Way the Crow Flies (34 page)

Vic says, “We need a Mackenzie King, we need a St. Laurent.”

“We need a Frenchman,” jokes Steve.

“Anyone but this prairie haystick,” says Vic.

“Hayseed.” Jack winks.

“I don’t mind where he’s from,” says Vic. “Saskatchewan’s full of good people—”

“Better believe it,” says Hal Woodley.

“What I mind,” says Vic, “is this guy—”

“Dief the Chief,” puts in Steve.

“He doesn’t know what he doesn’t know,” says Vic. “And he doesn’t want to know.”

“He’s asleep at the switch,” says Jack. And there is nothing to add.

“‘It’s a world of laughter a world of tears, it’s a world of hopes and a world of fears….’” Mr. March has declared that there is no finer patriotic gesture than to sing in the face of peril. Twenty-nine grade four voices, raised in unison: “‘ … It’s a small world, after all! It’s a small world after all, it’s a small world after all, it’s a small world after all, it’s a small, small world….’”

Elaine Ridelle has phoned Mimi twice, then popped over. She’s terrified. She asks where Mimi hides the sherry. Mimi pours her a drink and calls Betty Boucher. She speaks discreetly, almost in code, but Betty knows right away what’s up—Elaine has already popped in on her and found the Pimm’s.

Mimi puts the stopper back in the decanter and changes out of her hausfrau clothes as Betty arrives with her four-year-old and a bushel of apples to peel; between the two of them they will have Elaine more or less shipshape by five. She is seven months pregnant and afraid the
world will end before she gives birth. Betty tells her she ought to be more worried about giving birth to a lush, and puts the kettle on. They do not discuss the crisis, beyond Betty’s comment that she isn’t about to have her day ruined by “that Russian pipsqueak.”

They are joined by Dot from next door with her baby, and, almost as an afterthought, Mimi calls Sharon McCarroll. Elaine may be the squeaky wheel, but Sharon is farther from home than any of them—except of course Betty, but Betty lived through the Blitz. Sharon is crying as she speaks, but far from hysterical. She forms her sentences as diffidently as ever. “I’m just worried about my family, Mimi—you know, my folks in Virginia.”

Mimi takes the phone receiver into the dining room and lowers her voice while Betty distracts Elaine in the kitchen. “Of course you are, but you know it’s going to be fine.”

“At least my folks don’t have to worry so much about us, being up here and all,” says Sharon, brightening.

“That’s right.”

“I’m praying, Mimi.”

“We all are, dear, and we’re praying for your president.”

She hears a small sob at the other end of the line. “Thank you.”

“Listen,
ma p’tite
, it’s going to blow over, meantime we have to just worry it out, and I hate to do that alone.”

“Oh Mimi, would you like me to come over?”

“That would make me feel a whole lot better.”

The four of them play a round of bridge and exchange trade secrets, among them the exact nature of their housework clothes—ugly old maternity tops, diaper bandanas and ragbag slippers, the shock their husbands would get if they ever caught them like that. All except Sharon, who, when pressed, admits to changing into slacks and an old V-neck sweater. Silence, then the others laugh till they weep, while Sharon smiles, a little puzzled, and Mimi gets up and hugs her.

On the way back to work, Jack finds that Blair McCarroll is walking with him. He says to Jack with no preamble, “In a way I’m glad I’m up here, on account of my family’s here too. Safer for them.” Jack nods. McCarroll continues, “But I feel like a damn fool.” Jack
nods again. “Not doing what I’m trained to do,” says McCarroll in his farm-boy drawl.

Jack wishes he could tell Blair why he is up here; that it’s not entirely pointless. Instead, he claps a hand on the younger man’s shoulder. “We’re a hundred percent behind you, McCarroll. And you’re right about your family. Just as well, eh? Safer here in the middle of nowhere.”

Blair returns the stoic smile.

“The following little girls will remain after the bell….”

Perhaps Mr. March places a higher value on their survival. He has kept them behind to practise duck and cover under his big oak desk, “which is bound to provide more shelter in the event of an air raid.”

Marjorie squeals and skips to the front. Grace grins, looks back at the other girls ranged against the coat hooks and follows Marjorie. He makes them both duck and cover under his desk at the same time. Then they emerge and it’s Madeleine’s turn.

