The Canadian Civil War: Volume 3 - West to the Wall

by William Wresch

Chapter 29

  Waiting for radio

  Now what? If Foster had been telling the truth and the Dubuissants were thieves and liars, the other thugs might turn on them and this thing end on its own. But that outcome was based on Foster telling the truth and Goulet making an effort to expose the Dubuissants. I didn’t trust either one. And even if the effort were made, how long would it take for the LNA bureaucracy to reach the desert radio station? Hours? Days? Weeks? In the meantime, nineteen dangerous men were holed up in the hotel.

  I stood out in the street trying to determine where to go and what to do. It had to be thirty below, and the sun was barely above the horizon, but I realized I was not all that cold. I was acclimating. Wow. I had definitely been here too long. Time to get back to Green Bay.

  Could I just leave now? It was hard to see what more I might do. My reason for being involved was my former connection to Foster, and now he was gone. Did I have any reason to stay on? In truth, I guess I was just curious. And of course my car had been taken some place to be fixed and I had never seen it again. Since the hotel people had arranged for the repair, they would know where it was, but now was probably not a good time for me to walk into the hotel and ask. So, okay, I was going to be here a little longer. But what was I going to do right this minute?

  I decided to do a little snooping. Main street was being slowly cleared of snow. Dump trucks were brought in and large snow blowers picked up all the snow along the curb and on the sidewalk and blew it into the trucks. Two blocks were already clear and I guessed the rest of the commercial streets would be done by the end of the day. In the meantime, people still walked in the street, although now there was an increasing amount of car and truck traffic, so walking was a bit more challenging.

  I walked up the street looking at each of the shops. If I were a thief, which ones would I break into? Not an easy choice. Truthfully, I didn’t see anything in any store I would want to buy. Want hand-made blankets? Three stores. Want second-hand clothes? Four stores. Need a tattoo? Five places. At least a dozen storefronts were empty. DeSmet was not doing all that well. So what was there to steal?

  A block farther north I thought I found a couple prospects. Three pawn shops stood in a row. They would have guns, gold, and money. On the corner was a larger grocery store. It would have money too. The snow blowers had not reached this block yet, so I could see each store was pretty well blocked in by snow drifts. They would have been pretty hard to rob last night. Maybe around back?

  I walked around the corner to see if there was an alley to give access to back doors. There was, but it was completely blocked by snow. If there had been thoughts of robbing these places, the snow had protected them. But, what did I know? Maybe the Dubuissants had found another way in, or had robbed another group of stores, or maybe Foster was lying about the whole thing. Besides, the town had cops. They would have figured out all of this long before I did. Enough. I gave up being an amateur detective and walked back to Marc and Nicole’s house.

  Marc and Nicole were sitting at the kitchen table having a cup of coffee. I joined them. What was being said? Not much. They were both as tired as I was. I noticed the cabinet was open in the corner of the kitchen and all four rifles were there. But the door stood open. Clearly they didn’t think the problem was over, and they faced another night of thugs burning houses. I could hear the boys in another room, their video games making electronic noises in the background. At least they were able to return to the norm.

  “Foster left.” I said, and then filled them in on our conversation, plus the conversations I had had with the police and with the LNA. The burglary possibility struck Marc.

  “That would actually be great for us. We catch them in the act, and lock them up for being common criminals. Now all the politics is out of this. It isn’t desert rats versus Indians, it is crooks being crooks. The cops here are pretty good. They will watch. We can put a couple trucks on the street to provide more eyes, and maybe we will get lucky.”

  The radio idea wasn’t received as well. It was dependent on too many players. Goulet had to be willing to ask about the Dubuisants, some people in the LNA had to care, and had to agree that the Dubuissants should be exposed. That would mean they had to admit there were criminals in the LNA. Then there was the radio station. Would they air anything showing the men were crooks and frauds? They had been portraying the dead angry-men as “martyrs” and the hotel filled with “freedom fighters.” After a week of rabble-rousing, could they pull a 180? Pretty unlikely.

