by C. S. Starr
“We don’t have cows in LA,” Tal said, aware he was being a jerk. “But I get it. Thanks.”
Lucy ignored his dig. “Now, there aren’t as many of us as there were before. It’s possible now to work together to make things good for everyone. Kids still have to do shit jobs, sure, I mean, my brother up there with the oil? It’s disgusting. But you pay those kids a little more, let them know it’s appreciated, and they know it makes everything else work. You know why I have so many kids at my house all the time? Do you think it’s because I like being social?”
“No.”
“See, look how well you know me already. It’s because if you empower people, and make them feel like they have a say, they become invested in their own future. Kids tell me all the time the way things should be, and I mean, I hear some really stupid things, but there’s some smart in there too, and I listen. When was the last time you listened to just some kid on the street?”
“Oh, will you just give it a break!” Tal snapped, finding himself irrationally irritated. “Fuck, you’re self-righteous.”
Lucy just rolled her eyes. “Don’t be an asshole. When was the last time—”
“Never,” he admitted. “Well, when it came to what kind of movies they wanted to watch, in the beginning, but not for a long time.”
“So this is a good opportunity for you to listen. For me to listen too. You should never stop listening.”
They stopped for the night at another roadside hotel, this one in northern Missouri by Tal’s calculation when the fuel light came on. He caught a glimpse of Lucy’s cash and noted that they were running low after paying for the hotel and a loaf of bread with some jam for dinner.
“My mom used to do a lot of pro bono work,” Tal remarked, not to impress Lucy, but because she’d been on his mind ever since they’d visited the university. “I’m not ignorant to the reality that there are problems with our system.”
“Why don’t you do anything about it then?” Lucy asked, genuinely curious. “If you know.”
“It’s hard.”
“It’s easy,” she countered.
“Boy, you’re not cutting me any slack, are you?” Tal gave her a half smile.
“I think you’re all right,” she said quietly. “And I’m a careful judge of character.”
“You’re okay too,” he admitted. “And I knew you weren’t gaining people’s trust with blind luck. I knew that from the start, and I told Connor that.”
“We’re running out of money,” she mumbled, after they’d crawled into their respective queen sized beds. “And gas.”
“If I can’t call my people, you need to call yours,” Tal muttered back, narrowing his eyes so he could see her across the room. “It’s a long walk north, and it’s starting to get cold.”
“I’ll call tomorrow.”
“Goodnight,” he said, into the dark, after he closed his eyes.
“Night, Tal,” Lucy whispered back, rolling away from him.
***
Lucy didn’t fall right to sleep, and found her cheeks wet as she started thinking about her brother. She’d hardly thought about Cole all day, and the guilt over that ate her up. From where she stood, she wasn’t sure what she could do to try and get him back, but so far, she’d done nothing.
When she was sure Tal was asleep, she dressed and went downstairs to use the pay phone she’d noticed in the lobby, once there was no one around to overhear her. Minimal lights were on and the front door was locked up, which she hoped meant whoever was running the place had gone to bed.
Lucy had memorized the calling card number her mother had forced each of them to know when they were small. It hadn’t worked again until the systems all fell apart, and she’d tried it on a chance one night in Calgary a few years earlier when she’d run out of quarters and was desperate to talk to Zoey. She called the one person who she knew would know she was alive.
“Bull?” she said hopefully when the line clicked. “Hey.”
“Where the fuck are you?” he roared, the concern in his voice thrust through the line. “Shit, Ce. I’ve been looking everywhere…they all thought—”
“I’m in Missouri. North Missouri. At a hotel.”
“How the fuck did you get there?”
“I drove. From Arkansas. After we killed the kids that took us. From East.”
“Fucking East,” Bull muttered. “You and the West kid?”
“Yeah.”
“You okay?”
“I’m as okay as I ever am. Listen, what’s happening up there?”
“Your brother is losing his mind. They’re up here, him and Zoey.”
