I sat behind the crisp modern desk, which held not a single personal item of mine, as it was company policy. Plastered on the wall behind me, in great letters, was the temp agency's name, Champion City Staffing. Arranged on the ample workspace were pamphlets, various job-hunting literature, resources for non-native speakers. Did I mention I'd been seeing a lot of those lately? Some of their passports said Chile, but they were all coming from Haiti by the droves. Often, their English was so bad, and since we couldn't afford an on-site interpreter, we had to give them some information on learning English and send them on their way.

That day, a couple came in. I could tell from the man's accent that they spoke Creole, that they were from Haiti. They had a young child with them, a boy of maybe three or four years old, who wore a Phillies cap. His mother wore a form-fitting dress and flats. The man handed me an application, which was for his wife, who never spoke to me, or looked me in the eye, now that I thought about it. He handed me her permanent resident and social security cards, a photo ID issued in Florida. I took the documents, signed them in, and started on her profile. They were the only ones in the lobby, as it was still early in the day. A few minutes later, a worker in the back (a pudgy older man I didn't much care for) summoned the woman to her pre-screening interview. Her husband said something to her in Creole, and she rose to meet my co-worker. Given that she had remained silent, I wondered how she would fare. Several minutes passed while her husband and their child waited for her in the lobby. The boy began to wail, but the man shushed him.

"You speak Creole?" I asked him.

"Oui," he said, then correcting himself, "yes."

"From Haiti?"

"Oui."

"How did you get here?"

"We drive. We have apartment."

One of the theories surrounding the influx of Haitians was Ohio's generous assistance, at least compared to other states. It wasn't uncommon to see newly-arrived Haitians decked out in designer clothes, Louis Vuitton, Gucci, Prada, but I wasn't sure if they were knockoffs or the real deal. I wasn't rude enough to ask, or arrogant enough to assume. Apparently, families received a one-time sum of around $2,000 to furnish their living space, and then $1,500 a month for each person, so they were living quite comfortably, or so one would imagine. Corruption lurked everywhere in this country. Their money was fodder for the underworld, just like the rest of us. Add in a considerable smattering of manufacturing jobs (with entry-level positions with decent wages), and my area became a haven for Haitian refugees.

"I meant how did you get here from Haiti?"

"We take a boat. If you have the possibility, if you have passport, in my country, you can go. Is easy." His accent colored his speech with that French tendency to make long E's of the I's: possibility become po-see-bee-lih-tee.

"Why not fly straight here?"

"Not easy. Some fly to Chile and walk to United States." This was a journey that surely spanned months and several territories. Making the journey on foot seemed impossible to me then, but according to that man, many had performed the seemingly superhuman feat, some with children in tow. Imagine trekking across a hostile and unfamiliar landscape, littered with crooked police and bandits, surely gang-controlled territory, all to set foot in the so-called land of opportunity.

"Why can't you fly straight here?" I repeated my question, since he hadn't really answered it.

"Not easy," he said. I felt that was all I was going to get out of him, so I switched topics.

"Why did you leave?"

"How you say, the gangster, is so bad."

"The gangs?" I'd heard a little bit about the gang situation in Haiti on the news. Earlier that year, two rival gangs had overtaken "90%" of the capital, Port Au Prince. One of the gangs, called G-9, was reportedly run by a former officer, so it had ties to the police and the military. Another gang, formed in opposition to G-9, was called G-Pep. All that I could find about its leadership was it may have been an "unknown businessman."

"Yes, the gangs, they kill my people," he said, learning new words on the fly. He was clever; that's why his English was passable, broken as it was. At least he was trying.

"What did you do in Haiti, for work?"

"My family, we have business. Good money. I build the windows." Again, the I's turned long E's: family becomes fah-mee-lee.

"A friend of mine does that. He makes decent money." He did, at that. He had the idiosyncrasy of stopping to admire ornate door handles. We hadn't been keeping up as much lately.

"Yes, I come here, I find job." He proudly flashed his ball cap to me, embroidered with the logo of a manufacturing plant about thirty minutes away. He must have been commuting to work, since the address they gave was in Springfield. "I have a family. But my wife, she no speak so good."

"How did you learn to speak English?" I asked him, since he spoke a sight better than any of the Haitians I'd encountered through work.

