American Empire: The Center Cannot Hold (35 page)

  “Thank you. I should perhaps let you know certain American officers are in Belgium now, trying to learn from us.” Guderian smiled and shrugged. “Between us, your country and mine share the problems of the strong,
nicht wahr
?”

  “Yes,” Morrell said.
And I bet our boys don’t learn one
damn thing from you, either, except where
the officers’ brothels are.
 He wagged a finger at the German. “Nobody’s looking at what you’re doing in the east, in Poland and the Ukraine?”

  Heinz Guderian shook his head. “No, Colonel, no one looks there—and it is as well that no one does, too.” His eyes swung toward his tough-talking orderly. “In the east,
his
methods prevail. Poland pretends to be a kingdom. The Ukraine . . .” He shook his head. “After all, they’re only Slavs.” He might have been a Confederate saying,
After all, they’re only niggers.
 Morrell smiled with half his mouth.
Either
way, God help the poor bastards on the receiving end.

* * *

 
A
t seventeen, Mary McGregor had got used to being taller than her mother. Her father, after all, had been a big man. She remembered that very well, though these days she had trouble calling up the memory of just what his voice had sounded like.

  She also remembered when her mother’s hair had been the color of a bright new penny. Now she couldn’t help noticing how much gray streaked that once-bright hair. She hadn’t noticed it as it spread; one day, it seemed, that gray had simply appeared, as if by magic.

 
  But magic is supposed to be good,
 Mary thought, looking out across the fields she and her mother and her sister and whatever hired man they got for the spring would be planting soon. Soon, but not yet: snow, a deeper blanket than usual, still covered those fields. Winter had been hard, even for Manitoba.

  Mary clenched her fists so that her nails dug into her palms. This far north, the growing season was short enough anyhow. A late spring could make harvest touch-and-go before frosts came again in early fall. If they didn’t get a good crop . . .

 
  Well, so what?
 Mary thought, and went out to tend the horse and the cow and the rest of the livestock in the barn.
What if we’ve got no money and they throw us off the farm?
 She knew the family had relatives back in Ontario; her father had come west to Manitoba when he was a boy. But the McGregors weren’t close to any of those kin. Mary’d never met a one of them.
Would they take us in?
 Times were supposed to be even harder back there than they were here—not only had Ontario been fought over harder than Manitoba, the rebellion there had been worse.

 
  We’re on our own. Nobody cares whether we live or die.
 Mary shook her head. That wasn’t true.

  The Americans hoped the McGregors died. They’d killed her brother, Alexander. They’d killed her father, too. Oh, yes, his own bomb, meant for General Custer, had been the actual means of his death, but he never would have become a bomber in the first place if the stinking Yanks hadn’t decided Alexander was plotting against them and stood him against a wall.

  Some of those dark thoughts faded away when Mary went into the barn. It was warmer in there, with the walls holding out the wind and holding in the animals’ body warmth. Somebody from the city might have wrinkled his nose at the odor. Mary took it for granted; she’d smelled it all her life. And the work distracted her. She gave the horse and cow and sheep hay and put down corn for the chickens. Then she mucked out the stalls. The manure would go on the garden and on as much of the fields as it would cover.

  She handled pitchfork and shovel with matter-of-fact skill. Her hands had thick bands of callus across the palms. Her nails were short and blunt and dirty. A dozen scars seamed her fingers and the backs of her hands—anyone who did a lot of work with sharp tools had accidents now and then. Every once in a while, she thought wistfully of a manicure, but how much good would it do? A day after she got it, she’d be back in the barn and out in the fields once more.

  Hens squawked and tried to peck as she lifted them off their nests so she could gather eggs. One of them did more than try; the bird’s beak drew blood. She gave it a baleful stare. “Chicken and dumplings,” she whispered. “Fried chicken. Chicken soup.” The bird looked back out of beady little eyes. It was too stupid to be afraid. It was only indignant at having its nest robbed—and, being a hen, would forget about that in short order.

  Instead of taking the basket of eggs straight back to the house, Mary sat down for a moment to rest.

