The Way the Crow Flies

by Ann-Marie MacDonald

  Mike has been tailing Madeleine as usual. Now he says, “Quit staring, come on.”

  The policeman puts Claire’s bike back into the trunk.

  “I’m not staring, I’m just walking slowly,” says Madeleine, catching up with him. “How come they’re taking her bike away?”

  “’Cause it’s evidence,” says her brother.

  “What do you mean, evidence?”

  “Against whoever did it.”

  “Did what?”

  “Murdered her, what do you think? What are you doing now?”

  Madeleine has sat down in the fine sharp gravel at the side of the road. Murdered.

  “Well, what did you think happened to her?” asks Mike.

  Madeleine doesn’t know.

  “Come on, get up.”

  Claire died, Madeleine knew that. That’s what happens when children go off by themselves for too long. To the woods, after supper. Sometimes they don’t come home. They stay out after dark and, when you find them, they are dead. Passed away.

  “Madeleine.”

  Madeleine had not thought about how. Something terrible had happened and Claire was dead; “something terrible” had seemed specific. But it wasn’t. Otherwise, Madeleine would not be cut down by the side of the road like a daisy.

  “Come on,” says Mike. “Okay, don’t come on.” And he keeps walking toward home, glancing back over his shoulder to make sure she is not getting murdered.

  Madeleine stays in the cindery gravel, her bare legs folded under her. Her hands have disappeared. Her head is turned and she is looking and looking down the street at Claire’s house, where the OPP car is backing out of the McCarrolls’ driveway. Claire got murdered.

  Whatever will become of me? cried the little girl when the birds had stolen the last of her food. Evil has become of her. Madeleine has the sick smell feeling. Like before, only worse. As if she has done a bad thing—but I haven’t done anything. As though she has seen Claire lying dead in her blue dress—but I didn’t. Just lying there, that’s the most shameful thing for a little girl to do, to lie there dead and anyone could just pull her dress up. Oh it is a bad smell.

  The policeman touches the brim of his hat and Mr. McCarroll raises a hand. Mrs. McCarroll is inside the house somewhere, Madeleine knows. She is in there with Claire’s Brownie uniform and all her ankle socks and unbroken toys. There is nowhere for Mrs. McCarroll to go, the whole world is sore.

  The cruiser comes slowly up the street in her direction. When it passes, she sees the handlebars of Claire’s bike hanging out between the bouncing jaws of the trunk. “She only have one streamer,” says Madeleine to nobody. “She only has one streamer,” she corrects herself.

  A pair of hands wedges under her armpits and pulls her up. “Hop on,” says Mike. She climbs on and he piggybacks her home. “Sack o’ potatoes,” he says as she slides off his back onto the front porch.

  Maman comes to the door, takes one look at Madeleine, feels her forehead and says, “Straight to bed.”

  Jack has made a loop west from Exeter, zigzagged south through a series of uncharted dirt roads until he knows he is below Centralia, then veered east again to pick up Highway 4, which he will follow south to London, and thence Highway 2 all the way to Windsor, where so many cars are born and go to die. He realizes he is squinting and tries to relax his eyes against the noonday sun. He knows exactly where his sunglasses are: on his desk.

  Maybe it’s time Simon had a word with someone in Ottawa—filter it down to the OPP that they are barking up the wrong tree, going after so-called war criminals. Get them back on the scent before it goes cold. Jack wishes he had thought to suggest this to Simon over the phone; he’ll call and do so this evening.

  He shades his eyes with his hand and longs to put on his hat with its merciful dark brim. But he leaves the telltale hat where it is, on the seat beside him, and points the Ford Galaxy west.

  Madeleine convinced her mother that she was not sick. She is surprised at herself, passing up a legitimate opportunity to miss an afternoon of school. But she had a morbid feeling—as though, if she lay down on her bed or even on the couch in front of the TV, her eyes would go glassy, her head would heat up like a furnace and she would never get up again. So she has returned to school after lunch but, apart from the brief respite from monotony afforded by Grace Novotny’s shrivelled-looking hands, she has been unable to concentrate on anything but the window.

  Grace returned from lunch without her bandages. Her fingers are white and wrinkly, as though she has just got out of the tub. Someone called Children’s Aid. Grace’s dad would like to know who.

