The Origins of the Biochar Idea

"There is one way we could save ourselves and that is through the massive burial of charcoal. It would mean farmers turning all their agricultural waste – which contains carbon that the plants have spent the summer sequestering – into non-biodegradable charcoal, and burying it in the soil. Then you can start shifting really hefty quantities of carbon out of the system and pull the CO₂ down quite fast."

- James Lovelock, interviewed by New Scientist,
23 January 2009

I only happened to come across the subject of biochar through following the work of Albert Bates, an American permaculture teacher, among other things. He was a prominent figure in the 'peak oil' movement that gained some traction in the public consciousness around a decade ago, which I followed intently at the time.

(I think that the peak oil mindset remains my basic orientation to our economic situation, even though a lot of the predictions from that movement ended up to be quite inaccurate, and almost all of the main peak oil writers have moved on to other things.

(When I consider my adherence to this dissolved movement, I think of a line from Bob Dylan's Ain't Talkin':

I practice a faith that's been long abandoned...)

Albert Bates had a long history in environmentalism before peak oil. He was law graduate who came of age in the late 1960s, abandoning his fledgling career to become a resident of a hippie commune/pioneering eco-village in Tennessee. He resumed his law practice to defend the water supply of that eco-village against encroachments from the nuclear power industry, and it was the research for that defense that led him to become a very early author on the issue of climate change, publishing Climate in Crisis in 1990.

After the peak oil moment pretty much dispersed several years ago (John Michael Greer wrote a moratorium for the movement in 2016), Bates continued on in his engagement with the issue of climate change and the promotion of eco-villages. One of his main areas of focus was biochar, publishing The Biochar Solution in 2010 and, with co-writer Kathleen Draper, another pioneer in the biochar field, releasing Burn: Using Fire to Cool the Earth earlier this year.

A "Toucan" Stove on  my Balcony

A few years ago, I was looking for some small projects related to sustainability and resilience to undertake, so that I could immerse myself more fully in these topics. I heard some podcasts in which Albert Bates discussed biochar, and I wondered if this was something that I could attempt making on my own? Maybe I could also try mixing the powdered char into compost, and then that compost into soil, to test the benefits it might provide in a garden bed?

I am confused as to why biochar isn't more well known among people concerned with climate change. True, there are many doubts surrounding the idea, and arguments from against employing biochar production as a wide-scale strategy to draw down carbon from the atmosphere. There are also responses to these criticisms, so long as the biochar is produced responsibly. (And Bates argues that there really aren't incentives to produce biochar irresponsibly, outside perhaps of certain possible governmental subsidy arrangements.)

Paul Hawken's "Project Drawdown" published a book comprised of a list of methods to prevent runaway global warming, compiled by a multi-disciplinary team of seventy researchers and scientists. They listed biochar as #72 out of one hundred technologies and techniques that could be used to avert catastrophic climate change.

It is a complex issue. Biochar is a subject that cuts across climate science, ecology, agriculture, industry and economics, so there are a lot of unknowns, and a lot of testing and research to be done.

https://www.drawdown.org/

Still, I think that biochar holds so much promise because it is ultimately so simple and so fundamental. I think at its root, the practical process of making biochar is almost also a symbolic action, and a representation of the carbon drawdown effort as a whole.

A "kon tiki" biochar kiln.

Biochar is almost entirely carbon, as black as coal or petroleum, being the charred the remnants of wood or other organic wastes. The carbon that composes it was once carbon dioxide, drawn from the air by the leaves of plants and trees.

The plants embed some of this carbon in their own physical structures, as well as giving off a portion of the carbon as exudates into the soil from their roots, feeding the soil microbiome.

When these plants die or are harvested, that carbon can be transformed, by a pyrolytic fire, in to a dark powder, resistant to decay. It's stirred into compost, and returned into the soil, sequestering that carbon in the ground for ages.

Or, that carbon powder can be mixed into lime mortar, and used to construct a stone or a brick wall that can last for hundreds of years, while new generations of plants draw out more of the excess carbon in the air, once released by the combustion of coal and oil. What was collected and released by mining and pumping and combustion can be collected again, and returned to the land and the buildings we live in, just by tending to our wastes and making use of them.

An biochar pit dug into the ground.

I'd like to use this series of posts to organize my thoughts on the subject of biochar, which has developed rapidly in the few years since I came across it. When I first looked into it, all I could find online was Albert Bates' book, another book called The Biochar Debate, and one expensive textbook on the subject.

Recently, I've checked again, and there's now a wide range of popular books, as well as t-shirts and aprons with biochar slogans on them, containers to make biochar in your fireplace, and bags of fertilizers with biochar mixed in them, all available online. Albert Bates has been busy researching efforts to include biochar in concrete, asphalt, paper, plaster, paint, mixing it with waste styrofoam to make sturdy roof tiles, mixing it into cattle feed, testing its ability to absorb EMF. Large biochar plants have been erected in China. It's a lot of detail to keep a handle on!

At the same time, I think there's no necessity to look into all that, if a person simply wants to incorporate biochar into their garden or farm. I think that's why I gravitate to the idea of biochar.

I've had the thought that maybe it's best for the economy and the environment when the things that we do can be done on every level of complexity (like a fractal pattern) rather than just at the highest levels of the industry.

A basic fractal pattern from Wikipedia.

For an example, take food: I think its best when people are gardening vegetables and herbs in their yards, or in community gardens, while market gardens produce more intensively at the local level, and large-scale farms producing things like grain crops at the regional level, or for international export. Or for clothing: a fair number of people can sew and repair clothes at home, with more complicated garments being made by local craftspeople, as well as some mass produced fabric and clothes items being made on a larger scale.

It strikes a balance between efficiency and resilience, and a society can allocate its resources at a higher or lower on that scale, depending on the economic situation of the time (as long as no level of production, from the local craftsperson to the businesses that trade internationally, has been allowed to wither away.) I think it also helps to maintain a healthy democracy: if the average person has a feel for the kinds of processes that are occurring on every level of society, I have to think that the decisions made by that society will tend to be better overall.

Along these lines, biochar seems to me to be a carbon sequestration method that could be implemented at all scales (similar to other carbon draw down measures like tree planting or building healthy soils) as opposed to high-tech carbon capture and storage plants (though I'm not against those in principle, being build in addition to these simpler methods.)

So, a small biochar cooker could be making biochar while providing fire light for a patio on a Friday evening.

A farmer could make biochar from brushwood in a 55-gallon barrel, or an open, cone-shaped kon-tiki kiln.

A municipality could have a biochar plant at the landfill, to char organic wastes, to add to composting food wastes and sewage sludge (if they weren't charring those as well.)

Large scale plants can make biochar from things like rice husks, corn stalks, or forestry residues, to produce energy streams (electricity, hot water, etc.) and biochar that can be applied as fertilizer en masse. (Interesting too that biochar itself is composed of something like a fractal design, with, as Bates says, "pores on the walls of the pores on the walls...")

For this initial post, I'd like to start with the history from which the idea of biochar was drawn: the 'terra preta' (dark earth) soils of the Amazon river basin. At various sites along the Amazon river, archeologists and soil scientists have worked to decode the ingredients left behind in these soils, and from what they have discovered, maybe some remnants of long lost wisdom cand be drawn and applied to the problems of our own times.

*  *  *  *  *

We don't need plantations or crops planted for biochar, what we need is a charcoal maker on every farm so the farmer can turn his waste into carbon.

James Lovelock, The Guardian,

24 March 2009

If history is confined to the parts of the past for which we have written records, then the history of the civilizations that once lived in the rain-forests along the Amazon river can be known to us only from the thinnest shreds of documentation.

These documents are not from the peoples of these forest-dwelling cultures themselves, but from the sparse accounts of the Spanish, conquistadors and missionary priests of the 15th century, who were involved in the exploration and colonization of the Americas.

These brief encounters between these few Europeans and the peoples who lived along the Amazon brought to them the infectious pandemics that decimated the indigenous populations. The few who manage escaped these illnesses were forced to abandon their traditional practices, and formed small bands of hunter-gatherers to survive the collapse of their civilization. When Europeans next returned to these areas along the Amazon, almost a hundred years later, the civilizations there had been so completely dispersed, their housing subsumed by the rainforest, that the original European accounts of these populations were dismissed as lies and fabrications.

We rely on archeologists to study the physical record left by these civilizations, and apparently their findings have largely verified the accounts of the Spanish who first came across the peoples of the Amazon river basin. What they have pieced together gives us glimpses into a unique and fascinating civilization, whose methods of building and growing food seem possible quite different than many others of the ancient world.

I have to admit that don't know much about the findings of these archeologists outside what has been included in various books written specifically on the topic of biochar. I think that could slant one's perspective and, in particular over-emphasize the role of charcoal in the full range of practices these civilizations developed.

Most of the books I've looked at do freely admit that they are speculating about how the peoples of the Amazon basin might have used charcoal in their daily life, and in their soil building practices. Nonetheless, for someone who is interested in appropriate technology and resilient ways of living, even these speculations are full of ideas that might be useful for our own times.

As I understand it, the only account of European contact with the peoples of the Amazon river basin is the diary of a Spanish missionary, Father Gaspar de Carvajal, who accompanied an expeditionary crew of 57 men lead by the conquistador Francisco de Orellana.

Orellana had been involved with the colonization of the Peru since his youth, and learned several indigenous languages. Historians think he was possibly a cousin of Pizarro. He was charged with an expedition down the Amazon river, in search of gold, cinnamon, and nutmeg. The journey was inspired by stories of the "El Dorado" legend circulating among the Spanish, related to the chieftain of the Chibcha people, who was said to have been rolled in gold leaf and then ritually bathed in a sacred lake.

