Fever Season (8 page)

Even with what his mother was earning and the pay the army sent home from his father, money was tight. So David's mother came up with a plan to make a few extra dollars. The people at home were always being asked to sacrifice for the war effort. Mostly, this meant saving food. David had seen the posters all over Montreal.
WE ARE SAVING YOU
.
YOU
SAVE
FOOD
said one of the signs, and there was a picture of a stern-looking soldier. Another sign read:
WELL-FED SOLDIERS
WILL WIN
THE
WAR
.

Other posters urged Canadians to buy fresh fish.
SAVE THE MEAT FOR OUR SOLDIERS
, these signs said. People were also warned that they could be fined for hoarding flour and sugar. Material for clothing was also important and had to be conserved. Even for the families who could afford to buy new clothes whenever they wanted, mending their old ones became a patriotic duty. But with so many women working while the men were in the army, there wasn't always time for sewing. So David's mother began earning extra money by taking in mending for other families in the neighbourhood. She did those sewing jobs in the evenings and on weekends. With David's help she was able to get a lot done.

David didn't need to feel bad about sewing now. He was doing his bit for the war effort! Even soldiers in the army were issued with sewing kits as part of their gear. Of course, they usually referred to their kits as “housewives” but still … If soldiers sometimes had to do their own sewing, how much shame could there be in doing it at home?

Most nights, after Alice went to bed, David sat with his mother and they sewed together. She had brought home an old sewing machine from the hat factory and used it for big jobs. David did most of the small repairs by hand. Often when they were working his mother told David stories about when she was a girl back in Ireland. One night she told him how she and her brother had come to Canada.

“Your Uncle Danny and I weren't really orphans like your father,” she said. “We still had our mother.”

David was surprised.

“It wasn't uncommon,” his mother said. “It still isn't. Even here in Canada there are many children who get sent to orphanages because their parents can't afford to keep them. That's what happened to our mother. She moved us all in with her father after our father died. Her father had a butcher shop, and our father had worked for him. But a few years later our grandfather had an accident. I never knew what happened to him, but it was bad enough that he couldn't work anymore. So our mother had to take a job as a servant. There wasn't enough money for her to raise her children and take care of her father, too. Then she heard about the groups that sent children to Canada, and she thought we'd have a chance for a better life here.

“Danny was so young, I don't know if he even remembered our mother after a while. She used to write us letters at first. I always hoped that someday she'd come to Canada and we'd all be together again. I used to dream about it. It's hard to believe, but sometimes I still do! When I have those dreams, I'm the age I am now, but Danny's still just a boy.”

His mother sighed. David never knew how much his mother thought about her brother, but he could always tell that when she did it made her sad.

“Eventually,” she continued, “the letters stopped coming. After Danny got adopted, the people at the orphanage told me that our mother had died.”

David never asked his mother much about what it was like to grow up in an orphanage. And though he was curious, he didn't ask much about his Uncle Danny, either. Sometimes he'd look at the stack of letters in his mother's drawer, but he never took the ribbon off to read them. He knew she'd gaze at the half-photograph of her brother, and every so often he'd look, too. As he got older, it was amazing how similar he and his uncle were.

He remembered the first time he'd seen the half-photograph. He was seven years old. It was just a few months after Alice was born. His sister had cried all the time when she was a baby. All she did then was eat, sleep, and cry. And make a mess in her diapers. And wake up the family in the middle of the night.

“I like that Alice cries,” David's mother had told him. “I was so worried every time you made a noise. If you cried at home, I was afraid you were sick. And at work? If you cried when I took you to work, I thought I'd lose my job.”

“But I was a good baby, wasn't I?”

“You were very good. And so is Alice. She just likes to cry. So did your Uncle Danny.” A faraway look crossed his mother's face when she mentioned the name of her brother. It was an expression that seemed happy and sad at the same time. “You know, you're just like him. I've never shown you the photograph, have I?”

David shook his head. His mother didn't talk about her brother very often. He hadn't even known she had a picture of him.

He followed his mother into her bedroom. She put his sister down in her crib and pulled open the top drawer of her dresser. His mother moved aside some of her things, and David saw a stack of letters tied with a ribbon. Beneath it was a small cardboard folder, which his mother picked up. The top corner where it opened was bent, and the cardboard had started to split. His mother opened the folder carefully and took out a photograph. Or rather, half a photograph.

“How come it's cut like that?” David asked.

“It was the only picture we had of the two of us. I took the half that showed Danny. He has the half that shows me. Or at least he had it …” His mother's voice trailed off, and David thought she might start to cry. “It's been so many years. How could I know if he still has it?”

David's mother handed him the photograph. He took it carefully. “He looks older than me.”

“You're right,” his mother said. “He's ten or eleven. I don't remember exactly. It was taken a year or two after he was adopted. His new family was very kind to me and would have me over to their house for birthdays and holiday dinners. They just didn't want to adopt a teenage girl.”

