! You know they took Barry and his entire family last week, right? You could just as easily be next...”
“And that’s why I’m not willing to do anything, damn you!” The other man slammed his hand down on the table, trembling in a mix of rage and frustration. “You think I’m not scared? I am. You think I don’t wish things were better? I do, but they aren’t going to be. Nothing you or I do is going to change that, McLeod. Get that through your thick skull. How long have the Americans been fighting the Brits and the fucking Russians? It’s been almost a decade, and the damn Yanks are just as strong today as when they started. We can’t stand up to that, Jim.”
James leaned back in his chair, watching the bigger man. James was by no means a small man, standing on the edge of six feet and weighing almost 200 pounds, but next to Kevin Hartford, everyone seemed small. With a growl, James ran a hand through his short blonde hair. “Kevin, just think about it...”
“We’re done, McLeod,” the big man rumbled, leaning closer and poking James solidly in the chest with a meaty finger. “Don’t talk to me about this crazy shit again. Maybe you and that pretty sister of yours can afford to be dragged away, but I won’t put my family at risk. You hear me? We’re done.”
Hartford rose and stalked away from the table to the bar and paid his tab. He glared at James briefly as he walked towards the door, and James shook his head sadly. Kevin would have been a good asset to have. He was big, and people listened to him. James stared morosely at the watery beer in front of him and ran through the other names on his mental list. It was a rapidly diminishing list, he realized. With Kevin went most of the other people he thought might be willing to stand up to the problems they were facing. Most of them had young families. Most of them worked in the relatively newly developed water extraction plants, the only jobs that really paid enough to get by on, and wouldn’t want to jeopardize their income, meager as it was.
With a soft curse he raised the glass and drained the rest of the beer, grimacing at the bitter taste. His father had told him about what beer had been like before the American Occupation, and this piss was a far cry from that. He banged a fist on the table and looked around.
He understood the reluctance so many felt. Compared to the Detention Center he and his family had spent a few weeks in, those first few weeks after they had been forced from the cabin, Calgary seemed like a paradise. The bars had reopened, stores carried a range of groceries again, and televisions were once again a common commodity, though they only played specifically designated programming, most of it pro-American bullshit or obviously tailored news broadcasts. While it was a far cry from what James vaguely recalled from before the war, the luxuries and amenities were theoretically there.
That was the trap. The only way you could access them was by either working for American water industries, or prostituting yourself to the Occupational government and working with the system to exploit Canada’s rapidly dwindling resources.
Even his father had fallen into the trap, albeit unwillingly, slaving at one of the water plants until he was killed five years earlier, along with several other workers, when one of the poorly constructed pipes at the plant had burst. It was, James had thought at the time, an ignominious way for him to die. He had always been the consummate survivor, and dying that way had seemed incredibly banal. James had been fourteen. His father’s death had been difficult for all of them; the idea of life insurance, worker compensation, or death benefits was laughable, and James had been forced to find work. He had chosen to try construction instead of industry, wanting to rebuild what he could of the city, but wages were low. Ultimately Brigitte and Alyse both had to get jobs as housekeepers for American government employees, the only people who received any kind of decent money.
The war hadn’t helped things.
Ostensibly, the attacks from the British and Russians against occupied Canadian cities had been an attempt to return Canadian autonomy. In reality, the Brits and the Russians just wanted a piece of the pie. It was all corporate interest. The drought that had ravaged North America for the last twenty years had hit Europe later, but with equally devastating results. The Russians had managed to obtain a toe-hold in the arctic, and used it to strike down at Edmonton and Calgary on a fairly regular basis while mining the mineral deposits in the Yukon and Northwest Territories. As far as James was concerned, the attacks were meant to keep the Americans fighting so that the Russians could keep up the pretense of being liberators instead of a second occupational force. From the infrequent news reports about the war, the ones that weren’t obviously censored, it seemed as though the British forces had managed to land a force in the Maritimes. They, at least, made a pretense of attacking American cities as well as Canadian ones, but fear of American retaliation against Britain by long-range missiles kept the British from doing more than light aerial attacks on locations of obvious strategic value and minimal civilians.
It was a farce. Anyone with any kind of learning should know that. Of course, the schools only taught what the American Occupational Government wanted them to learn, and then only until students reached twelve years of age. James had been fortunate that his father had insisted, before he died, that James spend most of his early years reading the books that had remained, untouched, in the house James had grown up in. The collection of books his father had accumulated was one of James’ personal treasures.
James considered buying another beer, but decided against it. The little money he had needed to be spent wisely, and using it on beer while idly reflecting on the past was hardly money well spent. He rose and walked over to the bar. The bartender, who was obviously the owner of the place, peered at him as he paid, and James realized that the man was likely an American sympathizer. He was a business owner, and Canadians hadn’t been allowed to own or run a business since the Occupation without special dispensation from the Occupational Government. Considering the topic of conversation James had been having with Kevin, the man was probably planning on reporting him. He grinned at the man and winked conspiratorially. Let the man ponder that, he decided as he walked out of the bar, smiling.
He headed up the street to the tiny, box-like apartment building that he had called home since the Occupational Government had seized the old house shortly after his father’s death. They had claimed the place was no longer inhabitable. They had done the same with virtually all of the homes that had been reclaimed, unless the owners chose to pledge allegiance. Those houses had been deemed structurally sound. The property owners who lost their homes were granted possession of “appropriate alternative living accommodations”.
