The Cartographer of No Man's Land: A Novel (21 page)

Simon seethed as his grandfather marched off with utter confidence that Simon would follow. He glanced at the smoke curling up from Toby’s chimney. Toby’d be by the wood stove, mending his nets, the old pin in his gnarled hands weaving in and out. No sir. Simon would not be working for Langille or Reuben Heisler or any of them this summer. He’d be off to the Banks himself. He’d come back with money in his pocket. His mother could lean on him then. He’d tell her of his adventures and make her laugh just like Uncle Ebbin used to.

He shuffed through the snow after his grandfather, who wove handily through the spruce and stumpy pine and skinny poplars, dodging boulders and underbrush, and then at the foot of the ridge dropped heavily to the ground. And then Simon was running in great awkward leaps through snow, his scarf trailing, his limbs flailing. His grandfather slumped forward. Simon slid the last few steps and thumped against him in a blur and saw the fox at his grandfather’s knees—stiff and matted, black eyes open wide, gums pulled back in death’s grimace.

“
Trapping!
” his grandfather spat out.

Simon thrashed back on his elbows. His grandfather looked at him with round eyes as if Simon could explain it to him, with eyes near tears. Dumbly, he shifted his gaze from Simon to the fox. “The utter cruelty of it. Gone and gnawed his foot off to get free,” he said. Blood spattered the snow. He held the little paw against his knee and rocked back and forth. Then he tore the trap from the ground and flung it off over his head. It clanged off a boulder and buried itself in the snow. He tramped after it and yanked it up and threw it again.

Simon crawled to the fox and put a tentative mitten on the fur. His own tears were falling. “We can bury it. Can’t we?”

Trap in hand, his grandfather searched for others. “Please,” Simon pleaded. His grandfather looked up at the sky for a long time. “Please,” Simon whispered.

“We’ll leave it for the crows,” his grandfather said. “They need to live as well. We won’t sentimentalize nature so as to call ourselves civilized.”

Simon set the little paw by the fox’s leg. The solitary hunter lay stiff and exposed. Simon mounded snow over the body. He took off his mittens and cut the cord that held his knife to his belt and used the string to fashion two twigs into a cross and set them into the snow. Overhead, three crows flew fast, wings flapping.

S
IMON THOUGHT ABOUT
the crows a week later as he left the memorial service. Their raucous rasps, their ragged wings. Gulls lifted high above his head, high over St. Stephen’s square belfry, with wings that held the currents in their gliding. Crows knew nothing of the wind—how to find it, how to ride it, where it had been, where it was going.

Like so many black crows collected in a tree, the mourners had gathered now at the Hants—silence broken by little bursts of talk that grew louder as they piled slices of Finnan haddie, biscuits and boiled potatoes onto their plates and forked up slices of cold lamb. Standing by the window, light falling on her cream cutwork blouse, his mother smiled softly as friends offered their condolences—smiled in an indulgent way as she had during the service, as if sorry for their confusion in thinking Ebbin dead, but willing to accept sympathy for their sake. Balancing a slippery boiled egg on a plate, Simon found a place behind a stuffed chair next to his grandfather Hant’s bulky accordion. The accordion would not be played that day. Nor the silver harmonica on top of the piano, nor the piano.

For Simon, the service had been a blur of black crepe and Union Jacks and Red Ensigns and regimental colors and ancient old Athol McLaren squeezing out “The Flowers of the Forest” and “Amazing Grace” on the pipes and speeches before the service and clutched handkerchiefs and clutched hands during. It was his mother’s slow turn as she held out a gloved hand for Young Fred and Simon to join her in the pew. It was a funeral without a casket and people crowding the church from nearby villages. It was Grandma Hant, heavy and lumbering, supported by two sons, followed by the massive form of Amos Hant, like a slow-paced engine going down a track.

