Carruthers drained his drink. “Don’t hold back. Tell me how you really feel.”
Erin gave him a very halfhearted version of the finger and sipped more of her drink. “This program is the closest thing Canada has ever had to food stamps, or SNAP or EBT or whatever it’s called, and it’s been good for my bottom line. Did you know that Canada raised half of England’s grain during the Second World War? There’s absolutely no excuse for us not to feed our own people. It’s total and complete bullshit that we never had something like this before, and I for one am not going to abandon it just because the crisis is allegedly over.”
Carruthers remained uncharacteristically silent and she caught herself missing the friction. Ranting was easier than processing. Anger was easier than vulnerability. Not that she felt any particular need to justify her decisions, but explaining them in detail filled the silence that would otherwise be filled with the realization that yes, they’d attacked her farm, just like last year and the year before, and that they were growing bolder with each passing autumn.
“I was a card holder, once,” he said, as though there had been no break in the conversation. “In university. The ration card, I mean. The points. I mean I know everyone technically has one, they technically have a number for everybody, but I was a regular user. For a while it seemed like the only way to get groceries in Toronto, because of the railway blockades and the tariffs and the meatpacking shutdown. It was the only guaranteed system. Unless you had a good relationship with the guy at your corner store.”
Erin drained what was left of her drink and stood to make her way to the kitchen. “And I’m guessing you didn’t have one of those?”
“Well, no.” He stood to follow her. She reached into the freezer and brought out the bottle, plus a tray of ice. Then she moved into the dining room and found the carnival glass pitcher that matched the tumblers on her grandmother’s sideboard. When she turned around Carruthers was in the threshold between the kitchen and dining room, filling the door so effectively that she couldn’t weave around him.
“Everything here seems so delicate,” he said, out of nowhere. “All this glass. The plates on the rail up there. The lace on the table. It’s all so . . . breakable. Everything in here. It just seems really tiny and fragile.”
Erin craned her neck back to look him in the face. “What are you trying to say?”
“Nothing,” he said, swallowing, and he moved aside to let her through. Erin snapped the ice tray and poured ice cubes halfway into the pitcher, then wedged the bottle of gin inside. “Where are the others?”
“Dio and Ruthie?” Erin listened carefully. She heard the sound of the shower running. “Probably blowing off steam.”
Carruthers went red to the roots of his hair. “Oh.”
“Everyone decompresses differently.” She carried the gin and the club soda into the living room, set them on the tray, and started pouring. “Do you still want to call the police?”
He watched her pouring and held up two fingers when she’d poured enough for him. “Yeah. I should look at the truck, first. Check the tires, like you said. It’s a company car; it has front and rear cameras. They might have caught something. A face, a plate number. Worth a look, anyway.”
Erin hadn’t thought of this as a possibility. But it was one of the advantages, if there could be such a thing, of having been attacked in the afternoon. There was enough light for a camera to pick up something. “Yeah,” she said. “That’s a good idea.”
Carruthers fussed with his device. Erin suspected he was downloading the footage from the car. “Have you ever pressed charges?” he asked.
“The first year, I tried to,” she said. “But the investigation didn’t go anywhere. Every year I take pictures, and we have a camera rigged up at the front door, but they’ve never come close enough.”
“The first year?”
“Probably the year before the ration program went voluntary,” she said. “I made my opinion pretty clear, and, well, so did they.”
Carruthers put his device down and massaged his temples. “That’s like five years, Erin.”
Erin wasn’t sure when exactly she had switched from Miss Landry to Erin, but it seemed like a permanent shift. “Well, there was a break, the second year. I think one of them must have been sick. Or on probation for something else, maybe. I don’t know. I didn’t expect it to continue.”
“And you report it? Every year?”
“If only to establish a paper trail,” she said. “Much good that it’s done me.”
“Well, this time, if you don’t mind, I’d like to be the one who makes the call.” He flipped his device around to show her the image of a license plate slowly resolving into clarity.
TALKING TO THE POLICE WAS VERY DIFFERENT WHEN YOU WERE A MAN, APPARENTLY.
“You see, my company,” Carruthers flashed the logo on his tablet, “is looking to make significant investment in this property, but I have to say I find this history of violence and vandalism extremely concerning.”
It was evening by the time an officer of the Greater Sudbury Police Service arrived, a Sikh man whose bracelet glittered in the growing dark when Erin opened the door. They received him in the dining room amidst all the fragile things Carruthers was so nervous about, and they served him warm apple cider from their own orchards, and he was deliberate and attentive and he took notes on a big chunky tablet whose case seemed designed to survive an explosion.
“And you’ve reported this activity before,” Officer Singh said.
“Yes,” Erin and Carruthers said, in unison.
Officer Singh frowned. “One at a time, please.”
Erin nodded. “Yes. I’ve reported it. I’ve uploaded all my photos and video to your website, every year.”
“And I can do the same,” Carruthers added.
