The Way the Crow Flies

by Ann-Marie MacDonald

  Jack takes the grocery list and gives her a kiss. The women have figured it out, they always do. He heads for the door, shoving the list into his pocket full of dimes. Which reminds him, he ought to call Simon.

  From the big grassy circle behind the houses, Madeleine sees her father pulling away up the street in the car, and runs to see if she can tag along. But as she rounds the house, she sees the wheelchair across the street. Gleaming. Occupied.

  She slows to a walk. Shoves her hands into her shallow shorts pockets, glancing casually from side to side, trying not to stare as she strolls down her driveway toward her bike lying at the side of the road. She sits cross-legged next to it, takes three marbles from her pocket and, as though it was her intention all along, begins to carve out a course in the cindery gravel. She steals a glance. It’s a girl in the wheelchair.

  She looks back down and flicks one smoky marble into another, sending it spiralling into a little hole. She glances up again. The girl is very thin. Her head lolls gently to one side, she has a lot of light brown wavy hair and her skin is very white. The hair is neatly brushed but appears to be too big for her head, which is too big for her body. Her freshly ironed blouse fits her like a loose wrapper. Her arms seem to be in constant slow motion—as though she were under water. A shawl covers her legs despite the warm weather, and Madeleine can see the tips of her narrow feet in white sandals, one crossed over the other. She is strapped in by a seat belt. Otherwise she would probably slide right out of her chair and onto the grass. It’s impossible to tell how old she is. Madeleine looks back down at her marbles.

  “Ayyyy….”

  She looks up at the sound, which is like a gentle groan. The wheelchair girl raises an arm—her wrist looks permanently bent, her hand clumsily closed. Is she waving? Is she looking at me?

  “Ayyy!” An old-young quaver.

  Madeleine lifts a hand. “… Hi.”

  Head rolling, the girl says, “Umeeah.”

  “… Pardon?”

  The girl’s head jerks back and, suddenly loose and loud: “Haahaaahhh!”

  Madeleine is alarmed. Is the girl in pain? The corner of her mouth is pulled up. Is she laughing? At what? Well, she’s retarded, maybe everything is funny to her. Madeleine gets up. Now the sound is like moaning, but it’s only the dregs of the girl’s laughter—a naked sound and infinitely gentle, it makes Madeleine feel afraid that someone may come along and do something terrible to the girl. It makes her want to go back inside her own house. But the wheelchair girl waves her closed hand again and repeats, “Umeah!” … Come here!

  Madeleine picks up her bike and mounts it. She clothespinned a playing card to one of her spokes this morning—the joker—and it makes a putt-putt sound now as she coasts across the street. As she nears, she notices something unusual about the girl’s chair—its wheels are attached by two heavy-duty coiled springs. Perhaps it’s some kind of souped-up wheelchair. She realizes now that the girl wasn’t waving; she’s holding something. Offering it. Madeleine hopes it isn’t a sweaty candy.

  “What is it?” she asks in a kind tone of voice, leaning forward on her handlebars. The girl’s eyes slide like marbles, then her chin drops to her chest and she appears to be looking for something in the grass, her head moving from side to side. As Madeleine draws closer up the driveway, she sees that the girl is actually looking at her out the corner of her eye. The way a bird might.

  Madeleine hesitates, about to turn back—

  “Wayyy!” The girl flails her hand. Clear drool flows from the corner of her mouth.

  Madeleine comes closer. “Watcha got?”

  The screen door of the purple house flies open and the German shepherd bounds out. Madeleine feels for her pedals but her feet get tangled up in her bike and she topples backward. The dog barks and lunges. Madeleine covers her face and feels the soft tongue on her elbows—the feel of pinkness—and an ache at the back of her skull where she has banged it on the driveway.

  “You shouldn’t never run away from a dog when it’s chasing you,” says a dead-level voice. “It just makes them chase you more.”

  Madeleine uncovers her face and looks up. The girl with the knife. Blue eyes. Husky eyes.

  She sits up. The dog’s tongue pulsates like a slice of wet ham between his fangs, and he stares off past her shoulder the way dogs do.

  The girl says, “What do you want, kid?” She has the knife in one hand, a whittled stick in the other, its tip white and pointed.

