Jacobs rendered his country during the late war. This is a Distinguished Service Medal-I pulled some strings to get the War Department to issue it, since Mr. Jacobs was not formally in the Army during the war. But they humored me in this matter: one of the few advantages of lame-duckhood I have as yet discovered.'
Nellie clapped her hands together in delight. So did Edna. Hal Jacobs turned red. He said, 'Mr. President, I thought I made it perfectly clear I wanted no special recognition for any small things I may have done.'
'You did,' Roosevelt said. 'I'm ignoring you. There-another advantage of lame-duckhood: I don't have to listen to anyone if I don't feel like it, not any more. You'll take your medal and you'll be a hero, Mr. Jacobs, and if you don't happen to care for it. too bad. What do you think of that?'
'He thinks it's splendid!' Nellie exclaimed. Hal Jacobs gave her a dirty look. She didn't care. She didn't care a bit. If a wife couldn't speak for a husband when he needed speaking for, what good was she? None at all, as far as Nellie could see.
Arthur McGregor shooed a hen off her nest and grabbed the egg she had laid. The hen's furious squawks and flutterings said she was convinced he'd murdered part of her immediate family. She was right-he had, or would as soon as Maude got around to cooking the egg. McGregor had had a member of his immediate family murdered, too. It gave him some sympathy for the hen… but not enough to keep him from robbing her nest.
He slipped a china egg in there and let the hen return. She kept on fussing for a moment or two. Then she discovered the substitute. Her clucks changed from outrage to contentment. She settled down and began to brood an egg that would not hatch even on Judgment Day.
A scowl on his face, McGregor went on to the next nest. No one had given him any kind of substitute for Alexander. He wished he were as stupid as a chicken, so that a photograph might fool him into thinking he still had a son. Unfortunately, he knew better.
All he could hope for was revenge. The scowl grew deeper. 'I couldn't even get that,' he growled, knocking the next hen out of her nest with a backhand blow that almost broke her fool neck. She had no eggs in the nest, so he might as well have done her in.
'Dentures!' What a word to make into a curse! But if Custer hadn't broken his false teeth, he'd still have been sitting in Hy's when McGregor's bomb went off. As things were, McGregor had killed more than a dozen innocent people without getting the man he really wanted. He felt bad about that, and worse because they were all Canadians, victims of the U.S. occupation no less than he.
But Alexander had been innocent, and Alexander had been a victim, and nothing would ever bring him back to life. As far as McGregor was concerned, the war against the United States went on. Canadian forces might have surrendered (though rebellion did still simmer here and there, especially in parts of the Dominion the U.S. Army hadn't reached before the Great War ended). The mother country might have yielded. Arthur McGregor kept fighting, whenever he saw the chance.
He finished gathering the eggs and installing china pacifiers under the hens. As he headed back toward the farmhouse, he thought again how much easier life would have been had the U.S. issued him a china son, and had he been stupid enough to reckon it the same as the real thing.
Winter and reality slapped him in the face as soon as he left the barn. The wind cut like a knife. The sky was clear and blue, a blue that put him in mind of a bruise. If he stayed outside very long, he'd start turning blue, too. He'd never met a U.S. soldier who'd taken Manitoba winters in stride. The USA just didn't manufacture weather like this.
'So why the devil did the Yanks want to come up here and take this away from us?' he asked. The snarling wind blew his words away. That didn't matter. The question had no good answer, save that the Americans were as they were.
When he opened the kitchen door, the blast of heat from the stove was a blow hardly less than the one the freezing wind had given him. Where he'd been shivering an instant before, now sweat started out on his forehead. He shed his hat and heavy coat as fast as he could.
Maude looked up from the carrots she was peeling. 'How many eggs have you got there?'
'Seven.' McGregor looked in the basket. 'No, I take it back- eight.'
'Not bad,' his wife said. He shrugged. He didn't want to look on the bright side of anything right now. Maude went on, 'If things keep going the way they have been, we'll come through this winter in better shape than we have since before the war.'
'We won't ever be in the kind of shape we were before the war,' McGregor answered, his voice colder than the weather outside.
Maude bit her lip. 'You know what I mean,' she said. He did, too. It didn't help. Had Alexander been there with him, a year where he didn't end up broke might not have looked so bad, even under U.S. occupation. As things were, every year showed a loss to him, even if he made money.
'If only-' he began, but he let that hang in the air. He still hadn't exactly told his wife about his bombs. She knew he'd gone to Winnipeg, of course, and she knew what had happened while he was there. But they both still pretended that was nothing but coincidence.
'You know the Culligans are putting on a dance next week if we don't get a blizzard between now and then, and maybe even if we do,' Maude said.
'No, I didn't know.' McGregor looked at her in some surprise. 'You want to go dancing?' She hadn't shown any interest in that sort of thing since before the Great War. He shrugged. 'If you do, I'll take you. I'll be switched if I think I remember the steps, though.'
Maude shook her head. 'I don't care one way or the other. But Julia and Ted Culligan have known each other since they were little, you know, and I think she'd enjoy dancing with him more than a bit.'
'Do you?' McGregor made automatic protest: 'But she's just a-' He stopped, feeling foolish. Julia wasn't just a baby any more. She'd be eighteen in a few weeks. He'd been engaged to Maude when she was eighteen. He coughed a couple of times. 'I never paid any attention to Ted Culligan one way or the other. Does he matter that much to Julia?'
'He might,' Maude said. 'I don't know if she's serious, and I really don't know if he's serious-you men.' McGregor only blinked at that blanket condemnation of his half of the human race. When he did nothing more, Maude shrugged and went on, 'They could be serious, I think. We have to decide if we want them to be serious. The Culligans aren't bad folks.'
'No, they're not. They mind their own business-they're not like any of the people who got Alexander into trouble.' McGregor made up his mind. 'All right, we'll go to this dance.'
Go they did. It was snowing, but not hard. Julia chattered excitedly as McGregor drove the wagon toward the Culligans'. Mary chattered even more excitedly; it was her very first dance (actually, it wasn't quite, but she'd been too little to remember going to any of the others).
People had come from miles around, including the families of a couple of the boys who'd named Alexander as their fellow plotter. McGregor held his face still when he saw the McKier-nans and the Klimenkos. He'd been holding his face still for years. Doing it now wasn't that much harder than any other time.
Ted Culligan's ears stuck out. Other than that, he seemed a nice enough kid. He wasn't good enough for Julia; that was obvious. But it was also obvious no one else could be good enough for Julia, either.
A handful of American families had come up and taken over deserted farms around Rosenfeld. McGregor had wondered if the Culligans would invite them to the dance. Keeping his face still would have been harder then. But he didn't see them, and didn't hear any American accents, either.
A pair of fiddlers, a fellow with a concertina, and a man who pounded a drum with more enthusiasm than rhythm provided the music. The tunes were all old ones, and all safe ones. The little band stuck to love songs. McGregor would have loved to hear some of the regimental ballads he'd learned in the Army, but understood why the musicians fought shy of them; word would surely have got back to the U.S. authorities in town, which would have brought trouble on its heels.
McGregor danced a couple of dances with Maude. She did recall the steps better than he; he was content to let her lead. He noticed he wasn't the only farmer whose wife did the steering, either. That made him laugh, something he rarely did these days.
After those first few dances, McGregor was content to stand on the sidelines and drink punch. His eyebrows rose at the first taste of it. The Culligans hadn't stinted on the whiskey. A cup or two, and a man would think he could stay warm outside without coat and hat. He might even prove right. He was more likely to freeze to death.
