"Should, anyway," the postmaster agreed. "Sixty cents'll do it."
McGregor stared at him, then at the stamps. They were some shade of red or other, though only a stamp collector could have told at a glance exactly which. Every country in the world used some sort of red for its letter-rate stamps. And the letter rate in occupied Manitoba, as it had been before the war, as it was in the USA and CSA, was two cents.
"Don't you mean half that?" he asked Wilfred Rokeby. "Look, Wilf, I can see for myself they're two-cent stamps." They were, as far as he was concerned, ugly two-cent stamps. They showed a U.S. aeroplane shooting down one either British or Canadian-the picture was too small for him to be sure which.
"Two cents still is the letter rate, sure enough," Rokeby said. "But you got to pay four cents each to get 'em, all the same. These here are what they call semipostal stamps: only kind we're gonna be able to sell hereabouts from now on. See? Look." He pointed to the lower left-hand corner of the stamp. Sure enough, it didn't just say 2. It said 2 + 2, as if it were part of a beginning arithmetic lesson.
"Semi-what?" McGregor said. "What the devil is that supposed to mean? And if two cents is the letter rate but I've got to pay twice that much to get one of these things, where do the other two cents go?"
"Into the Yankees' pockets-where else?" the postmaster said. "Into a fund that pays 'em to send actors and dancing girls and I don't know what all out toward the front to keep their soldiers happy."
"We get to pay so they can do that?" McGregor demanded. Wilfred Rokeby nodded. McGregor took a deep breath. "That's-thievery, is what it is," he said slowly, suppressing the scream.
"You know it, and I know it, and I expect the Yankees know it, too," Rokeby said. "Next question is, do they care? You can figure that one out for your own self. If we're paying for their damn vaudeville shows, they can spend more of their money on guns."
In its way, the casual exploitation of occupied Canada appalled McGregor almost as much as the casual execution of his son. It showed how the invaders had the conquest planned out to the last little detail. "What happens if we don't pay the extra two cents?" he asked, already sure of the answer.
"The surcharge, you mean?" Rokeby's fussiness extended to using precisely the right word whenever he could (come to that, McGregor didn't remember ever hearing damn from him before). "If you don't pay the surcharge, Arthur, I can't sell you the stamps, and you can't mail your letters."
"You don't happen to have any of the old ones left?" McGregor asked.
"Not a one," Rokeby said. "Sold out of 'em right quick, I did, when these here first came out last month. I'd have expected you to notice the new stamps on your mail by now."
"Who pays attention to stamps?" McGregor said, which drew a hurt look from the postmaster. The farmer took another deep breath and dug in his pocket. "All right, sell 'em to me. I hope the dancing girls give the Yankee soldiers the clap."
Rokeby giggled, a high, shrill, startling sound. He gave McGregor fifteen cents' change from the quarter and half-dollar the farmer laid on the counter. McGregor took the change and the stamps and left the post office shaking his head.
Henry Gibbon's general store was only a few doors down. The storekeeper nodded when McGregor came inside. "Mornin', Arthur," he said.
"Good morning." McGregor's eyes needed a little while to adjust to the lantern-lit gloom inside the general store. Boards covered what had been the big window fronting on the street before a bomb blew it out. That was a year ago now. "When are you going to get yourself a new pane of glass?"
"Whenever the Yanks say I can have one," Gibbon answered; no U.S. soldiers were in the store to overhear his bitterness. "I ain't holding my breath, I'll tell you that. How's your family, Arthur?"
"What I have left of it, you mean?" McGregor said. Bitterness…how could you replace a broken son? But the storekeeper had meant the question kindly. "They're healthy, Henry. We're all down at the mouth, but they're healthy-and thank God for that. We'll get by." He stood a little straighter, as if Gibbon had denied it.
"That's good," Gibbon said. "I'm glad to hear it. Like I told you last time you were in, I-" He broke off abruptly, for two men in green-gray walked in off the sidewalk and bought a few cents' worth of candy. When they had left, the storekeeper shook his head. "You see how it is."
What McGregor saw was Henry Gibbon making money. He didn't say anything. What could he say? "You still have any of those beans, Henry? I want to buy a couple of sacks if you do." No postage stamps here, he thought, and almost smiled.
"The kidney beans, you mean? Sure enough do." Grunting, Gibbon put two sacks of them on the counter. "What else you need?"
"Sewing-machine needles and a quart of vinegar for Maude, and some nails for me," McGregor answered. "Ten-pennies, the big ones. Got some wood rot in the barn, and I'm going to have to do a deal of patching before the weather gets worse. Don't want the stock to freeze." He gave the storekeeper a quart bottle.
"You're right about that," Gibbon said, filling the bottle from the spigot of a two-hundred-pound barrel. "How many nails do you want?"
"Twenty pounds' worth should take care of things," McGregor said.
"I should hope so," the storekeeper said with a chuckle. He dug into the relevant barrel with a scoop. But as he dumped a scoopful of nails onto the scale, a frown congealed on his plump features. "Only thing I got to give 'em to you in is a U.S. Army crate. Hope you don't mind."
"It's all right," Arthur McGregor answered wearily. After a moment, he added, "Not the box's fault who made it."
"Well, that's right." Gibbon sounded relieved. "It's only that, what with everything, I didn't think you'd care to have anything to do with the Yanks."
"It's just a crate, Henry." McGregor dug in his pocket. "What do I owe you for everything?"
"Dollar a sack for the beans," Gibbon said, scrawling down numbers on a scrap of butcher paper. "Sixty-eight cents for the needles, nineteen for the vinegar, and ninety for the nails. Comes to…" He added up the column, then checked it. "Three dollars and seventy-seven cents."
"Here you are." McGregor gave him four dollars, waited for his change, and then said, "Let me bring the wagon by, so I don't have to haul everything." The storekeeper nodded, patting the beans and the crate and the jar and the little package to show they'd stay safe till McGregor got back.
As the farmer headed out of Rosenfeld, soldiers in green-gray inspected his purchases. They didn't usually do that; they were more concerned about keeping dangerous things from coming into town. Seeing what he had, they waved him on toward his farm.
A week later, in the middle of the night, he got up from his bed as if to go to the outhouse. Maude muttered something, but didn't wake. Downstairs, he threw a coat and a pair of boots over his union suit, then went outside. The night was very still. Clouds in the west warned of rain or snow on the way, but the bad weather hadn't got there yet. For the moment, no traffic to speak of moved on the road near the farm. He nodded to himself, went into the barn, saddled the horse in the darkness, and rode away.
When he came back to bed, Maude was awake. He'd hoped she wouldn't be. "Why were you gone so long?" she whispered as he slid in beside her.
"Getting rid of some things we don't need," he answered, which was no answer at all. He waited for her to press him about it.
All she said was, "Be careful, Arthur," and rolled over. Soon she was asleep again. Soon he was, too, however much he wanted to stay awake. If anything happened in the night, he didn't know it.