Way the Crow Flies (111 page)

T
HE SUN IS HALFWAY DOWN
the sky when Madeleine puts her car into first and rocks up the stony track toward a log house just coming into view.

The day feels as endless as summer itself, suspended in heat. Trees bask in a cinematic light so rich that every pine needle glints, sharp as resin, against the hot blue. In the upper boughs of a Douglas fir, a spiderweb glitters, prismatic, and a crow sits, as crows like to do, atop the central spire. Birch leaves, responsive to the slightest breeze, blink back the sun with their silver undersides. Birdcalls sound intimate and precise; Madeleine is aware of having entered their home. And appearing with the rise in the road, in the distance between slim scaly trunks, the blue sparkle of Lake Huron. A dog barks. Several dogs.

The house stands on a swell of pink and grey granite—a piece of the Canadian Shield softened by sunset. Is it possible that this ravishing evening light can erode stone, painting it day after day with pastel rays? Veins of mica glitter like strewn diamonds, clefts in the rock cast shadows on patches of moss, grey, green, gold and black, the house itself is burnished ochre at this hour. A wooden ramp zigzags up to the front door.

A dog rounds the house and trots, barking, toward her car: ears erect, sturdy, with a white and grey coat. He escorts her up to a level patch where a shiny Dodge pickup is parked. Nearby is an open shed—firewood neatly stacked floor to ceiling, snowmobile, battered snowplough blade, tools and tire chains, along with several large dog crates and leather harnesses. On the other side of the shed, a vintage Ford Thunderbird rests on blocks, hood propped open like a grand piano, mess of greasy engine guts on the ground. She pulls up and parks.

The dog is part husky, judging by the curl of his tail and the song he is singing now, head thrown back, eyes still on her, one blue, one brown. The rest of the canine chorus is coming from somewhere beyond the shed. She gets out of her car and the dog wags his tail but resumes barking, glancing back toward the house as though waiting for permission to drop the guard-dog schtick.

She can smell a barbecue going. She has arrived unannounced at suppertime. After twenty-three years.

Someone comes out from behind the house. A tall figure. Denim cutoffs. Sneakers and a T-shirt. Lean and brown.

Madeleine shades her eyes with her hand and says, “Hi Colleen.”

The dog has stopped barking but he is still at her side, awaiting instructions.

“It’s Madeleine.”

“I know.” Colleen’s voice, still smokey and brief but with the added weight of adulthood.

Madeleine says, “Can I come up?”

“What for?”

She hesitates. She is reminded of the day long ago when she met Elizabeth, and Colleen challenged her,
Well say her name, can’t you?
Elizabeth. That would explain the ramp up to the veranda. She says, “I’ve brought you something.”

“What?”

Something that belongs to you
.

Neither has moved. As though each is waiting for the other to jump from the teeter-totter.

A story
.

Madeleine goes to her car and reaches into the back seat.

What remains?

Story. Yours, or one like it, in which, as in a pool, you might recognize yourself.

Memory. Mixed and multifarious, folding itself down, down, for the journey. Story is memory rendered portable. Your memory, or many like yours. Unfold it like a tent. It can shelter a world.

Madeleine holds up her father’s air force hat.

Memory breeds memory. The very air is made of memory. Memory falls in the rain. You drink memory. In winter you make snow angels out of memory.

So much remains.

One witness.

Tell
.

After a moment, Colleen disappears behind her house. Madeleine follows, accompanied by the dog. As she comes level with the house
on her left, she sees, off to the right beyond the shed, a compound set half amid the trees. A long low wooden building with several small doors at intervals, like a miniature motel, painted hunter green. Covered runs lead from the doors and open onto a fenced-in acreage of mown grass and trees, canine Shangri-La. Eight or ten adults bound along behind the fence, Labs, yellows, browns and blacks, noses crammed through the mesh, tails wagging.

She rounds the house. The curve of rock obscures the shore, so that the granite’s pink is juxtaposed with the open water that stretches to meet the horizon. In between, the blue expanse is dotted with stone islands flat as pancakes, their pine trees permanently wind-tilted and shimmering in the heat like northern palms. A far-off ferry boat inches along, plying the route between the mainland and Manitoulin Island. Beyond where the eye can see lie Michigan and the U.S.

Colleen is tending the barbecue and doesn’t look up. Madeleine walks to the crest of the smooth stone, and a dock comes into view below. Water laps at the wooden posts and glitters with the intensity of early evening. She can almost hear the
ting
of light rippling gold and silver, like notes on a xylophone. A battered aluminum outboard rocks against the dock, bleached-out life-jackets mildewing in the bottom where a sawed-off plastic Javex bottle floats, purpose-built for bailing. On the shore, a few feet above the waterline, a canoe rests overturned, casting a longboat shadow on the stone.

There is a wheelchair at the end of the dock. A woman is sitting in it, facing the water. It’s not Elizabeth. This woman has long gleaming black hair, straight and loose. A head pops out from under the dock—a child. He hauls himself up, water sliding in gleaming sheets from his bare chest. He flops naked onto the dock, a long braid slicked down his back, and stands up. He is a girl.

“Mom, everybody, watch!” she shouts, bounding up the dock, turning to pelt back down again, splashing the silvery wood with ragged black footprints, past the woman in the wheelchair and off the end, cannonballing into the water. The dog rockets down the slope, onto the dock and in after her. They both emerge, one panting, one laughing. Madeleine looks over at Colleen, who is watching the child from her post at the grill.
Mom
.

