Bone Coulee by Larry Warwaruk Read Free Book Online

to know.”
    All Mac has left in his name is fifty acres cultivated and the rest of the quarter section in prairie grass. With some farmland still in his name, he gets the cheaper rates on farm plates for his truck. He took some new swather parts to the farm yesterday, and while he was there he fuelled his truck. His son told him that the government’s changed the rules. He said a farm has to gross $10,000 in order to qualify for tax-exempt gasoline.
    “The government doesn’t have to know,” he told Lee.
    “How much wheat did I seed at the coulee?” Lee asked. “Fifty acres? You can’t hold a permit book on fifty acres.”
    “Fifty, or five thousand,” Mac said. “The Wheat Board represents us all.”
    “And that’s the trouble.”
    It sure is, Mac thinks. One generation to the next. Men organize to work together and form the wheat pool, and their sons tear it down. The next generation of Indians may as well turn it all back to the buffalo.
    “Well, Mac?” Sid says. “Didn’t Abner say that some Glen guy from the Three Crows Nation was looking to buy his farm?”
    “With our money,” Jeepers says.
    “Get rid of the NDP in Regina,” Pete says. “With Harper in Ottawa, things’ll change.”
    Nick leans forward, head to head with Mac. “You sure they haven’t been after you to sell? You know, the buffalo jump? That’s right up their alley when it comes to heritage.”
    “Seen that Indian girl moved in next door to you?” Pete asks.
    “Which one?” Mac says.
    “The young one’s an artist,” Sid says.
    As if Sid would know anything about art. But as Duncan's mayor, he's attended meetings with the regional development officer in Bad Hills.
    “She teaches art," Sid says. "At the regional college. They’re offering a course on making baskets out of willow.”
    “I wonder what they’re up to, moving into Duncan?” Pete says.
    “The Indians can buy my place,” Jeepers says.
    “I wonder what they’ll do with Abner’s land?” Nick says.
    “Rent it out,” Pete says. “Do you ever see them do the work themselves?” He hunches over, a big man, broad across the shoulders, bushy eyebrows, thick fingers gripped to his coffee cup. “They’re taking over the whole country, and they don’t pay taxes. The municipality will be out whatever Abner has been paying for property tax. Then who’s going to build the roads?”
    “I should have been a lawyer,” Jeepers says. “They make all the money.”
    “More coffee?” Tung Yee says. She fills Mac’s cup. “Out to your Indian place this morning?”
    “Going this afternoon,” Mac says.
    “Anyone else want fill?”
    The front door opens and Abner shuffles in with a stranger, a short man, rather heavy-set, and with a well-scrubbed look about him.
    “Duncan’s last breathing socialist,” Nick whispers. “And another one with him.”
    The men at the table don’t change their postures, other than to straighten up just a little. They don’t gawk or change their expressions. Their faces don’t show any hint of a softening up, nor of a hardening, though their necks might have stiffened just a little at the sight of Abner. It’s not something new that they’re seeing. Abner has escorted socialist candidates during elections for the last half century.
    “I’m John Popoff,” the candidate says. “Running for the NDP.” He circles the table, stops in front of Nick and holds out his hand. “John Popoff.”
    Nick backs away from the table and stands up.
    “Nick Belak. Pleased to meet you. I don’t need to shake Abner’s hand. It shakes enough already.”
    “John farms at Fiske,” Abner says, with both his hands clutched to the back of an empty chair. He is bothered with Parkinson’s disease, and it really shows when he’s nervous.
    Sid stands up and introduces himself, one politician to another, though he’d likely be a lot more at ease with the other candidate. Jeepers wipes his hands with a napkin and rises to his feet. No one’s at