  Madeleine swallows. “What’s your dog’s name?” The girl squints and fires a neat round of spit from the side of her mouth. Madeleine wonders, does she cut her own hair with that knife? Shaggy rust to just below the ears.

  “Eggs,” groans the wheelchair girl, her head lurching forward with the effort of speech.

  “What?”

  “She told you,” says the girl.

  Madeleine rises cautiously to her feet and looks at the huge black and tan dog. Can his name possibly be Eggs? He turns and goes to the wheelchair girl, flops down and rests his chin on her twisty feet. He blinks but doesn’t move when her hand drops down to pet him and her zigzagging fingers poke him in the eye.

  “What are you doing here?” says the girl with the knife.

  “She called me.” It feels rude to call someone “she” when she’s sitting right there, but Madeleine doesn’t know the girl’s name. Probably the girl doesn’t know her own name.

  The knife girl turns to the wheelchair one and says, “Was she bothering you?” Madeleine inches toward her bike. Me go home now.

  “Noohhh,” sighs the wheelchair girl, followed by the slight sobbing that is her chuckle. “I ju wah teweh my nay.”

  The girl turns to Madeleine and says, “She wants to tell you her name.”

  Madeleine stops and waits.

  The wheelchair girl says, “Ahm Ewivabeh.”

  Madeleine doesn’t know what to do. The tough girl shears a curl of bark from her stick. Around her neck is tied a leather shoelace that disappears beneath her grimy white T-shirt. At the corner of her mouth, Madeleine can see a paper-thin scar—it traces a line down toward her jaw, pale pink in the tanned face. She senses that this girl would fight like a dog. Sudden, savage.

  Madeleine turns to the retarded girl and says, “Um. Hi.”

  “Well say her name, can’t you?” says the knife girl.

  Madeleine hesitates, then says, “Ewivabeh.”

  The wheelchair girl’s head jerks back at an angle and her laughter shreds the air: “Ahhhhaaahaaaa!”

  The knife girl stops whittling. “Is that supposed to be funny?”

  “No,” says Madeleine, honestly.

  “’Cause if it is, you’re dead.”

  “I know.”

  “Her name is Elizabeth.”

  “Oh,” says Madeleine. “Hi, Elizabeth.”

  “Ayyy.”

  Madeleine looks at the tough girl. “What’s your name?” she asks, surprised by her own nerve.

  “Who wants to know?”

  “Um”—she can feel a grin tiptoeing across her face, and tries to suppress it, along with Bugs Bunny, who threatens to take over—“Madeleine.” Charmed, I’m sure, doc.

  The girl spits again and says, “Colleen.” Then she folds her knife, sticks it in the back pocket of her denim cut-offs and leaves, walking away barefoot up the street with her stick over her shoulder.

  Madeleine picks up her bike. “’Bye Elizabeth.”

  “Wayyy!”

  Madeleine waits with her hand outstretched while Elizabeth’s closed fist wavers over it, then opens and drops something into her palm. Not a candy. Madeleine looks down at her hand. “Wow.” A beautiful green boulder, swirled sea smoke. A glassie. The most valuable marble you could own. “Thanks Elizabeth.”

  Jack waits in the stifle of the phone booth beside the PX. He has fed the phone enough dimes to cover the call to Washington but he’s concerned his time will run out before he gets to talk to—“Crawford here.”

&
nbsp; “Simon.”

  “Jack, how are you, mate?”

  “Not so bad, yourself?”

  “Can’t complain. What’s your number there, call you straight back.” Jack reads the number into the phone, then hangs up.

  It was an obstacle course getting through to Simon—First Secretary Crawford. A series of English accents, from Eton to London’s East End, told him he had reached the British Embassy in Washington. Bureaucracy, vast and self-perpetuating. Jack knows; he is part of it. Thank goodness there are people like Simon, who know how to cut through. The phone rings, Jack picks it up.

  “Back in Centralia, eh? How’s the old place look?”

  Jack glances out—an airman carries groceries to his station wagon, where three kids bounce in the back seat and a beagle haroos in the back-back. “New,” he says.

  “Not a great deal to report, Jack. Our friend is still on hold. I’ll let you know when he arrives.”

