'I'm not a bad man.'

Mark told himself this every morning whether he had the time to or not. Some days he wanted to hear it more than others, especially when he wanted to block out that his life was tinged in the blood of others. Today he needed it.

'I have my doubts,' he thought, 'but if I was evil, people would treat me that way, wouldn't they? But they don't, instead I have a house in the suburbs, a beautiful wife, and once a week I go to the block barbecue. This is not the life of a bad person.'

Mark refused to get out of bed, instead he preferred to just lay there under the wife's two hundred dollar greyish blue bed sheets. Getting out of bed would mean having to start his day and that was something he wasn't ready to do just yet. Maybe he was getting old, but at forty-four he knew he had quite a few more years left and he kept himself in relatively good shape.

Or maybe just worn out, at the end of most nights he felt drained from the day but he was starting to notice that he'd wake up that way. It was as if gravity had doubled in strength around just him in particular, everybody else seemed unaffected.

He sighed then decided he couldn't hide in his room forever and shoved off the blankets.

Mark stood shirtless in front of the sink with a healthy coat of shaving cream smeared on his face. His focus was on the sharp edge of the razor blade that he held under the running water. He wondered how people used them to kill themselves; yes they were sharp but surrounded by plastic. Maybe they break them.

He brought it up and started to scrape the whiskers and cream off methodically. Once done he checked to make sure his hair was symmetrical. There was grey at the temples but short enough not to stand out; his attention went to the glint of red that came over his right shoulder. The top of a tattoo he put there when he was twenty-two. He knew without being able to see it that it said 'Indian Killer,' underneath he had the Washington Redskins head done with a line through it. Since then, over the years, he had five more heads drawn out; each one a representation of someone he personally killed. Initially it was a source of pride and a reminder of what he's done but more recently, it was a reminder of what he's become.

"You know how much water you're wasting?" Amanda said as she came into the room, moving to put the plug in the sink. She was the wife he reminded himself that he had, to make himself feel better. Sexy; literally the girl next door, from his teenage years, that grew up into the lean, sultry woman behind him, with long chestnut brown hair.

"Says the woman about to take her fourth shower this week," He said back, noticing the winter robe she wore as she leaned on his shoulder.

"That's not unusual."

"It's Tuesday," He smirked. She smiled back and kissed him on the cheek before moving to the shower.

"I don't have any time for baths, Mark; but putting in a plug doesn't cost you anything." She pulled the curtains aside.

"Comparatively, is all I'm saying. Am I really wasting so much water?" He asked, shutting down the water as he rinsed off the razor.

"Comparatively? Comparatively you can make anything look good by putting it next to something that's bad enough." She turned on the water in the tub, letting it run over her hand as she waited for it to heat up.

"You could," He said more to himself than her.

"But you're still wasting water," She turned back to look at him and noticed that she lost him. "Hello?"

He came out of his daze and looked over at her. "Yeah?"

"You're thinking what now?" She asked.

"You can't even compare it to systematically killing six million Jews," He said as a matter of fact, and she knew that he wasn't talking about the plug anymore.

"No, probably not, but all the same just put in the damn plug, ‘kay?" Amanda said, hitting the switch that flipped the water to the showerhead. She ignored that feeling deep down of wanting to talk about what they both knew, what hanged in the air between them; it was better left alone.

Amanda made up a quick breakfast of scrambled eggs and toast for the two of them. She wished that she had more culinary experience. He needed some sort of pick me up. She considered using sex but she already showered and was dressed in her best suit for work.

Mark came down the stairs a few minutes later also dressed for work, Amanda paused when she saw which suit he was wearing. Mark spent a lot of time working out of the office and had several suits for it; mostly blues and greys depending on how casual he wanted to be. Today he was dressed in black; a black dress shirt with black khakis and before he left he would grab his leather jacket. It's an outfit that he hid in the back of the closet, and there's only one reason he would ever bring it out.

Amanda frowned and moved to intercept him before he reached the front door.

"Hey, I'm making eggs," She said to grab his attention.

"I don't have time, Ryan's waiting on me," He said as he grabbed his jacket.

"Wait, hey, wait."