  Jack squeezes his eyes shut once or twice, and increases his speed, driving into the afternoon sun. If the police do their job and come up with an honest-to-goodness suspect, the war criminal story may never be reported; left to fizzle at the local level. He is watchful, glancing frequently into his rearview mirror. He curbs his speed as he sails toward Chatham—the last thing he needs is to be stopped for speeding.

  At recess, Madeleine leaves her friends and drifts over to the stormpipe, intending to look inside once and for all but she sees Colleen sitting on the sunny side of the school, where the white stucco prickles back the sun; she is bent over a piece of glass and a page from a discarded newspaper that has blown up against the wall. Madeleine sees a puff of smoke rise from the page, and approaches. Suddenly the paper levitates and curls inward, consumed by a brief orange flame. Madeleine doesn’t say anything and neither does Colleen, but soon they have strayed round the back of the building, leaving the charred headlines to blow away, Ban-Bomb Trekkers Storm Secret Haven.

  They have never spoken on school property during school hours. They don’t speak much now. Madeleine proposes a plan.

  By two o’clock the report has come in on the registration search Bradley ordered on Ford Galaxys. It turned up eleven possibilities: five in Toronto, two in Windsor, two in Kingston, one in Ottawa, one in Sudbury. In ten cases, the owner was at work between four and five P.M. last Wednesday, with his car. In one he was out of the country altogether.

  Jack accelerates. The police will be wrapping up their session at the arena right about now. Just east of Windsor, his heart leaps at the sight of a black-and-white cruiser in his rearview mirror. Gaining on him, tailgating. He’s had it. He waits for the flashing light, even now preparing himself to pull over, to say nothing and insist on making a phone call. But the black-and-white pulls into the passing lane. Jack keeps his eyes on the road. What is more natural—to glance at the passing driver? Or to keep his eyes forward? His face feels like a beacon. The cruiser takes forever to pass—is the cop on his radio right now? Finally it pulls past Jack, steadily gathering speed, widening the distance between them. He breathes again.

  Welcome to Windsor. Jack heads for the waterfront. Smoke rises from the GM factory across the river in Detroit—you could almost skip a stone to it. He finds what he’s looking for on the edge of town.

  Stretching before him are acres of bodies, some rusting, others wrecked—jagged windshields, gaping hoods, crumpled snouts. One great tumbling car crash. At the far end, stacks of neatly pressed chassis loom near a shack that sits in the shadow of a crusher, its magnet like a giant pendulum. Henry Froelich and his boy would be in heaven here, thinks Jack, as he takes the tools from the trunk. He gets to work, calm now. Maybe he is cut out for this sort of thing after all. He removes the hubcaps and sends them saucering in four directions. Then the tires. He unscrews the steering column and yanks it by the wheel, dangling wires and ignition. Uproots sparkplugs, pries off the bumpers, and hurls them. He funnels dirt into the gas tank, removes the fan belt, the battery, and, holding the crowbar like a baseball bat, goes at the exterior. Finally, he smashes the windows.

  There are bound to be bigger wrecking yards in Detroit, but he didn’t wish to risk being stopped at the border, now that a bulletin has surely gone out on the Ford. Not to mention having to walk back across the bridge an hour later—although th
e guards are unlikely to pay much attention to him on either side of this point on the world’s longest undefended border. Four thousand miles of freedom.

  He drops the plates in the river.

  In the recreation director’s office at the curling arena, the last uniformed, hatted air force man goes out the door, closing it behind him. Constable Lonergan folds his notebook away, turns to his superior and asks, “Should I put out a bulletin on that Ford Galaxy now, sir?”

  Inspector Bradley looks at the man, his face betraying no opinion as to the merit of the question he has just been asked, and says, “There was no Ford Galaxy.”

  If Mr. March wonders where Madeleine is when the rest of his class returns to their desks after recess, he doesn’t show it. He neither informs the principal nor phones the child’s mother. Has he thought ahead to what he will say when the parents ask why they were not alerted to their daughter’s absence, now of all times? Or is he counting on Madeleine to make sure her parents don’t find out, thus sparing him the ordeal of answering their questions as to why she would choose to avoid his classroom?