“They’re there?” It was surprising that Andrew would have gone to Bull for help. They’d never gotten along or agreed on anything.
Their affection for her was the exception.
“They drove up yesterday. Wanted to see what kind of plan you and I’d cooked up—”
“Don’t tell Zoey anything.”
Bull sighed on the line. “She’s fucking distraught over you, and no, I didn’t tell her anything. I assume your brother is okay to talk to? He’s a poor fucking substitute for you since his strategy is just to kill everyone—”
“I think Zoey’s working with East.”
Bull snorted. “I think you have trust issues.”
“You don’t think—”
“I think if she was working with East, she wouldn’t be here, sobbing her eyes out for no one’s benefit and not trying to involve herself in anything political. If she’s a plant, she’s the world’s worst.”
Lucy squeezed her eyes shut and pulled her knees to her chest, a wave of relief flooding her. “You think she’s okay?”
“I don’t know,” Bull muttered. “I’ll keep an eye on her. You need to get back up here. Kids are really angry.”
“I’m not ready to be a martyr yet. Don’t worry.”
Bull was silent for a long minute.
“You know what? Don’t come back yet. Let me see…I want to figure out who’s behind this. No use in you coming back if it’s not safe.”
“You want me to stay away?”
“Give me a week. We haven’t even got a ransom note for you. They keep sending shit about Cole though. Fucked up shit,” he said, lowering his voice. “I shouldn’t have told you that. I just…they…we all thought they had you too.”
Lucy felt like she was falling, as her mind processed his words. “What do they want?”
“Everything. Assimilation. We won’t do it, even if you were to agree under duress. It’s not what you want.”
Lucy found herself brokenhearted and grateful knowing that. “I…I need money. I don’t have any money.”
Bull was quiet again. “Go to Oklahoma. Not too far from you. Get to Grove, on the lake. Look for Red Cloud.”
Her years with Bull had taught her a lot about Aboriginal heroes. He loved the stories. “You’re not very inventive with your names, are you?”
“They’re good ones,” Bull said, unapologetically. “They honor our ancestors.”
She rolled her eyes. Bull wasn’t Sioux. He was Blackfoot. He just thought Bull was a cool name. Cooler than James. “I’ll get there.”
“I’ll meet you there, as soon as I can. Red Cloud, he’ll take care of you. I’ll call him tonight.”
“Thanks,” she said, wiping her eyes. “I’ll be okay.”
“Of course you will be. Goose, I’ll see you in a few days. Don’t worry about Campbell,” he said reassuringly. “Everyone up here is fighting for you. I’ll keep the war on simmer until we know where to fight it.”
“I love you,” Lucy whispered. “And thank you.”
“I love you too, old friend,” Bull whispered back. “And thank you for letting me get some sleep. You’ve been screaming in my head for two nights now, not making a lick of sense. I thought they were hurting you, bad.”
Lucy decided against telling him the specifics of her ordeal. “It’s been…stressful. I’ll try and be quiet tonight
. I haven’t been sleeping right,” she said, frowning to herself as she hung up and thought about her twin, who, under any other circumstance would have been her next call.
Tal was awake with the light on when she got back to their room, dressed and throwing stuff into a bag. He exhaled loudly with relief when he saw her. “Where the fuck were you? Did someone take you?”
“I just went to call my friend in the lobby. I’m fine.”
“You’re crying.” He looked at her face. “Is everything—”
“It’s fine,” she choked. “We’re…we’re going to go to Oklahoma. He’s got a friend there, and he’s going to meet us in a week.”
“Okay,” he nodded, stepping closer to her. “Why are you crying?”
She hadn’t cried much about Cole at home. She’d had a stern talk with herself a few days in, and convinced herself crying wouldn’t help. Here though, away from everyone, she felt like all she’d done was cry whenever she had a minute to herself.
“My brother,” she mumbled, avoiding his eyes. “I’m just worried about him…they’re…it’s not good, what’s happening to him.”