“Thank you. Ma’am, if you could forward me your confirmation numbers from those uploads, that would help.” Erin nodded, and Officer Singh used his stylus to point between the two of them. “And you, sir, were here to discuss the purchase of the land?”
“Yes. I’m the manager of this account, and I like to take a very hands-on approach,” Carruthers ignored the sudden snort from Dionisia, but the officer didn’t, “and that’s why I was here. And thank God, because now we have this video, and now something can finally be done. Right?”
His voice invited no argument. Erin felt him looming in the chair beside her like a warm shadow, not touching but not distant either, and for a moment she remembered the sudden darkness of his hand over her eyes, as though he too had expected her windows to shatter all around them. She shuddered for just a second, and instantly felt him put his hand on the table beside hers, not touching but within reach. Officer Singh noticed the movement, and his nostrils flared slightly.
“And, ma’am, regarding the sale of this land, for how long have you been in negotiations with this man? With his company?”
“Um,” Erin looked at Carruthers. Suddenly it was difficult to remember that afternoon, much less the past year. “It’s been—”
“I sent my first letter to you in February,” Carruthers said. “And then I called you every month after that, to update you on plans for the boarding school.”
“Right.” Erin nodded at the officer. “That’s correct.”
“So these incidents started before there was any offer made to purchase the land?”
“What are you implying?” Carruthers asked.
“Sir, I’m not implying anything, I simply want to know if—”
“If you think I would ever hire some fucking goons to intimidate one of my accounts—”
“Sir, there’s no need for that kind of language—”
“They fucking shot at us, Officer Singh. They pointed guns at this farm. A farm, by the way, which has queer women of color living on it, which might technically make this a hate crime, which means they have every right to bring the full force of the Ontario Provincial Police down on these kids if your department won’
t—”
“Callum,” Erin said, and when he turned to her his face was white with high spots of red spattered across his cheekbones, and his chest was rising and falling as it had on the screen porch after the shooting. “It sounds like Officer Singh really does want to help. I think we should give him the benefit of the doubt.”
“I assure you that something will be done,” Officer Singh said. “This is really troubling. For all the reasons you mentioned. Now, ma’am, I have to ask: do you feel safe, here? Incidents of vandalism do go up a little around Halloween, usually just kids smashing pumpkins, but with your particular history, you might have more cause for concern.”
“Thank you,” Erin said. “For asking. Dionisia? Ruthie? How do you feel?”
The two women glanced at each other. “Well, there are three of us here,” Dionisia said. “And you have the deer rifle—”
“I’m staying,” Carruthers said. When everyone frowned at him, he hastily added: “In the area, I mean. I’m staying in the area. Until we finalize our negotiations.”
“For the land,” Officer Singh said.
“Yes. For the land.”
Officer Singh raised his eyebrows, but nodded. “Okay. Sure. Well, let me get to work on this, and I’ll be in touch.”
They saw him out, and when Erin wandered back into the kitchen Callum was washing her grandmother’s teacups by hand, very carefully, as though still afraid of breaking them. “You don’t have to do that,” she said.
He stared out the window over the sink. “I needed something to do with my hands.”
“Well I have a couple of acres’ worth of corn that needs shucking, if you’re into that kind of thing,” Erin said.
He shook his head ruefully. “I have . . .” He cleared his throat. “I was downtown. During the Canada Day attack. I was in the subway.”
The hairs on Erin’s arms rose. “I’m sorry. No wonder today was—”
“Yeah.” He wiped something from his face with the sleeve of his upper arm. “Yeah, it was. You’re a lot better at this kind of thing than I am. You’re a lot tougher than I am.”
“I’m not sure that’s true.” Erin tried to smile. “I mean, most other people find me pretty prickly and awful to deal with, but not you. You just seem to take it in stride.”
He snorted, but said nothing.
“You extended your stay? At your rental?”
He shook his head. “No. I mean I will, but I haven’t. Yet. But the officer has a point: I don’t know if Devil’s Night is a thing out here, but—”
“Have you even checked your tires?” Erin asked, suddenly catching on.
“No.” He set the last teacup upside down on its drying mat, aligning it with the others just so, and turned to face her. “No, I have not.”
“So you don’t even know if you can get out of here.”
“I’m pretty sure I can’t, actually,” he said. “In fact I’m pretty sure I’m . . .” He licked his lips. “I think the technical term is ensnared. I’m pretty sure I’m ensnared, Erin.”
She swallowed in a dry throat. “Oh. It’s . . . like that?”
“It’s like that.” His eyes widened. “I mean, not that I’m asking for anything specific, I can sleep in my car—”
“Don’t be an asshole,” she said, lifting the back of her hand to whack his arm. But he caught her hand before she could make contact, and he held onto it, running his thumb over her wrist. She stared at their linked hands. “I hope you know I’m still not going to sell,” she said. “If I haven’t sold this land after five years of having my scarecrows shot up, I sure as hell am not going to sell because you happen to be very—”
“Very?” He was grinning.
Erin looked at the teacups all in a row. “Detail-oriented.”
“Erin,” he said, “you have no idea.”
