The Cast Stone (19 page)

Nothing happened there, nothing was supposed to happen there. Vicky had been so happy that their son Rick had been posted to Saskatchewan and not Quebec City. He would be safe there, quiet, rural, no population to speak of. It wasn't that long ago, in the good days before all this, they had gone to northern Saskatchewan, drove up in the rented RV. Dean remembered Otter Rapids on the Churchill River, little Ricky, he must have only been eleven, twelve maybe — no, he was twelve — just finished sixth grade, the year of the excellent report card. Ricky swam the rapids, seen other kids do it and begged until Dean and Vicky bundled him in an over-large life jacket and stood on the iron bridge with the expanded metal deck and looked down on the rolling blue water, churned into sparkling white foam. They stood holding hands, their hearts racing, while little Ricky floated and bobbed down the rapid, waved up at them as he passed under the bridge. Dean could still see the big smile on his son's wet face. It wasn't that long ago.

Ricky had to grow up, couldn't stay the brave little boy forever. He turned eighteen and they drafted him into their army, not Dean's army and certainly not Vicky's army, that army that belonged to the others, those crazies, those stomping and yelling people, their army. Drafted Dean's son, took him away from the farm. Dean was happy here. His Dodge pickup with the chrome stacks that rumbled when he drove it into Sioux Falls was still in the Quonset for when he came back. He could go to town with a nice girl, take her to a movie, marry her and bring her home to the farm.

Dean kicked his toe into the dry earth, raised powder dust. Missing in action, how can that be? Missing in Saskatchewan; shee-it, they had joked with Rick before he left that where he was going there was no place to hide. “Keep your head down.”

“Yeah, right, in a gopher hole, I'd guess.”

Three weeks now, Ricky was missing for three weeks; there was hope. If something had happened they would have found him by now. No, as each day came and went, the better his chances, Dean hoped. That was all he had, hope. Hope for the best, hope that Ricky would come home. He kicked the dry dirt again, looked to the west where a promising cloud was beginning to build, maybe it would rain, maybe a thunderstorm would come by with a little moisture, as long as it didn't bring hail.

It was all over by the time Ben arrived in Saskatoon. Idylwyld Drive was open again and traffic flowed down its length over the melted and blackened pavement on the southbound lane. Someone had hauled away both trees, cut them into pieces, left sawdust on the sidewalk and a few small branches too small to bother with. Ester Kingfisher cried often, cried when she thought of those trees, the elms. Mostly she cried when she thought of the elm that had stood in front of her house. Elmer would miss them. Poor Elmer, at least he didn't live to see this.

Roger Ratte's bullet-ridden Toyota Prius sat on its flattened tires on a low trailer in the government insurance inspection garage. The inspector didn't have good news. He could have told Roger when the car was first brought in, but he wanted to hear the story, so he went through the motions of assessing the damage, even wrote figures onto the form clipped to a board. Then he invited Roger into an office, sat across an empty particleboard desk and asked an easy, “So what happened?”

“I was on my way home, Northbound on Idylwyld, about twenty-eighth, twenty-ninth, somewhere in there and holy shit! a tree fell across the street right in front of me.” Roger had told the story a few times already, once to his wife over the phone to explain why he wasn't coming home that night, once to the guy at the hotel. He had it down, had practised it again on the way here this morning, each time adding a little more detail, arranging it chronologically.

“There was this old lady, I talked to her after, her name is Ester — she seen everything. I guess she lives right there, all her life she said. Anyway when the tree fell in front of my car there was this guy with his hood up and tied tight around his face so you couldn't see it very well and the old lady, Ester, she was still trying to take the chainsaw away from him. That's the tree on my side of the street. The tree on the other side came down just as I was getting out of my car. So they blocked traffic both north and south. I knew something was wrong then. I knew something was really wrong. The guy with the chainsaw on my side of the street, he gave the chainsaw to Ester, well he sort of threw it at her, or let her take it. I don't know. Then he ran away, towards downtown, right past me; I was on the sidewalk by then. Weird shit, I figured. I went to see if Ester was all right, she was sitting on the grass, it kinda' slopes down to the street there, she was sitting there holding the chainsaw where the guy pushed her down and the saw was still running, and traffic is piling up now if you know what I mean, on both sides of the street, nobody can go anywhere. I sure couldn't have got my car out of there with all the cars behind me and the tree in front of me and the way the land slopes down on each side. I was stuck there. And I knew. I knew something was really wrong. I grabbed Ester, took the saw away from her and tried to get her out of the way of whatever was coming. Tell you the truth, I didn't give a shit about my car at that moment. I was just getting out of the way, and getting Ester out of the way.

Then Homeland Security, they must have been behind me, five, six vehicles of them, all together, you know the way they travel. Well, when the traffic got blocked they must have gone over the meridian there onto the southbound lane where there was no traffic and come up right beside my car on the opposite side of the street where they were blocked by the other tree and the vehicles piled up behind it on that side.