Back in his office, Jack stares at the phone. He wonders if he ought to go out to the booth at the edge of the parade square and call Simon. If the Soviets pull another Berlin Blockade in response to this crisis, it’s game over for anyone trying to defect to the West. So much for our hopes of depriving the Soviets of the scientific expertise of people like “our friend,” Oskar Fried.

That’s what the new warfare boils down to. Technology. Brains. We’ve grown soft in the West, we read manuals on how to raise our children, we offer basket-weaving courses at universities and spend untold hours in front of the boob tube. Meanwhile, in the U.S.S.R., a generation of engineers is coming of age. Khrushchev is right. They are perfectly capable of burying us.

He pulls a paper-clipped wedge from a mimeographed stack and inserts it into a large binder; articles and essays he has culled from various American management publications—might as well keep busy.

A heading catches his eye,
Scientific and Professional Employees
. He reads:
Scientific and professional employees have less orientation toward their employer and more toward their work and their profession
—that makes sense. Pure science is a higher calling.
They
are more matter-of-fact and less talkative, participative and social
. That certainly doesn’t describe Henry Froelich—he is shy, but once you’ve coaxed him out of his shell…. Will Oskar Fried be the same? That is, if he makes it out of the Soviet bloc?
The true scientist intends to work at his specialty regardless, and the fact that a specific employer has hired him is somewhat incidental
. Jack pauses. That’s why scientists such as Wernher von Braun remain above the fray—although Henry would counter that such a thing is impossible. But rockets are rockets. And now they are ICBMs that we pray we will never use, and Saturn engines that will power us to the moon. And von Braun has switched employers, he works for us now—the Americans, that is.
Aware of his ability and contribution, the scientific employee has high status drives, leading to some discontent and frustration
. Jack lifts his gaze to the window and begins to construct a mental composite—a profile—of Oskar Fried.

Perhaps he is defecting not just for ideological reasons but because he’s had it with the bloated Soviet system, which tends to reward corrupt apparatchiks, fugitive Cambridge spies and the odd cosmonaut—not to mention the periodic purges, which are not necessarily a thing of the past. Could it be that Fried is tired of a drab life labouring in obscurity and fear? That he craves the kind of prestige and rewards the West has to offer? The good life? Who could blame him? He is coming alone. Perhaps he is unmarried, or a widower. Perhaps he has nothing to live for back in the U.S.S.R.

Jack’s gaze has come to rest on the photo of Mimi and the kids. If a man came into his home and threatened his family, Jack would kill him. Simple. He turns a paper clip between thumb and forefinger. But there is nothing simple about this situation. The men on the other side of the world don’t need to leave their homes in order to destroy his. Mountains used to afford nations a defence. Bodies of water, deserts and, until recently, sheer distance. That was why thousands of Allied aircrew were able to train in safety, at this very station among others, before heading overseas to defeat Fascism. But nowadays there is no such thing as “out of range.” Global village. And all it takes is one idiot….

Meanwhile, Canada’s defences have not been activated. Jack’s hands are tied. He can’t so much as order a blanket broken out of
mothballs, should it become necessary to provide relief for the civilian population. His own government has decided that Jack’s children don’t need to be defended. He hasn’t felt this angry, this useless, in years. Not since 1943, in Centralia.

The phone rings. He grabs it. “McCarthy here.” Her voice at the other end is relaxed. An ordinary day.

“Fire away,” he says, his disappointment only fleeting. The heat in his face, the pulse at his neck recede as though the sound of his wife’s voice were a cool cloth to his head. “Milk? … yup … butter….” He drops the paper clip and reaches for a pencil.

Madeleine walks out the side door of the school. She has her art with her, a construction-paper bear. His head is square—she was unable to draw and cut out a circle, no matter how she tried.

The afternoon is grey and gauzy, no sun except for a dirty yellow stain against one end of the sky—the only indication that there is still such a thing as east or west, or that it makes any difference.

It burns probably because of the chalk on his finger, but that is just a sting and it will stop soon, for even though it’s her first experience of being stabbed, she sees no reason why it should sting forever, nothing does.

