Bone Coulee by Larry Warwaruk

starting to gather in front of the café.
    Mac watches from inside the cab of his truck. As in every election he can remember, Abner leads the NDP parade into Duncan, not that it’s ever drawn any votes.
    “Any car that can run on diesel,” Johnny says, “can run on biodiesel. And do you notice the different smell of the exhaust? A healthy smell? Like I said, just like standing outside a KFC franchise.” The young campaign manager hands out pamphlets, giving one to Mac at his open window.
    “New truck?” Nick asks.
    “You’ve seen it before.”
    “Didn’t think of buying one that would burn biodiesel?”
    “Kwok Ming would have to fry up a passel of chicken balls to use up enough oil to fuel it.”
    “Jeepers takes all the café’s old cooking oil to feed his pigs,” Nick says “and Farm Report claims that biodiesel is propping up grain prices.”
    “Recycle! Recycle!” Johnny shouts as he pounds on the roof of his Rabbit. “We’ll instigate a program that will gather up, free of charge, all the used cooking oil from every restaurant in the province, fast food or otherwise.”
    The campaign manager taps on a set of bongo drums. “Either Kathy wants me to sing,” Johnny says, “or else she wants to drown out my noise.”
    “What about gas engines?” Nick asks.
    “We’re entering a new era,” Johnny says. “The oil companies have, to all intents and purposes, become one big monopoly. The strategy for us little guys is to decentralize production. Right here in the village of Duncan, you have a closed-up garage that could be converted into a collection centre and a research laboratory and processing plant of farm biodiesel, and with further research, biogasoline.”
    “Rigley Motors rides again,” Pete says.
    “I heard that,” Johnny says. “But you know what? We’re doing it in Fiske. A local co-operative, and yes, without any help from Federated. We are processing biodiesel from spoiled canola, and yes, we are converting gas engines and what not.”
    “Just like Stalin,” Jeepers whispers in Nick’s ear. “My dad told me that in Russia during the thirties the communists built a factory to make axle grease from grasshoppers. Green power.”

• Chapter 9 •
    M ac had noticed Jen Holt befriending the Wilkie woman, and he figured it couldn’t help but be a good thing. If anybody had a finger on the pulse of things, it was Jen, and she’d be the first to know if the woman might be up to no good or if she just seemed such a grouch because of the state of her health. He knocks on the Wilkie door at a quarter to eight, then wonders if he might be early and they won’t yet be out of bed. He waits a moment, then thinks he should leave and come back later. As a parting gesture he tries the knob, only to discover that the door’s not locked. He opens it partway, enough to get his head in and see Roseanna standing at the kitchen entry, leaning on a cane.
    “Who is it?” he hears Angela call from another room.
    “Chorniak,” Roseanna says.
    “Tell him to come in.”
    “Why?” Roseanna asks.
    “I brought the owl,” Mac says.
    “Hmmmph,” Roseanna says as she turns her back to him and shuffles past Angela, brushing her hair at a hallway mirror.
    “He brought the owl,” Roseanna says, and then she lowers her head and mumbles, “Kokum used to say that owls are death birds. She told us that an owl flew over the camp the night those men killed Thomas. I think I remember seeing it, and Kokum said.”
    “Maybe I should come back later,” Mac says, thinking that he’s being ignored, that he’s not welcome.
    “I’ll be right with you,” Angela says. “Coffee’s on.”
    Mac has the owl in Esther’s dog crate in the back of his truck, along with the roll of chicken wire, hammer and nails, staple gun and staples, a five-gallon pail filled with rocks, a crowbar, an electric power auger, an extension cord, some boards he had stored away up in his garage and the used fence posts.
    “Where