Down on the dock, the wheelchair is turning. Madeleine can see from here the sinews in the forearms, tanned and strong like Colleen’s, red cotton sleeves rolled up, faded jeans over thin legs. Cowboy boots. The person looks up, a hand raised to shade the eyes. Beautiful smooth face, high cheekbones, cords in the neck rising from the hollow between the collarbones. His hand goes up in greeting.

Madeleine walks tentatively, hat in hand, down the warm stone, feeling through her sandals how welcome it would be to the soles of bare feet.

“Hi, Ricky.”

She takes his outstretched hand. He pulls her down to him—there is not as much strength and substance to his arms as was suggested by the slanting light. He hugs her. “How you doing, Madeleine?”

“I’m okay,” she says. “How are you?” There is no question that is not inadequate.

“Can’t complain.” His voice has thinned, but it’s clear. Light. How is that possible? “You’re beautiful,” he says.

She has no reply.

He is beautiful.

His brow is smooth, the only signs of aging the slight hollows under his black eyes. He is both older and younger than he was. What happened to him? She wants to touch his face. She sees him notice the hat in her hand.

He says, “How are your folks?”

She swallows back tears. She was unprepared for kindness. Why can’t he be more like Colleen?

“You staying for supper?” He wheels himself up the dock toward the stone, where a ramp traverses the far side. As he rolls past, his black hair swings and the sun catches streaks of silver. He is three years older than her brother would have been.

Feet plunk along the dock behind her; the little girl runs past, droplets flying, followed by the dog, who sideswipes Madeleine with his wet fur, his good wet-dog smell. The girl grabs a crumpled piece of cotton from the rocks, slips it over her head and suddenly she is wearing a dress.

She looks up at Madeleine. “Hi.” Ice-blue eyes; the downward tilt at their corners lends them a permanently amused expression. Sharp like Colleen’s, but unsuspicious.

“Hi,” says Madeleine. She pauses. “I’m Madeleine.”

“I’m Vivien.”

The girl runs back to Rick, grabs the handles of his chair and hurtles them both forward.

“Mush,” he says.

“I’m mushing, I’m mushing!”

Madeleine follows them. They stop up near the house at a picnic table under which sits a cooler. Rick slowly, carefully rolls a cigarette from a pouch of Drum tobacco.

Vivien asks, “Are you the one on TV?”

Madeleine is taken by surprise. “Sometimes, yeah.”

The little girl laughs and hurls herself at Rick’s lap.

Rick puts the cigarette between his lips and looks up at Madeleine. “Everyone thinks you’re funny now but they didn’t know-you-when, eh?” He uses both hands to light it with a lighter.

Madeleine puts the hat on the picnic table.

As Rick exhales, the smoke mingles with the freshness of the evening, the charcoal from the grill. Colleen is cooking something in foil. It smells wonderful.

Madeleine says, “That was my dad’s hat.”

Rick says, “What can I get you to drink?” Vivien announces, “We have beer, Dr Pepper, Mountain Dew and chocolate milk.”

“I’ll have what you’re having.”

The child bounds toward the house. The dog flops, still wet and grinning, at Rick’s feet. Madeleine sits facing the lake and says, “He’s the one who waved at you that day.” It feels so small. The words are tiny. Not difficult to say. Not hard at all.

Rick looks away, following the smoke with his eyes as it drifts toward the water. His profile is so pure, cut with the finest instruments, eyes gleaming like jet. He raises the heel of his hand and wipes them. He could have been anything he wanted to be.

A sizzle behind her as Colleen turns the foil package. Madeleine is weeping now too. Because the pines smell so vivid. Because his
face is so familiar. Because it’s summer and the evening sun is all the clothes you need and school doesn’t start for a long time.

“I know what happened …,” she says. And down in the schoolyard a boy on a red motor scooter is giving everyone rides. “And I think I know what happened … to your dad.” But that’s too much. What happened to Mr. Froelich and the children he loved … is too much.

“I’m sorry,” she says, getting up. “I’ll put it in a letter.”

She is about to leave but the child is there, offering her an iridium-blue tin cup.

“How come you’re crying?”

Madeleine takes the cup and replies, “Aw it’s okay, it’s….”

Rick says, “Her daddy died.”

The child puts her arms around Madeleine’s waist. When will Colleen turn from the grill and drive a knife into Madeleine’s back?

Madeleine says, “It’s okay, hey, cheers Vivien.”

They clink cups and Madeleine drinks. A dreadful candy clash. “It’s great, what is it?”

“My secret recipe,” she replies, moustached now in mauve. “Mountain Dew and Dr Pepper and then you put in a bit of real pepper.”

“Wow.”

The child disappears back into the house.

“Max,” says Rick, “get Papa a cool one.” The dog gets up, walks to the cooler, opens it with his nose, lifts out a can of Moosehead beer and brings it over. “Good boy,” says Rick, popping the tab.

“How did you get him to do that?”

He points his thumb at Colleen. “I’m just the guinea pig, she’s the genius. Guide dogs, eh? ‘Special skills for special needs.’”

“You train dogs to get beer for blind people?”

Rick laughs, and Madeleine sees the side of Colleen’s mouth rise. The same thin scar at the corner. Same rusty thatch of hair.

He has multiple sclerosis—MS. Diagnosed a few years after he got out of prison. He had been working with horses again up until then. “Out west,” he says.