Everything Is So Political (15 page)

I figure it out on the way home. It's obvious. Albert and Henry broke the unwritten law. They were caught in the wrong part of town. What will they do now? How can they go to work if they live up the hill and not down in the South End? How can they live in their house? Life is so mean, I think, and dumb too. The unwritten law isn't fair but as hard as I try, I can't think what to do about it.

When I complain to my father he merely says, “Aye, it's wrong and it'll be changed one day. But not now, Lass, not yet.”

On Monday, at recess, Evadne pulls me behind the caragana hedge at the edge of the playground. “My mother says she's sorry for scaring you,” she whispers so no one else can hear. “She was worried because the boys were late, is all.” Then she laughs. “She says you'll grow wings one day, you're so speedy.”

I blurt out, “How are your brothers?”

“They've left,” Evadne says, “because of what happened at the police station. You know what I mean,” she says and then laughs again. “Henry's got a bad temper so Ma thinks he'll get in trouble if he stays here.”

I'm shocked, unable to speak. The boys must've recognized me at the police station and then mentioned it to their mother and Evadne. At the time, I didn't think their eyes had come my way once.

“They're going back north to trap for the winter,” Evadne says, “but now the house is way too big for us, so we're moving in with my Grandma in Fort William.”

“Fort William! So far away!” But before she can answer, the bell shrills out and we have to run to get in line. I turn to see Evadne but she isn't there. My eyes search the lines looking for black hair and bangs and a big happy face but she has vanished the way angels do in the Bible. Silently and completely.

After school, I recruit Elsie and my sister to come with me to Evadne's house because I‘m still afraid of her mother and I need reinforcements. I want to say good-bye. But when we turn down the lane, we hear the front door banging in the wind. The place has a hollow look and the windows are skull eyes. Our knocking sends clunky sounds into the emptiness inside. We creep in, holding hands, our feet scuffling along as we try to be quiet in case someone is there. Close together and moving across the wooden floors in the bare downstairs rooms, which never did have any furniture, we go into the kitchen to find only the woodstove and the stained yellow linoleum remain. The cupboard doors hang open to reveal bare shelves. Even the dishpan is gone and the bag of clothespins by the back door.

Upstairs in Evadne's room, the cardboard boxes, still carefully lined up along the walls, gape empty. Evadne's cot is missing but the boys' mattresses still lie on the floor. Before, the house always smelled faintly of bleach but now a damp odour is creeping through the rooms. Rita Hayworth, looking over one bare shoulder and showing her mustache, is still on Albert's wall. I rip her down, crumple her up and throw her in the corner and then do the same with Carmen Miranda and her stupid smile and headdress of fruit. In the next room, I roll back Henry's mattress and there are the Batman comics. We kneel on the linoleum, still powdered with grain dust, and divide them among us. Then, without talking about it, we clutch the comics and run outside as fast as we can.

That night, my father doesn't come home for supper and my mother paces the kitchen, wiping down the counter over and over, washing each dish as soon as my sister and I finish with it. Then she orders us to bed at seven o'clock, much too early, but we go without complaint because first, you can't argue with my mother and second, we've got the Batman comics. We sit up in bed and go through them all, passing them over as soon as we have one finished. Eventually, my sister falls asleep but I can still hear my mother pacing between the kitchen and the living room.

“The English bastard!” My mother's voice wakes me. It's still light outside so I couldn't have slept long. I'd never heard her use a bad word before so I've got to hear more. I creep to the top of the stairs.

“A year! A year on the night shft. And back to the beat just when ye've moved into plain clothes. The bastard.”

“Ah, aye,” my father sighs. “But mind, he doesn't know for sure; he just suspects. Good may come from it, however. Maybe this incident will get the waverers thinking so they sign that paper. I've no doubt, Meg, we'll be certified before the year is up and then I'll be all right, but till then…”

His voice trails off and there's a long silence. “Our Janet will be happy anyway,” he says with a laugh. “I'll be down in the South End and maybe we can do something about that so-called unwritten law.”

“Oh, do be careful, Duncan,” my mother says.

There's another silence and then he says, so softly that I have to move down a couple of steps to hear it, “Are ye afraid, Meg? Ye know that Reynolds will be snooping round and if he gets any real facts about the union, he'll fire me. He said as much today. So are ye afraid? Do you want me to stop? Say the word.”