All the Hants were massive, except for Simon’s mother and Uncle Ebbin, who were blond and fine-featured, as if they’d arrived together in a basket left on the doorstep. Which they had, in fact—a story Ida told again to Simon the day after they heard Ebbin was dead—how Amos Hant had parked the babies, just thirteen months apart, on Elma Mitchell’s doorstep when he came back home to Mahone Bay from the failed farm after burying his wife in her family’s plot on the Alberta plains. Each night after a day’s work at the forge that he’d wanted to escape and would later come to own, he’d pick the babies up. A few months into it, he decided it might be easier to skip the dropping off and picking up by marrying Elma Mitchell, who went on to give him four sturdy, dark-haired sons.

And there standing guard over her as she sat, twisting a handkerchief around her thick fingers, was Lady Bromley with talk of God’s great purpose—“fallen hero,” “noble sacrifice,” “angels of victory”—each word increasing Simon’s dread that every man in France would end up unfound and unburied. His tears during the service had been a pouring out of that fear.

Out back, men had gathered around a fire pit. Putnam Pugsley, Vor Moody, Wallace, Zeb, Herman Weagle, Wilson Bethune, Frank Stevens and one of his boys and some others Simon didn’t know. Probably talking about the war from the grim look on their faces. Simon wanted to hear what they were saying, but it was cigars and hard cider and no shadows to hide in.

A hand thrust a hot cherry square on a napkin at him. He took it and ducked through the crowd to the kitchen, where his mother was head-to-head, whispering with Margaret McInnis. Maggie or Mags, his mother called her, an old school friend who’d come down from Halifax and had hardly left her side all weekend, draped in black as she had been since her brothers were blown to smithereens at Sanctuary Wood two years before. Sorry as he felt for her, Simon decided he didn’t like her much, nor her whispered secrets to his mother. He went out the back door, and decided to find himself a spot on the porch with its view of Front Harbor.

“Hant heart, faint heart, bold heart.”

Simon jumped. George stood on his crutches next to a rain barrel where the path curved around the house. His pale eyes reflected nothing. His knuckles were raw and bleeding. His hair was slicked straight back, his forehead wide and pale. He’d been at the service and had several times stood up as if in protest. His mother had had to settle him. People steered clear of him afterwards.

“A medal for his heart box is what he should have. Thiepval. Weepval. Regina trench. Nearly passed me by with the badge of the
45
th, but turned back.”

Simon felt compelled to set George straight because Simon knew all the names of all the battles. “My uncle?” he said. “He wasn’t with the
45
th. And he wasn’t at Thiepval. He died before that at Courcelette.” He let that sink in. Said the word “died,” and meant it suddenly.

“Hant heart, bold heart,” George repeated, shaking his head. “Came back running. Pal of my heart, bone out my calf, heart in his chest box, beating to the drum.” He began to shiver. Spittle formed at his mouth.

“Where’s your mum? You’re getting cold,” Simon said. But George’s eyes were fixed on the cherry square in Simon’s hand. Simon offered it up. “Here. Take it. Take all of it.” George lunged forward, hands on his crutches, and bit into it. Crumbs and cherry filling clung to his cracked lips. The rest of it fell to the ground. Simon’s mouth fell open. He backed away.

“I have five silver coins in five silver—”

“No! You don’t!” Simon shouted.

Snowmelt crashed off the eaves and tipped over the rain barrel with a massive thud. George arched back, flung his crutches and dove for the ground. Hands over his head he elbowed into a hole in the lattice work at the foundation of the porch. There he jerked like a string puppet. Simon was rooted to the spot, horrified. Then the leg went still, and he thought George was dead.

He looked up to see Mr. Heist setting the rain barrel upright. A strangled choking came from under the house. “It’s George!” Simon cried out. “That thing tipped over, and he dove under the porch. I’m going to get my grandfather!”

“
Ach
. Wait now, Simon. Wait,” Mr. Heist insisted, coming toward him in rapid little steps. “Let’s not have everyone out here, seeing him this way. Let’s just give him a little time.”