The journey down the river, the severe trials they faced (at one point they apparently boiled shoe leather and grass to avoid dying of starvation, at another they set up an impromtu iron foundry to make nails for repairing their ship), the raids they made on various settlements, the skirmishes they had with the indigenous peoples there, who sometimes followed them along the river for days: it seems like a complicated and involved story, hard to fully grasp from the accounts included in books on biochar.

Still from Apocalypse Now, director of photography Vittorio Storaro

Reading these excerpts from the story of their journey, of a ship sailing slowly down a river in a foreign land, told entirely from the European perspective, I can't help but be reminded of scenes from Apocalypse Now (which should probably remind me of one of its main sources, Joseph Conrad's novel Heart of Darkness, if I had ever read it.) Seeing that both the film and novel both focus on Western individuals entangled in an imperialist project, Vietnam and the Congo respectively, connections could probably be made with Father Carvajal experiences in Orellana's expedition. (I'm learning now that there is a popular book on Orellana's expedition titled River of Darkness, so I'm guessing I'm not the first to make this connection!) I'll have to get back to Conrad's novels some day.

Carvajal reported seeing many densely populated cities, houses side-by-side, with roads and highways connecting them, and leading from the river to inland.

There was one town that stretched for fifteen miles without any space from house to house, which was a marvelous thing to behold. There were many roads that entered into the interior of the land, very fine highways. Inland from the river, to a distance of six miles more or less, there could be seen some very large cities that glistened in white and, besides this, the land is as fertile and as normal in appearance as our Spain.

For one stretch of around 275 miles, Carvajal reported that most towns were so close to each other that "a crossbow shot could connect town to town" and that the largest gap he saw between towns was as around 3.5 miles. He also counted at least five towns where there was almost no separation between houses for over 7 - 10 miles. He reported seeing glistening white cities, set back several miles from the river.

A Roman oil lamp

There was apparently a common language among these peoples. Food was in great abundance: game meats, hunted poultry, fish and turtles, a great variety of fruits, cakes made from maize and ayuca. At one stop Carvajal noted that there "was so much abundance to eat it could have fed a thousand men for a year."

Details from Carvajal's notes also describe a civilization had great skill in building and in their craft work. Regarding their pottery, he was very impressed with their shapes and their glazing, as well as the figures and scenes drawn on their stoneware, of fearsome divine figures and pleasant scenes of nature, as well as with their household figurines and local statues.

In this town were houses of pleasing interiors with much stoneware of diverse forms. There were enormous pitchers and vases, and many other smaller containers, plates, silverware, and candlesticks. This stoneware is of the best quality that has ever been seen in the world [...] It is all enameled with glass, of all colors and the brightest hues [...] They craft and draw everything like the Romans. [...] There were giant statues and in one there were working arms and knees, run by gears and wheels.

*  *  *  *  *

Francisco de Orellana died just before attempting a second expedition of the Amazon River. The diaries of Father Gaspar de Carvajal were the only record of the first voyage, and when later explorers returned to these areas, they saw no evidence of the glistening white cities that Carvajal reported. It was left to modern day archeologists and soil scientists to affirm Carvajal's account, that there was once a thriving and unique horticultural civilization that lived along the Amazon river.

The primary artifact left behind by these civilizations was a sort of very fertile soil, called "terra preta" by local people, which is Portuguese for "dark earth."

Whereas soils in the rainforest apparently tend to be depleted, acidic, and red in colour, due to centuries of high heat and intense rains, terra preta is a dark soil, with a balanced pH and a high nutrient content. It is so fertile that it has been excavated, bagged and sold to gardeners in South America in recent times. The key ingredient (though it was only one among many): charcoal.

James Bruges, in his book The Biochar Debate, notes that archeologists have found many raised ridges, banks and mounds along the Amazon river, for "tens of thousands of kilometres", and that the charcoal buried within them dates back over 2000 years. The thought is that these ridges and mounds were built to keep their intensive gardens above water in the rainy season, and also that the scope of the "digging and earth-moving involved in creating these structures [...] was comparable to building the pyramids. They completely altered the landscape."

They also may have built huge fish-ponds inland, which would be filled as the waters swelled in the rainy season, flowing over weirs that would trap these inland lakes from draining down in the dry season, providing fish to eat throughout the year. Bruges mentions that idea intrigued him, as he had seen similar systems in old French monasteries. His descriptions of their "bridges, dams, dikes, causeways, canals, ponds, gardens, [and] orchards" reminds me of what I imagine Holland must be like, with its controlled inundation of its low-lying plains, and also maybe of the importance the ancient Egyptians placed on the annual overflow of the Nile.

Ute Scheub, in his fascinating book Terra Preta, speculates more closely on the role charcoal may have played in the daily life of the ancient cultures along the Amazon River. (His book credits Haiko Pieplow, Hans-Peter Schmidt, and Kathleen Draper as co-authors: I'm not sure what their contributions were to this book, but each has an interesting body of work to their name, relating to soil science and carbon sequestration. I'm currently very engaged by Kathleen Draper's book Burn, which she wrote with Albert Bates, which details a full spectrum of uses for carbon in the economy, along with applying biochar to the soil.)

Ute Scheub begins by pointing out that indigenous people of the Amazon river did not burn or clear-cut the forest to cultivate an agricultural landscape, instead they established their homes and gardens among the fruit bearing trees. We know that they produced a fair amount of charcoal, which Schaub assumes was probably made from "scrap wood and dead branches," as larger timber was hard work to come using with hand axes, and would probably be used mainly for building homes.

The main use of charcoal would probably be as a fuel source for cooking food. It burns at high temperatures and gives off relatively little smoke compared to burning wood directly. In the hot, humid climate of the tropics, turning wood into charcoal prevents it from rotting before it can be used as a fuel.

Burning charcoal to cook meals leaves one with ash, of course, and not the charcoal content that is found as a major ingredient of terra preta soils. The shards of clay pottery that are also commonly found in terra preta might indicate the other main use of charcoal in a forest civilization.

Based on the animal and fish bones and shells and the human feces found to be a component of these soils, Scheub speculates that both kitchen wastes and bathroom wastes were collected in clay vessels of about five gallons in volume (about the size of the plastic pails in common use today.) Powdered charcoal would have been layered into these vessels, to cover over the wastes, drying them out and preventing odours. The clay vessels would have tight fitting lids, and the contents of the clay containers would then begin to ferment, something similar to Japanese/Korean bokashi fermentation.

The addition of charcoal apparently sets up "better conditions for lactic acid fermentation. Lactobacilli, excreted by the human intestinal tracts, initiate the fermentation process. The numerous water-filled pores of the pieces of charcoal provide an excellent habitat for these probiotic intestinal bacteria. Harmful bacteria, however, have very little chance of survival, as fermentation has a bactericidal effect..." (Scheub, 41)

Scheub continues to conjecture that these clay refuse bins & dry toilets, layered with charcoal throughout, could have been a means of preventing disease within the tightly populated areas along the Amazon river. Containing waste materials, and then subjecting them to a period of fermentation, would have greatly restricted the ability of pathogens to pass from one person to another. The authors speculate that perhaps each person of a household had their own dry toilet, or maybe that a person who was ill was given a personal toilet, to sequester the pathogens that might spread with communal toilets in a densely populated civilization.

In addition to these household-sized pots, there were also larger vessels, 50 - 80 gallons in size (basically the volume of a regular-to-large hot water tank) that would be lined up in rows, maybe in areas that were intended to later be gardens. These larger receptacles were filled with layers of cooking wastes, feces, charcoal and soil, and were sealed at the top to undergo fermentation, and to avoid the contents being washed out or attracting  insects.

Some of these larger pots seem to have been made with holes in their bases, which Scheub theorizes may have allowed effluent to seep out the bottom of the vessel witin the ground, attracting soil microbes up into the vessels, helping transform the mix of fermented wastes, charcoal, and soil layers into terra preta.

Another possibility for some of these vessels is that, "as soon as the vessels began to emit an earthy smell, the indigenous people may have planted a seedling or a banana plant in the vessel to complete the humus-making process" through the symbiotic relationship between plant roots and soil microbes. "In time, plant roots would have burst through the confines of the vessels, providing an explanation for the numerous shards found in deeper soil profiles." (Scheub, 43)

People would slowly fill these with fermented kitchen and toilet wastes, and when this layer of containers was completely filled, perhaps a new set of clay vessels would be built up on top of these, creating the raised-ridge garden mounds, filled with charcoal and humus-rich soils, that seem to have been characteristic of this civilization.

A Potter in Nepal works with clay-biochar mix

(I'm wondering if maybe these mounds were built up first, and then holes dug into them to line with clay, to fire in the ground. How else can a 80 gallon clay pot be fired? Maybe the firing of these pits involved making a batch of charcoal, in open-pit kon-tiki style burn, I'm wondering if the temperatures would be high enough?)

The indigenous civilizations of the Amazon river apparently did not keep livestock (making them very susceptible to the types of viruses brought to their continent by Europeans.) This means that they did not have a steady supply of animal manure to use as fertilizer. The use of their own "humanure" filled the double purpose of making fertile soil as well providing sanitation and disease control. Nor did they use draft animals in their agriculture, they had no plows and no carts. They worked their raised mound gardens with their hands and digging sticks, and therefore spared themselves the degradation of their soils that is normally entailed by constant tilling.

Ebenezer Howard's Schematic for Garden Cities, 1902

James Bruges wonders if this horticultural, forest-dwelling way of life created an egalitarian type of society: there is no evidence here "of pyramids as in the Maya civilization, no ramparts, no hierarchy of grand buildings surrounded by hovels." They certainly engaged in massive building projects, in controlling flood waters with canals, ponds, etc., as well as bridges and roads, and their raised garden mounds, but their projects seemed to focus on function rather than social hierarchy, more civil engineering than the aggrandizing of wealth and power.