  Perhaps Mr. March doesn’t care what happens to Madeleine. Or maybe he doesn’t believe her to be in any danger.

  Jack directs the taxi to the Hertz dealership in downtown Windsor—he’ll be able to get most of the grease off his hands there. His head has begun to ache, the pain radiating from his left eye. He decides not to take the time to find a drugstore, he’ll grab a couple of Aspirins when he gets home. He rents a car—no need for back roads now. He’ll bomb straight up the 401 to London and, with luck, be back before dark, although he knows his family will be safe at home.

  He can hardly bear to think of his daughter; her face becomes overlaid with the face of the McCarroll girl and he feels almost terrorized by his good fortune. His child is alive and happy. And right now she is in one of the safest places of all. School.

  REQUIEM

  Find in the story and explain: “Her thoughts were miles away.” Developing Comprehension in Reading, Mary Eleanor Thomas,

  1956

  THEY HAVE TO FIND her other streamer. That is the mission. But Madeleine knows that what she really needs to find is where Claire was for three days and nights. Rex found her. “Good boy, Rex.”

  The two of them hid against the windowless exterior wall of the gym until the recess bell rang, then slipped away. Madeleine waited at the railway tracks by Pop’s Candy Store while Colleen went home and got Rex, then they took the fields all the way to Rock Bass.

  Madeleine doesn’t feel she is doing anything wrong by playing hooky. This is like missing school for church. Or the hospital. Anyhow, they haven’t taken off in order to fool around. There is something solemn about risking getting in trouble for the sake of finding Claire’s other streamer. And visiting the spot. It’s a necessary sacrifice. Colleen follows her through the gap in the wire fence.

  They have brought Rex in case the murderer is still there. Murderers always return to the scene of the crime. Perhaps they ought to have brought weapons. Don’t worry, Colleen always has her knife. And Madeleine can pick up a stone if necessary. She did think fleetingly of Mike’s rifle, but that’s a toy, and this is not a game.

  Colleen leads the way down into the ravine. They have brought no food; this is not a picnic. They remove their shoes and socks and wade through the icy stream, ankles aching, then climb up the embankment, their frozen skin numb to the thistles, and into the newly sprouted cornfield. Be careful.

  They put their shoes back on and walk for a long time, single file, between the furrows, feet growing heavy with mud, Rex in front, the lope of his hindquarters, his reassuring fur shining in the sun. They don’t speak. The cornfield becomes the meadow.

  Oh it is Tuesday, bright and sunny, but inside Madeleine’s stomach it is chilly. Everything is so quiet, school-day quiet. Look for something pink and gleaming in last year’s fallen-down grass, or draped perhaps across a sticky milkweed pod or bulrush—furry brown spike bursting fluff. Maybe they will see it blowing across the tops of the lacy stinkweeds that are scattered like dropped napkins across the meadow—the entire countryside is a tablecloth laid for a banquet—or down among the dull burrs snagging their ankle socks—something winking back the sun, that will be her streamer. We have to find it because it was hers. And it is still out there, all alone. Keep walking. Rex knows the way.

  He zigzags out in front, looking over his shoulder from time to time, stopping, letting them go ahead for a while. He is herding them. The lily of the valley release their scent, crushed underfoot in the new grass.

  The ground becomes marshy. Up ahead, standing alone, announcing the woods, is a stately elm.

  There, stop. Don’t step in. Stay at the edge. Like stumbling upon a pond, you don’t want to get a soaker. If this were a pond, you might see your own reflection and wonder if there was a tiny world down there looking back at you. But it’s not a pond, it’s a circular patch of tamped-down grass and weeds, as though someone had a picnic there. A spot the size of a puddle. Big enough for one to curl up in. That is where she lay. But already the tender grass is springing back. Soon there will be nothing to see. Around the edges, bluebells and dandelions have been plucked, the milk dried in their severed stems, their blossoms tossed among broken bulrushes. There is no sign of her pink streamer.

  Madeleine says, “Maybe they’re going to bury her one streamer with her, or else keep it as a souvenir.”

  When Madeleine is grown up, Claire will still be in a box in the ground. She will still be little, still in the same dress they buried her in. No matter what I am doing, no matter where I go, Claire will be there in that one spot.

