Jackfish

On the bus that left from the mall, I sat across from a native guy wearing a Pink Floyd prism t-shirt. He sprawled across three seats like he owned the place and since he was a tough-looking, shaved-head, scarred-up hefty guy, nobody took exception to him occupying whatever space he wanted.  Halloween was a few days away and as we passed through a suburban neighbourhood with pumpkins, witches, and skeletons on porches, he said. "I like to see them little ghosts and goblins coming to the door."
Nobody else was sitting in that section of the bus so he was either talking to himself or to me. I was surprised to hear him embrace a white man's festival but native cultures had ceremonies of their own like the braid bundle dance for remembering the dead. His childhood experience of Halloween probably wasn't different from mine even if he'd grown up on a reserve.  The one near my hometown could be mistaken for any group of houses in a small subdivision with their carports, cathedral entrances, and living-room picture windows.  The handmade costumes the kids wore would be the same. "My favourite part of Halloween," I said, "was the candy."
I was relieved he didn't go off on a naturalist tangent about apples, granola bars, and bags of sunflower seeds.  We both liked the sugar rush.  I thought the conversation was over and that we had been like insects briefly touching antennae to make sure the other wasn't a threat before we went on our way.
"There's a lot of pickups for sale cheap," he said.  
"Maybe they can't afford the gas," I suggested.  "Or they're people's second vehicles and the insurance is too expensive."
"I'm going to get me a 150," he said and I knew he was talking about a Ford 150 because I once owned one.
"It's a good time to buy if they're cheap,"  I said.
"I won't use it for a while," he said, "but it will get me to Regina."
Regina could have been his home, or near his home, or maybe he had a girlfriend there. I wondered why he wouldn't use it right away and figured it was probably because he had to earn the money for the trip first, or his drivers license might be suspended.  With his forthright, calm, yet defiant manner, I wouldn't want to see him drunk and if he was, it wouldn't be easy for a sober person to convince him to surrender the keys to his truck.  
  When our bus turned onto a street whose one side bordered a  meandering coastal waterway, we both looked out at the alluring sparkle of sun on the still water and he said,  "I'd like a boat.  Maybe do some fishing."
"This wouldn't be the best place for it," I said. "It's polluted."
He didn't comment so I continued.  "All those houses on the opposite shore had septic tanks before they were connected to the sewers.  When the tide is low you can hardly get through it with a rowboat or a canoe because it's choked with seaweed." I knew the overgrowth of seaweed was promoted by phosphorus and nitrogen, not only from years of septic fields under the green lawns that sloped down to the water, but from the chemical fertilizers that were thrown around like they were sand.  Phosphorus and nitrogen in themselves were not poisonous but with such a concentration of runoff from these suburban houses, it wasn't clear what other chemicals had found their way into the water.  I wouldn't be inclined to eat a fish from there.  No doubt my bus companion knew more about fishing than me, and was thinking about what clever creatures the fish were who lurked among the underwater forest of seaweed.
"I go for jackfish," he said. "My mum's got a picture of me wrestling one out of the water."  He allowed himself a trace of a smile for the first time, either in memory of his mother or the pride he felt at besting a monster.
"I don't know what jackfish are," I said.  "I don't think we have them out on the coast."
"We can't eat ours," he said.  "They're poisoned with mercury."
Unfortunately I wasn't surprised to hear this.  Although there were jackfish in fresh water all over Canada, his home territory in Saskatchewan must have had industries that dumped their waste into the rivers and lakes.
"My back's shot," he said.  
I wasn't sure if eating tainted fish could give someone a bad back but mercury probably didn't do much good for the bones.
"Twenty years doing rebar did it in," he said. "It hurts just to sit down."
Sprawling across the bus seats wasn't a demonstration of macho ownership after all.  The man was in pain.
 "The things we have to do for a buck," I said.
"I had to quit," he said. "I'm a flagman now."
"That's a boring job," I said.  "Stuck out on a road somewhere.  And all those idiot drivers."
"It beats the hell out of rebar," he said.
People didn't usually engage in conversations with strangers on city buses and as more people got on, we were aware they were listening.
"I'm helping a friend remodel his house," he said.  It seemed like he was trying to tell me he was gainfully employed in something more complicated than setting rebar or flagging traffic.  "Been working on it for a while now."
I wondered if he was expecting me to ask him to remodel my house. He'd boast about how he'd picked up business on the bus by being more talkative with a white guy than he usually was.  Networking they called it, and he had been around, so why not try it?  Unfortunately I don't have a house nor any need of remodelling so I had no use for his non-specific talent.  Was he a carpenter, a plumber, an electrician, a drywaller or a roofer?  Or could he turn his hand to all of them.  People who grew up in the country learned to do some of everything.
I don't ask him about house remodelling and he lapses into silence as if he has wasted his time talking to me.  When I get off the bus I say goodbye to him but he won't even look at me and I don't want to insist.