  “Do you have a ballpark?”

  “Not really. I should think we’ll move when the time is right.”

  Jack wonders how they’ll get the man out. Through Berlin, perhaps. Will “our friend” be concealed in a car? Jack has heard about defectors being brought in that way—folded into the false trunk of a Trabant. “What about when he gets here? Do you want me to track down an apartment for him in London?”

  “It’s all taken care of.”

  “Good, that’s good.” Jack doesn’t want to sound too eager. “Where do I pick him up when the time comes?”

  “All you’ve got to do is look in on our friend once he arrives. See that he’s comfortable, not too bored. Take him out for an airing once in a while. Usual care and feeding of your common garden variety defector.”

  “Does our friend have a name?”

  “I’m sorry, of course. His name is Fried. Oskar Fried.”

  Jack pictures a thin man—spectacles and bow tie. “East German?”

  “That’s right. Though he’s been stuck in the boonies for a few years.”

  “Where? Kazakhstan?”

  “One of the ‘stans,’ no doubt. Come to think, you may as well take his London address….”

  Jack fishes in his pocket, finds a scrap of paper and writes down the address on the back of Mimi’s grocery list. “So there’s not a whole lot for me to do but sit tight.”

  “Welcome to ‘the great game.’” It’s the first reference Simon has made to the fact that he is an intelligence officer.

  “First Secretary, eh? Isn’t that Donald Maclean’s old job?”

  Simon laughs. “Technically yes, although I don’t plan on a midnight flit to Russia any time soon.”

  They hang up with a promise to get together when Simon passes through with the defector.

  Oskar Fried. Jack assumed the “Soviet scientist” would be Russian. The fact that he’s German adds a congenial dimension to the already fascinating prospect of meeting the man—it’ll be that much easier for Jack and Mimi to make him feel at home. Not to mention Henry Froelich right across the street—Jack meant to ask Simon whether he could invite Fried home for a meal. He looks at the address on the scrap of paper. A street near the university. If asked, Oskar Fried is here doing research at the University of Western Ontario. No one will ask. An academic with a German accent—hardly a rarity. And this part of the world is rich with German immigrant culture, pre-war and post. Simon has chosen a good place for Oskar Fried to recover quietly from whatever the ordeal of defection entails. It’s simple, Jack reflects as he pockets the list: select a context in which people will answer their own questions. He opens the folding glass door of the booth and sets out for home across the parade square.

  Oskar Fried is presumably a scientist of some importance. Why is Canada getting him? There’s the National Research Council in Ottawa. There’s the heavy water plant at Chalk River, which was cleansed of espionage back in ’45—after the infestation by the Atomic Spy Ring that helped the Russians get the bomb. Fun ’n’ games, thinks Jack, shaking his head at the memory of Igor Gouzenko talking to the press with a hood over his head after his defection. A real black eye for Canada. Chief among the names the Russian cipher clerk gave up was that of a Brit, Dr. Alan Nunn May—like Maclean, another Cambridge type—who had passed weapons-grade uranium to the Russians in the name of “world peace.” Jack touches two fingers to his forehead in response to the smart salute of a cadet and steps from the black parade square to the cooler sidewalk, enjoying the stroll home. He sticks his hands in his pockets, absently rolling a bit of paper. He can almost hear Simon: “Take off those American gloves!”

  Perhaps they were just overly privileged. Nunn May, and Guy Burgess and Maclean and their lot, wouldn’t last a day on a Soviet collective farm. But that’s history; Russia has the bomb and, God knows, so will China soon enough. What count now are nuclear missiles, ICBMs, and developing some sort of defence against them. Is that what Fried will be working on? Canada has a small number of nuclear weapons, but no warheads—at least, not that Prime Minister Diefenbaker will admit to. Jack stops in his tracks. The groceries! He makes an about-face and retraces his steps to the PX, digging in his pocket for the grocery list—it’ll be great seeing Simon again, and finally introducing him to Mimi. She’ll fix them a real Acadian feast. Then over to the mess, where the two of them will close the bar the way they used to—“Here’s to being above it all.” He regards the scrap of paper: shredded wheat, milk, can peas…. He peers at his wife’s pencil scrawl. Real jello—no, that must be red Jell-O—bag potatoes, hot dogs, doz. buns—and here he’s defeated—mushmelbas? What’s a mushmelba? A type of mushroom? A cracker? Mimi ought to have been a doctor instead of a nurse, with her writing. He would phone home to ask, but he finds he’s out of nickels and dimes. Oskar Fried. Friede means “peace.”