"At the heart of each town was a big circular plaza from which roads radiated," one archeologist said of the sites he studied in Brazil, describing them as essentially "garden cities."

* * * * *

"Charcoal is one of the oldest industrial technologies, perhaps the oldest."

                                           - James Bruges

A few years ago, a suggestion in a Transition group meeting of maybe producing an 'Encyclopedia of Post-Carbon Living' got me into the mode of researching one topic related to resilience at a time, instead of the very general reading I was doing before. Not that I would try to become an expert in any topic, but I aimed for learning enough that I could write an encyclopedia style article for that subject.

The first one I worked on was biochar and biochar stoves, then to composting toilets and the use of humanure, then concrete and alternative concretes, then compost heat recovery systems. I picked the topics pretty much at random, but I started to feel like that there was a connected group of materials and purposes that kept circling around in these topics, something like:

biochar  -  clay  -  limestone  -  waste management  -  nutrient cycling  

water filtration and storage  -  fermentation  -  carbon drawdown

Every topic seemed to reach into the other, mind-map style. The histories of charcoal and pottery seemed to be very intertwined, likewise with the ancient kiln-based practice of roasting limestone to make mortar. The oldest temple in the world has lime-clay floors. Biochar works well mixed in with lime mortar/concrete. Biochar is excellent and filtering water, and can help in various composting toilets.  Biochar can be mixed in clay pottery with good results, and clay vessels are ideal for fermenting and food storage. Both clay and certain kinds of cement make excellent cisterns. And of course, working with biochar allows to engage in one form of carbon drawdown.

One example: in Albert Bates and Kathleen Draper's new book Burn, they mention a practice of the traditional peoples of the Levant (around modern day Syria), of finding a good spot for a cistern, beside which they would build a house. The book is a little unclear on the details of the practice, but basically they would dig out the pit, and use some of the clay soils to line the walls of this cistern. The clay would be set with a charcoal-producing, gassifying fire. The biochar was used to help filter the water in the cistern.

On the left, a 2000 year old clay cistern in Syria.

They also used crushed char, ash, calcined clay and potassium lye to make plasters and concretes, one use of which was to make indoor columns that could condense large amounts of water out of the air. On top of that, amazingly, they somehow channeled this condensed water into underground set-ups that basically produced compressed air, and forced it into the bottom of their cistern to keep the deeper waters from becoming anaerobic. They also used the cool, compressed-air they generated for refrigeration, and channeling  through air wells into their orchards, for crops like apples and pistachios that do well by growing in colder air.

It sounds almost fantastical to me, but I bring it up to illustrate how these traditional appropriate technologies can cross-pollinate among themselves, and how traditional peoples often had very sophisticated means of working with nature's systems to provide the necessities of a good human life. It's surprising how often that researching appropriate technology and resilience leads one learning about really ancient ways of living. For instance, my main source for the history of concrete traces the origins of limestone kilns to the shamans of pre-agricultural tribes, and to the construction of temple at Gobekli Tepe around twelve thousand years ago (which interestingly also came up when reading about the memory systems of oral cultures.)

Of all places, biochar happened to get a mention recently on the Joe Rogan Experience podcast, in an interview with the author Graham Hancock. It has to be the largest audience ever to be introduced to biochar, terra preta, and the civilization that once populated the Amazon river basin. The interview was related to Hancock's newest book, America Before, which I believe is centred around recent discoveries that suggest that the indigenous peoples of the Americas have been here far, far longer than was previously thought in the academic world.

Hancock and his collaborator Randall Carlson of Sacred Geometry International have been very active in recent years promoting the idea that human civilization is itself far older than previously thought, having alternated through cycles of flourishing and cataclysm, and that certain remnants these extremely ancient cultures were carried through these collapses and passed on to successor civilizations. I can't help but wonder if somehow this knowledge about these forgotten, obscure civilizations isn't arising now, at this particular moment in time, because there is something there that we need to hear and learn about to deal with the crises we are faced with today.

Anyways, I'd like to follow this introduction to biochar with a few more posts on biochar, including an exploration as to what benefits it might have as a soil amendment, about various biochar producing devices, and on the many uses biochar could have in the economy outside of it's agricultural applications. Please stay tuned.

Working Together

This is my submission for John Michael Greer's short fiction contest for the proposed collection Love in the Ruins. It's my first attempt at fiction, and I hadn't been thinking I would enter the contest until recently. When it was first announced though, it did catch my interest.

I started thinking about what a de-industrial future might look like, as I worked at various places in the city, and kind of daydreamed about a few characters. I got busy with a period of technical training and left off thinking about the story for a long while.

When I saw the deadline approaching, I thought I would try to write down some of the scenes that I had envisioned, and the story started rushing out in full. It definitely could use some editing and revision, but I thought would post it anyway, in case it might be suitable for the collection.

Working Together

   

    Alex took a moment's break from packing the remains of the harvest, as well as some tools and belongings, into a large trailer, and had a drink from his canteen in the cooling autumn air. He looked out across the field at his journeyman, hoe in hand, making some finishing touches in the garden before they would leave for the season. A wiry man with a thick dark beard, wearing a wide straw sun-hat, a billowy white work-shirt and long skirt that he'd sewn for himself from cotton broadcloth, as well as his homemade tire sandals, he did not exactly accord with the image of fashion that Alex was used to at least aspiring to approximate.

     Alex had made the trip into the city twice since the late summer, to transport into town the vegetables and grains that he had helped to produce, for the most part to be preserved for the winter by those few who remained in the city for the summer months. He was glad that his boss let him make the trip, instead of taking it for himself, and leaving Alex with a set of chores on the farm. His journeyman, Phillip Ducharme, seemed to him a bit odd, unconcerned with the months of isolation, and welcoming the three days of solitude that these delivery trips would afford him. Alex would have preferred some more time in the city himself, as aside from these trips, there were only two local dances out in the country to break up the hot summer months. But after dropping off the produce and arranging for their preservation, and spending a night at his mother's house, he was obliged to make his way back out to the union farm. Harvest would be over soon enough, however, and he would have time on his own to enjoy some return parties in the city, to play some music and meet up with his friends before winter set in and a new season of work began.

      One of those who remained in the city for the summer was the chef at a lunch counter next to the law courts. Between orders, Rose was getting two young teenagers set up at a long wooden cutting block next to some baskets of vegetables. Her own cutting block was adjacent to the two hammered-steel woks she cooked at, and set back a little from the counter where her customers ate, or could pick up their orders to eat at the tables. From her station she could keep an eye on everything in the restaurant, as well as deliveries being brought down to the cellar.

      A regular pushed through the screened door and made his way to a stool at the counter, a bundle of papers under arm, wearing thick round glasses, a loose linen dress shirt, khaki pants and some leather sandals.

      “Chicken soup?” Rose asked. He pulled his lips to one side and gestured with his face “Why not?” while setting his papers in front of him. “And a light beer.”

      Rose slid the gas valve open with her knee, and the burners fired with a whoosh while she flicked a spoon of lard into the wok. It melted and shimmered, and she tossed in a handful of sliced onions, bell peppers, and celery root, and then a few chicken pieces. She pushed them up along cooler back slope of the wok to make space for another little pool of fat, into which she added some ginger, garlic, and dried lime peel. Chicken bones were quietly simmering in the other wok, with a few aromatics and chilies swimming around at the surface, and she took a few ladles of broth to add to the vegetables. It came to a quick boil as she added a scoop of cooked rice and a pinch of green herbs. She ladled the mix into a deep clay bowl and brought it to the counter, then pulled a cork stopper from a jug of cool-ish beer, to pour him a glass.

      “Thank you Rose,” only just barely pulling his eyes from his long sheets of handwritten notes. She smiled at him, and moved back to scrub the wok and get ready for the next order.

      She was quick and deft in every movement she made. The years of kitchen work, the constant movement, the slinging around of cast iron cookware, sacks of grains and crates of vegetables had made her healthy and fit, and strong for her slight frame. Working in a food business helped as well, as there was always nutritious meals to be had from what wasn't sold in the day, which she cooked up to eat with her sister and her helpers.


      The restaurant had been set up by her mother when Rose was a young girl. After Rose's father had passed away, her mother took over his restaurant supply business, which imported goods that weren't grown locally, various grains, legumes, coffee, spices, an so on, mainly for the few restaurants in the city, as well as for some inns and institutional kitchens. It was successful enough, but grew harder to manage as time went on: demand in the city was always diminishing, and there was continual disruptions in supply. Certain orders would just stop arriving, and the suppliers never heard from again, though Rose's mother, Natalia, would write letters, left to wonder what had happened to her connections.

      So Natalia kept her ears open for an opportunity to set up an establishment of her own, to augment her main business. She was offered a chance to go in on a roast house that was opening on Wellington Avenue, a wealthier neighborhood in the city, but instead she took a commission to run a cafeteria in the city centre, right beside the law-courts and near city hall and the hospital. It was a good decision. The high-level staff that worked there were a captive clientele of professionals requiring a meeting place with an interesting rotation of meals. It added a steadier income stream to Natalia's family.

      And compared to the outdoor ovens at the roast house, her fuel cost was minimal. She had decided on the woks, as good quality Chinese pans and tools were available from her northern supplier, and they could be heated quickly for a stir fry as the order came in, and then turned off again as quickly. This also helped keep the kitchen from heating up excessively. (In cooler weather, they sometimes would set up an iron grate over some charcoal, for a change of pace.) The commission came with the ability to buy city bio-gas at a decent rate, as a supply line had already been piped over from the central physical plant, across the street.