The old house now belonged to an American colonel, who seemed to find it quite inhabitable.
The stairs creaked as he plodded slowly up to the third floor and opened the door of the two-bedroom apartment he shared with Alyse and Brigitte. While it was nothing fancy, it sufficed.
Alyse had aged considerably since his father’s death. She glanced up from where she sat in a threadbare recliner, watching the news. Her face was lined, and her dark eyes no longer had that spark of vitality that James remembered from his youth. Even so, she remained an attractive woman. James walked over and kissed her gently on the cheek. “How was work?” he asked softly.
She rolled her eyes. “That old hag decided that the floors weren’t cleaned well enough with a mop. I spent the day on my hands and knees while her husband sat in his leather chair and stared at my ass all day. Otherwise it was splendid.” She grinned at him, a hint of her old self shining through in her eyes. “Did you see Brigitte while you were out?”
James shook his head. “She said this morning that she was going to have to work late to clean up after a party.”
Alyse frowned and studied him for a moment. “She’s found a man, hasn’t she?”
Laughing, James tossed his jacket in the closet. “No, Alyse, she hasn’t. She had to work late.”
“That’s the same excuse I always told my mama when I wanted to spend some time with a boy. I may be old, but I’m not stupid, you know.”
“You aren’t old, Alyse, and I know you aren’t stupid,” he chuckled. “Let her have her little fictions. She needs a little happiness in her life.”
Alyse huffed for a moment, and then glanced at him with a wistful smile. “And you, James? Have you found a girl that has been keeping you out late?”
He grinned at her. “Of course. Lots of them.”
She grimaced. “Oh, James, tell me you weren’t out trying to recruit more fools to your crazy little cause.”
Walking into the kitchen, he opened the rickety old fridge and peered inside. He grabbed the bread and butter. “It’s not crazy, Alyse. We need to do something, or things will just get worse. The days of sitting around grousing about how good things used to be are done. We need to change things, not just complain about them.”
“You know what your father would say,” Alyse told him.
“Blah, blah, blah,” James grumbled. He spread the butter thinly on the bread. Bread was cheap. Butter wasn’t. “Look, Alyse, Dad always said that things would get worse before they got better. They’ve gotten worse. It’s time to try to make them get better. I don’t care if I have to yell it from the rooftops. Things have to change.”
“And when the government comes knocking on our door to arrest you for sedition, what do I do?” Alyse asked quietly. “You know how dangerous it is...”
“I know, Alyse,” he murmured around a mouthful of bread. “That’s why things have to change. Look at the people outside and you can’t miss it. They are terrified that anything they say will end up killing them. That’s not right. We shouldn’t be afraid to speak the truth.”
Alyse turned away, blinking tears from her eyes. She stared hard at the television. An ad was playing, reminding citizens that crime rates had increased and cautioning them to report any suspicious activity in their neighborhoods. “How long before someone reports you, James? I couldn’t bear it if I lost you, too. Why can’t someone else do this?”
James finish eating and walked over to crouch down in front of her, reaching one hand out to tilt her chin up. “Alyse,” he said quietly. “I can’t promise nothing will happen. I’m no optimist. But don’t conjure up problems before they happen. This war can’t last forever, and sooner or later the US will back down. I can’t imagine it’s popular in the States. When that happens, someone else is going to take over. The question we have to ask is what kind of changes will there be? If we’re not careful, things will get worse. If we don’t start demanding change now, whoever comes into power might decide that we don’t need change at all. If that happens...” he paused and took a deep breath. “If that happens, Alyse, we’ve condemned ourselves. We won’t be able to blame it on anyone else.”
Alyse shook her head. “You sound like your father, only your father had the sense to realize that he couldn’t change the world.”
“Dad was a survivor, Alyse. I need more than to just survive.” He gestured at the room around them. “This is what survival looks like now, but what will it look like to my children? To my grandchildren? Will it be better or will it be worse? If what I do can help to make it a better place instead of a worse one, how can I not do it?”
“And if what you do makes it a worse place?” Alyse demanded, her voice strained. “Or if it means that you never have children?”
James rose to his feet. “At least I’ll know I tried,” he said sadly as he walked towards his bedroom.
“That will be small comfort if you are dead,” she called out to his retreating back.
“If I die with the truth on my lips, maybe someone will finally listen,” he replied and closed the door behind him.
He lay down on his narrow bed and stared at the poster on the wall beside him. Somehow it had managed to survive everything that he’d gone through. It was tattered on the edges, and covered in dirty fingerprints that wouldn’t wipe off, but it had managed to survive. It was the only decoration in the room that was his. Brigitte had various things on the walls above her bed, things she had drawn, a picture of her with some of her friends from school, a travel poster for some tropical paradise, that kind of thing. For him, though, the poster was enough. He’d discovered the name of the movie years before, and he often felt as though it could be him in the poster. While he had a cause, it seemed like he was the only one who could see it.
He shook his head sadly. After a moment, he sat up and pulled one of his father’s books from the small shelf at the foot of his bed. He’d read all of them before, many times, so which one he picked didn’t really matter. Many of the books were dense texts on political science and history, a few dealt with philosophy. His father had had specific tastes, which made sense considering his education. The one James grabbed, however, was a novel about the American Revolution. It was ironic, he decided, that he had first found inspiration to rise up against the Americans from reading about their own history. Smiling slightly, he settled in and started reading.