Altered America (17 page)

             
“Let’s move off” he said to his men and they started marching south.

The Shining Path

by Jason Sharp

Dateline:  February 15, 1975, between Ottawa and Montreal, Occupied Canada

             
"Pierre's out there," insists Corporal Miguel Hidalgo. "I can feel his eyes—those beady little eyes—watching us
right now
."

             
I only see snow-covered pine trees flashing past us, but I'll take his word for it. He's been here in Canada, fighting the good fight, for close on eight months now. If anybody knows what Pierre is doing, it’ll be Hidalgo.

             
Beside him, in the driver's seat, PFC Paul Watts nods grimly. "Pierre, Bro," he says, a reefer dangling from his chapped lips. "He's trouble."  Watts, in-theatre for six months, knows the score. 

             
Across X Corps, from the rocky Gaspé Peninsula to the flyover country of northwestern Ontario, legends abound of Pierre, the guerrilla fighter of French Canada. Pierre walks atop fresh snow without leaving tracks, and across the thinnest sheen of ice without cracking it. He cools his breath before he exhales, so it is invisible in the frigid winter air. He lives on a diet of maple syrup, venison, and wild berries collected in the forests of Quebec and eastern Ontario. He spends his days holed up in his
cabane sucre
, plotting the overthrow of the Occupation, and spends his nights carrying out his plans.

             
And yes, I did mean to say eastern Ontario.  Apparently, back when Canada was just another backwater British colony, some genius decided it would be easier to sub-divide the place based on the location of a river, rather than on the basis of where the different ethnic groups actually lived, because history's shown us all how well
that
works.

             
Now, Pierre isn't just the collective name of every French-Canadian out here, though you could be forgiven for assuming so. Nor is it a clever Fleming-esque acronym for a secret terror organization, although to hear Corporal Hidalgo talk of them, it might as well be. Let's see:
P
atriots
I
ntimidating
E
nemy a
R
mies
R
eally
E
ffectively. It could work, if you pronounce the
ar
in
army
. Does it translate well into French? A good question, which I'll put to the first French-Canadian I see today. They'll probably just tell me that we Americans actually coined the name ourselves, based on the name of Canada's final prime minister. Assuming they don't just beat me to death with hockey sticks first.

             
Right about now, you're saying to yourself, "Hang on—why has America’s third-most-popular pop culture magazine dispatched
this guy
, of all people, to an active war zone?  Especially when the competition’s already sent in that Thompson fellow?"

             
And my answer to that, assuming I overhear you, is, "Because Thompson and his lawyer are still held up at the border.  Because the Army doesn't want us to be here.  They must be hiding something.  We need to find out what it is, and reveal it to the American public so they can be suitably outraged."

             
And you’re probably derisively replying, "Who's this
we
, stupid?  It's freakin' cold in Canada."

             
You're quite right.  It
is
freakin' cold in Canada.  It is particularly cold in February, in a fabric-topped jeep zooming down an unplowed back road at forty miles an hour.  Corporal Hidalgo and PFC Watts are out here, risking their extremities, because Pierre thinks it’s not so much cold as just a pleasant break from the mosquitoes. 

             
I'm here not because the Army wants me to be, as I just told you, but because a bag of Acapulco Gold goes a long way in today's army.  And because I knew some Mohawks who could get me across the St. Lawrence.  And because I'm anxious to ask Pierre why he's out in the trees eyeballing us when he could be in a goose-down sleeping bag with his mademoiselle.  And because my editor told me that the alternative was to cover a dog show in Minneapolis, which is just as cold as Canada and has more fresh dog shit.

             
"You guys run into Pierre before?" I ask, since we're still kind of on that topic.

             
“Never face to face," Hidalgo says.  "Pierre don't fight that way—we'd napalm his sorry Frog ass in a heartbeat if he did."  He plucks the joint from PFC Watts' mouth and takes a drag for himself before returning it to its original place of rest. "But I've heard him.  Seen what he done.  He's taken my buddies, and when he does, they don't come back."

             
“Alive?”

             
“At all, Bro.  He got Marcus and Burke two weeks ago," PFC Watts notes flatly, his dilated eyes never leaving the road.  "We found their jeep along Route 14, in the forest just like this.  Just like this, bro.  The jeep was still running and everything."

             
"Maybe they'd gone off into the trees for a piss break?" I suggest.

             
"There were no tracks, man," Watts says, "And only Pierre can do that."

             
"Lack of tracks could also mean nobody was there, though, right?"

             
"Somebody had to be there," he insists.  "Otherwise, what the hell happened to Marcus and Burke?  People don't just vanish, you know."

             
"There was a rumor going around the base that maybe the Spetsnaz got them, rather than Pierre," Corporal Hidalgo observed.  "The Commies got their special forces in here, you know, helping out their Canuckistani comrades.  With helicopters—black helicopters, so they can't be seen in the night.  Maybe they came for Marcus and Burke and took their sorry asses back to one of their camps up north."

             
"I didn't realize the Soviets were involved," I say.

             
"Hell, yeah.  Nobody’ll ever say it out loud, but they’ve got subs and planes sneaking over to drop off crates of small arms all the time.  It's a huge country, man. Bigger than America.  Lots of room to sneak around, and nowhere near enough of us to stop it."

