Breakthroughs

kicking great clouds of dust into the air. McGregor wouldn’t have wanted to be one of the Yankee soldiers marching behind the noisy, smelly barrels. But then, he wouldn’t have wanted to be a Yankee soldier under any circumstances.

He looked out across his fields. They were beginning to go from green to gold. He would have a fine crop this year if the weather held-and the only way he would be able to dispose of it was to the U.S. authorities. He grimaced. Almost better to touch a match to the wheat than sell it to the USA.

The barrels passed-like a kidney stone, he thought, remembering a torment of his father’s. More men in green-gray slogged north on foot. Watching them, McGregor thought of ants swarming round spilled molasses. You could smash some, but more kept coming. How many columns of U.S. soldiers had he watched trudging up that road? How many men did the United States hold, anyway? One answer fit both questions: too many.

Southbound traffic was sparser. The farm near Rosenfeld was a long way from the front these days; few Americans needed to withdraw this far. Gloomily, McGregor headed for the barn to muck out and to get in a little work on his latest bomb. He thought he had a way to get it into town, but he wasn’t sure yet.

Here came a U.S. Ford, painted green-gray as Army motorcars often were. McGregor paused, wondering if it was Major Hannebrink trying to catch him in the act. If so, the Yank would be disappointed. McGregor had nothing out now, and would have nothing out ninety seconds after he stopped work. He did not believe in taking foolish chances with his revenge.

When the Ford stopped just outside the lane that led to his farmhouse and barn, he laughed quietly, sure he’d pegged things aright. “Not today, Major,” he murmured. “Not today.”

But then the automobile sped up again, rolling south toward the border. McGregor scratched his head, wondering why it had stopped in the first place. He got his answer a moment later, when a great exultant shout ripped from the throats of the marching American soldiers: “Winnipeg!”

McGregor took two quick steps to the barn and leaned against the timbers by the door. He didn’t think he could have stood up without that support; he felt as punctured, as deflated, as the inner tubes on the motorcars that had come with Hannebrink after Mary got through with them.

“Winnipeg!” the U.S. soldiers cried, again and again. “Winnipeg!” Every repetition felt like a fresh kick in the belly to Arthur McGregor. Since the war began, the city through which passed the railroads linking Canada’s east and west had held out against everything the United States threw at it. McGregor knew fresh train lines had been built north of Winnipeg, but if the Yanks had broken into it, could they, would they, not move past it as well?

Slowly, grimly, he walked back toward the farmhouse. The bomb would wait. The bomb would wait a long time. The United States looked to be in Canada to stay.

When he went inside, Julia gave him a severe look and said, “Don’t you dare slam the door, Father. Don’t you dare stomp around the way you usually do, either. I’ve got bread in the oven, and I don’t want it to fall.”

“All right,” McGregor said meekly, and shut the door with care. The last time he could remember sounding meek, he’d been about eight years old. He shook his head like a bear bedeviled by dogs and wondered what the devil to do next. He had no idea. With Winnipeg lost, what did anything matter?

His older daughter noticed that he sounded strange. “What’s wrong, Father?” she asked.

He cocked his head to one side. With the door closed, with the windows closed, he had trouble hearing the Yankees yelling. If Julia had been busy with the bread, she probably hadn’t even noticed them. “Winnipeg’s fallen,” he said baldly. “I think the Americans mean it this time.”

Julia stared at him as if he’d started spouting gibberish. “But it can’t have,” she said, though she had to know perfectly well it could. Then she burst into tears and threw herself into his arms. He held her and stroked her hair as if she were a little girl and not turning ever more into a woman day by day.

Hearing Julia start to cry was enough to bring Maude and Mary at a run. McGregor knew what was in his wife’s mind, at least-Maude had surely feared the Yanks were seizing him. Seeing him there, she stopped dead. “Dear God in heaven, what is it?” she demanded.