Tal looked at her, obviously unsure of what the proper response was. He hesitated, and she knew he was concerned about how she’d react if he hugged her.
He did it anyway.
“I lost brothers,” he murmured, holding her against him, despite some initial flinching. It was a careful hug and Lucy knew his intentions were purely supportive. “So I do know, even though it’s been a long time. You’ll be okay. Just get through each day until you’re with him again.”
Lucy pulled away and looked up at him, feeling the slightest bit less alone. “How many did you have?”
“Two. Adam and Rob. Fifteen and seventeen.”
“So close,” she whispered, wincing. “I’m sorry.”
“Me too,” he nodded thoughtfully. “Adam…We were really close. Everyone in my family, really.”
“Of course you’re the baby,” she said, a half smile through her tears. “I should have known.”
“And that makes you the middle, I’m guessing?”
“By ten minutes,” she said quietly as she pushed away from him, realizing something new about Tal Bauman. He was a hell of a lot stronger than she’d given him credit for. “Thanks…for that.”
“We should get some sleep,” he replied, returning to his side of the room. “Since we’re going to have to pimp ourselves for gas money to get to Oklahoma.”
“I’ll make sure you get what you’re worth,” Lucy said, smiling at the bed opposite her as she switched the light out. “And don’t touch me again.”
“I wouldn’t dream of it,” Tal murmured, hoping he was lying. “Night.”
“Night.”
Chapter 11
February 2002
Fort Macleod, Alberta
“Well, I’m going to call it Campbell,” Bull joked, glancing at Lucy out of the corner of his eye. “It’s a better name than Fort Macleod, anyway. There aren’t any Macleods here, and the fort sucks.”
“I think we should call it something geographical, like they’ve done in the east,” Lucy piped up, looking up from her game of checkers with Angela Duncan. “Like North.”
“Campbell’s better,” Bull said, moving onto the floor beside her, their thighs brushing. “East isn’t going to bring everyone together. Kids in the west aren’t going to want to be part of East. Or kids in the north. If we’re all going to do this, we need to think big.”
“What if we just call ourselves Canada?” Cole replied, looking admirably at Bull, who seemed to be taller and more handsome every time he came to visit.
Lucy didn’t miss the way Cole looked at her boyfriend. She’d called him on it, and he’d confessed to having a crush on him. It had shocked Lucy at first. She didn’t know anyone who was gay, or even what it meant to be gay until Cole had told her he was. She wasn’t surprised that Bull made Cole feel similar to the way he made her feel. They’d shared feelings and emotions, for as long as she could remember. She knew from the amount of kissing that Bull seemed to want to do that he wasn’t going to reciprocate Cole’s feelings but it bugged her a little, the way Cole didn’t care that Bull was hers.
She’d never had someone that was just hers before.
“We’ve got some Americans interested. If you were American, would you want to be Canadian?” Lucy said, staring deadpan at her twin who was fixated on her boyfriend. He quickly looked away, and knew Lucy well enough to know that he could expect a lecture later.
“I don’t know,” Cole mumbled. “Maybe? I think a lot of Americans wanted to be Canadian.”
“Why would you think that?” Lucy countered sharply. “That’s not true at all.”
“Children, children,” Bull tisked, shaking his head and ruffling Lucy’s hair playfully. “I think Campbell is good. It’s not one person, and this town, it’s Campbell anyway.”
“And you really think we’ll all just work together, and everyone will be happy, and that’ll be the end of it?”
“No,” Bull laughed, shaking his head. “Don’t be ridiculous. It’s a start, and if we don’t start, someone else will.”
“Your kind are going to listen to me?” Lucy shook her head. “Yeah, right.”
“They’ll listen to me. We’ll just work together. You’re right; no one’s going to go for colonialism again, now that we know better.”
“What’s that?” Cole asked, sliding next to Angela around the checkerboard.
Bull sighed. “You know what? Never mind—”
“It’s when all the white people came and took everything from Bull’s people and didn’t give them anything back for it,” Lucy interrupted. “Right?”