             
"But the Soviets don't like Canada, either," I note. "They're part of NATO and NORAD".

             
"Oh no?  What happened when Kosygin visited Canada?  Handshakes and walks in the sunshine.  What happened when Nixon visited Canada? 
Bang,
" Hidalgo says, using his gloved right hand to simulate a bulky green gun to his temple.  This, of course, is an inaccurate dramatization of the assassination of Dick Nixon, whom Arthur Bremer shot with a
black
gun in the
neck
.

             
But Hidalgo's got the essence of it, to the degree that you or I or anybody can understand it.  An American president got shot on Canadian soil less than a month before a heated election, the Canadians bungled the arrest prompting President-Elect Wallace to send in some marshals to get the shooter—the Canadians
didn't
bungle arresting
them
, and once Wallace was officially sworn in he decided he didn't like Canada sheltering draft dodgers or talking about nationalizing their private sector, so he sent in the army.

             
It was a brilliant plan, based on hard-won lessons from Vietnam, such as:
It's easier to invade somebody if they think you're an ally
.  Those sap-sucking Canadians never knew what hit them.  Most of their army was over in West Germany, watching the Red Menace rather than the Red, White, and Blue Machine.  Their involvement in NORAD?  That was just a clever plan to ensure we knew where all their planes and bunkers were.

             
So we enjoyed a short, victorious war after the long, not-so-victorious war in 'Nam.  Trudeau and other Canadian politicians were arrested and sent to a super-max prison in Colorado, and their military forces at home were squashed while those in Europe were left to glower and mutter ineffectively.  It seemed that we'd have little difficulty reacquainting the Canadians with capitalism and sensible government and leave ol' George cruising towards an easy re-election in seventy-six.  And to be sure, most Canadians aren’t complaining, though to be fair, maybe they’re just being polite and are quietly hoping we’ll figure out how rude we’ve been and go home.

             
But that still leaves Pierre looking at us funny everywhere we go, the Soviets laughing their collectivized asses off, and NATO slowly gearing up to politely ask us to vacate Europe.  Ol' George's electoral prospects are looking a little dim, and his present to America on its bicentennial looks like it'll be corpses in coffins rather than a fifty-first state.

             
We drive in silence for a while.  I note various animal tracks crossing the road, wave to a man on a snowmobile (who shows me his middle finger in return), and otherwise enjoy the scenery.  The forest is sporadically interrupted by clearings with little houses and sheds in them.  As we approach one such place, I see a couple of kids in front of a house, either building a snowman or camouflaging Pierre.  "Hey, can we stop so I can talk to these kids?" I ask.

             
"Yeah, I suppose," Hidalgo says.

             
Watts steps on the brakes; the jeep skids to a halt just past the driveway.  The kids stop to look at us, then back at the house.  I step out of the jeep in a cloud of roiling smoke, turn on my tape recorder, and say, "Bon Jor!  Say journalist!  Parley view English?"

             
"No," the taller kid says.  It's a boy.  The shorter kid, a girl, shakes her head.  Either they speak English or my French is better than I appreciated.

             
"How do you feel about America?" I ask.

             
The boy succinctly summarizes his views of the long and complicated historical relationship between Canada and the United States of America with, "Merde."  The girl sticks her tongue out.

             
Before I can ask what they think of my acronym for P.I.E.R.R.E, the front door of their home is flung open and a short, sturdy woman storms out.  Wearing a flowing, plaid housecoat and black winter boots, she marches up the driveway, barking a stream of harsh words that I do not know, yet definitely understand.  “What do you want?  Eh?  Dey are just playing!" she adds in English.

             
I introduce myself and tell her, "I’m a journalist visiting from America.  I wanted to ask their opinion of a possible acronym for P.I.E.R.R.E".

             
"Pierre?" she rages.  "You mean dat name you use for every man and woman dat fights you?  It is just a way for you to treat dem like faceless enemies!"

             
"Well, what are we supposed to call them?" I ask.

             
"Patriots? 'Eroes? Canadians? 'Uman beings?" she shouts.

             
"I
was
working with
Patriots,
" I say.

             
Her nose wrinkles.  "Are you...", and she pauses to look for the word she wants, "On drugs? Stone-ed?"

             
"It’s possible," I confirm. 

             
"Tabernac!" she shouts, throwing her arms into the air.  "Dis is what American journalism ‘as become?”

             
“Well, I’m not exactly an experienced war correspondent, now, am I?  What is it
you
think I should be doing?”

             
She steps closer, rising on the tips of her boots so I can smell her breath.  “Report on your election of a man who would segregate black people and ‘ose running mate wanted to nuke Vietnam.  Tell your fellow Americans why ‘e turned on your closest neighbour and largest trading partner over de act of a single madman.  Explain why you’ve sent in an army of undisciplined conscripts to find and arrest der countrymen who were principled enough
not
to be conscripted for Vietnam.”

             
“Sounds cool,” I say.

             
She puckers her lips.  “And you, with de drugs and de stupid funny ideas.  You really tink de world needs more of that gonzo trash?  Non.  It needs sober analysis and facts.  It needs truth.  It needs you to get out of de ditch and walk the shining path again.”

             
“I’ve heard that
gonzo
actually is Quebecer for
shining path
.  Can you confirm that?” I ask.