Harry Turtledove - The Center Cannot Hold

Part of Mary applauded that. But it infuriated more of her. This Enos woman had struck back for her country, and politicians in the USA praised her to the sky. Mary's own father had struck back at the USA for Canada, and he'd been hounded and hunted and ended up dying fighting the Americans. They'd murdered her brother, Alexander, who'd also been a patriot: murdered him under the disguise of law. Where was the justice in that?

And I haven't done anything-not a single, solitary thing-to pay the Yanks back for what they did to Alexander and to my pa. Shame burned Mary's cheeks. Her father's bomb-making tools remained hidden in the barn back at the farm. How am I supposed to bring them here? One day I'll have the chance, I suppose, but it hasn't happened yet. How old will I have to be before I can do something? To twenty-three, even twenty-five looked far away.

She went through I Sank Roger Kimball at a feverish pace. She did it, she thought again and again. She did it, and she got away with it.

I haven't done anything. When will I do something? Will I ever do anything? She went to the window and looked outside. As if on cue, a green-gray U.S. Army truck rolled slowly up the street. The Americans had been in Rosenfeld for going on twenty years now. The most she'd ever done to them was flatten a Model T's tires with a nail, and she'd been a little girl then.

Most Canadians, these days, found it easier just to… get along with the Yanks. Even people who'd called themselves patriots during and after the war were in bed with the Americans these days, sometimes literally. She despised them even more than she despised the Yanks. Americans were wrong, but at least they served their own country. What could you say about a Canadian who did the bidding of the United States? Mary didn't know any words vile enough for such people.

She'd had thoughts like that before, had them and done nothing about them. But I Sank Roger Kimball fired her all over again. Her father hadn't feared to pay the price. Did she?

She shook her head. It wasn't that. Life had got in the way. She'd never expected to fall in love, to get married, to leave the farm. She didn't see how anyone could do that sort of thing and keep fighting the Americans.

That was all right-as long as she eventually got on with the war. As far as she was concerned, it hadn't ended in 1917. It would never end till the Yanks left Canada and her country got its freedom back.

She salted and peppered a pork roast and put it in the oven with dried apples-the potatoes could wait till later. Buying meat at the butcher's shop instead of doing the slaughtering herself was one more thing she'd had to get used to. It was much more convenient, even if she couldn't always get the cuts exactly the way she wanted them.

Mort came home carrying a copy of the Rosenfeld Register. "Here's something funny from Ontario," he said, pointing to a story on an inside page. "Somebody threatened to bomb an American barrister's auto in Berlin."

"Just threatened?" Mary said. "Shame he didn't do it."

Mort Pomeroy nodded. He didn't love the Yanks, either; Mary couldn't have loved him if he had. But then he said, "He's not an ordinary barrister, though. Have you heard of Jonathan Moss? He defends Canadians in trouble with the occupation government, and he gets a lot of them off."

"No, I hadn't heard of him," Mary said. "Why does he do that, if he's an American? He must have some kind of angle."

"I don't think so," her husband said. "He is married to the woman whose maiden name was Laura Secord, but he was doing the same thing before he married her. And she wouldn't have anything to do with the ordinary run of Yank, would she?"

Mary didn't want to argue with Mort, even about something like this-which proved she was a newlywed, and very much in love. "I wouldn't think so," she said, and then, "Supper should be ready. Let me go make sure."

"Smells good," Mort said, and Mary smiled.

But she wasn't smiling on the inside. She remembered Laura Secord's name from the failed Canadian uprising of the mid-1920s. Wasn't the woman supposed to have warned her American lover about it? And wasn't it likely that that lover was this Moss fellow?

If that was so, the fellow who'd threatened to bomb the motorcar really should have done it, but with Moss' wife in the machine. Mary remembered her scorn-no, her hatred-for collaborating Canadians when the rebellion fizzled. She'd vowed revenge on them then. She'd vowed, and then she'd ignored her vow.

She took the pork roast out of the oven. Savory steam filled the kitchen. Mort exclaimed again. Mary hardly heard him. As she plunged her carving knife deep into the roast, she knew what she had to do.

"And I will," she murmured.

"Will what?" Mort asked.

"Get some butter for the potatoes," Mary answered smoothly. She took the butter out of the refrigerator. She'd bought it. She hadn't had to churn it: one more change from farm to town. But that wasn't what she'd meant. No, that wasn't what she'd meant at all.

W hen the door to your flat opens at three in the morning and you wake up at the noise and you smile and murmur, "Oh, thank God," odds are you are a fisherman's relative. Raising her voice slightly from that relieved murmur, Sylvia Enos called, "Is that you, George?"

"It's me, Ma," he answered, also in a soft voice: Mary Jane lay sleeping in the bedroom she now shared with her mother. "I'm sorry I woke you up."

"Don't worry about it. I'm glad you're here," Sylvia said. Mary Jane muttered, rolled over, and started to snore again. Sylvia went on, "Four days after New Year's and I've got my Christmas present. What time did your boat get in?"

"Last night, about five," George, Jr., said.

"What?" Sylvia couldn't believe her ears. She jumped out of bed and angrily hurried to her son. She wanted to shake him, but he was too big to shake. "And what were you doing between then and now? Drinking away your pay with a pack of worthless sailormen, I'll bet-that or worse." She sniffed, but she didn't smell beer or whiskey on her son's breath. She didn't smell cheap perfume, either, so maybe he hadn't been doing worse.

"Ma, I'm not drunk," George, Jr., said, and Sylvia had to nod, for she could tell that was true. He went on, "I didn't do… anything else, either. Not like that. Not what you meant."

Reluctantly, Sylvia nodded again. She didn't think he would lie to her straight out. "What did you do, then?" she asked. "Why didn't you come home?"

George, Jr., took a deep breath. "Ma, I didn't come home because I paid a call on Constance McGillicuddy and her folks. I asked her to marry me, Ma, and she said yes."

"Oh." The word took all the breath out of Sylvia. She stared up at her tall, broad-shouldered son in the gloom inside the flat. To her, he would always be a little boy. "Oh," Sylvia said again. Yes, she'd had to inhale first. Little boys didn't give her news like that.

"I love Connie, Ma," her son said. "She loves me, too. We'll be happy together. And she's got a waitressing job that looks like it's good and steady. We'll be able to make it, with a little luck."

In times like these, how much luck was out there? Sylvia didn't know. Times were hard when you had to worry about what your wife-to-be could bring in. She did know that. But George, Jr., was sensible enough to make the calculation instead of ignoring it. I did something right, Sylvia told herself.

Aloud, she said, "I haven't even met this girl, or her family. What do they do?"

She could barely make out her son's smile in the darkness. "Her father's a fisherman-what else? He knew Pa a little. I don't think they ever sailed together, though. He was in a destroyer during the war, too. He even got torpedoed, but he made it to a boat and got picked up."

"He didn't get torpedoed after the damn war was over." Sylvia's voice stayed soft, but she could hear the savagery in it. Even after more than sixteen years, what Roger Kimball had done still felt filthy to her. She remembered the weight of the pistol in her hand, remembered the way it had bucked when she pulled the trigger, remembered the deafening report, remembered Kimball falling with a look of absurd surprise on his face and blood spreading over the front of his shirt. If I had it to do over again, would I? she wondered.