"Right now, I take classes in, uh, how you say, Columbus." He put a French lilt on the pronunciation. Cuh-lum-bus became Coh-loom-boose. The city, our own state's capital, was at least a 45-minute haul. This man was driving like crazy to make a living. I had to hand it to him, but it also made me think the situation back in his country was less than savory.

"You were born in America?" he asked me.

"Yes," I answered nonchalantly, but he responded with a look of awe.

"Oh, that's really great," he said. It wowed me to find that my Americanness was a source of wonder for someone, but I figured their time there was running short.

"Look," I said, hoping to turn the mood serious without frightening him, "With all this going on in the news, you have to be careful." His friendly smile faded as he recognized the gravity of my words. I never do this, but something compelled me, and I wrote down my personal number on a post-it and gave it to him. "If something happens, feel free to call me. I might be able to help." He took the note as one might a business card, admiring it with a sparkle in his eye before tucking it away in the pocket of his jeans.

The woman came from the backroom, shaking her head at her husband, tears welling in her eyes. They had declined to hire her, probably given her poor or non-existent English skills. She hadn't even made it to the tax paperwork and the drug screen, but they didn't look like dopers to me. I thought of referring them to another agency, but after considering the rumors of terrible working and living conditions they foisted on their temps, I decided against it.

"Good luck," I said to them, as they stepped out into the daylight.

The next day, the temp agency I worked at, as well as the others, got closed down for the day. The city had been plagued by bomb threats, places all over the city were being temporarily closed, and one finally reached my place of work. Word must have gotten out that they were hiring immigrants. It all started with an offhand comment made during a presidential debate.

The debate was a wash. The younger combatant (who happened to be black and female) made a fool of her catchphrase-spewing opponent (old and white, go figure), who preyed on the basest urges of his followers. It was standard fare, at least as far as the debacle that American politics had become in the first quarter of the 21st century. That is, until the discussion turned to immigrants, as it inevitably would, a touchy subject for decades now, centuries? The older candidate reached into his bag of tricks and pulled out a bombshell from his unconvincing toupee.

"Right here, in our country, in the heartland, Springfield, Ohio, have you heard about this?" The crowd booed, whether they'd actually heard about it, I couldn't be sure. It was news to me. "People, these immigrants, these 'refugees' from Haiti", the bastard actually used air quotes, "They're eating the cats, they're eating the dogs, they're eating our pets, American pets. It's vile." The crowd hissed and booed.

Dread washed over me when I heard my hometown, and place of residence (yes, I was one of those poor saps who never got out) mentioned, on national news, no less. The only other publicity we got, to my recollection, was being one of the most depressed cities in the country based on some poll, which I didn't participate in.

What was that about animals? There was a recent rumor that many of the geese in a local park had disappeared, but I chalked it up to xenophobic nonsense and wondered what he was trying to distract us from. Maybe it was something going on within the city itself. And yet, there it was, for all to see. That one little comment brought a storm down on my city. It was the spark that ignited a powder keg. And boom went the dynamite.

The older candidate won by a landslide. When they announced he'd won, I felt the atmosphere, some quality in the air, change. Just as I had felt it when he had won eight years ago, with an older, bumbling liberal serving a term in between, who happened to have a rape allegation which he allegedly covered up, sealing the report in Pennsylvania somewhere, so it was with considerable guilt that I marked his name on the ballot. But I couldn't stand to vote for the opposition.

In the four years that the new president served before, racially motivated shootings within the country skyrocketed. One even happened in Dayton, a nearby city. But it wasn't just the US. Psychopaths all across the world seemed to answer his thinly veiled anti-non-white rhetoric. Anyone who denied it was blind or suckered in, as far as I was concerned. All of this ran through my mind as they announced the outcome of the election. I felt the next four years looming over me like an unshakable stalker. I think it goes without saying that I voted for the younger candidate. So much for democracy, but alas, I was but one of many.

A series of explosions left many of the buildings downtown in ruins. Whoever had been making the bomb threats seemed to be targeting officials, since they hit City Hall, the courthouse, etc. There were rumors that the bomb threats were coming from "overseas," but on what and whose authority I never dared to inquire.

