Minnesota and start us a new weekly paper when the weather gets better. Been a long time since that bomb in front of Malachi Stubing's place shut down the old Register T
That bomb had not been one of McGregor's. He hadn't been in the bombing business back then. He had been in Henry Gibbon's general store when the bomb went off. The Americans had almost taken him hostage after the blast. Frowning, he said, 'One more way for the Yanks to peddle their lies.'
'That's so,' Rokeby admitted, 'but it'll be good to have the town news, too, and all the advertising. We've missed it. You can't say we haven't, Arthur.'
'Well, maybe,' McGregor said, but then, as if to rebut himself, he added, 'Minnesota.' Shaking his head, he turned and walked out of the post office.
The general store was half a block up the street, and on the other side. Henry Gibbon was wiping his hands on his apron when McGregor came inside carrying a large sheet-iron can. A hot stove gave relief from the chill outside. 'Didn't expect to see you for another week or ten days, Arthur,' the storekeeper said. He raised an eyebrow almost to what would have been his hairline had his hair not long since retreated to higher ground.
'Ran out of kerosene.' McGregor set the can on the counter with a clank. 'Want to fill me up again?'
'Sure will,' Gibbon said, and did so with a large tin dipper. When he was through, he put the top securely back in place and held out his right hand, palm up. 'Five gallons makes sixty-five cents.'
'Would only have been half a dollar before the war,' McGregor said. The fifty-cent piece and dime he gave Gibbon were U.S. coins, the five-cent piece Canadian. More and more of the money in circulation came from the USA these days.
'During the war, you'd have been out of luck if you didn't have your ration book,' Gibbon said with a massive shrug. 'It's not as good as it was, but it's not as bad as it was, either.'
He hadn't had a son killed. He could afford to say things like that. McGregor had, and couldn't. He started to head out the door, then checked himself. Gibbon might not know good and bad from the man in the moon, but he heard all the gossip there was to hear in Rosenfeld. 'Has Wilf Rokeby got it straight? Is some fellow coming up from the United States to put out a paper here?'
'That's what I've heard, anyway,' Gibbon answered. 'Be right good to let folks know every week that I'm still alive and still in business.'
'But a Yank,' McGregor said. The storekeeper shrugged again. The notion didn't bother him. As long as he got his advertisements in the newspaper, he couldn't have cared less what else went in.
With a grunt, McGregor picked up the can of kerosene and went back out into the cold. He started across the street. A motorcar's horn blared at him. He froze like a deer-he hadn't paid the least attention to traffic. If the automobile hadn't been able to stop in time, it would have run him down.
It halted with its front bumper inches from him. It was a big open touring car, with a U.S. soldier who looked very cold driving and two men in buffalo robes and fur hats in the back seat. One of them looked older than God, with a beaky nose projecting from a wrinkled face. 'Jesus Christ, I wanted to see what one of these little towns looked like,' he said, his voice American-accented. 'I didn't aim to kill anybody while I was doing it.'
'Sorry, General Custer, sir,' the driver said. His greatcoat didn't offer him nearly the protection from the bitter winter chill that a buffalo robe would have done.
'1 think your wife had the right idea, sir,' the younger man in back said. He was a porky fellow, porky enough that his blubber probably helped keep him warm. 'You might have done better to stay on the train till we got up to Winnipeg.'
'I'm supposed to be in charge of things,' the old man said querulously. 'How can I be in charge of things if I don't see for myself what the hell I'm in charge of?' He shook a mittened fist at McGregor. 'What are you standing there for, you damn fool? Get out of the way!'
McGregor unfroze and took a few steps forward. The motorcar shot past him with a clash of gears; its tires spat snow up into his face. He stared after it. He'd learned about General Custer in school. During the Second Mexican War, he'd beaten General Gordon's British and Canadian army down in Montana, beaten it after the USA had agreed to a cease-fire. McGregor had assumed he was long dead till his name started cropping up in war news.