      So, it was an economical way of cooking. They could use shavings of whatever meat was available (pork, poultry, rabbit, goat, beef, bison) to serve over whatever dried grains or legumes that they had in dry stock (rice, millet, wheat, sorghum, lentils, beans.) To these proteins and carbohydrates, they added whatever vegetables might make sense, incorporating fresh produce from the city garden beds, or the onions, cabbages, beets, Brussels sprouts, carrots, garlic and ginger that were stored in the root cellar, as well as the sauerkraut and kimchi mixes that fermented in clay vessels along the cool basement walls. Added to that the seasonings and sauces made possible by the imports that Natalia was able to arrange, it was a versatile culinary style. Over the years Rose had developed a sense of how to combine these variable inputs into one or two coherent dishes to offer per day, and based her style on an intuition on how various regions (Europe, Asia, Central America) might have composed their flavours and arranged their meals.

     In the early morning, Alex rolled up their bed clothes and bug nets, and loaded them into the trailer, along with a generator and a small pump. He checked the air pressure on the tires, harnessed their two mules to the trailer's makeshift hitch, and with that they were ready to go. Philip climbed into the open cab, dressed not in his gardening wear today but instead in his city work uniform, a dark collared shirt, dark denim pants, cuffs rolled up, and some leather shoes. His hair had grown out about a quarter-inch from when he had recently shaved it. No socks though, for whatever reason, Alex noted. The younger apprentice had put on some nicer clothes for the journey himself, wearing a newer red plaid shirt and some blue jeans. He had shaved his deeply tanned face, though he barely needed to. His blonde hair was nearly down to his jawline at this point, but he would get a haircut once he got back into the city.

     Not tending the reins on this trip, his journeyman morose and silent as usual, Alex had plenty of time to think on the ride back home, reflecting on his first summer out on the union farms, which could be the first of many. He did not relish this thought. It wasn't that he minded the work really, and it was pleasant to be out in the country, especially for the hot summer months, were the heat was especially oppressive in the city. Not to mention, it felt dead in town from June to August, as so many people closed up business for the season and headed out to work on the land and grow food, in a variety of arrangements. But Alex doubted that many in either city or country had to endure the spans of deadly quiet that he did that summer.

     They rolled slowly down the highway. Alex watched the ruined houses, clustered together every so often not too far from the highway. In a few places along the paths leading into Winnipeg, there were a few homes that were maintained over the year. Some family had obviously stayed in place over the decades of disruptions, to patch, paint, caulk or tarp as needed to keep the elements out.

     “How long since most of these houses were put up?”

     “Hmm. I'd say about eighty years for most. Sixty maybe for the last ones.”

     And silence again for a while between them. They were coming up to another camp working in the field, about eight people. Alex didn't know these people's affiliation, but he did feel a touch of longing at the idea of working in a group of people like that. He noticed too that, like the set-up that Philip and Alex had just closed down for the season, they were making use of some of the poured concrete basements that had been left intact beneath these collapsing chipboard structures. If a basement could be found that wasn't too big, and where the house had been built on higher ground,where drainage wouldn't be a constant problem, these could be covered and used as in-ground shelter. Which was pretty much the only option to passing through the summer's devastating heat.

     At the site they had stayed at in the Central Maintenance Union's grounds, some timber wood had been pulled across the opening of such a concrete dugout. Moss had been pounded into the crevices where the logs came together, and on top of that some loosely-filled sandbags had been arranged into a V-shaped roof, aiming to move standing water away from their shelter. There were some some fence boards, and some brushwood that had been woven together on top of that. They had a piece of corrugated tin, weighed down with cinder blocks on three corners, to cover over the hatch at the front, where they climbed down into their quarters.

     Watching this group in the field, a few men and a few women, Alex wondered how they arranged their sleeping spaces, and how they spent their downtime. Alex and Philip had gotten up early nearly every day of the summer, working from the cooler hours of the morning until about noon, when the heat would become unbearable. They would take a break on their cots for a few hours. If he didn't sleep, Alex would practice quietly on his mandolin, and also write down some lyrics and chords in his notebook if a new song was beginning to come together. He didn't ask if Philip minded, and Philip never mentioned it, so he kept at his songs throughout the summer, though he kept it muted nonetheless. There was a large clay vessel, that they pumped full of water, that somewhat separated the two sides of the dugout, and also kept the air a few degrees cooler in a radius of a few feet.

     Well, it was behind him now, and he was looking forward to seeing his friends, playing in the band, and having a week or so to himself. And as for next summer, maybe he could have more time working in the other, larger camps of the Maintenance Union's. For seeding, harvest, and for a little bit of building, Alex had helped out some other camps for a few days over the summer. Maybe as he got to know Philip more, and so long as he did his chores on Philip's plots, he could perhaps spend more time living in another camp? Alex didn't think his journeyman would mind the time alone.

     He didn't dislike working under Philip. He was actually quite grateful to have been taken on, and a lot of his fellow apprentices had far harsher work conditions than him. He did get along with Philip for the most part, but it was a hard transition into the working world from how he had been living. His parents, somewhat unusually, had allowed him to follow his interests into his late adolescence, in part because his father, Bill Roche, was fairly well off, working as an official near the top of the city's bureaucracy. He was a competent man, and had carved out a place for himself organizing various essential services and dealing with the unions that were supposed to provide them. Bill was a good negotiator, he managed his connections and his influence with skill, balancing his own affluence and security with the needs of the city and of the unions, he was well aware that these were all connected.

     The long hours that Bill put in though, along with the back-room deals, and the precarious obligations that he struggled to fulfill, inclined him to let his son move along a different path. So Alex had finished the tenth grade and focused on music, making some money with a band of friends, playing the coffee house scene on Osborne street and wherever else they might get hired to perform.

     The coffee houses tended to sell newspapers and, for a few cents each, a variety of pamphlets, mainly political essays or diatribes, though sometimes they veered more into spiritual topics. An atmosphere of discussion and debate pervaded these establishments, and as well as playing shows, Alex had taken an interest in politics, communtarian thinkers in particular. This somewhat aligned with the politics of his father and some of the others his father had allied with.

     In short (and, to be honest, Alex had not yet fully mastered the details of their philosophy) commutarians were either calling for an end to money in the economy, or at least for a limit on it's role. Times had been hard in recent years, and organization between the city, provincial and national goverments were spotty at best, there often wasn't even enough currency available for the economy to even function. There were a number of proposals, but most had some sort of arrangement for essential goods to be distributed directly to the working people, in exchange for performing certain work essential to the city's economy. People were looking for security in their basic needs, and hoping to exchange a portion of their work for a guarantee of a share of what the city produced.

   The wealthier families of the city did not like these sorts of ideas circulating among the working class.  Those families, who sometimes lived in multi-family compounds to shore up their positions, did not have trouble keeping stores of currency on hand, or keeping stores of food, as their well-stocked pantries could carry them through the lean times at the end of winter and the early spring, aside from whatever other disruptions might occur over the course of a year.

    The debate raged on, fueled by editorials and comments in the papers, and the pamphlets that circulated among the intellectuals in their various places they congregated. That was the world that Alex had gotten involved with on account of his involvement in the music scene, even to the point of participating in some rioting. Some residences had their windows smashed, some fires had been set, and Alex had narrowly avoided being charged.

    Once his father had fallen ill though, and then passed away, Alex realized soon after that his extended youth had come to end.  Through a connection in his father's office, Alex had been connected with Philip, who was looking to take on an apprentice in the city's maintenance union. He felt lucky to get the position, at twenty he was older than a lot of the other new apprentices, a lot of them as young as fifteen as they started in the union. Philip didn't seem to take notice of that, or didn't care, and never mentioned it.

     A noisy pickup truck with some sort of hand-painted company logo on the passenger-side door overtook their trailer on the highway, and moved slowly on ahead.

     A pair of surgeons were finishing up a large meal at a corner table, eating their way through some bowls of meat and vegetables, some small dishes of sauce on the side, a sambal and a mayonnaise dip, and a platter of thin flatbread. They're celebrating something, Rose thought, or maybe indulging after a difficult ordeal at the hospital. She had sent the food out on a new set of dishes that she had bought, all with a mottled deep-blue glaze.

     “Hey Rose!” one of them called out across the restaurant, a little overly loud. Rose looked up from her cutting block. “I love these bowls! What do you say we take them with us?”

     She raised her cleaver from her table into their sight-line,and bobbed it in the air. “What do you say I take a few knuckles?” She paused, and gave them a slight smile. They grinned, as well as an administrator who was eating at the counter, a woman wearing an elegant, long, light-grey wrap dress.

     “Alright, they stay here!” Rose returned to her work.

     Rose was a definite favourite among those who worked in the city centre, as her mother had been. She was a beautiful woman with a commanding presence, and didn't hesitate to speak her mind. She ran her business with intelligence, and was attentive to the needs of people she dealt with, both her customers as well as those with whom she had business. She had long dark hair, that she usually had her sister braid and tie up, to sit behind her black baker's cap. Her daily uniform was a black t-shirt, loose checkered kitchen pants, a long black apron tied at her waist, some kitchen clothes tucked between the strings, and a pair of rubberized clogs on her bare feet. In her appearance and personality, as well as in her capabilities, she was a radiant figure to all those who knew her.

     Her mother had passed earlier in the summer, and though Rose didn't show it, talking with doctors made her uneasy. She had some mixed feelings and held some resentment towards them. As helpful as they had been with her mother, they had scheduled her surgery for the winter, after the hospital resumed full operation and they starting working through their back-lists of non-urgent procedures. She had no way of knowing, but of course she had to wonder if her mother would have survived with more timely attention.

     Her mother had been in poor health for a while, so Rose was used to running the restaurant and the import supply on her own, along with overseeing her sister's small side-business. When her mother had passed, the burden was lessened somewhat, not having to care for her on top of the long days of work. But she she couldn't help feeling the weight of responsibility increase on her, particularly for her sister, and for the network of relatives and cousins that often looked to her for help. The city was always in hard times these days, especially as industry and the government began to focus more to the north. A lot of things were being neglected, and Rose felt the strain of keeping things together in lean times.