  He walks into the PX, takes a cart and, still staring at the encrypted list, wheels slowly up the aisle and straight into someone else’s cart. “I’m sorry.”

  “That’s okay,” the woman says. “You’re new.”

  “That’s right. I’m Jack McCarthy.”

  “I think we’re neighbours.” She is perhaps three or four years older than he, pretty in a way. “I’m Karen Froelich.” They shake hands.

  “I just met your husband.”

  She smiles. Yes, she’s pretty in spite of the lines around her eyes, her mouth—no lipstick. “I hope he offered you a cup of coffee.”

  “He offered me a beer,” says Jack, “but we made do with coffee.”

  “Good.” She brushes a strand of hair from her cheek, tucking it behind her ear. Her hair is not done but you wouldn’t call her unkempt. She is simply not, as Mimi would say, “bien tournée.” Her gaze falls briefly as she says, “Drop by any time.”

  Shy, or perhaps vague. In any case, it isn’t the usual air force wife invitation: You and your wife must come over for dinner once you’ve settled in. But he recalls that she isn’t an air force wife.

  “I’m afraid you’ll be seeing us sooner than you think, Mrs. Froelich.” And he repeats the invitation he extended to her husband earlier this morning. He is ready for a feminine objection echoing Mimi’s and Betty Boucher’s, but Karen Froelich just says, “Thanks,” and begins a polite getaway down the aisle.

  There is something girlish about her, although she must be forty. Worn white sneakers, stretch pants. And, it looks like, one of her husband’s old dress shirts.

  “What’s, uh—” He feels suddenly awkward as she stops and turns; he is making too much conversation. “I saw you’re reading Silent Spring.”

  She nods.

  “What’s it like?”

  “It’s um. Disturbing.” She nods again, as though to herself.

  He nods too, waiting for more, but she just says, “Nice meeting you,” and moves off.

  Jack turns to stare at the shelves of cans in front of him, the way men do in grocery stores—I could find Dresden at night from twelve thousand feet, but where are the canned peas? He heads back up th
e aisle. “Mrs. Froelich,” he calls, a little embarrassed. “Can you help me out here?”

  “Call me Karen.”

  “Karen,” he says, reddening for no reason, and handing her the grocery list, “I can’t read my wife’s writing.”

  She looks at it and reads aloud, “Four-seventy-two Morrow Street—”

  Jack takes the list back and turns it over—Simon, are you watching this? Christ.

  Karen looks at the scrap of paper, where he’s pointing. “Marshmallows.”

  “Thank you!” says Jack. I sound too relieved. As they move off in separate directions, his heart is beating a little too quickly, out of proportion to the gaffe—the address was meaningless to her. No harm done. It’s a healthy reminder to be careful, that’s all. Not that it matters. Even the name Oskar Fried would be meaningless to her. It’s largely meaningless to Jack. Some Soviet egghead in a bow tie.

  He finds the fruits and vegetables mounded amid plastic grass, turns his gaze to the bananas, apples and pears, and shreds the address inside his trouser pocket. Potatoes … ah, there they are. Mimi didn’t say how many. He puts two bags of them into his cart. Now, what else did she want? He reaches into his pocket for the grocery list and finds the shreds—that’s it, shredded wheat. And what else? Hot dogs. And buns. For the kids. And marshmallows, of course….

  Madeleine is up in her room before lunch, surrounded by her worldly goods: books, toys and games, and her—she refuses to call them dolls—what’s the word for dolls that aren’t sissy? Bugs Bunny is in pride of place on the bed, his ears currently arranged in two chignons on either side of his head. At his right, she places a sock monkey named Joseph—she can’t remember why he is called that, she only knows that when he was a sock he was pinned round her neck the time she had strep throat in Germany and she miraculously recovered. “Guten Tag, Joseph,” Madeleine says, and he smiles back with his button eyes.