“You’ve been reading the books I gave you?” Bull smiled at her.
“Yeah. I kind of hate myself a little more every day,” Lucy said, grinning back at him. “But I guess Mother Nature showed us all.”
Bull chuckled. “She’ll do that.”
Lucy had learned a lot from Bull in the short time they’d known each other. She’d never really understood the imbalance in her world until he’d talked about his family and the stories his grandfather had passed onto him about how his people had once lived. She’d learned a little about it in school, but it was nothing compared to having Bull tell her about life on his reserve or show her things like the place where the Blackfoot had once hunted buffalo by chasing them off a cliff, just a stone’s throw from Fort Macleod. “You want to go up to Head Smashed In again tomorrow?”
“Of course,” he replied, beaming as he wrapped his arm around her shoulders.
Andrew had gone north to visit some of the boys he’d met in foster care the night before, which left an incredibly nervous, but trying to play it cool Lucy alone with an incredibly anxious, but always cool, Bull. Lucy tried to stay up as late as she could, hoping she’d either find some way to explain that even though a few of the twelve-year-olds they both knew were having sex, she wouldn’t be, or that they’d both simply fall asleep and it would never come up.
She had no such luck when Bull followed her into her room much later that night.
“We’re not doing it,” she said, raising her eyebrows at him. “Ever.”
His face dropped. “Ever?”
She shrugged. “I’m…I’m not sure I want to.”
“Well, I don’t think you have to decide at eleven.” He tugged off his heavy wool sweater to reveal his muscular frame. “And I don’t know why you think that’s what I want from you. I’m not sure I’m ready yet either. I’m barely twelve. You’ve seen all the girls around with swollen bellies. Who needs that?”
“What do you want from me?” she asked curiously, changing into her flannel pyjamas behind the bedroom door.
He gave a small shrug and smiled as he climbed into her bed. “I don’t think I have to decide that either.”
September 2012
Somewhere just east of Old Oklahoma
“So you trust thi
s guy that’s sending us to some place called Grove? It’s not some elaborate trap? He’s not the rat?”
“Bull is not the rat. Bull is…” She looked up thoughtfully. “He’s…we share a brain sometimes. He’s an old boyfriend.”
Tal raised his eyebrows. He hadn’t imagined Lucy gushing over anyone. “And here I thought—”
“Oh, you thought right,” Lucy quipped. “And my only boyfriend. We were eleven. Twelve maybe. And then we were friends, and now we’re still friends. Because we don’t sleep together.”
“Right,” Tal nodded. “Because sex makes people—”
“Crazy.”
“I was going to say ‘hate each other’, but crazy works.” He shrugged, leaning against the car where they’d run out of gas, somewhere along the highway. “I guess we walk?”
Lucy gave a dull nod. “I guess so.”
It was a nice day; the sun was shining, and the sky was blue forever. On either side of them, scraggly bushes filled fields that had likely once been wheat.
“It’s like we’re the only two people in the world,” Lucy said, watching one foot move in front of the other. “We could be. Everyone could have died.”
“Why us? Why would we live, if everyone died?” Tal squinted into the sun.
“Fate? Blind luck?”
“How do you stop people wanting…things? If you’re all for your communist—”
“Socialist.”
“Whatever. If you’re a socialist, how do you convince yourself you don’t want to be on top?”
She smiled mischievously. “Oh, I’m always on top. Don’t get mixed up there. The extremes are just less extreme. I make a good salary and I don’t want for anything. ” She looked down at her ratty t-shirt. “Except maybe now. A new bra would be the bee’s knees.”
He smirked at her. “That’s an expression I haven’t heard in a while.”
“I’m old-school, Tal.” She scuffed her foot along the pavement. “There are no gulags in Old Canada. No sad, sad communist faces in line for bread. Shit just works.”
“Campbell: Shit Just Works. It’s like a dream marketing slogan.”