“Afraid?” my mother says. “Stop? Bow to that black-hearted Englishman? Huh! We can wait him out, Duncan. Aye and best him in the end. Come on, my dear, and get your tea. Come on Duncan now, and get your tea.”

The Extremists

R. Jonathan Chapman

Characters

Joe
—A rancher

Mary
—Owner/operator of a general store

Andes
—An environmental activist

Setting

Mary's
—a general store in a small hamlet in the Yellowhead riding
of Alberta

* * *

Mary sits behind the counter at her general store, flipping through a copy of the
National Post
. Joe approaches, holding a box of lightbulbs and a small package of quinoa. He is reading the back of the package with some disdain.

M: Hey Joe, how's it going?

J: Fine, fine.

M: How's Beth?

J:

Alright. Hey what's this?

M: That's quinoa.

J:

Keen-wah.

M: It's a grain. You cook it like rice.

J: Huh.

A pause.

M: Just the bulbs, then?

J: Yeah.

Mary rings up the purchase and hands him the coins. He's still distracted by the quinoa. Eventually he shrugs.

J: Who would buy this?

M:

I had to order that in special. All these new people in town have a lot of… special dietary requirements.

J: New people?

M: Don't tell me you haven't noticed.

J: Well, you know. We've been cooped up for the past couple months. All the snow.

There is a jaunty dingle as Andes enters the store. He wears a knitted toque and sweater. He blows on his hands to warm them up.

M: Oh, here's one of them now.

A:

Hello?

M: Hey, Andes. Have you met Joe?

A: Don't believe I have. Nice to meet you.

J:

Andy was it?

A: Andes. Like the mountains.

J: Alright.

M: Andes is one of the founders of a new commune that just opened up on the old Miller property.

J: A commune?

A: A farming collective, really. We're doing all-organic gardening, micro-wind farming, and manure/compost blends.

M: Tell him where you get the compost.

A: Oh. Well. All the people working there, it's their…It's a human waste composting system.

J: There's money in that?

M: It's like I always said—one man's shit is another man's gold, right?

A: To be fair, it's not hugely profitable. But a lot of the local ranchers have been selling us manure, and the mixes are a high-end gardening product. Between that and the vegetables we figure on just about breaking even. A lot of us have other jobs too. I run a blog reviewing ecological technologies, so I work out of an office in town here a couple days a week.

M: Anything in particular you're looking for?

A: Just some lunch stuff. We finally got the office kitchen set up.

M: Well there's quinoa and chickpeas back by the rice there, and soy cheese in the dairy cooler.

A: Thanks.

J: Sorry. I hope you don't mind me asking, but—why come all the way out here to set up a…farming collective. Surely you'd have better luck in B.C. somewhere.

A:

You haven't heard?

J: Heard what?

A: We're part of the Green Agenda.

J: The Green Agenda?

A: Yeah. I'm surprised you haven't heard about us. It was on CBC radio and everything.

J: Oh sure. CBC.

A:

We're part of a new movement to make Yellowhead the first riding in Canada to elect a Green Party MP.

J:

You don't say.

A: You don't think we can?

M:

Here we go.

J: Son, this riding's been conservative since before you were born.

A: But that was the old demographics.

A pause.

J: I don't follow.

A: It all started with a tweet. You've heard of Twitter, right?

J: Of course.

Joe flashes Mary a “Is this guy for real?” look, and she replies with an apologetic shrug.

A: I was actually on Twitter when it happened. It was just after that stupid media consortium decided not to let Elizabeth May into the last debate. They said it was because we didn't have a seat in the House of Commons. And this girl out in B.C. tweeted “Green party—one million voters strong—how hard would it be to stack a riding?”

J: Stack a riding.

A: Well, take this riding. About 100,000 people live here, right? Factor out the kids and you've got about 80,000 voters. About half of them vote and there is some split among the parties, so in order to win the riding we figure you'd need about 40,000 new voters, give or take, all dedicated to voting the same way. Well that's about five percent of all the people in Canada who vote for the Green Party. Lots of very committed people among the membership, of course, so we decided we would all move into the Yellowhead riding for the next few years, and the next time an election rolls around, we'll be the majority for a change.

A pause.

J: You're not serious.

A: Of course I am.

J: But that's…that's cheating.

A: It's totally by the book. As long as we've lived in the riding for more than a year, been enumerated and registered as voters—

J: But that's ridiculous. You can't just steal a riding from the people that live there.

