instead, we should have a Kill the Rapists walk.”
“Or just a Kill the Men walk.”
“So,” Spike asked once they were out and standing on the sidewalk, “best ever pain au chocolat?”
“Well, no. We went over that this morning, remember?”
Spike groaned.
“Probably best ever.”
5
For a while on the following day, they passed not much of anything, and Spike thought about heading to the secondary, more scenic and more full-of-interesting-places-to-stop-at, highways. There must be something worth seeing or doing on the way from Montreal to Paris.
“Let’s go to Boston,” Jane said. After just five minutes of googling.
“Before or after Paris?”
“Monday. There’s this place, Chantal’s. It’s a restaurant, but every Monday they have an allyoucaneat chocolate buffet. Twenty bucks a person.”
“Really?”
“Isn’t that cool? An allyoucaneat chocolate buffet!”
“Boston it is. Find us an interesting route though,” she added.
“On it …”
Almost as soon as they’d turned onto a secondary road, a cigarette butt flew out of the driver’s window of the car ahead of them. A minute later, the plastic lid of a cup. Jane had her phone ready when the empty Timbits carton came flying out.
“You got the licence plate in focus?”
“Yup.”
“Gonna send the picture to the OPP?”
“Yup. No—what’s the OPP in Quebec?” She googled.
A balled up napkin came out next.
“That’ll cost him, what, five hundred dollars?”
“A thousand.”
And then an empty cup.
“It boggles the mind, doesn’t it?” Jane said. “They throw their shit out of their cars, their boats, their space ships with such—ease. Do they think it just vanishes into thin air? It’s like they have no concept of context. No concept of attachment. Their perception of their independence is so …”
A not-yet-empty KFC carton hit the road. Spike swerved unsuccessfully to miss it.
“And yet they’re able enough to see their vehicles as extensions of themselves,” Jane reconsidered. “Maybe it’s because they’re so visually oriented,” she suggested a moment later. “If the garbage they tossed overboard, for example, floated on the surface of the lake … Though it’s amazing what they don’t see even when it’s right in front of them.”
A plastic bag whirled out narrowly missing their windshield.
“Or, no, maybe it’s an expression of contempt. For the other. Have you notice that men don’t set down their garbage. They always toss it.”
Spike nodded. “ ‘Look at me, I don’t give a fuck.’ ”
“So, what, caring about others is for sissies?”
“So is cleaning up after yourself. That’s what Mom does. Mom’s a woman. So to pick up after oneself is womanly. Emasculating.”
“That sounds right … We do know that most littering is done by men.”
When the small tv came flying out of his window, Spike leaned on the horn, sped up beside him, and forced him off the road.
“What’s your problem?” the man shouted as he got out of his car, slamming his door shut.
“You are my problem!” Spike shouted back, as she too got out. Jane continued recording as she went around behind him, casually reached in, and extricated his car keys.
“The world is not your private dump!” Spike said. “Whatever made you think it was?”
“What?”
“You’re tossing your garbage out your window like you expect someone else to come along behind you and clean up after you. What are you, two?”
“What?”
“What do you think happens to all your shit?”
“The animals’ll get it, don’t worry about it.”
“Since when do animals eat cigarette butts, plastic, cardboard, and paper? And frickin’ tvs? The cardboard’s going to take a couple years to decompose, and the plastic’s going to sit where it landed forever.”
“Well, unless he goes back and picks it up,” Jane said, off-hand.
“Yeah. Why don’t you do that?”
“Fuck you!” He got back in his car and, as they drove past him, discovered what was missing. Besides part of his brain.
“Did you notice the little Canadian flag flying from his antenna?” Jane asked.
“I did.” Spike sighed. “Canada produces more garbage per person than any other country in the OECD. And that’s not counting all the shit that flies out of car windows.
“We are second worst when it comes to nitrogen oxide emissions, we are second worst when it comes to sulphur oxide emissions, we are second worst when it comes to greenhouse gas emissions, and we are dead last when it comes to volatile organic compound emissions.
“We consume more water per capita than every other country except the States, and we use more energy and generate more pollution to produce a given amount of goods and services than almost all of the other countries.
“Korea’s doing better than us. Not to mention Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Finland, Switzerland, Austria, the Netherlands, Germany, Japan, Italy, the UK, New Zealand, Spain, Greece, France, Ireland, the Czech Republic, Portugal, Australia, Luxembourg, Iceland, and Belgium.”
“You’ve got these things memorized?” Jane asked.
“I do.” Spike sighed. “For all the good it’s done.”
Jane stared out the window.
“We are hogs,” Spike summarized then. “We are stupid, don’t-give-a-damn pigs. We’re the ones to blame for so much of this climate change—the heat waves, the floods, the droughts, the high food prices. Our fault.”
Jane