     Katerina was at her usual table off to the side of the restaurant, as her morning duties in the kitchen and in the store room were finished, and the small animals in the building's courtyard had been fed. She bused tables as needed for the early afternoon, though Rose usually took care of the counter, while Katerina caught up on some paperwork, among several other things. Rose never really exactly knew what Katerina was working on, her sister was a much quieter person than herself, and a bit secretive, you had to pry if you wanted details from her. Looking over at her table, three or four books beside a notebook and some papers clipped together, it was clear she was busy with something.

     Katerina had kept the books for the business for years now. She had been pulled from school to work, as Rose had been, a little less early though, but her mother knew that Katerina was not going to take to physical work as readily as her sister had. She was reading whenever she had a chance, she was shy and she lived in her head a lot more than she focused on the details of daily life. As a younger teenager, Katerina mentioned some vague ideas of wanting to work in the city's office buildings, as a secretary perhaps, so her mother got her a subscription to Modern Professional. It was a small quarterly that catered to these sorts of aspirations, aimed mainly at young women, with articles about making it into, and succeeding in, the professional classes. It was mostly a vehicle for selling correspondence courses, of which her mother purchased a few to further Katerina's education: bookkeeping, penmanship, applied math, short-hand, basic legal studies.

     Katerina devoured these courses, receiving lesson materials and sending tests and assignments by mail, usually far before they were due. Natalia was pleased with the system she'd set up for her younger daughter: she could put in some work with basic chores to earn her keep, and put in time on her courses later in the day. With time she gave over to Katerina more of the administrative work, writing letters to suppliers, paying taxes, and so forth, and Katerina talked less about wanting to get a job in the government or industry. This pleased Natalia, as while she wanted her daughter to be happy, she was averse to the idea of working for wages, and liked to keep her family working together, as a unit.

     Over time, an idea came to Natalia of a business for Katerina. Constantly interacting with the various professions and officials at the restaurant, from time to time they asked Natalia if she could maybe source a certain book from her contacts in Chicago or Minneapolis, with some sort of technical information they were needing, things related to medicine, geography, or engineering, and so on. Sometimes she was successful, and bringing the books along with some other supplies, and she wondered if maybe she could start up a small bookstore beside the restaurant that Kat could manage. The space she had in mind was more an alcove than a full shop space. It had been once been the front desk/lobby for some offices in the building, but it could fit a few shelves, and they could build up some stock slowly. There was a need for information that was getting harder to access these days, maybe she could carve a niche for her daughter in supplying that gap.

     Another magazine Katerina had a subscription for was Mind, much more fun than the professional journal. It was filled with logic puzzles, crosswords, articles on things like code breaking, mnemonic systems, Latin etymology, and speed reading. It was an amusement, but it helped immensely in dealing with the requests that the doctors and judges grew accustomed to placing with her. A lot of the specifics they mentioned were alien to her, but she could make an image with her mnemonic system to keep a track of it quickly, even if she was busy. She couldn't always arrange for a book to be ordered, but she developed some work-arounds: sometimes materials could be loaned, and she could write up a neat manuscript for her client, an article could be sent, or she could even arrange a long-distance phone call, and make notes dictated by a specialist. Her short-hand and mnemonics made that possible.

      She would practice her short-hand and her concentration skills from her table in the restaurant sometimes, eavesdropping on conversations, singling them out through the noise of a lunchtime service. No one noticed, and even if they did, no one would be able to read her personalized notation. She was good at working from the sidelines, and didn't mind letting her sister take centre-stage. 

      “Hey Kat!” Rose called from behind the woks. Kat looked up from her book. Rose gestured to the dishes on two tables in the corner that had been vacated for awhile.

      “Oh yes, thanks,” Kat replied, marking her place and getting up. She had known they were there, but tried to finish up her chapter first.

     Moving towards Winnipeg from the east, Philip and Alex took a short detour off the highway when they could see off to their right the tops of the lime kilns rising above the prairie horizon, preceded by smoke rising from several spots in the vicinity. As they moved towards them, their road passed through the open quarry, and Alex looked out over the men down in the rocky pit, working with hammers and shovels, filling carts with the blasted stone. Though they were heading into autumn, the direct sun beating down on field of white rock beneath the cliffs was intense. As much as he had struggled over the past year, he had to reflect on how much harder some lines of work were compared to his own.

      A sign on the path read 'Manitoba Limeworks and Colliers Union', leading into the complex of kilns, a central plant and the worker's barracks. And as hard as the work in the quarry must be, Alex couldn't imagine adding to the summer heat the continual fires burning here, roasting the limestone and producing charcoal from the massive piles of chopped timber stacked in the field beyond. There were men in gloves and long-sleeved shirts, with goggles and scarves over their faces raking the the quicklime from the bases of the kilns, and others, blackened with soot, collecting the charred wood into large sacs tied down to pallets. Maybe they worked mainly night shifts during the heat spells? Their were lamp posts set up throughout the grounds. Alex couldn't imagine any other way.

     Their trailer was more than half-way full at this point, but there was room to carry in to the city some of the building supplies that their Union used in such large quantities. Philip would be reimbursed for materials when he dropped them off and then credited for the delivery. Every little payment helped to make ends meet. They pulled up alongside a loading dock, and a worker carted out three medium-sized kegs of quicklime and two large sacks of charcoal, which he helped Alex to load into the trailer, while Philip went into the office to pay. 

      There were two other vehicles at the dock doing the same as them, making building supplies a part of their cargo on their way into the city. Leaning up against the trailer, Alex couldn't help but eavesdrop while they conversed with another worker about city news. His heart sank at what he heard. The two councilors who had been working in networks related to the commutarian circles he'd been a part of last year had been arrested. Charges unclear, but Alex was sure that it would be something entirely unrelated to the fact that ideas which these politicians were promoting were becoming popluar in the city. He had no idea if these two might in fact be involved in corruption or something like that, but whatever the case, it wasn't good news for the movement that he realized he still had some hopes for. After the months out in the country, overhearing this conversation about the murky intersections between politics, the legal system and the industrialists left Alex feeling somewhat glad that he had left his involvement in all that behind when he started his apprenticeship.

      “I think we'll stop here for the day,” Philip said, interrupting Alex's thoughts as he passed around the mules, heading toward the trailer's cab. “They said it's alright to camp in the grounds over there. We'll eat, and have a good sleep, and start back on the highway tomorrow.”

     They rolled the trailer to a site beyond the workers' barracks, with a few fire pits spaced out around a well with an iron hand pump. Alex wanted to take a look at the kilns, so he said he'd take a walk and pick some firewood from the lot they'd seen on their way in. He reached over behind the lime kegs to grab some cloth he could use as a sling to carry the wood. Philip started setting up their two canvas pup tents, and setting out some hay and water for the mules. 
 

     It must have been dinner time for the kiln workers, as the lot was empty and quiet, except for the crackling of fires in the various kilns. The lime kilns were towers made themselves out of limestone, while the charcoal units were made of thick steel, painted black, in which logs were stacked to char behind heavy metal doors. The charcoal units were paired with the lime kilns, and pipes directed the gases let off by the charring wood into the fires of the lime kilns.

     Alex had heard that the Limeworks had been built in the thirties, during the drawdown efforts that had been taken up back then. He had no idea if that project, with all those countries working together might still be in operation, but he was glad they had invested in all this, he had seen through his work how useful it proved to be. Though Philip worked nominally in the plumbing division of the maintenance union, more often than not they were capping off people's connections to the sewer system. The treatment plants had become unreliable, and especially in the heavy rains, basements were continually under water.

     The city did have a program where they could offset the cost of the maintenance work if they had their bathrooms set up for the collection of their wastes by the night-soil men, this was a usual task for Philip and Alex. They city had invested in some giant anaerobic units, to generate bio-gas for various purposes, to generate electricity, for some heaters, and so on. They ran their limited phone service by this power.

     Alex's main task was usually smashing open the concrete floors near the building clean-outs, so he could dig down to cut the main sewer line, and plug the pipe with a mix of sand, gravel and mortar.  Cement was unusual these days, and to replace the hole they'd broken in the floor, they made a mix of quicklime, clay and char which set fairly well.  It also worked well for repairing leaks in the old foundation walls made from river stone and mortar, which they could chip out and replace. The old concrete though was harder to replace. They could tar over cracks for a while, but eventually, when the rebar swelled and broke open the concrete, turning to powered rust in the center of the walls, the structural strength was lost, and the buildings had to be abandoned, and taken down.

    In the evening twilight, Alex picked through the logs in the yard, and headed back to the fire Philip had set up. The roasted sweet potatoes pierced with metal prongs, as well as some dried beef jerky.

    Rose slowly climbed the stairs in the courtyard up to the landing outside their family's second floor apartment, and took a moment to look out at the sky. The evening sun was casting dark pink hues up on the heavy clouds resting above the city's skyline. Kat heard her unlock the deadbolt, and looked up from the kitchen table at Rose coming through the door. Rose paused when she saw her, and something in Rose's eyes made Kat nervous right away.

     Rose flipped her black clogs onto the mat and came over to the table. She seemed like she was going to say something, and then paused again. “We need to talk for a minute.”

     “Sure.”
     Rose took a seat on the chair, angled a little away from facing Katerina directly. “That position they were talking about, up north, they awarded it to me.” She looked up. “They want me to move this week.”

     Kat was silent. A friend of Rose's hearing the news would've put on show of being glad for her getting this commission, and covering over their sadness to see her go. But the sisters, close as they were, especially after losing their mother recently, were both overwhelmed with trying to process the implications.

     Rose started again, “We're going to have to leave the restaurant to you, at least for a bit.”

