No Great Mischief by Alistair Macleod

Author:Alistair Macleod [MacLeod, Alistair]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Historical, Adult, Contemporary
ISBN: 9780393049701
Publisher: Vintage
Published: 1999-09-30T04:00:00+00:00

Outside the camp gates and beyond the posts of the security guards, there existed another world. No one was legally allowed within the camp gates unless an identification card or badge number could be produced, indicating the company of employment. To the security guards in their small plywood huts, there came a constant stream of people with a variety of petitions and requests. Some were looking for work and had driven in over the rough and rocky roads encouraged only by the possibilities of speculation. Others had hitchhiked in and stood with their backpacks at their feet, the sweat-blotched outlines of the packs still visible on their shirts. Others were looking for real or invented relatives: brothers, cousins, boyfriends, men who had not paid their child support. Some were there to collect debts. Some were looking only for a meal. “No,” said the security guards over and over again. “No badge number, no entry.” “No, I don’t have a master list of everyone who works here.” “No, I don’t know if anyone is hiring now. You’ll have to go back to Sudbury and register there at the Unemployment Office.” “No, I don’t know any tall dark man with a missing finger and a scar running down his cheek.” “No, I don’t recall anybody by that name.” “No, you can’t go in just to have a look around.” “No, there is no need to leave a message here, because I can’t deliver it.” “No, I told you the same thing yesterday.” “No, I can’t let you in even if you give me twenty dollars.”

Farther outside the camp gates a primitive parking lot had been hastily bulldozed out of the bush. Amidst the overturned boulders and the uprooted stumps waited the automobiles of the few employees who considered it worthwhile to own them, as well as the cars of uncertain visitors. At the edge of the parking lot and strewn along the roadside were other smashed and abandoned vehicles which had been bulldozed to one side or the other. Most of these had been stripped of their licence plates by former owners who wished to avoid detection, and many of them now served as temporary shelters or primitive places of commerce. Out of the abandoned cars and those of the visitors came individuals who offered products and services for sale. Pedlars sold work shirts and gloves for prices lower than those of the commissary within the gates. There were men with trays of rings and watches, and others with pornographic pictures and various sexual gadgets. The nervous, suspicious bootleggers were always there, constantly looking over their shoulders as they offered cases of warm beer they had secreted among the tree stumps, or jugs of wine or bottles of liquor at twice the legal price. In some of the cars sat young native girls from the reservations who had come looking for money and perhaps adventure and excitement. Sometimes they sat on the hoods of the cars in the hot summer sun, sitting on blankets spread to absorb the hood metal’s heat.

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