  “They can’t do that with evidence,” says Colleen.

  Evidence. Imagine your bike, or your running shoe, or any old thing; one day it’s just your stuff lying around, and the next day it’s evidence. Police. Do Not Touch. Top Secret.

  They search the area around the spot carefully without touching anything. They speak sparingly, in whispers. They walk lightly. This is a grave.

  “We should have a funeral.”

  “Yeah.”

  Mike and Madeleine had a funeral for a fly once. They put it in a matchbox and prayed for it and Madeleine composed a poem, “Goodbye fly, the time is nigh. You flew too high, goodbye, good fly.” A poem is coming to her now, “Claire, you were fair, but it was no fair….” She can get no farther because all she can think to rhyme with it is “underwear.” “But where is your underwear, fair Claire?” Lost and gone forever.

  “Her underpants were off,” says Colleen.

  “How do you know?” asks Madeleine.

  “I heard Mrs. Ridelle tell my ma.”

  “That’s sick.”

  “Yeah.”

  They stand in silence, gazing down at the fading circle. Rex stands next to them. On guard.

  “Maybe the murderer got her other streamer,” says Madeleine.

  “She coulda just lost it.”

  “No, she had it,” says Madeleine, “’cause remember? We saw when she was going to Rock Bass with Ricky and Elizabeth.”

  “She wasn’t going with them.”

  “I know, but I saw she had both of them then”—Madeleine looks back down—“and that was the day.” She moves to pluck a weed to chew, then stops herself, not wanting to chew or eat anything from around here.

  “We were the last ones who saw her,” she says. Everyone in the world will have a last person who they see, who sees them. Who will mine be?

  “No, Ricky and Elizabeth and Rex saw her after we did,” says Colleen.

  “Oh yeah.”

  “And someone else.” Colleen has taken out her knife but she doesn’t open it, or flip it and catch it, the way she usually does.

  Madeleine says, “Who?” Colleen narrows her eyes and doesn’t answer, doesn’t look at Madeleine. Madeleine gets it: the murderer, that’s who.

  She can hear grasshoppers fiddling, insects crawling up blades of grass. Sun burns the
centre part in her hair. Nearby, the woods are dark and cool. Rex sniffs the edge of the tamped-down circle, but he doesn’t venture in either. Colleen reaches out and passes her hand over it. “To feel if it’s still warm.”

  “Is it?”

  “A bit. Feel.”

  But Madeleine doesn’t want to. “Wanna go home now, Colleen?”

  “No, I wanna tell you something, and if you ever tell, I’ll kill you.” Rex’s ears prick up and he lifts his head. “What is it boy?”

  They follow Rex’s gaze, toward the woods. A crash—Madeleine’s heart leaps, she grabs Colleen’s arm, Colleen doesn’t push her away, they stand stock-still. Heavy footsteps. The leaves are shaking. Madeleine sinks her fingers into Colleen’s arm and Colleen says, “Shhh.”

  There, amid cool green shadows—light brown jacket through the branches—a doe. Huge brown eyes. She looks at them from behind the jigsaw green and black of the forest fringe. Like a creature up from an underwater world, about to sample oxygen, that dangerous and irresistible nothing.

  Rex goes into a crouch, growls softly. His shoulders move, he inches forward. “It’s okay, Rex.” He stops.

  The deer steps from the woods into the meadow. Bends her head and starts to graze. They watch her, the three of them, oh for a long time, for five minutes, until the deer lifts her head and bounds away like a wave, diving back into the dark pool of trees.

  That was Claire’s funeral.

  “What were you going to tell me?” asks Madeleine.

  They have turned away from the woods, from the small circle, they are leaving the spot. Madeleine sees a piece of blue shell in the grass—it looks like a piece of robin’s egg. She stoops to pick it up but, before she can, Colleen seizes her wrist and turns her face-on. In her other hand she holds her knife, open. She slaps the handle flat into Madeleine’s palm and closes Madeleine’s fist around it. Then she holds out her own palm and says, “Do it.”

  “What?”

  “Cut me,” says Colleen. “Then I’ll do you.”

  “Why?”