     Kat wiped a tear from her face, Rose's eyes started to well up. “Why do they want you so soon?”

     “Ah,” Rose began to reply, trying to steady her shaking voice, “I guess it's the same up there as it is down here, their city's starting up again in full for the fall. There's big dinners planned, and politicians from Asia are coming to stay in the consulate. I need to get up there to organize everything, the supplies, the menus, and train people for the kitchen. You know how it is with staffing, people get sick or go missing last minute, things turn on a dime.” She leaned on to the table and rested her chin on her hand. “It's a really good opportunity though.”

      Kat's eyes had dried a little, she was trying to think everything through. “It's going to be busy next week here, with everyone coming back into the city, the parties and all. You know I can't do the work that you do Rose.”

    “I know, Kat. You have seen it all though so many times, and you don't have to do it just like I do, you can make the things that you want to. If people don't like it, too bad.” She paused for a moment. They both knew that Kat wouldn't take the complaints she was bound to receive that well. “You've got the helpers, and you can hire some more if you need. You don't have to open everyday right way either, I'm going to be bringing in plenty of money up north, we can afford it. And with the return parties and everything next week, people are going to be out of their routines anyway.”

      Kat stared down at the table. There were so many details left out of these directions that they both knew there wouldn't be time to work out before Rose left, Kat would just have to figure things out as she went. She looked at Rose again, “Are you going to come back?”

      “Not for a bit, Kat. I don't know how this is going to go. I'd really hate to lose this restaurant and our other accounts unless I knew for sure that things will be good up there, but if things turn out, maybe we could give this place up, or have someone else in the family take this over, and you could come up with me. Maybe I could come back to train someone, and get things in order.”

     “But what about the bookstore?”

      “I don't know. Maybe you could do something like that up there.”

      Kat's took a deep breath, her head was spinning. She got up and put her arms around Rose, and leaned her head into Rose's shoulder. “I'm going to miss you.”

      Philip had circled the trailer around the edge of the city to the nearby town of Charleswood to drop Alex off at his mothers' house. Philip paid his respects, and they made some vague plans to meet in about ten days to start up their winter maintenance work, before he left to head into Winnipeg.
He had considered having Alex help him unload the trailer in the city before dropping taking him home, but he knew his apprentice's patience had worn thin over the last stretch of the summer. He could feel the young man's restlessness grow the closer they got to the city. He was actually kind of glad to be rid of him, so he could calm down and take a rest himself. Overall though, Philip thought, Alex had done well, he was glad to let him have a little time to himself before they set to work again.

      On his way out of Charleswood, Philip stopped at a store to buy a little tobacco, and rustled a pipe out a bag of his in the trailer. He hadn't smoked anything all summer. His habit was to use the move out to the farm in the late spring to shed whatever vices he'd fallen into over the winter. the withdrawal from city life into the silence of the country (especially into the solitary way he worked during the hot months) pretty much masked the withdrawal he'd feel from other the substances. He didn't mind indulging with his pipe today though, to mark the changing of the seasons.

      Philip himself really wasn't excited to get back into the city, though he was a little glad to have a break from the farm. He wasn't trying to isolate Alex and himself on the plot he always worked, it was just he had always found socializing with other teams on the union's farms felt a little too close for him, ironically there was a bit more distance between people in the city, and that touch of formality suited him. Watching Alex happy to go help the other teams, Philip felt a little ashamed: maybe he should try to be more outgoing? He resigned himself to the idea that this wasn't likely. Once your habits and your reputation have reinforced the faults in your nature, it is hard to make a change.

      Looking ahead at another winter in the city, the headaches seemed to line up one after the next. It was getting harder to function in his trade. Not that there weren't a lot of repairs, and a little construction for them to do, but finding a way to pay for these was getting harder. People were doing without, or abandoning their buildings altogether and moving elsewhere. Proper parts could be hard to come by, patches and impromptu fixes were not the way he liked to work, but he didn't always have a lot of choice. Keeping an apprentice was another expense, even just one was a struggle to afford for many in the union. He wanted to keep Alex on, he saw promise in him. And when Philip took on an apprentice, he did his best to see them through learning the trade, to a point where they could be recognized, and take on jobs and apprentices of their own. And it was not only work, but the general violence and the theft in the city that had been weighing on him for the last few years.

      Philip exhaled deeply, pulled back his shoulders tightly for a moment, and tried to release all this worry. He'd be alright. As long as he worked hard and made himself useful, there would be a way to make a living. It was a matter of managing all the problems as they arose, and that was done moment by moment, when the time came.

      When he got into Winnipeg proper, he pulled the trailer over, hitched the mules, and bought a bottle of soda. He sat in the cab for a moment and watched the people in the street. Two women were leaving a hair salon together. That is one business that will never fail, Philip thought, when it comes to people looks they will find a way to come up with the money. In a studio to the right, some grunting and slamming sounds were coming from some open windows out into the street. One young man was working out combinations on a heavy bag, and a few others were on the mats in the back, practicing some catch-wrestling. Henderson's Fight Club. Further down the street Philip could hear a church choir in an afternoon rehearsal. A lot of noise and activity to acclimate to in the city.

     As Philip made his way through city centre, heading a little further north past the old rail-yards, just after passing the law-courts he came across a woman leaning up against the post of a fence, her face buried in the sleeve of the white dress she was wearing. There was bit of blood splattered across her apron. He noticed her light-brown hair tied up loosely, resting on her dress's stiff white collar. A cleaver dangled from her hand, on his side of the fence. He pulled back on the reins, and brought the cart to a stop.

     “Ma'am, is everything alright?”

     Katerina sniffled, and pinched the bridge of her nose with her fingers, moving across her closed eyes to clear away the tears. She looked up at the stranger, not knowing how to answer. “I... can't.... I don't like doing this,” she said as started to cry again. Philip looked at her again, and then through the fence to further in the yard, and saw a chicken's body dangling from a thin rope, it's head cut off. There was a goat chained to the fence as well.

     He took a moment. “Well, if you don't like to do it, do you have to? You couldn't bring them to the butcher's maybe?” he said, thinking aloud.

     She turned her head slightly and looked askance into the yard. She hadn't thought of that, maybe that was an idea?

     She didn't quite meet his gaze. “It's only that... The restaurant there, nothing's set up, I can't get the burners to work right...” She looked up at him, “Just not a good day.”

      He wasn't sure how to respond. She wasn't quite asking for help, but she wasn't indicating that he should move along either. “What kind of burners?”

      “Oh, um, they're under the woks we cook with.”

      “Well, I could take a look at them if you like. I'm in the maintenance union, I work with that sort of thing.”

      She looked up at him again, scanning his face to see if she felt she could trust him, to let him into the closed restaurant alone. Rose's two helpers were working at the back table, but they were still fairly young, they probably wouldn't be a lot of help if was to rob them or something like that. 

      “Um, sure,” she said, thinking it over, “you can pull your trailer in here.” She walked over and unlatched the long gate they opened for delivery carts.

      She stepped up on the back dock, and hung up the bloodied apron and the cleaver as well, fitting the hole in the back of the steel blade over a thick nail in the wall. She washed up over the outdoor sink, and took a cloth from her pocket and wiped it by her reddened eyes, trying to get a hold of her emotions and deal with this day. “Just a moment,” she said as he paused by the back steps. “Ok, right in here.”

      “I didn't get your name yet, ma'am.”

      “Oh, Katerina. Chovnyk.” She held out her hand for a hand-shake.

      “Philip Ducharme. Nice to meet you,” he said, giving a slight nod with his head.

      Two young faces looked up at him as they came through the back end of the kitchen, halting the conversation they were having while slicing some onions, ginger and cabbage. The air was pretty smoky, in the wok on the right there was a fair amount of suet rendering and spitting of bits of oil or water. Philip didn't know much about cooking, but this looked way too hot, and dangerous. Katerina walked up to the pan, tilting it carefully away to try to avoid being hit with splatter. “This pedal here, it seemed pretty stuck this morning,” pointing down to the gas lever at knee height, “I forced it on but it doesn't seem to work anymore.”

      He bent over to move the lever back and forth, which was very loose. It looked like the shaft had snapped off inside the valve, you couldn't turn the bio-gas off with it anymore. Philip stood up to take a look at the direction the steel pipe was run from. More worrisome than that was the hood vents above the woks, they didn't seem to be taking up the smoke too quickly. Not such a danger today, with the breeze from the open windows just the metal grate security doors, but in colder weather it could be a problem.

      “Do you need these on for the rest of the day?” he said, gesturing to the woks.

      “I don't think we're going open 'till tomorrow at this rate. I guess they just need to be on to finish this.”

     “Ok, good, well if you want... I'm not really set up now, but if you want, I could come back in the morning and probably get this lever working. For today...” He trailed off, moving over to look behind the shelves at the gas piping. “Oh, yes,” he said, as he bent down near the far wall, throttling the gas supply with a shut-off on a pipe coming up through the floor. The flames beneath the pan with the suet dropped down to the burners, heating the woks far more gently. “I'll leave that bar mostly down like that, and when you're done, move the bar right down towards the floor, and make sure those flames go out.”

      Katerina took a look in beside the shelf. She really hadn't ever paid much attention to the details of the restaurant, that was Rose's domain. She realized she had always just focused on completing her limited kitchen chores, so that she could get to her other work, pushing through it in turn that she could get to her own interests. Maybe she should've shown a bit more interest in how their businesses were ran. With her mother gone, and Rose moved away, it was so much to take on this abruptly, and there was no way that Rose could've prepared her in so short a time.

      “I'm hoping too that there's access to the roof around here,” Philip continued, “...cause I'm thinking there is something not right with these vents. You should probably have those looked at before it cools down.”

      Katerina looked at him, feeling overwhelmed with him piling on these issues. “Can you do that?”

