Mama (Updates Thursday)

It's Not Right

The ground out here in the prairie was hard and heavy. My muscles were already aching, and I hadn't even dug down two feet yet. I'd have to dig a lot deeper than that.

But adrenaline pushed me on. I had already come this far; further than I thought I would. It was gratifying, in a way. This guy probably thought he could just keep doing whatever he wanted, and the worst punishment he'd get for it is a stern talk from the factory warden, or getting fired and just taking a job in Fort McMurray. No one on the reservations wanted to work, so the ones that did, they'd want them to stick around.

My mama was one of them. White-haired and leather-skinned, she'd been working in the factory way longer than she should ("you think my pension's worth half a damn, Jeanette?" she'd tell me), and she noticed him around. She knew a smooth operator like him wasn't here because he needed the work. He could work anywhere. He'd be one of the guys who'd be off the reservation faster than you can say "Athabasca". She knew he stayed around here for a... different reason.

He usually left her alone; someone as old and rough as Mama didn't interest him. He was, however, keen to sweet-talk the younger girls that worked on the floor. Mama could see a method to what he did. The girls would usually be interested in him, someone young, confident, and not working on a farm, or at all.

He'd be interested in that girl, always working near her, helping her out, being a gentleman. But then, all of a sudden, he'd forget about her. As for the girl, if she was still coming into work, she'd have this... look. A look of constant worry, like something was just behind her, everywhere she went. She said my grandfather had a similar look after he got back from the War. I never knew my Gramp, but I had a feeling I'd know that look.

This guy knew young people came and went out of the factory all the time. The girls that she talked to, they just had to move onto other things. And Mama had a hunch that the kind of girls he favoured were the ones he knew would be too nervous to say anything. They were young, they had no instinct about this kind of thing; the kind she had developed over years and years of dealing with guys like him.

It's not right, she would tell me. It made her sick, seeing this kind of thing happen, and that whatever might happen to him, it wouldn't be enough. Nothing was going to stop him, and he had no reason to stop on his own.

Mama was always telling me stories about the kind of things that drove her crazy on any given day, whether it was the government, the grind she had to deal with at work, or the people she would see. I was happy to just listen, and her stories usually ended in a bitter dismissal about whatever she was talking about. But now that I was older, she said that something ought to be done about people like this. They shouldn't be allowed to act without justice. This shouldn't be a place where this kind of thing happens.

Listening to her, I couldn't help but agree. The more she told me about him, the more I felt something should be done about him. My thoughts turned from daydreaming to planning: how I could do it, how I could get away with it, where I could take him that no one would find him. This isn't the kind of person anyone would really miss, anyway. As these thoughts formed in my mind, they drifted to my Gramp's old service revolver in the drawer...