A news report went out soon after, claiming the attack was orchestrated by Haitian gang lords that had come over with the refugees, who were fighting for control of the city as they had done in Port Au Prince. A state of emergency was declared. Mobile watchtowers patrolled the city, manned by soldiers armed with who knows what, and a strict 9pm curfew was set in place. Citizens were discouraged from leaving their homes.

My phone rang, a number with a Florida area code, but I wasn't sure which area, maybe Broward county, since a friend of mine had recently moved down there. I picked up.

"Yes, my friend, it is me, from before." I recognized the man from the temp agency's voice right away.

"I'm glad you called," I rattled back to him, "Have you heard what's going on?"

"Yes, is very bad for my people. But my wife, the child, we cannot leave. No money."

"You can stay at my house. I have a place I can hide you."

"Oh, thank you, thank you, mèsi. We be there soon."

I had given him my address, and they got dropped off within about fifteen minutes. They seemed experienced at taking their whole lives with them at a moment's notice. I waved them inside, praying no spying eyes were on us, where they set up in the basement.

Armed soldiers, under the guise of immigration enforcers, began to search the neighborhoods. We all knew who they were looking for. It was similar to when they rounded up illegal aliens a few years ago, only that time the target was Mexicans, who had poured into the factories and food processing plants for the livable wages. Unfortunately, most of them were undocumented. The feds raided the workplaces, taking nearly half the workforce. I wondered how they'd handled the major hit that must have been to production. But this new hunt, the hunt for Haitians, was amplified ten-fold. It wasn't just workplaces. They were looking everywhere. They trolled the streets at all hours of the day in Humvees, looking for anyone 'suspicious.'

My basement was unfinished, but it was a hiding place, nonetheless. It had a small, and clearly very old door (the house was built in the 1920's) that led to a tiny dirt-floored room, perhaps intended for cold storage, since the room was quite chilly with its crude stone walls. It was just enough space for them to lay down some blankets and curl up to sleep. I would bring them food during the quietest hours, so I could listen from my vulnerable place underground, away from the front door. It never occurred to me that one of the neighbors may have spotted them coming in, but if they did, they never told. Perhaps they didn't want to get involved.

I wouldn't exactly call myself a doomsday prepper, but I did have an emergency store of food that I kept in the landing that led down into the basement. It served as a useful handing-off point in the days to come.

I spent the first evening with them. I'd brought down a portable TV that I kept from my camping days, and we huddled around the tiny screen. There were reports of more and more Haitians being deported, particularly in Ohio, where we were, and Florida, where my companions had first touched down on American soil. Many Haitians had already fled further north to Canada. I wondered how much the woman and the child were able to glean from the rapid series of foreign words and images.

"No, is wrong," the man said, his English good enough to leave him enraged by the broadcast. "They are sending my people back to the gangster, the gangs." He glanced at me with some contempt in his eyes, but it faded when his eyes found my face. "I don't mean you," he said, with perfect clarity.

"Why don't the police intervene?" I asked him.

"The gangs, they have bigger gun than police. Is no good." He mocked holding a massive gun. "My friend, when I tell you, twenty soldier! Twenty American soldier could stop them, is no problem." He forced a friendly foreigner smile. I hoped he was speaking from a place of naïveté, or maybe flattery, some combination of both, and the problem wasn't so easily solved. Either way, I saw his point. It probably wouldn't be much for the U.S. military to intervene and stabilize the crisis, but I thought it might send a ripple through the geopolitical landscape and spark a world war. There were too many unknown allies and hidden dealings.

I asked him to tell me more about their journey from Haiti. He picked up almost where he had left off at the temp agency.

"To come here, we take a boat. Is not long. When we come, to Florida, we stay, maybe a few days, but a man, he say, 'I take you to place, you get good job and nice house,' I say 'how much,' he say 'fifty dollar,' I say 'okay,' we get in van, we come here." I looked at him in amazement. That must have been the case for many of the Haitians in Springfield, aside from those who walked from South America.

"Some of my family, my other family," I assumed he meant is other family members; he didn't seem like the two-timing type, "They go to the country, to get away." He must have meant the ones who couldn't get a passport. They were fleeing the city to get away from the gangs.

"The gangs, they, how you say, libere?" He spoke the last word in Creole.

"Liberated?" I guessed.