The other girls disperse, unwrapping their candy. Madeleine doesn’t take the candy any more. The others put out their hands and for once in her life Marjorie Nolan has the power to say, “You can have this one.”

Madeleine did not know you could be stabbed so hard and not die or go to the hospital, she did not know anything could get up there—that must be where the pee comes out, and she can already tell that pee will make it sting more, although maybe it will also disinfect since that is what stinging often does.

Right now she is more worried that her head may not return to normal size. The moment she left the school, it began to swell and expand until it became huge, like the grey cloud that has become the sky this afternoon. If she closes her eyes she can feel herself growing impossibly tall and weightless, her head ballooning up up and away, her feet far below and tiny on the ground in their scuffed Mary Janes.

Walk fast and make a breeze to cool the sting, there is moistness in the air, that will help, it will also dry the underpants, which are damp and wadded like a bandage.

She doesn’t continue through the baseball field toward home. Instead she crosses the parking lot and turns up Algonquin Drive, the PMQs on her left, the farmer’s field on her right.

The good thing about stabbing is that she is now certain she’s no longer afraid of needles. Once you have been stabbed, a needle is nothing. And that’s what you get for secretly hoping he would touch your underpants.

She veers onto the road and walks down the middle. She’ll hear if a car comes along. She could walk into that low field between the furrows, follow the sugar-beet road. The farmer might come out with his shotgun. She could pretend to be a scarecrow or simply walk into the bullets, she would like to feel them bouncing off her. That farmer doesn’t own the world, no one does,
blow it up, earthling
.

She could keep walking in a straight line until she finally gets home for supper, years from now. Why does anyone stay anywhere? Why don’t people just roll like marbles over the tilting earth? How does anyone know there is such a thing as themself? She starts to zigzag down the road, weaving between the broken yellow lines. Perhaps this is why mothers say not to stray on your way home. Because they know you might keep going. She turns onto the Huron County road.

The white buildings of the base spread out to her right, opposite are the PMQs, their colours muted, no expressions on their faces, and up ahead the Spitfire, indifferent. Madeleine sees everything all at once without looking at anything. All appears grim and indistinct, stripped of one layer of light, stripped of distance and difference beneath the uniform grey that has lowered the sky—the ceiling, as pilots call it. High above that blur, the day is eternally blue and sunny—this grey, these clouds change the whole world for us down here and yet they are no more than a curtain or a piece of stage scenery. Her father is over there somewhere to her right, and to her left is her mother. They are specks, words.

Mr. March’s expression does not change, his glasses glint as usual. You would never know by looking at his face that he has his hand up a little girl’s dress. Madeleine doesn’t think of it as “my dress.” It’s as
though she’s seeing the plaid pleats from the level of her hem—there are her bare legs, and a man’s grey sleeve up between them as if she were a puppet. It stings. She melts away from the pain like a Popsicle from a Popsicle stick. Do not speak, your voice is far away in another country. Do not move, your arms and legs are not attached to the pain, there is nothing for them to do but wait.

Her feet will not stop walking—past the turnoff to the PMQs now—like Karen in
The Red Shoes
, she will have to find a kindly woodcutter to chop them off. She begins to run heavily, pounding her heels because this is the way to feel that your feet will not be chopped off. The air is like layers of damp tissue paper clinging one after another to her face. As she runs, she opens and closes her fists, twisting her wrists, because this is the way to feel that your hands will not be chopped off, or just come off by themselves and float away like pieces of Pinocchio.
Stand still, little girl
.

The ragged
caw
of a crow, a sound like something scrawled in black ink on the air. She looks up on the run. One is returning to its home atop the pine pole where the air-raid siren protrudes from beneath the mass of twigs and hay, the rusting mouth open as though in mid-cry, or like a fountain run dry. She runs past the Spitfire on its pedestal, aimed upward, its gun barrels filled in and painted over. It won the Battle of Britain. How come someone didn’t kill Hitler? Why didn’t someone just walk up to him with a gun? Anne Frank would have lived. If only she could go back in time and kill Hitler. If only a car would come along right now with a strange man in a peaked cap who says, “Get in the car, little girl,” she would kill him, smash the door on his head. Here comes a car, let it be a kidnapper,
I will bash his head in with a rock
.