And now he was coming to Canada to be in charge of things? And not just to Canada but to Winnipeg, only a couple of days to the north even by wagon? McGregor hurried back to the wagon. Purpose had indeed leaked out of his life after he'd avenged himself on Major Hannebrink. Now, suddenly, it was back. This time, he wouldn't just be avenging himself. He'd be avenging his whole country.
Nellie Jacobs yawned, right in the middle of business hours. Edna laughed at her. 'This is a coffeehouse, Ma,' Nellie's daughter said. 'If you're sleepy, pour yourself a cup.'
'I've been drinking it all day long.' Nellie punctuated her reply with another yawn. 'I don't want another cup right now.' She hesitated and lowered her voice so the couple of customers in the place wouldn't hear: 'It hasn't tasted quite right, anyway. Did we get a bad batch of beans?'
'I don't think so,' Edna Semphroch answered, also quietly. 'Tastes fine to me. Nobody's said anything about it, either, unless somebody went and complained to you.'
'No,' Nellie admitted. She yawned again. 'Goodness! I can't hold my eyes open. If this keeps up, I'm going to have to go upstairs and lie down for a while.'
Edna said, 'Sure, go ahead, Ma. Leave me with all the work.' Maybe she was joking. On the other hand, maybe she wasn't.
In the end, Nellie didn't go upstairs. A few more customers had come in, and sticking Edna with all of them didn't seem fair. She got through the day, though by the end of it she felt as if she had a couple of sacks of cement strapped to her shoulders. 'Oh, Lord, I'm beat,' she said over the ham steaks and string beans and fried potatoes that made up supper.
'You look it,' Hal Jacobs said sympathetically. 'What have you been doing, to make yourself so tired?' Her husband looked worried. 'Do you think it is something you ought to see the doctor about?'
'I haven't been doing anything special,' Nellie answered, 'but today-no, the past few days-I've felt like I was moving under water.'
'Maybe you should go to a doctor, Ma,' Edna said. 'That ain't like you, and you know it ain't. You've always been a go-getter.'
'Doctors.' Nellie tossed her head. 'They're all quacks. Half the time, they can't tell what's wrong with you. The other half, they know what's wrong but they can't do anything about it.'
Neither her daughter nor her husband argued with her. If you had a broken arm, a doctor could set it. If you had a boil, a doctor could lance it. If you needed a smallpox vaccination, a doctor could give you one. But if you had the Spanish influenza, a doctor could tell you to stay in bed and take aspirin. And if you had consumption, he could tell you to pack up and move to New Mexico. That might cure you, or it might not. Doctors couldn't, and the honest ones admitted as much.
Nellie found herself yawning yet again. She covered her mouth with her hand. 'Gracious!' she said. 'I swear to heaven, I haven't felt this wrung out since I was carrying you, Edna.'
The words seemed to hang in the air. Hal Jacobs' eyes widened. Edna's mouth fell open. 'Ma,' she said slowly, 'you don't suppose… you don't suppose you're in a family way again, do you?'
'What a ridiculous notion!' Nellie exclaimed. But, when she thought about it, maybe it wasn't so ridiculous as all that. Her time of the month should have been… Her jaw dropped, too. Her time of the month should have come a couple of weeks before. She'd never thought of asking Hal to wear a French letter on the infrequent occasions when she yielded him her body. She hadn't even worried about it. She was far enough past forty that she'd figured having a baby was about as likely as getting struck by lightning.
She glanced cautiously up toward the ceiling. That was foolish, and she knew it. If a lightning bolt came crashing through, she'd never know what hit her.
'Are you going to have a child, Nellie?' Hal Jacobs asked in tones of wonder.
'I think-' Try as she would, Nellie had trouble forcing out the words. At last, she managed: 'I think maybe I am.'
Edna burst out laughing. No matter how tired Nellie felt, she wasn't too tired to glare. A moment later, her daughter looked contrite. 'I'm sorry, Ma,' Edna said. 'I was just thinking that, if you had a baby now, it'd be almost like I had a baby now, and-' She dissolved in more giggles.