"Yes, mèsi, they liberated the prisoners, in two prisons." I struggled to imagine the chaos that two prisons' worth of inmates could wreak on an unsuspecting city, and I didn't want to press him for details. He continued.

"Yes, and the government, my government, they no give to the people. UN send money, America send money, they no give. Is very bad. That's why we leave. The government and the gangs, they work together." He took two fingers from each of his hands and interlocked them to drive his point home.

We all sat silent during his spiel, even the child, prone as he was to fits of crying. I left the TV with them and made my way upstairs to get some rest.

They remained undetected for several days, during which time I brought them hot water to use for bathing, and of course, their meals, until the woman made a break for it in the middle of the night.

I snapped up from my bed. A gunshot, just one. I rolled down onto the floor and snuck to the window. There, half in the street, was the woman who had taken refuge in my basement. She twitched for a few minutes until she ultimately went limp in a pool of her own blood. I waited for more shots, but none came. She had apparently crept out while the man and child were sleeping and got as far as the sidewalk. She was crumpled on the pavement like a discarded newspaper, apparently still in the clothes she slept in, a pair of sweatpants and a t-shirt. No one came to remove the body or investigate the house. By then, it was too late.

I went to check on them in the basement. The child was crying, and his father was covering his mouth and clutching him to his chest, rocking him. Perhaps they too heard the shot.

"I'm sorry," he said, "She go. I no could tell her. She say you, how you say, suspicious? She say you keep us here, I say no. Her mind, I could not change." I tried to come up with some reason why she decided to flee. Maybe she really did mistrust me, but I took great care to prevent that. I had no ulterior motive for harboring them other than sheer concern for their safety. Maybe she misunderstood the risk I was taking for keeping them there, but I couldn't blame her now.

I saw the futility in his face, though he didn't allow himself to shed tears in front of the boy. As if he had read my mind, he continued.

"The child, he is not mine. The gangs, they go to my people, they rape the women." I wondered why he was telling me this, especially after what just happened. Surely the boy had some semblance of understanding.

"My wife, they raped her. In my country, how you say, terminate les enfant," he struggled for the word.

"Abortion," I said, fearing what came next.

"Yes, it is illegal in my country. A woman, she gets pregnant by the gang, the baby, she must have. I only try to help her. The child is not mine." The boy began to wail, now an orphan in a country that was not his own. I was almost certain that had they remained in Haiti, and the gangs continued their reign, the child would have likely been blackmailed into becoming a member.

Since no one came to clean up the body, I buried her as best I could in the backyard, using an old spade I had lying around. The soil was loose and moist enough, but it still took a good bit of time, most of the morning. Her bereaved widower wanted to say a prayer over her grave, but I couldn't risk him being spotted.

For one horrible moment, I thought of the trouble the boy, with his crying fits, might bring us in the future. I hesitate to relay this, but I contemplated snuffing the boy, one to end his suffering, and two to secure us from the possibility of his crying leading to us being captured. But the thought was replaced by the boy's struggle, how far he had come in spite of his circumstances. It wasn't my place to decide his fate. He was in the hands of my companion, his new keeper.

We watched reports of cities being overtaken by supporters of the president. They referred to themselves as the Trumpers, since they considered themselves to be a political trump card. They were exclusively white males who wore animal fur and wielded primitive weaponry, like axes, maces, and spears. Their armory was devoid of any projectiles; all their brutality was committed by hand, at close range. In spite of this, their sheer numbers allowed them to assert military dominance in several major cities. They were executing all foreigners and enslaving the rest. The report said they had just sacked a sizable city directly to the northeast, Columbus, where my companion had been taking English classes, but they were upon us before the morning.

The Trumpers started with the watchtowers, storming them and ejecting the snipers that hid within. They didn't bother to take their guns. Something told me they were too uncivilized, even for that. I watched out the window as they were mowed down by machine guns, but they just kept coming, fueled as they were by hate.

While the Trumpers were sacking the city, I found they were strangely impotent, at least regarding 'their own kind,' as I unfortunately was and am a white male. Brazen and perhaps a bit stir crazy, I strode boldly out my front door to confront them. They did nothing to me, I suffered not a scratch. In fact, they paid me little mind at all. All they seemed able to utter was a frenzied, "Aghh, where are they?" ad nauseum. I rushed back into the house with a plan.