      “Oh yeah, sure. No problem. I'll try to make up something for that lever tonight, and like I said, I can be back in the morning.” The pedal was a specialty device that had come with the unit that those woks were sitting on, probably a long time ago, but Philip was thinking of ways he might attach it to a regular gas valve with something he could find in the union shop. 

      “Ok, then, do we pay you, or the Maintenance Union, tomorrow then, or do you need something today? We're ok for the money,” Katerina said to reassure him. “I don't normally deal with these things.”
      Philip looked at her, and thought a moment. “You know what? I'm just coming in from the country today, I've got a lot of vegetables in that trailer, and more I had brought in a few weeks ago. I'm thinking maybe I could do the repair, and the cleaning, no need for pay, and your restaurant could, buy some of the food I've got stored from the summer?”
      He really should not have offered that, that food was really more the union's than his own. The workers who spent the summers in the country were credited for what they produced, but what was produced on the farm was more for the security of all union workers, not just those that grew it. He might be able to buy some of this back, in order to sell it, pointless as that would be, but Philip's mind was racing through some ideas as to how he might make good on this strange deal he had proposed. Nonetheless, on this day, coming back into the city after months of solitude, not really expecting to be taking on his role as maintenance worker yet, his impulse was not to make this repair a transaction for pay, but rather to set up some sort of relationship with this woman and her restaurant. He'd worry about providing the vegetables later.

      “Well, we might be able to do that. We do have a food supply business here too, it's not hard for us to make use of extra food,” she said, with a slight smile, pleased to be able to offer something in return.

      “Great. Ok then, I'll be back tomorrow, first thing.” He smiled and nodded, and started for the back door. “Oh,” he said, and looked back, “that chicken – I'm going to be passing a butcher, would you like me to drop it off and bring the meat back tomorrow?”

      Katerina's heart dropped a little, being reminded of the stress of dealing with the animals, at the same time as she was touched by his attention to detail and his helpfulness. 

     “Please. Thank you.”

     Philip had parked the trailer in the Union compound for the night, and slept the night in a dorm room there, to get up early to deal with the contents of the trailer, and to gather a few parts and tools to deal complete the repairs at the restaurant. It was no hardship, he was used to getting up very early over the summer, trying to get some work done before the heat became overwhelming. Katerina had been on his mind, lightly, over the night. Something about her and the atmosphere of the restaurant had caught his interest. He didn't feel like hanging around the union hall today. He felt a call to get involved with something new.

      The trailer and the mules were left in the compound. After a light breakfast of rough-cut oats, Philip borrowed a worksman tricycle with a deep cargo bin, and packed it with a basic tool kit, some varied lengths of threaded steel pipe and rod, some pipe wrenches, and some brushes for cleaning out the vents. A beautiful cool autumn breeze met him as he set out below the garage door and headed towards the butcher's shop. 
 

      When he arrived at the restaurant, he tapped on the window grate to be let in. One of the helpers he'd seen yesterday, the younger sister of the pair, came to let him in. On the dock, some charcoal was heating up an iron grate.

      “All cut up,” Philip said to Katerina, placing the packages of chicken, neatly wrapped in brown butcher's paper, on the back counter.

      “Thank you so much. Did you find what you needed to get the wok going?”

      “Yep, pretty sure. I'll get to that first, I'm sure you'll be needing it soon.”

      “Yes! Thank you.”

      Philip carried the tool kit to the woks and started to work. He watched Katerina move about in the kitchen, somewhat frantic and lost, bringing things up and down from the cellar, working with the helpers on the large cutting blocks. The older boy, maybe fourteen years old or so, was offering his advice, and helped her out with a large pot of water to the outdoor charcoal stove.

      By the time he'd finished the repairs and turned the bio-gas back onto the woks, a few customers had already been let in and had taken seats at the counter, conversing and drinking some tea. Katerina was trying to set herself up at the woks as Philip was gathering his tools. He went up on the roof to check on the vents while she started making a few of the dishes she'd planned out for the day.

      And by the time Philip had carried his tools back down off the roof, they restaurant was pretty busy. He tried to make himself scarce as he twisted up a sheet of newsprint, and reached around around Katerina to light it from the flames beneath the wok. He blew it out, so it would issue a little stream of smoke, which he held near the hood vents, to see if the smoke would be drawn up and out the vents. 

      Despite his efforts to be unobtrusive, he could sense that Katerina was stressed by the cooking, and a little irritated by the interruption, though she tried not to let on. Once he was sure the vents were working, he stepped back, and took a look at the customers at the tables, and back at the two helpers working at the cutting block and minding the stove out back.

      “Katerina,” he started, and hesitated.

      “Yes?”

      “Is it possible I could help out in the kitchen?”

      She looked at him with questioning eyes. Was he wanting a job? Was this part of what he'd mentioned yesterday, about buying the vegetables? She was confused about what she was owing him at this point. “Ok – were you wanting to be paid separate from the repairs, or..?”

      He took a moment. “You know, I'm not too worried about pay right at the moment.” He was thinking how he could phrase this, and raised his eyes up to hers. “I've just got back into town yesterday, and I've got some time off for the end of the season, before things start up again. I'm just interested in the restaurant, I've never really seen in a place like this, how it works.”

       She looked back at him, and her face softened a little. “Yeah, alright. That's fine.” She looked at his hands and clothes, covered in soot and dust and grease. “You should probably wash up, the sink's out back.” She smiled. “There's an apron on the hook back there.”

      After he got cleaned up, they got Philip set up with a kitchen knife where the young man was working, while he went up to the woks to help Katerina and to deal with the customers. He moved back and forth to organize Philip when he had a moment. The younger helper, the young man's sister, even started to give some pointers on how to hold his knife, and on how thick to slice the various vegetables, or how fine to dice them, passing on some of the instructions she'd been taught by Rose.
       Over the afternoon, all of them had a some fun taking on unfamiliar roles. The lunch service was right on the edge of falling apart, but they were being creative, forced to relate to each other differently than their roles had dictated before now. For the first time since Rose had left earlier in the week, the gloom had lifted in the kitchen. Philip didn't say a lot, focused on the prep tasks he was given, but he was glad to have a role in the kitchen that day. And Katerina appreciated his presence, strange as the circumstances were having him in working in the kitchen out of the blue.

      Over the next few days, while getting settled back in his apartment and getting his workspace at the union compound back in order, Philip kept coming by the restaurant for a few hours at time, helping out with the various crises as they arose, in the restaurant, or with their stores and the supply business. He was interested in how the restaurant operated. Though he'd been involved in growing food for quite a few years now, his own knowledge of cooking was very basic. He enjoyed seeing how they processed all the meats, the vegetables and the spices. Their clientele of professionals, and the adjoining bookstore, only lent to the allure the restaurant held for him.

      Questions of pay kind of fell into the background, maybe they were working under the pretense he was coming by to secure the sale of the vegetables he'd grown. With the preparations underway for the return parties over the weekend, and in the wake of the shock of Rose leaving so abruptly, Katerina and the helpers were in a holiday mood, and Philip's presence kind of blended in with all the other changes.
 

      That Friday in the late afternoon, when the helpers were washing up outside, Philip approached Katerina before leaving for the day.

      “Kat, I was wondering if you'd want to go the return party on Osborne street tomorrow, together. I didn't know if you were going or not.”

      She was taken aback. She hadn't really thought of the weekend yet, or expected to go to the festivities at all, it wasn't something she normally would normally do. This was the first weekend since Rose had left, and now that he'd brought it up, she didn't want to spend it entirely alone.
“Sure, that would be really nice. Thanks for asking,” she said, smiling.

      Katerina took an extra hour of sleep the next morning, and then planned to care of all the tasks she hadn't managed to get to over the week. Deliveries were stacked up out of order, they had fallen behind on their own shipments, and a pile of paperwork was building on the kitchen table. She hadn't even opened the lock on the bookstore since Rose left. Exhausted, aching, and a little depressed, she was unsure how she could continue with this. She was keeping the restaurant closed today on account of the return parties, and they almost always took Sunday off, so she was glad to have the weekend to catch her balance. Before she began, she took a seat in the restaurant with a cup of black tea that she'd dropped some dried citrus peel into, and enjoyed the silence and the sun spilling in through the shuttered windows.

      In the afternoon she laid out some clothes on her bed that she was considering for the evening. She was quite nervous. Just for this moment she was glad that Rose was away and she had the apartment to herself to think, she would've been quite embarrassed by all the comments that Rose would've no doubt sent her way. She hadn't been out with anyone for a very long time, not since she was a teenager at least. Rose had a a few suitors more recently, but it had been hard for her to match with someone who wouldn't disturb their lives. Katerina was reserved by nature, and she found it easy to keep herself more than busy with the studies she was constantly taking up. It had been easy to fall into a routine, especially with her mother falling sick and needing care this year. Somehow though, her death and Rose's sudden move had shifted her perspective quickly, things were not seeming they did a few short months ago, though she hadn't put words or definite thoughts to anything yet, it was just the sense of questioning that had come over her. It was strange that Philip had shown up right when he did.

    She chose a flowing red dress, with little some white, black and green worked into some small floral designs throughout the fabric, along with some nearly-flat leather shoes, with a slight heel, closed toe and a strap reaching over to a buckle. After she did her hair, she sat on the bed with a thick hardcover book on her lap, though she wasn't reading it, just lost in thought. She was very happy to have had Philip coming by the restaurant over the week, it was good to have his help, and his thoughts on the various problems that were coming up. Though he didn't know anything about restaurants, he had a viewpoint coming from his range of experience that she found interesting.