“Winnipeg,” he said. The one word was plenty. It made Julia cry harder than ever. Maude turned away, as if she could not bear to hear such news-and if she could not, who could blame her?

Mary’s mouth fell open. “God doesn’t love us,” she whispered, no doubt the worst thing she could think of. Then, as a grown man might have done, she gathered herself. Over Julia’s shoulder and bent head, McGregor watched the process with nothing but admiration. A word at a time, Mary went on, “I don’t care if God loves us or not. I won’t be a Yankee, and there’s nothing they can do that will make me be one.”

“I won’t be a Yankee, either,” Julia said, and stood straighter. McGregor affected not to notice the dark tear stains on the front of his denim overalls. “I won’t be a Yankee,” Julia repeated. But she, more than anyone else in the family, had a way of looking at things over the long haul. “I won’t be a Yankee,” she said for the third time, and then added, “but what will my children be, if I ever have children? What will their children be?”

McGregor, thus prodded, thought of those distant, hypothetical great-grandchildren he probably wouldn’t live to see, since they’d be born around 1950, a year that seemed impossibly distant from mundane 1917. What would they be like?

Try as he would, he couldn’t see them as much different from himself and his own family. He supposed that was foolish. His great-grandfather, whom he’d never known, would have been astonished at the modern conveniences to be found in Rosenfeld, just a few hours away by wagon. Maybe, when the century had halfway run its course, such conveniences would reach farms, too.

That wasn’t really what he wanted to think about. If the United States won this war, as they looked like doing, how would those great-grandchildren think of themselves? Would they be contented Americans, as the Yanks would try to make them?

“They have to remember,” he said, more to himself than to anyone else. “They have to remember they’re Canadians, and the USA stole their country from them. They have to try to take it back one day.”

“Can they do that?” Maude asked the ruthlessly pragmatic question. A farm wife who was anything but ruthlessly pragmatic had a long, hard, rocky road ahead of her.

But McGregor, to his own surprise, had an answer ready: “Look at Quebec. The Frenchies there are still mad that we licked them on the Plains of Abraham a hundred and fifty years ago. As soon as the Yankees gave them their chance, they jumped on the idea of this Republic of theirs, and to the devil with whatever went before it. If somebody gives us the chance, we can do the same.”

“Who would give us a chance, with the United States smothering us the way a bad sow smothers her piglets?” Maude said.

“I don’t know,” McGregor admitted. “But the Quebecers didn’t know before the war, either. Sooner or later, something will turn up.”

“My bread!” Julia exclaimed. “I forgot the bread!” She fled back into the kitchen. The oven door clanked open. Julia let out a sigh of relief.

“It smelled fine,” Maude called after her. “I didn’t think you had anything to worry about.”

Mary looked at her mother in astonishment. “Don’t you think turning into a Yankee is something to worry about?”

“Well, yes,” Maude said, “but it isn’t something Julia can fix by taking it out of the oven on time.” Her younger daughter thought that over. At last, reluctantly, Mary nodded.

McGregor said, “Maybe they can make us stand up in front of the Stars and Stripes. Whatever they do, though, they can’t keep us from spitting on it in our hearts, and from staying loyal to the King.”

“God save the King!” Mary said, and McGregor and Maude each put a hand on her shoulder. She caught fire, as she had a way of doing. “We’ll make it our secret,” she breathed. “We’ll all make it our secret. I don’t mean all of us-I mean all of us Canadians. We’ll do what the Yanks tell us, but inside we’ll be laughing and laughing, because we’ll know what we really think.”

Arthur and Maude McGregor looked at each other over their daughter’s head. “Some of us will,” McGregor said. “Some of us will keep the secret. Some of us will want to. Some of us won’t care, though-remember how things were in your school? Some people will believe the Americans’ lies.”

“We’ll make them pay,” Mary said fiercely. Her parents looked at each other again. McGregor didn’t know how much she knew about his bombs. She did know Major Hannebrink kept coming around-and she knew her father