Debris Read Free

stove. One middle-aged and greying, stout and square-jawed. The other young and dirty blonde and very pretty, a scattering of old pox-scars on her cheek and forehead. Hoye and his two constables came into the room and spread out, eyeballed the foreign men, hands on the heels of their pistols. A door shut somewhere in the back of the house and soon enough the three other constables filled the doorway at the other side of the kitchen. Hoye knocked a stack of papers from a nearby chair where it sat below a wallmounted rotary phone. He spun the chair to the table and sat. Across from him sat old man Marchuk and he tried to stare a hole through Hoye. Black, biblical hate in his eyes. Hoye just stared back.
    â€œYou know that there’s warrants out for your cousins here, from B.C., and they’re to be escorted to the border and placed in custody there.”
    â€œThat is a load of horseshit,” Marchuk said. “What for?”
    â€œI’ve got ‘Fight Causing a Disturbance’ for a Bretton Marchuk and ‘Cultivation of Marijuana’ for Gary Myshaniuk and Mark Oulette. The rest can just go in for assisting wanted fugitives.”
    â€œThey’re my guests and they aren’t goin’ anywheres. So you can go fuck yourself. You ain’t got no warrant or cause to come into my house.”
    â€œWe don’t need a warrant to seize the wanted men. But I’ll be kind and give them a chance to drive their asses outta here to the border under escort. Or they could get shot instead in this fuckin’ kitchen for all I care. Seems to be a way of life for you folks.”
    Marchuk tried to get out of his chair and Hoye stood and sat him back down by the shoulder.
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    Old man Marchuk was taken into custody and locked up in the station holding cell while his cousins were driven west, handed off from detachment to detachment until they were released to officers from Golden. Bretton Marchuk had a broken nose plugged with bloody tissue when he was put under arrest inside British Columbia. The other men were marked with facial lacerations and contusions along their forearm and shinbones. The elder woman, wife to the cousin Marchuk, spat at one of the B.C. constables and then watched her husband take a baton to both of his knees. She held her spit from then on. The constables released the younger, blonde woman alone, and let her take the truck back to their lands in the foothills.
    Marchuk saw his bail rescinded and spent his days and nights in holding at the Red Deer Remand Centre. He got letters and visits from townsfolk. Few people would speak to Hoye or his wife, any of the other officers or their families, even those born in that township. Hoye did not mind. One day he found their lawn staked with dozens of “For Sale” signs. He pulled them and stacked them in the garage.
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    On shift near daysland, Constable Hoye had his radio flare up and the dispatch told him that his wife had been taken by ambulance to the hospital in Red Deer. Jenny Hoye had gone into labour nearly a full month early. The constable lit his sirens and drove those black nightroads with the gas pedal pinned. He pulled into the hospital lot just before midnight and found triage, took directions to the labour and delivery rooms.
    Hoye wore scrubs over his uniform and they let him into delivery. Jenny gripped his hand hard. Her hair had gone dark with sweat and stuck to her forehead. She had taken no epidural and had just begun to crown. Hoye bent to better see her face. He wiped her brow with a wetcloth and tried to get the hair from her eyes.
    â€œIt’s alright, Jenny,” he said.
    â€œOh, fuck this,” she said.
    The doctors had her breathe and push. She hollered and swore and gritted her teeth. Again and again until the baby’s shoulders cleared. The boy was born blue with the umbilical wound tight around his neck and upper arm. The doctors went to work unwinding the cord. Jenny