Mark turned back as she came up on him. "What?"

The sharpness of his question caused her to pull up, but she grabbed his shoulders and moved in to kiss him. It was long and sensual before she pulled back. "Have to redo my lipstick, but well worth it."

"What was that for?" Mark asked after a moment.

"No reason." She smiled.

"Liar."

"Just be home at five," Amanda moved toward the kitchen.

"For more of that?"

"Only if you and my mom have a thing I don't know about." She said to Mark’s disappointment. He wasn't a fan of his mother-in-law, and she would be the last person he had a secret anything with. He considered her a petty and sick woman.

"When again?" He asked.

"Five."

"I'll be lucky if I can get home by six," he lied.

"She's here till eight."

"Perfect," Mark smirked to himself, he paused to take a look at his house; two floors, two garages with wood flooring. It reminded him of the best parts of a Sears catalogue. He considered himself lucky that this was his life, but what he and Amanda avoided saying out loud was what this life cost. And who's paying the most for it?

He headed out the door.

The nearest reserve to Vancouver was three hours east of the city, out where the farmland transformed into mountains and forests. There used to be several reserves around that blended into the city such as The Capilano reserve or The Squamish First Nations but after the first uprisings, the government felt it was too dangerous to have Indians near civilized society.

Jacob remembered when the Government’s Relocation project occurred, he was only five at the time but it's not something easily forgotten. It was seared into his brain. They waited until just after midnight so there would be as few cars on the highway as possible. A convoy of police cruisers came in first with their red and blue lights lighting up the reserve, the trucks hauling the military reserves followed by yellow school buses.

Jacob was already awake watching the lights come through his window, marveling at the colour spectrums. That was when his mother burst through the door shouting, she grabbed his clothes and pushed them into a suitcase. He didn't remember the face of the man following her just that he wore a military uniform and carried a large assault rifle. He told her to pack lite as they were only allowed one case for each family; that didn't leave much room for Jacob, his two sisters and their mother.

They were given ten minutes to put what they could together and then the Soldier, along with two of his friends, escorted their family out onto the road. There they huddled with their cousins, aunts and other family members. The remaining men were moved to their own area away from the women and children. Jacob remembered the men were fewer but had twice as many escorts.

Over the next half hour Jacob and his family were moved slowly toward the buses, along the way someone came by and put tags around their necks with their reserve and status numbers on them. Another person came along with a digital scanner to read the bar codes before moving on.

His mother lifted Jacob as she moved his sisters and herself up the steps onto the bus; their assigned seat was near the back. It was another hour before the 'ok 'was given by the police to move out. The doors closed with several Military Reserve troops still aboard and the engines started. Jacob remembered staring out the window as his bus pulled out onto the highway, as his home disappeared into the distance behind the red and blue flashes of their police escort.

That morning nearly five thousand First Nations people were moved three hundred kilometers east. They were joined by another six thousand throughout the valley on their way to their new home.

It wasn't given a name, people just called it what it was. The Reserve. Twenty years later it was the home to twenty thousand natives on fifteen square kilometers in third world conditions. Electricity was limited, there were no phones or Internet and clean water was literally a pipe dream.

Now twenty-five Jacob lived near the river with his mother and surviving sister. The eldest sister passed away at thirteen from an anti-biotic resistant strain of TB; not that she was given antibiotics. Instead they cut out her lung and sent her home with an open cavity under her right arm with instructions to keep it dry. Over the next four months the doctors would come out to check on her and record their findings, but eventually she succumbed.

So many people died during that outbreak, one that lasted three years. So many bodies were burned...

Their home now was a two bedroom shack that they didn't even bother painting. It was held together only because Jacob learned early to canvas for wood scraps that him and his mother used for repairs.

It was the same with fishing; today he was using the remains of two nets he found on the riverbank that he used to repair the net he had strung up in his yard. An otter had cut the string to get at the salmon inside, allowing every other fish to get out. That was a major set back as Jacob was designated the fisherman for five hungry families.

His stomach dropped when he saw the Lincoln pull up to the front of the house. It was black and shiny in appearance; a sharp contrast to the dirt road. He knew who it was, who else around here would have a car.

Indian Agents.