Half a mile outside of Rosenfeld, a squad of U.S. soldiers inspected the wagon. McGregor hated to admit it, but they did a good, professional job, one of them even getting down on his back on the dirt road to examine the axles and the underside of the frame. They were businesslike with him, reasonably polite to Maude, and smiled at his daughters, who were too young to be leered at. If they gave Alexander a sour look or two, those weren’t a patch on the glares he sent them. After a couple of minutes, they nodded and waved the wagon forward. Fortunately, Alexander didn’t curse them till it had gone far enough so they couldn’t hear him.
Julia gasped. Mary giggled. Arthur McGregor said, “Don’t use that sort of talk where your mother and sisters can hear you.” He glanced over to Maude. She was keeping her face stiff-so stiff, he suspected a smile under there.
Rosenfeld, as it had since it was occupied, seemed a town of American soldiers, with the Canadians to whom it rightfully belonged thrown in as an afterthought. Soldiers crowded round the cobbler’s shop, the tailor’s, the little cafe that had been struggling before the war started (what ruined most folks made a few rich), and the saloon that had never struggled a bit. There were three or four rooms up above the saloon that must have had U.S. soldiers going in and out of them every ten or fifteen minutes. McGregor had never walked up to one of those rooms-he was happy with the lady he’d married-but he knew about them. He glanced over to Maude again. She probably knew about those rooms, too. Husband and wife had never mentioned them to each other. He didn’t expect they ever would.
Henry Gibbon’s general store was full of U.S. soldiers, too, buying everything from five-for-a-penny jawbreakers to housewives with which to repair tattered uniforms in the field to a horn with a big red rubber squeeze-bulb. “You don’t mind my askin’,” Henry Gibbon said to the sergeant in green-gray who laid down a quarter for that item, “what the devil you going to do with that?”
“Next fellow in my squad I catch dozing when he ain’t supposed to,” the sergeant answered with an evil grin, “his hair’s gonna stand on end for the next three days.” A couple of privates who might have been in his squad sidled away from him.
A tiny smile made the corners of McGregor’s mouth quirk upward. Back in his Army days, he’d had a sergeant much like that. When they were just being themselves, the Yanks were ordinary people. When they were being occupiers, though…The smile disappeared. If they had their way, they’d do whatever they could to turn all the Canadians in the land they’d occupied into Americans. That was why Julia and Mary didn’t go to the school they’d reopened.
McGregor held onto Mary’s hand; Maude had charge of Julia. They picked their way toward the counter. Some of the U.S. soldiers politely stepped aside. Others pretended they weren’t there. That rude arrogance angered McGregor, but he couldn’t do anything about it. He held his face still. So did Maude. Their children weren’t so good at concealing what they felt. Once he had to give Mary’s hand a warning squeeze to get rid of the ferocious grimace she gave an American who’d walked through the space where she had been standing as if she didn’t exist.
“Good day to you, Arthur,” Henry Gibbon said. Had a moving picture wanted to cast somebody as a storekeeper, he would have been the man, if only his apron had been cleaner: he was tubby and bald, with a gray soup-strainer of a mustache that whuffed out when he talked. “Brought the whole kit and kaboodle with you, I see. Well, what can I do for you this mornin’?”
“Need a couple of hacksaw blades, and a sack of beans if you’ve got some. We’ll get our kerosene ration, too, I expect, and the missus is going to make a run at your yard goods. And tobacco-”
“Ain’t got any.” Gibbon moved his hand just enough to suggest that the Yanks had bought him out. McGregor looked glum. So did Alexander. Life was hard. Life without a pipe was harder.
“And we’ll see what kind of candy you’ve got here, too,” McGregor said. His eye went to the Minnesota and Dakota papers piled on the counter. He reached out and shoved one of them at the storekeeper, too. It would be full of Yankee lies, but new lies might be interesting.
He went over and stood by the pickle barrel, waiting while Maude told Gibbon what she needed and he compared that to what he happened to have, which was a good deal less. He wasn’t quite emptied out, though, as McGregor had feared he would be. That was something, anyhow.
When McGregor took a look at the hacksaw blades while walking back to the wagon, he understood why. “These were made in the United States,” he exclaimed, and then, a few steps later, “No wonder Henry’s still got stuff on his shelves.”
“Traitor,” Alexander said, low enough so that none of the U.S. soldiers passing by could hear him.
But, after a moment, McGregor shook his head. “Everybody’s got to eat,” he said. “Storekeeper can’t live selling dust and spiderwebs. I’m surprised he’s able to get things from the USA, that’s all.” He rubbed his chin. “Maybe I’m not, not with all the soldiers he has in there. No, maybe I’m not. They’re getting things from him they likely can’t get straight from their own quartermasters.”
“I don’t like it,” Alexander said as they got into the wagon.
“Everybody’s got to eat,” Arthur McGregor repeated. “Rokeby the postmaster sells those occupation stamps with ugly Americans on them, because those are the only stamps the Yankees let him sell. That doesn’t make him bad; he’s just doing his job. Weren’t for the Yankees buying our crop last fall, I don’t know what we’d be doing for cash money right now.”
That produced an uncomfortable silence, which lasted for some time. None of the McGregors cared for the notion of the United States as an entity with which they and their countrymen did business, and upon which they depended. But whether you cared for the notion or not, it was true.
When they got back to the farmhouse, the front door was open. Maude spotted it first. “Arthur,” she said reproachfully, “all the heat will have gone out of the house.” McGregor started to deny having failed to shut it, but he’d ducked back inside for his mittens after everyone else was in the wagon, so it had to have been his fault.
So he thought, glumly, till a man in green-gray walked out onto the front porch and pointed at the wagon. Several more U.S. soldiers, all of them armed, came running out of the house. “What are they doing here?” Alexander demanded, his voice quivering with indignation.
“I don’t know,” McGregor answered. Some of the Yankees were aiming rifles at him. He made very sure they could see both his hands on the reins.
The man who’d first spotted the wagon walked toward it. He wore a captain’s bars on each shoulder strap. “You are Arthur McGregor,” he said in a tone brooking no denial. He pointed. “That is your son, Alexander.”
“And who the devil are you?” McGregor asked. “What are you doing in my house?”
“I don’t have to tell you that,” the captain said, “but I will. I am Captain Hannebrink, of Occupation Investigations. We have uncovered a bomb on the railroad tracks, and arrested some of the young hotheads responsible for it. Under thorough interrogation”-which probably meant torture-“more than one of them named Alexander McGregor as an accomplice in their vicious attempt.”
“It’s a lie!” Alexander said. “I never did anything like that!”
Captain Hannebrink pulled a scrap of paper from his breast pocket. “Are you acquainted with Terence McKiernan, Ihor Klimenko, and Jimmy Knight?”
“Yes, I know them, but so what?” Alexander said. Arthur McGregor knew them, too: boys his son’s age, more or less, from nearby farms. He knew Jimmy and Ihor were hotheads; he hadn’t been so sure about the McKiernan lad.