"We have to go," I said. Without another word, we packed our meager belongings into parcels we could carry and made our leave of the house. As long as I created a shield around the man, who held the child, we managed to go unharmed, and eventually even unnoticed, as they struck off to their next insurrection, their next conquest.

I knew of a farmhouse a few miles out of the city, a property that was rented out as a shooting range. The locusts were hissing noisily in our ears, a phenomenon that only occurs every seven years or so, as we made our way to the house. We saw a light on inside, perhaps a candle, but it was snuffed out.

"Who goes there?" a man on the porch shouted. He had an English accent, but don't expect me to identify which region; us Americans are not so worldly.

"Just me," I said, "And two other travelers, a man and a child. We are without arms and come in peace. We seek refuge."

"Well come in, for chrissakes, it's bound to be bloody dangerous out there."

It turned out he was a journalist from Brighton sent to cover the story of the immigrant crisis in Springfield. I remembered seeing the odd foreign-looking reporter, his tie flapping with the flow of traffic as he stood reporting by the roadside, but of course it was hard to spot a white Brit from a distance. We may have even crossed paths before. He was able to communicate with his country via satellite phone, but the area was still too hot for extraction. They told him to sit tight.

"How did you find this place?" I asked him.

"Mate, it's bloody unbelievable, but I thought about those Haitians who fled the capital, the ones who couldn't make it out of the country. Where did they go? Into the countryside. That's how I found it, I'm smart like you guys," he said, jabbing my companion in a hammy show of camaraderie. I hoped his English was sharp enough to grasp that this man was full of shit.

"They sent me here to report on rumors of animals being consumed, but I unearthed something much deeper, much darker." He didn't give us time to interject. "Here, in this unremarkable American city," that one stung a little, but I guessed he was right, "I discovered an elaborate human trafficking ring. A wealthy realtor, who happens to own one of the staffing agencies in the city, was having them shipped here in unmarked vans, straight off the boat in Florida. Some sources say they were picked up off street corners." My refugee friend's recounting of his journey was ringing in my head. Remarkably, the boy remained silent during his speech. He may not have been the best journalist, but I could see him grabbing people's interest on TV with his compelling delivery. He was clearly getting a head-start on his thrilling exposé. Little did he know it was old news to us. I savored the irony of a newsman with no breaking story. He continued, nonetheless.

"And furthermore, that very same wealthy realtor has since fled the country, fearing that the endless death threats would one day be fulfilled." Although I was a little taken aback, and scornful of the multi-millionaire for his clean escape, there was nothing overtly shocking in his rundown.

We listened to his satellite phone over the coming days as we received developments from England. The Trumpers had taken most of the country, and it was deemed necessary for foreign involvement. The French military flew in soldiers, all for a fight over American soil. I wondered if they gave the statue of Liberty an ironic wave as they came over in planes to spill blood.

With much loss of life on both sides of the conflict, the Trumpers were finally pushed back. The U.S. president made a final decree. He had resigned, but not before implementing an executive order, his final trump card, that rendered the United States now a part of Canada, apparently as part of an eventual merger with Mexico to usher in a unified worldwide currency, claiming that the embarrassing military defeat of his followers by the French was an unshakable embarrassment, saying finally, "We may as well join those pussies. Au revoir." Those were his last words before he was escorted shortly to prison, where he spent the rest of his days, surely calling shots from the inside and maintaining his many businesses.

I turned to my companions in the abandoned house and shrugged.

"Well, I guess we're Canadian now?"

"Not me, mate, I'm getting the hell out of here," the reporter said.

The child's cries resounded through the farmhouse, and again, the Haitian man, a man he held no blood ties to, quieted him. The three of us were citizens, at least. It couldn't be all bad. But nothing could bring the boy's mother back, not even a sudden change in nationality. We looked around at that brand new country of ours, though nothing much had changed, perhaps a bit more peace.

---

G. W. McClary is a native of Ohio, with a B.A. in literature. His stories have appeared in The Yard: Crime Blog and Pulp Lit Mag, and are forthcoming in Timada's Diary, Mystic Mind, Mobius Blvd, and Schlock! webzine.