David studied the boy in the picture, then glanced at himself in the mirror above the dresser. Despite the difference in ages the resemblance was remarkable. Both boys were skinny and a bit small for their age. The shape of their faces was almost identical, and they had the same combination of dark hair and light eyes. “What colour are his eyes?”

“Blue,” his mother said. “Just like yours.”

David didn't want to ask anything that would make his mother sad, but he was curious. “If his family was so nice to you, how come you never see him anymore?”

“Danny's new father worked for the Canadian Pacific Railway,” David's mother explained. “When Danny was twelve, Mr. Embury was transferred to their office in Winnipeg and they moved away. That was just a little bit after I left the orphanage to work at the rooming house where I met your father. I'd send Danny postcards because the stamps cost less, and he'd send me letters. They weren't in Winnipeg very long when his father was offered a better job in Vancouver. Danny didn't want to move again, but it was a big opportunity for Mr. Embury, so they had to go.

“It was very sad,” David's mother said, and he could tell from her face that she didn't just mean moving again. “They were only in Vancouver about a year when Danny's father got very sick. He had to go to a special hospital in Seattle, and Danny and his mother moved there, too, so they could be close to him. He seemed to get better, but I guess he never really recovered. He died about a year later. Soon after that the letters stopped coming. After a while, I didn't bother writing to him anymore, either.”

As if she could understand what her mother was feeling, Alice began to cry.

“You might not think much of your sister right now,” David's mother had said as she had picked up the baby and tried to soothe her, “but I know you will when you both grow older. There's nothing in life as important as family, David. Always remember that.”

Now, though, instead of asking his mother more about her family, he asked her questions about his father.

“If his parents were killed, how did he get sent to Canada?”

“I don't remember all the details,” his mother said, “but it had something to do with another relative. People in their village knew that his mother had a cousin living in England. Someone wrote to him, and he arranged to have your father brought to London. From there it was easy enough to find a charity that would send him to Canada. That was how a boy from Poland wound up on a farm in Quebec.”

“Did he speak with a Polish accent?”

David's mother laughed. “I imagine he must have. But I didn't know him then. That would have been about 1892, I suppose.”

“He told me he learned to speak French when he was working on the farm.”

“And English, too, I should think. He spoke them both very well by the time I met him.”

“When was that?”

“It was in the spring of 1901. Your father had left the farm a few years before that when he turned eighteen. He was twenty-one when I met him, and he already had his job at the hat factory. He had just moved into a rooming house not too far from here.”

“And you had a job there cooking and cleaning?”

“That's right,” David's mother said with a smile. “I worked there and I lived there, too. That's how your father and I met. We got married two years later.”

“And that's when you started working at the hat factory?”

“Not right away, but soon. After we got married, your father didn't want me to work in the rooming house anymore. We needed to find somewhere else to live, but neither of us had much money. So your father asked Mr. Salutin if I could have a job in the sewing room. I started working there right after New Year's in 1904 … and you were born a year later.”

With his father gone David didn't get to any more hockey games. Still, he kept up through the newspapers and with his scrapbooks. The war was definitely having an effect on hockey. Fit, strong men were always needed for the army. Young hockey players were expected to sign up. Many of them did. All the best amateur leagues in Canada had teams of hockey-playing soldiers by 1916. The men would stay in shape by playing hockey, then they would be sent overseas to see action in the war. Still, some amateur leagues had to stop playing. Too many of their players — and even the fans who used to watch — were in the army now. That wasn't just true for hockey. It was the case for a lot of sports. The professional leagues struggled on, but it wasn't easy. Many pro hockey players had joined the army, too. Even the National Hockey Association, the top professional league in the sport, had a team of soldiers during the winter of 1916–17.

David's father had told him it was nice to be able to read about sticks and pucks instead of rifles and mud. Now there were more stories than ever about the war. They were starting to take over the sports section, too. Practically every day it seemed there was news about a former sports star killed or wounded in the war. All around the neighbourhood David was hearing more and more stories about who had been getting the dreaded telegrams. “We regret to inform you that your father, brother, son, or husband has been wounded.” Or worse.

Near the end of the school year in the spring of 1917, David was walking to school with Alice. Sammy was waiting for them as usual at the end of the block. As soon as David saw Sammy's face, he knew something was wrong.

“We got a telegram last night,” Sammy said. “From the army …”

“What did it say?” David wasn't sure he wanted to hear the answer.

“Aaron was wounded in the battle at Vimy Ridge.”

David expelled his breath, relieved that Sammy's brother hadn't been killed. “Will he be all right?”

“It doesn't say. It only says he's been sent to a hospital in England.”

That could only mean bad news. David knew they only sent wounded soldiers back to England when they were badly hurt. “Do you know what happened?”

Sammy shook his head. “It doesn't say.”