      He was nearly as quiet as she was. She could tell he was enjoying having a little role in the restaurant, learning about their methods, joking a little with the two young assistants. It wasn't his business and he was on a break from his work, so he could afford to be more easy going that Katerina had been that week, but it had lightened the mood and made the week bearable. She had no idea what she owed him at this point, she hadn't settled up for the repairs, and she guessed they were working under the pretense that he was just around for his interest in restaurant work. She didn't have the social skills to try to clarify the odd situation. She didn't want to offer to pay him again, she sensed that a transfer of money would bring to an end whatever was developing between them, and disperse the spell that had come over the restaurant that week. She was glad in a way that he had asked her to the return festival, him expressing interest in her directly brought some unstated sense into the situation.

      Philip rapped on the window, and Katerina came around back on to the dock. She looked at Philip on the sidewalk through the fence. He had cleaned up nicely, he must have given the deeply tanned skin on his face, his hands and forearms a hard scrubbing. His beard was trimmed, and he was wearing a new navy denim collared work-shirt, the sleeves rolled up into light-coloured cuffs just below his elbows, with some dark denim pants and black leather shoes. She came through the gate and joined him, and they took off walking towards Osborne Street.

      Over the evening, they really didn't discuss anything from the previous week, and just let themselves have fun at the various attractions that had been had been set up along the the avenue, lit by the wavering flames of torches that had been posted along the way. They sat and listened to some country music, and got some kettle corn, and some roasted & spiced peanuts. They stopped at a bench to watch a play that was being performed several times over the evening, a comedy with some brilliantly coloured paper mache masks, a story about a greedy figure who tried to manipulate all the characters around him, whose house of lies fell down around him in spectacular fashion.

     Philip walked Katerina back to the restaurant, and after they unlocked and opened the gate, she leaned over and placed a kiss on his cheek. He pulled the gate closed again and clicked the lock closed again, before heading back to his apartment in the late evening, entirely elated.

      The feeling remained the next morning, as he made the walk over to the union compound. These few days since returning to the city had overturned his regular orientation completely. He was full of energy, sleeping about six hours a night, and everything seemed new to him all of the sudden. He hadn't mentioned any of this to Katerina, but his mind was streaming with plans to work their lives together.

      As he entered the union compound, heading toward the area near the dorm room he'd stayed in, where he'd deposited his tools and belongings, a voice called over to him from the office area. “Hey Philip, come over here a minute.”

      He walked over to Andrews, the union representative standing in the doorway. “Yeah?”

      “Ah, have you heard what happened to Alex?”

      “No,” he said, growing worried, “what is it?”

     “He was arrested, a bunch of them, a crackdown from those councillors from the rich districts. I'm not sure of the charges, or if they were caught doing anything.”

      “It's political stuff?” Philip asked. “He hasn't been involved with any of that since he's been with me, I'm sure.”

      “Well, it's gotten pretty serious recently,” Andrews replied. “They're pushing back against all the complaints and the unrest, they're trying to make a statement before the upcoming session. They've got to have some judges and who knows who else on their side, I think the mayor is pretty much with them too. Anyways, I just thought I'd let you know, if you didn't already.”

      “Alright, thank you,” Philip said, reeling. He walked over to the empty dorm and sat on the cot, trying to collect his thoughts. He really had no idea how to deal with this, but he felt responsible. He had never dealt with the legal system, his father's dictum for staying out of trouble was always to be useful to your union, and steer clear of the law. You never knew when you might be swept up into the hands of a corrupt judge or a political situation, it was best to stay clear of their view altogether. If Alex's father was still alive, he probably would've let him handle it and wished for the best, but, from what he knew of Alex's mother, she wasn't the person to handle this competently. He packed his bag of clothes and a little bit of food into the cargo tricycle, and headed off for the house of Alex's family.

      Katerina had spent her second day off getting the restaurant ready for the second week that she would operate it. She was buzzing from the evening before, she hadn't had a carefree time like that for as long as she could remember. She felt a little uneasy over the day, when Philip didn't stop by, she wanted some sort of confirmation that he'd felt the same way about yesterday. But, they hadn't made any plans, and the restaurant was closed today, maybe he wasn't planning to come over today? She hadn't known him the last time the restaurant was closed, she didn't know what the routine might be. She smiled to herself at the absurdity of it, despite her nervousness.

      She was looking over a book by a candle at her kitchen table in the early evening, when she heard knocking at the restaurant window coverings below. She looked out her second floor window, and saw Philip pacing below, having dismounted the cargo bike.

      “Hey there Philip,” she shouted down from above, waving. “Did you want to come in?”

      “Yeah, please.”

      She carried the candle down, and set it on the docks when she went to unlock the gate for him.

He looked distraught, and she wasn't sure why he was here.

      “Is something the matter?”

      “Yeah, it's my apprentice, that I had mentioned, he's in some trouble.”

She tried to catch his down-turned eyes. “Hey, come sit down. I'll get some tea.” He walked over to the steps and paced a bit while she went back up to the apartment for the kettle, and came back down with it and two small cups in the other hand. “Hey, come sit down,” she said, setting the kettle down by the candle on the ledge. “What happened?”

      He relayed what he had gathered of the details. “I'm not sure what to do. I can't afford a lawyer, and I'm not sure that would help anyway. We're supposed to be starting back at work later in the week, he supposed to be working with me over the winter. And it's not that so much, it's more that I'm kind of responsible for him, he's living with me, he's under my care, to some degree anyways.”

      “Do you know what he did?”

      “You know, I'm not sure he did anything, he was involved in some political actions last year, on the side of those councilors that got arrested. I think it's more due to that, but maybe he got up to something the last few days in town, I really don't know.”

      Katerina was aware of the politicians he was likely referring to, she read the paper daily and closely, and she'd see a lot of them in the stopping into the restaurant regularly as well.

      He took a moment to sip the tea, and to look up at the law-courts against the evening sky. Katerina rested her arm on his back, and rested her hand on his shoulder, giving it a rub.

      “Hey, we'll figure something out, we will.”



      David Rencit was sitting at his desk, reading through some letters, when he came on envelope with a typewritten address, from a Kyle Chulnak, Attorney at Law, the return address was a post-office box in Charleswood. He didn't think he'd come across this lawyer before, which was a little unusual.

      “Dear Mr. Rencit, I'm writing to you on behalf of my client, Alex Roche, who you may be aware is currently in detention, possibly in relation to some political agitation he was believed to be party to.

      “First, I want to assure you with all sincerity, that the details of this letter have been shared with no one, and have be keep in confidence between myself and my client.

      “That said, my client does have information related to some plans of yours, that may be of interest to you. He knows about the plans for the union mergers, the changes to the ownership legislation for union projects, as well as the names of specific firms and industrialists who have a stake in these plans.”

      The letter laid out a list of names and the details of their alleged business and political plans. It was not entirely accurate, and there didn't seem to be an evidence behind these claims, but it was close enough to get Rencit's heart pounding. How would anyone have known about this? Alex Roche – was this a relative of Bill Roche? Hadn't he be gone for over a year now, and how would anyone in his old office have known about any of this anyways? Whenever David had met with anyone to discuss this in public, and even at home for that matter, they had always been vague and spoken in pretty much in code. He didn't think they had left any sort of paper trail either, it had all been face-to-face meetings, away from their offices.

      The letter continued, “I want to stress that my client has no interest in releasing any of this information, or having any further involvement in political action. He has been employed learning a trade for almost a year now, and would like to continue along that path. Your help in securing his release, so that he could continue his work in his union would be greatly appreciated.”

      David folded the letter. This wasn't the only leak he was dealing with, and once the deals were done they'd be on safer ground, the danger was in being derailed by the public before things were completed. He let out a sigh. It was so much trouble to arrange all this, but in the end, this was how the city was going to stay afloat, it was about investment and not about re-distribution schemes. The communal types would end up creating fair shares of a disappearing pie. Without opening some new industry, all the activity would move up north. Times were changing, and the city had to find new niches in which to compete.

      David calmed himself and considered the letter. It didn't seem that bad, they did not seem eager to go to the papers with this. He appreciated the tone, their deference and tact.


      In mid-December, on the edges of a crowd that was gathering at the markets and shipping yards near the docks at where the Red River and the Assiniboine met, Alex and Katerina were setting up a concession stand. It had become a ritual in the city to see off the last shipping boat of the season, before the rivers froze over for the winter. Things quieted down a little after that, as in mid-summer, there were less goods coming and going from the city, people focused on keeping their houses warm for the cold spell. Katerina and Alex set up a little iron channel holding some hot charcoal that they rested skewers across, a few pieces of meat alternating with vegetables, over which they squeezed some lemon juice, chili flakes, and salt. Philip was sitting nearby on a short brick wall that held the hill back from the pathway, watching the people in the crowds.

      Since his release, Philip had kept Alex's name off of union paperwork as a precaution, and Alex had spent time working on the woks, and learning the cooking style of Katerina's restaurant. Philip still took Alex out on jobs as needed, he still planned to see Alex through his apprenticeship, regardless of the difficulties. He had begun to set up a shop in one of the vacant spaces in the buildings surrounding the restaurant's courtyard, coming and going through the same gate that the deliveries passed through. Philip made some of the deliveries himself, the work at the restaurant allowed him to be a little more discerning as to the jobs he took on, which were growing a little scarce anyways.

      With Alex taking on more of the kitchen tasks, Katerina resumed something more like her old schedule, watching over the accounts and the correspondences, and dealing with the bookstore and the specialized requests of it's clients once again. In these uncertain times, they didn't know how well, or for how long, this arrangement would work. Philip had some ideas of maybe opening a repair shop, or maybe dealing in scrap metal. And if it didn't end up working at all, maybe they could leave and try their luck up north, under Rose's wing.

       Katerina left Alex to deal with the cooking and the crowd, and in the light winter snowfall, went to sit beside Philip. She leaned on to his shoulder, he placed a kiss on her head.