  Nevertheless, Nicole went to work on her computer. She had a laptop on a table in the corner, and she did a web search until she found the website of the station. They were live-streaming their local broadcast and she clicked on that. It was ghastly. Basically a stream of hate put in the form of victimization. There was a “war” on the poor people in the desert launched by an oppressive government in Green Bay. Then there were the references to race and religion. It was ugly. Nicole turned down the volume. Even at lowest volume it felt like it poisoned their home. Both boys poked their heads in and asked what that was. As I explained why we were listening, some caller launched into a racist rant that made us all want to throw the computer out. As much as we wanted to hear some comment about the Dubuissants, was it worth having that ugly nonsense in the house?

  “Let’s shut it off,” I suggested. “There are city and provincial officials who will be listening. We don’t have to.”

  “There are people who believe this?” Nicole asked. She looked at me, and then she looked at the boys. She was clearly embarrassed they were hearing this.

  “There’s a reason why they live in the desert.” I hoped that was sufficient explanation. But it really wasn’t. How do you explain or excuse broadcast hatred? Nicole turned her computer off. But there was ugliness in the kitchen now. I did not know how long it would take for the air to be cleared of it. How do you turn on an exhaust fan for broadcast poison?

  We decided the best way to clear the air was to leave the house. Nicole needed groceries, and we all needed to be outside in the clean air. All five of us crowded into Nicole’s car and we drove up to the grocery store I had looked at earlier in the morning. It was getting pretty good business. Among the customers were half a dozen angry-men who were loading up on sandwich fixings, junk food, and beer. It hadn’t occurred to me before, but with the restaurant closed at the hotel, they were either going to have to find a new restaurant, or serve themselves. Apparently they felt more comfortable eating among their own, if you consider potato chips, cookies, and beer actually eating. I wondered if scurvy was a common problem for these guys.

  Watching them load up their shopping carts was interesting. First, they looked stupid pushing a cart, is if they were normal people, but in my experience normal people don’t walk around wearing camo and carrying a rifle slung over their shoulder. Normal people also occasionally engage in conversation. Not these guys. I never saw them exchange a word. The just rolled a cart to the beer aisle and then to the junk food aisle, and they put things in until the cart was full. If a high school kid with a fake ID were in the store, he would be making the same purchases.

  The other unusual thing was the way others in the store reacted to the angry-men. They were given plenty of space. You could see people push a cart around a corner, see the men, and back out of the aisle. No shopper has ever had as much space as these guys were given. Of course, when you come to the store armed and dressed for drama, such space should not be too surprising. But if they noticed it, they gave no sign. They loaded their carts, pushed to the checkout counters (which also suddenly had no lines), paid and left.

  It got me thinking about conditions at the hotel. They had no food or liquor except what they brought in themselves. The lobby was pretty well trashed. What did their rooms look like? Had anyone changed the sheets? The hotel staff may still be going in to work, or t
hey might not be. Was it getting pretty uncomfortable in there?

  “Marc,” I asked as we trailed behind Nicole and the boys. The three of them were having a bit of a competition over what went into the cart. The boys had their ideas (chocolate seemed to be the organizing principle), and Nicole had her ideas (largely centered on vegetables). As some compromise position for the cart was debated, Marc and I talked. “Remember that idea we had for the village school? Give any thought to shutting the heat to the hotel?”

  “Yeah, we’ve had a couple discussions on that. The general thinking now is that the hotel is a good place for them. They are all in one place so they are easier to monitor, and they have already done as much damage as they are likely to do. We could try to force them out, but they might just go somewhere else in town.”

  “So we wait.”

  “We wait, and we watch.” At this point Marc put some smoked salmon in the cart.

  “Anything for you, Shawn?” Nicole asked. I made some comment about needing lobster, and sure enough they had some. It was canned, but canned lobster is better than no lobster. And that topped off the cart. I paid for the groceries. It was the least I could do.

  Back at home, I promised to make a lobster thermador fit for Bookbinders, and I will give myself credit for a serious try, but at the end, it was still just canned lobster, chunks of potatoes, and a heavy sauce in a casserole. I spent a couple hours basically making the recipe up as I went along, but everyone had fun watching me mess up the kitchen. I took so long that by the time I was finished everyone was hungry enough to try some of the concoction I had made. Marc even made a big show of having seconds. The boys had no need to be good hosts, so they ate as little as they could get away with, and went back to their video games.

  While nothing was said, the real accomplishment was killing a long afternoon and staying busy as we thought about what might also be a long night. That was far more important than my silly casserole.