They just opened fire, as soon as they came to a stop, they must have realized it was an ambush and they opened up first, shooting everything. My car got it the worst because it was the closest. They were just, fuck! there were bullets flying everywhere. By this time I got Ester back off the street. There's kinda a cement wall there by her sidewalk up to her house. I held her down in there and laid on top of her. And you know what she's crying about when those bullets are smashing into everything? She's crying about the tree.

Then all I heard was
whoomp
and the first HS vehicle, it's all on fire. Must have been one of those Montreal cocktails we hear about, you know the one with diesel fuel and Styrofoam and oxygen mixed into it like an Aerobar; must have been something like one of those. I didn't see who threw it. I seen one guy on the other side of the street up on the roof of a building come right out to the edge, right out into the bullets. He had some kind of machine gun or something and he was shooting at the first vehicle. Must have been drawing fire so his buddies could get up close enough to throw I figure. Well they got him. Yeah, fuck man, just like in a bad movie, I watched that guy come off that building, then
whoomp
and that front vehicle, you can't see it anymore, all flames, orange, orange flames, and those HS guys never had a chance, whatever the hell they hit them with, it had some concussion to it. Felt it from where we were on the other side of the street. Then there's more bullets and another
whoomp
, that one must have been the back vehicle, I don't know, I got my head down and there's shooting like you wouldn't believe. Never in your wildest imagination man, you couldn't imagine how many bullets, hundreds, no thousands, thousands of bullets from both sides. Just fuckin' incredible.”

Roger stopped, out of breath a little, looking at the inspector, waited for a response. The inspector sat there with the edge of the clipboard on his crossed leg, held it with both hands leaned against the desk, sat there with his mouth slightly open, maybe he breathed through his mouth instead of through his nose that was too small for his face. He sat there for the whole story, didn't flinch even once, not even for the
whoomps.
He waited, possibly for more. But there was no more. Roger wasn't going to talk about carrying Ester into her house, putting her on the old sofa, knocking things off the coffee table, bottles and bottles of medication, of finding a bottle of gin under the pillow when he propped her up and tried to make her comfortable.

“I'm sorry to have to tell you this, but SGI policy does not insure against incidents of war. It's in every policy. War is something you cannot buy insurance against.”

Roger put his hands on the edge of the desk, not threatening, not at all; he just needed someplace to put them after waving them around for so long, tracing bullet paths and mushroom clouds. He was tired, shocked and tired.

“Incident of war.” His voice was flat.

“Yeah, it's in the policy.”

“But the Americans say this isn't a war, it's an annexation, justified in international law as a protective measure.”

“Don't matter what spin the politicians put on it; any right thinking court in Canada will determine what happened to your car was an act of war. Fighting an insurgency is an act of war, I'm sure.”

“Insurgency.” Roger's voice remained flat, questioning.

“Well, yeah, an insurgency is classified as an act of war.” The inspector was beginning to feel threatened, remembered his training on psychopathy.
Cold emotionless, kill you as soon
as look at you
. Roger was too calm. He should be upset.

Roger remained rational. “An insurgency is when people try to overthrow a legitimate government, right?”

“Uh-huh.” The inspector held the clipboard, maybe he could defend himself with it.

“A resistance is when people fight off an invasion, right.”

“Uh-huh.” Agree with him and maybe he won't do anything.

“So what do we have here, an insurgency or a resistance?”

The inspector shrugged. He didn't know.

Roger stayed still, calm, the car really didn't matter. Insurance, no insurance, fix the flats, buy some glass, maybe even duct tape up the holes, drive it out of here, what the hell, didn't matter. And this guy here with the clipboard, he didn't know shit, not even worth talking to anymore, just a dummy, doing a dummy job, not thinking, not questioning, didn't even know if he was living through a revolution, an uprising, or a resistance. Didn't matter they were all likely incidents of war to him. Did he even know what war was? Probably not. War is when an old lady cries because a tree was cut down; that's what war is.

Monica was not at home. Ben rang the buzzer of apartment 607, waited in the glass case cubical, stood in front of the panel array of names, numbers and buttons and wondered whether he had the right address. He checked the slip of paper again. No this was right. 607- 212 4th Avenue South, Saskatoon. He rang the buzzer again before he went back to his truck to wait, looked skyward as he hurried the few yards between the front doors of the apartment building and the street.

Monica sat on the floor with her back against the wall, something about drinking wine and sitting on the floor that seemed right, brought back memories of university, memories that had laughter at their core. This was different, sitting here because they didn't want to be seen through the windows. She leaned as she passed the bottle over to Ed Trembley and he leaned away from the adjacent wall to take it, tilt it, glug it, once, twice, spilt some in his eagerness. He put it down between his outstretched legs, wiped his mouth with his sleeve. “So, was it the full council that decided, or what?”