We live in a world that is being progressively poisoned and perhaps one day soon the only food available to the poor will be ultra-processed, pre-cooked,  pre-packaged, and long-lasting - so durable it can be used in place of currency.  Fresh foods would be limited to the well-off who had the money to buy food products raised in protectively scrubbed atmospheres that filter out the toxins.  These people would be healthier not only because of their healthy diet but also because they would have access to better medical care.

Media would be segregated into rational correct information, which would only be accessible to those with money, while those without, could only access media that was so cluttered with misleading advertising and cultural misinformation it would be useless.

It would only take a large enough meteor to land at an inconvenient spot to knock out the global digital network and local power networks that rely heavily on computers to operate. Waterwheels have been superseded by giant hydro-electric plants that are digitally controlled. People would soon find themselves without supplies to meet their basic needs. Parks would soon be stripped of firewood, petroleum products would no longer be available because there is no way to transport the raw materials let alone process them. There would be looting and gang warfare for dominance.  In the midst of the chaos it would be impossible for people to find what they need and there would be mass starvation. Our modern societies are a whisker away, a chance trajectory of a rock in space, from reverting to the primitive tribes they once were. The native man on the bus was only a couple of generations away from those times.

I recently watched a Netflix series called "Unlocked" that experimented with giving prisoners who had been kept in their cells for 23 hours a day, open cell doors and free access to their common area whenever they wanted.  After their isolation there were hiccups along the way as they learned how to live among other men again.  After several missteps, order was restored by reminding the prisoners by example that they would be locked up again if they didn't learn to get along.  A few men stepped up as mediators and had some success in bringing factions and individuals together, but these civic minded men were often criticized by the others because they had learned to mistrust of the motives of authority.   

In an environment where money was not available, the men found ways  to acquire the extras they wanted by using a barter system.  Not only could they hoard their commissary rations and leftover food to trade for preferred items, but they made alcohol out of carbohydrates, and cigarettes from paper towels soaked in coffee.  With almost everything taken away from them and reduced to a primitive barter system, the prisoners found ways to survive and coexist.  Mostly composed of fierce individuals who for various reasons had never fit the standard role society had chosen for them, they were joyful at their first taste of freedom with responsibility, like it was a thing they had created themselves.  Eventually the more intransigent ones, usually the youngest, finally understood if they surrendered even the smallest piece of their egos, they could live in peace and safety.  If global systems did shut down, after a difficult period of adjustment, people would find a way to live and eventually to thrive.  Primitive man had done it and if modern man was left alive after a catastrophe, he could also adapt to his circumstances.

There will always be young people full of the juice of injustice who will let emotion rule them and will go for the nuclear option even if it kills them.  They are young and believe they have no future anyway so it doesn't matter if the world burns.  Mature voices suggest it might be better to live humbly and work from the inside to change what is possible because if the young destroy their societies, they won't necessarily die in the struggle but will be forced to live in even harsher conditions.  Those with experience suggest it is better to keep what little they have and make the best of it rather than torch everything and kill everyone.  In adverse conditions, animals hunker down and wait for less harsh times.  With the human's illogical polarized strategy of all-or-nothing, one side would technically win the war but there would be nobody left alive to acknowledge the victory because everyone would be dead.  The prisoners in the open jail understood it was better to cooperate for the common good, but the polluters and the nuclear adversaries don't know, or don't care what happens to humanity.