A: We live here.

J: That's not the same.

A: How is that not the same?

J: Mary, tell him.

They both look at Mary. A pause.

M: Well, I can't see as there's anything illegal about moving somewhere if you want to live there.

J: But they
don't
want to live here. They're just using us.

A: I resent that. We've made every effort to integrate into this community.

M: It's true, Joe. They've been great neighbours. Volunteered to clean up along the highways. Helped the MacIntyres take care of their cattle after they had a fire—

A: And we don't even believe in eating animals—

J: Bu—

M: And they've been great about supporting all the local businesses.

A: We were even thinking about starting up a local theatre company. We wanted to call it “The Green Fools” but apparently that's already taken.

A pause.

J: Look. You can't just hijack a riding. It's…undemocratic.

A: Undemocratic? Ha. You know what's undemocratic? 1.5 million votes for the Bloc Quebecois means 50 seats, but 1 million votes for the Green Party equals no seats at all.

J: That's different.

A: How is that any different?

J: French people aren't conspiring to live in Quebec!

A: But it shouldn't matter where they live! Why should one person's vote count any more than another's? They should just add up the votes across the country and give seats to each party in proportion to how much of the vote they got.

J: You can't do that! We'd have a dozen little parties with one or two seats! How would anyone ever get a majority?

A: Who needs a majority? The parties with similar views would form a coalition.

J: Oh here we go!

A: What? A coalition is a perfectly reasonable form of government! There's coalition governments all over the world! Norway, Germany, Japan…

M:

Italy, Belgium, Iraq…

A:

Okay. So it's not perfect, but…hang on. Belgium?

M: They had an election a year ago and the parties can't agree on who should form the government, so they just haven't had one.

A: Right. So there are problems. But there are problems with every system.

J: But we're happy with how ours works.

A: Of course you are. Generally it works in your favour. And that's why you can't complain if a majority of the people in this riding happen to vote Green. That's the system you prefer.

J: But you're cheating!

A: You don't like it when a bunch of people with the same views live in a concentrated area so that one party is guaranteed to win? You already live in a place like that—it's called “Alberta.”

J: Oh that's it! I can't believe you have the arrogance to [come in here and tell me]–

M:

Joe.
Joe! Calm down.

You're making a scene—

J: But he—

M: This is a free country. Everyone is entitled to their opinion, right?

A pause.

M: Right?

J:

I suppose they are.

No matter how ridiculous.

M: And this is a place of business. Perhaps this isn't the right venue for this sort of… bickering.

J:

“That's not bickering, that's democracy.”

M: Anyway I'm sure Andes has things to do, and he'd like to get on with his shopping.

A: It's true. Thanks, Mary. I'd better grab a few things and go.

And I'm sure we'll meet again…neighbour.

J: Seems like.

Andes heads deeper into the store.

J:

Dammit, Mary! How can you be so complacent about all this?

M: His money's just as good as yours.

J: But we're being overrun by these…these…

M: I wouldn't worry about it.

J: How can you not be worried about it?!!

M: Think about it. Ten thousand people just moved into our riding and more to come. Into the rural areas mostly. I say it's just what we've been hoping for. They're already talking about reopening the school. I had three realtors through here last week looking for properties. Pretty soon we'll have a doctor, a lawyer, local tradespeople… My sales have never been this good!

J: Yeah, but—

M: And so what if they take over one riding? It's not like they can win the majority of the House that way. You think one Green MP is going to make that much difference? You think one more face in a televised debate is going to change anyone's opinion?

J: But…but they're against our whole way of life!

M: Look, Joe. They're extremists. So are you. The truth is, so is everyone. We all think what
we
think is right. Either you're a Green party die-hard, or a hard-core redneck. A yoga freak or a hockey fan. Bankers believe in money, artists believe in art. Everyone believes in something so they can make their way in the world. But at the end of the day there are two kinds of government—the kind where one group uses force to suppress their opponents and the other kind, the kind we have. Where all the extremists compromise and nobody's happy. That's democracy.

A long pause.

J: So what am I supposed to do?

M: Look. You can accept it, or you can move. It's your call.

But if it was me, I'd go make nice at their next bake sale, and see if they're interested in buying your manure.

A pause.

J: One man's shit, huh.

M: You got that right.

Joe shakes his head thoughtfully and exits.