  She leaned back against an old wagon wheel that had been sitting in the barn ever since she was a little girl. The iron tire on the wheel showed red streaks of rust. The wheel had a couple of broken spokes.

  Not for the first time, she wondered why her father had left it there instead of either repairing it or getting what use he could from the wood and the iron. Letting things lie idle wasn’t like him.

  She shrugged. She’d never get the chance to ask him now. If she ever needed anything that wheel could provide, she wouldn’t hesitate to take it. Or, if she had to, she thought she could fix it. She hadn’t tried her hand at carpentry till her father died. As with so much else, she’d had to learn the hard way—several of the scars on her hands came from slips. But she could do things nowadays that would have amazed her a few years before.

  With a sigh, she climbed to her feet again, picked up the basket, and headed back to the farmhouse. She blinked in surprise when she saw a buggy by the house. People didn’t visit the McGregors very often.

  She walked faster, curious to see who’d broken the unwritten rule.

  A couple of Fords sped past on the road that led to Rosenfeld. One was painted green-gray, which meant it belonged to the U.S. Army. The other was the more usual black. All the same, odds were it had a Yank inside. Even now, almost ten years after the war ended, not many Canadians could afford a motorcar.
And most of the ones who can are a bunch of damned collaborators,
 Mary thought.

  She opened the kitchen door. Her mother sat at a table drinking tea with another woman of about her own age, who was saying, “I tell you, Maude, it’s a disgrace. I’m sure she and that Yank—” She broke off and smiled. “Hello, Mary. How are you?”

  “I’m fine, Mrs. Marble, thank you.” Mary laughed at herself, thinking she should have recognized the buggy.

  “Tell me more, Beth,” her mother said. “You can be sure Mary won’t let it get to the wrong ears.”

  “Well, I didn’t expect she would,” Beth Marble answered, sipping her tea. She was a couple of inches shorter than Mary’s mother, with shoulder-length brown hair, blue eyes, rather flat features, and a habitual expression of good humor. After picking up a shortbread wafer from the plate on the table, she did go on with her story: one more tale of a Canadian girl who’d lost her virtue to a fast-talking American with a fancy motorcar and with money in his pocket.

  Mary listened with only half an ear. She hardly knew this girl, who lived even farther from the McGregors than did the Marbles, and she’d been hearing such stories ever since the days of the Great War. Only the details varied. The American conquest of Canada continued on many different levels.

  Soldiers occupied the land. American men seduced Canadian women. Newspapers printed only what the conquerors wanted the conquered to read. Films pounded home the same messages, as she’d seen at the Bijou. So did the wireless, not that she’d ever heard it. Canadian schools taught the U.S. view of history—a pack of lies, as far as Mary was concerned. Her parents had pulled her and Julia out of school when the Yanks changed the curriculum. Most children, though, had kept on going, and the Americans had been in charge of such things for quite a while now. How long till a whole generation forgot what being Canadian meant?

  Mary put the eggs she’d gathered on the counter. She went over to the table. “May I have a wafer, Mother?” she asked, and took one when Maude McGregor nodded.

  “Such lovely manners,” Beth Marble said, and beamed at Mary’s mother. “Both your daughters are so sweet and charming, Maude.”

 
  Do you know me at all?
 Mary wondered as she nibbled at the shortbread.
I don’t think so.
 In her own mind, she was as much a fighter against the American occupation as her father had been, more of a fighter than her brother had been—even if the Yanks had murdered him for his opposition to their rule.

  Sweet? Charming? She felt like pouring a cup of tea and then spilling it on their visitor, even if Mrs. Marble had meant well, as she surely had.

  As much to make a point as because she really wanted it, Mary took another shortbread wafer, this time without asking permission. Mrs. Marble, engrossed in another bit of gossip—she did like to talk—failed to notice. Mary’s mother did, and wagged a finger at her. From behind Beth Marble’s back, Mary stuck out her tongue.

  Her mother raised her teacup to her mouth to hide a smile, but her eyes danced above it. Carrying that second piece of shortbread away as booty, Mary went into the parlor.

  Two steps in were more than enough to show her she’d made a mistake. Her older sister sat on the rocking chair in there, and Beth Marble’s son Kenneth on the sofa close by. More plainly than words, Julia’s look said the two of them didn’t want any company.