“Time for what? What’s he doing? Why’s he under there? He’s having a fit. He needs—the doctor maybe.” Simon looked anxiously up at the house.

But Mr. Heist was on his knees by the bushes, talking to George, very softly. “Just a rain barrel. That’s all, George. It’s over.” He stretched out and pushed against the latticework and got himself in far enough to put an arm around George. “Listen,” he said. “Silence. See? It’s safe now.” Simon could hear George’s muffled sobs. They stayed like that for minutes. Simon knelt down, stood up, looked around.

After a time, Mr. Heist eased himself back. His suit was wet and muddy. His collar and glasses, too. “We may be here a bit longer, Simon,” he said.

“It’s my fault. He was trying to tell me something and I wouldn’t let him. I tried to stop him from saying—”

“No. It is not your fault. The barrel went over. It was too loud for George, too sudden. I’ve seen this before.” He took off his glasses and shook out his handkerchief to wipe his face. “We need to hope no one comes out. You see what you can do.”

“
Me?
”

“Why not? He was talking with you. He doesn’t talk often.” Simon hung his head. Mr. Heist wiped the back of his neck and polished his glasses.

“George?” Simon said, finally, crouching down, keeping his distance. He could see the heaving of George’s breath, could smell his sour sweat, and the odor of urine made his own stomach heave. He swallowed hard and held his breath, then whispered, “Peg’s here.” George lifted his head. Simon looked back at Mr. Heist, who nodded encouragingly. “She’s wondering where you are,” Simon said.

George inched out a bit and finally backed all the way out and hunched over like a baby, head in his hands. Simon looked away.

Voices above. Footsteps crossing the porch. The thumping of a cane. Simon wanted to shove George back under the porch. At the bottom of the steps, Lady Bromley nearly tripped over one of George’s crutches. She and Lord Bromley took in the scene. “George fell,” Simon said quickly. “By mistake.”

“We’re just helping him up,” Mr. Heist added.

“Look at you! Covered in mud! Have you been rolling around on the ground with him?” Lady Bromley shoved at the crutch with her cane. “Of all the bother! Why ever did he come? He should be kept at home.”

“Kept at
home
?” Mr. Heist said, whipping off his spectacles, one hand on George.

“For his own protection, of course!” Lady Bromley huffed. “What would
you
know about what’s best for him? Go inside, Simon, and get some help, for heaven’s sake. Get Duncan.”

“We have it in hand,” Mr. Heist said.

“Apparently, you do not,” she replied, and tromped back up the stairs herself, attacking each step with the cane. “Duncan! Mr. Hant!” they heard her call out at the door.

“
Ach
, wore him like a medal pinned to her chest when he came back,” Mr. Heist muttered. “But now . . .”

George rolled over and sat up, slack and confused. Lord Bromley handed him his crutches and the three of them pulled him to his feet and brushed him off as best they could. A crow swooped down and plucked at the cherry square, then lifted away with it to the roof. Simon stared at the remains of red filling congealed in the dirty snow. “Thiepval, weepval,” George whispered.

T
EN

February 24
^th,
1917

Arras Sector, France

I
n the shed, with Paul standing sentry, Angus hovered over Ebbin. He was surprised to see the badge of the
45
th on Ebbin’s sleeve. Had he switched units? Ebbin coughed, coughed again, and rolled over. “Ebbin!” Angus whispered. Ebbin spit out blood, cupped his jaw and got up on all fours. Pale as a ghost, dripping blood, he slowly raised his head. Angus froze at the blank stare he got and then remembered how long it could take Ebbin to come to from a faint. Ebbin glanced at Paul and back to Angus. “Thanks,” he mumbled. He sat back on his haunches, pressing the rag against the bleeding cut, eyes closed. Then, staring into middle space, he attempted a salute. “Lance Corporal . . . Lawrence Havers . . . sir,” he said without a flicker of recognition.