4
Interviews of Importance
Malka Older
THEN THE NOTIFICATION WENT OFF, A SHORT MINOR-KEY MELODY, AND CHELA FELT the usual pang of surprise and sorrow, although she was fairly sure she knew who it would be.
She picked up her phone and checked. Yes, the ninety-eight-year-old, the registered nurse and great-grandmother, had died. Not unexpected, but still sad.
Elder Resources talked a good game about recognizing the necessary emotional complexities of the work, and they were allowed to—really allowed to, and not discouraged—wait a few days before opening a new client relationship, but Chela preferred to set one up right away and then take a little time before the first interaction to psych herself up. She pulled up the app and spun the simulated wheel.
Chela thought, as she did every time she fired up the app, about how much they must have spent on user experience. It was just a randomizer; there was no need for a pretty colored wheel that clicked so satisfyingly as it turned. Compensation, she imagined, for the rest of the process being distinctly low tech. Everyone wanted a fancy solution, something new, and so even when the obvious answer was just talk to people they tacked on technological frills and furbelows to get you to do it.
Regardless of the reasoning behind it, there was a sensual pleasure in the design, the spin of the randomizer, the palette, the pacing. And then she had been assigned an elder to refill her portfolio.
A man. Chela wished they would let her filter by gender, but no. Eighty-seven, no major health issues but some recent cardiovascular concerns that would have moved him up the list. He had lived in Boston his entire life. Chela usually loved listening to people who had moved around, but there was a certain interest in the view of a single place over a long stretch of changing times.
Bueno. No point in delaying it. She pinged with an appointment request. A few seconds later he called. Of course.
“Hello? Hello?”
“Hello, this is your Elder Resources interviewer. I was hoping to set up a time to talk.”
“Sure, now’s fine, nothing else to do.”
“I’m afraid I can’t do it right now.” Chela didn’t have another appointment, but she needed to prepare herself. She needed to know when it was going to happen, build up to it, settle herself first with her routine. And she needed to set the tone from the start, control access to herself. She was so grateful that the interactions were anonymized both ways.
“Then why did you call me?”
“To set up an appointment.” Practice had made Chela smoother at this, no longer inclined to argue the fact that she hadn’t, in fact, called, only sent a message. She knew her irritation was unfair. Who knew how she would manage with newer technologies when she was eighty-seven?
The man was still grumbling. “An interview, as if anyone cared what I thought.”
“We care,” Chela said, with a fixed stare to get herself through it. We, a kind of we that might not include her individual I.
No, that wasn’t true. She did care. Or, at least, she found it mildly interesting. “And it’s not just what you think. It’s what you remember. What you’ve seen. What you want to contribute that maybe no one is listening to.”
“You’re only asking me because I might die.” There was an extra querulousness in his voice for that, and his fear opened up a welcome path to sympathy.
“I might die, and nobody’s interviewing me. Anyone might. That’s not why we’re requesting an interview with you. It’s because your long memories are rare and useful.” She didn’t know yet whether he in fact had long memories. She had interviewed some people who couldn’t tell her much of anything about their childhood or young adulthood, others who’d recalled movies as their own history. And she didn’t know if the memories would be useful. But there was no reliable way to find out without trying.
“Not so rare as all that,” he mumbled, but he agreed to a time two days hence.
Why did some people not want to be interviewed? Yes, there was the whole reminder-of-mortality thing—would have been very fashionable in the Middle Ages or whenever those skull paperweights had been trendy—but it seemed more than that.
An ingrained reticence about seeming to demand attention? Some old-fashioned notion of privacy? The recordings were fully anonymized if people asked, but most didn’t.
The interviews were what everyone thought of when they thought about Elder Resources, this new agency in every local government and at the federal level. It wasn’t supposed to be the most important part of their mandate, at least not when the program had been designed, shortly after the pandemic. The goal had been to create a network connecting elders with working-age people, both to reduce loneliness and isolation (supposedly among the elders, although Chela thought that was also what some of her colleagues got out of the job) and to have some early warning and support for vulnerable people in any kind of future disaster. Then there had been the additional consideration of technological competence for the elderly: the new measures for digital democracy required people to feel comfortable conversing, debating, and ultimately voting virtually, and the user interface for the network had mimicked the one used for civic participation.
It had been a grand idea, one of the sweeping policy innovations that had come out after the crisis, ticking off the objectives of valuing the elderly and creating jobs and community preparedness and democracy. And then the misinformation had hit. Suddenly everyone was asking why the government wanted to track old people (as if that weren’t thoroughly answered in the policy paper and legislative documents!). People posted indignant comments about other people letting themselves be controlled by government agendas. The phrase death panels resurfaced. There were suggestions that anyone who let their parents enroll in the program didn’t care enough about them to take care of their elders themselves. Predictably enough, participation plummeted, as did the energy of the employees. Even Chela’s mother had asked her—cautiously, because they were having a lot of fights about politics at that time—whether she was sure she wanted to work for Elder Resources.
Make Shift Page 6