  Face heating, Mary mumbled, “I . . . I guess I’ll go upstairs now. Hello, Kenneth.”

  “Hello, Mary,” Kenneth Marble answered politely, but he kept his eyes on Julia as he spoke. He’d been coming to call for most of a year now, sometimes with his mother, sometimes without. He was the first young man who’d come to call on Julia since Ted Culligan broke off their engagement after her father’s death. There were times over the past few months when Julia had got all dreamy and absentminded.

  Mary didn’t take that for a good sign.

  Up the stairs she went, fast as her legs would carry her. When she turned around and looked back, Julia and Kenneth were leaning towards each other. She sighed. She didn’t know what Julia saw in him. He was only an inch or two taller than she, and, to Mary’s eyes, nothing much to look at. Some actress had got a reputation as the girl with
it
. In Julia’s eyes, plainly, Kenneth Marble had
it
. Mary still found
it
more bewildering than exciting.

  She flopped down on her bed and started reading a copy of
The Ladies’ Home Journal
she’d got the last time she went into Rosenfeld. The magazine showed her a whole different world, and not just because it came from the USA. Skinny girls in short dresses strode city streets, rode in motorcars, listened to the wireless, lived in apartments, used electric lights and telephones, and did all sorts of other things Mary thought herself unlikely ever to do. Even more than what they did, that they took it so completely for granted was daunting.

  If it weren’t for the recipes and patterns the
Journal
included, Mary’s mother probably wouldn’t have let it come into the farmhouse. Nothing could have been better calculated to make someone on a farm discontented with her life. This issue even had a story about flying to California for a holiday. Flying! For pleasure! The only aeroplanes Mary had even seen were the fighting scouts and bombers that had buzzed above the farm during the Great War. She couldn’t imagine wanting to get into one of those.

  The
Journal
also had an article about a journey on an ocean liner. Mary couldn’t decide whether she found stranger the idea of a liner or that of the ocean itself. She’d never seen it, and didn’t expect she ever would. Before she could read much of the article, a commotion broke out downstairs: Julia and their mother and Beth Marble sounded even more excited than the hens had when Mary rifled their nests.

  She flipped the magazine closed and hurried down to see what had happened. She found her older sister in tears, with their mother and Mrs. Marble both embracing her. Kenneth Marble stood off to one side, a sickly grin on his face. Mary stared at him. Had he tried to . . . ? With his own mother, and Julia’s, in the next room? He couldn’t have been that stupid. Could he?

  Then Mary noticed both her mother and Beth Marble were crying and smiling at the same time. Maude McGregor said, “Kenneth just asked Julia to marry him, and she said yes.”

  “Oh.” Mary couldn’t have said anything more if she tried; she felt as if she’d been punched in the pit of the stomach. Even breathing was hard. The first thought that went through her mind was,
How will we do
the work if Julia moves away?
 Even with all three of them working flat out, it barely got done.

  Despite her mother’s smile, Maude McGregor looked worried, too. Mrs. Marble seemed oblivious to the glance that went between Mary and her mother. It wasn’t
her
trouble, after all.

  “This is the happiest day of my life,” Julia said. Beth Marble burst into tears again. Mary congratulated her sister.
What a liar I am,
 she thought.

 
T
o Anne Colleton’s ears, J.B.H. Norris’ drawl sounded harsh and ignorant. But the Texas oil man had proved a sharp operator in spite of that backwoods accent. “Hope you’ll see fit to invest in our operation here, ma’am,” he said, tipping his hat to her. The Stetson, with its high crown and wide brim, also told her she wasn’t in South Carolina any more.

  She
was
near the banks of the Brazos River, northwest of Fort Worth. And she had questions that went beyond profit and loss. She pointed west. “That new Yankee state of Houston isn’t very far away. What happens if there’s another war? How are you going to keep U.S. soldiers and aeroplanes from wrecking everything you’ve got?”

  “Ma’am, you’d do better asking Richmond about that than me,” Norris answered. “If they hadn’t given up so much last time, we wouldn’t need to fret about it now.”