The Way the Crow Flies

by Ann-Marie MacDonald

  She has rubbed cream into her hands to soften them. She feels terrible that she let him see her that way—in her work clothes—but he must have known the house doesn’t stay clean on its own.

  “Smell nice,” he mumbles.

  “Jack….” She touches her lips to his ear.

  “Where’s the Aspirin, baby?”

  She gets up, returns with a glass of water and two pills. “Is it bad?”

  “Naw,” he says, rolling to face the wall.

  “Pauvre bébé”—massaging his neck.

  He reaches back and pats her on the hip. “Thanks for dinner, it was great.” He sleeps.

  He is up and gone before Mimi wakes—there are his pajamas on the floor. She folds them, then goes into the bathroom. Someone is mowing a lawn nearby, she can hear the motor, and there is the particular smell of gasoline and cut grass that she associates with weekends, not Friday mornings. She brushes her teeth, and out of the corner of her eye she registers someone mowing the Froelichs’ front lawn. She glances, then stares; it’s her husband. Closing in on a shrinking square of overgrown grass in the centre of a perfect green carpet. The Froelichs’ front door opens and Karen Froelich comes out with a steaming mug. She hands it to Mimi’s husband.

  Madeleine sits with Rex in the cindery strip between grass and street. She steers an ancient Matchbox truck through roads she bulldozed with a piece of roof shingle. She knows she is too old to play in the dirt by herself with someone’s dog—maybe I’m retarded and don’t know it.

  There is a U-Haul in the Froelichs’ driveway. Her father saw it too, from the kitchen window, at breakfast, and said he was going over there to “see what’s up.” But her mother got the idea to go on a spur-of-the-moment camping trip, and told him to help her pack instead.

  Madeleine is half hoping that Colleen may come out of the house and say hi. She is always at the trial, and when she comes home it’s late in the evening, after visiting Rick. But today is Saturday, and the U-Haul says that any minute the Froelichs will come out of their house and start loading something into it. Or maybe they are going to buy something. A new couch. Madeleine hears her name being called—“Madeleine, on y va”—and joins her brother and parents in the Rambler.

  “No one ever asked me,” Mike mutters under his breath at the back of his father’s head. He spends the whole drive ignoring Madeleine and thumping his fist into his baseball mitt.

  When they return Sunday evening, the U-Haul is gone and so is Ricky’s home-made hotrod. The Froelichs’ house sits empty. “What the heck is going on?” says Jack, standing in his driveway, fists on his hips, looking across at the purple house.

  At first, Madeleine thought her father was offended because the Froelichs had decided to move without telling anyone, or saying goodbye. But it turned out the Froelichs had lost their PMQ.

  HOW

  Ousque ji rest? Chu en woyaugeur, ji rest partou.

  Where do I live? I am a traveller, I live everywhere.

  Métis voyageur, Minnesota, 1850s

  “I CALLED HQ,” says Hal Woodley, “but my hands are tied.”

  Hal is cleaning out his desk. The handover parade is next week. A new CO will take formal command of RCAF Centralia. The air force band will play, officers, cadets and other ranks will be in their uniforms—a dazzle of gold braid and, for the wives, new spring hats. Jack knows nothing about the new CO, but how reasonable is it to expect that he would lift a finger to help Henry Froelich? Hank is not even military personnel.

  “Did they at least tell you why they turned him out on the street?” asks Jack.

  “Froelich’s no longer eligible for housing because he’s no longer employed by the local school board.”

  “They fired him?”

  “‘Chose not to renew his contract’ is the official word.” Hal takes the framed photo of the Avro Arrow off his wall and places it in a box.

  “How’s your young gal—Marsha—doing?”

  “Well, she’s … she’s young, she’ll be okay. We’ve sent her to stay with her aunt out west.”

  Jack knows the girl was taken out of school before the end of the year. According to Mimi, she had to be sedated when she heard about Ricky; Elaine told her that Steve has since prescribed a mood-elevating drug. But time heals, and in just a month the Woodleys will be at NATO headquarters in Brussels. Jack feels a pang of envy, then remorse when he recalls the Froelichs. Stuck here and virtually homeless. “Hal … what are the chances that a well-placed phone call to the school board from someone like yourself might—?”

  “Tell you the truth, Jack, it’s probably for the best. What kind of life would the Froelichs have here after what’s happened?”

  “But the boy will be acquitted, don’t you think?”

  “Probably. But the damage is done.”

  Jack nods. Extends his hand. “Raise a good glass of German beer for me, will you, sir?”

  “Will do, Jack.”

  Mimi and Mike have headed off to a movie together, over on the station—The Sands of Iwo Jima, starring John Wayne as a hardbitten Marine sergeant. Jack pointed out that “for a fella who never saw action, he sure gets a lot of credit,” but Mike just shrugged. Jack had officially grounded him, but Mimi told her son that, although she was not usually partial to war pictures, she’d heard this one was good. Jack gave her a look—what’s the point of punishing the boy if you’re going to turn around and spoil him?—but she ignored him and the pair left the house.

  Jack watches them walk up the street and, when they have disappeared around the corner, turns and calls over his shoulder, “Where’s my little buddy?” Then, “Hop in the car, I’m going to get my ears lowered.”

  In Exeter, Madeleine chats with the barber and the men who play checkers outside, and they get her to do her impression of Sammy Davis Junior. The barber gives her a Crispy Crunch bar and she and Dad head over to the A&P to pick up a few things.

  It’s fun grocery shopping with Dad. He buys all kinds of things Maman never would: store-bought cookies, precooked ham in tins, a barbecued chicken, ready-made potato salad and Wink, the world’s best lemon-lime soda. They shop quickly, without looking at any price tags, and Dad tells her to pick out a treat from the store freezer. She chooses a rainbow Popsicle, which she splits in half by cracking it against the curb in the parking lot.

  “Where are we going?” she asks, because he has pointed the car north, instead of south toward Centralia.

  “We’re going to drop in on some old friends.”

  They drive fast up Highway 4, then veer left on Number 8 toward Lake Huron. “Are we going to Goderich?” she asks—maybe we’re going to visit Ricky at the county jail. But they turn inland again just south of Goderich, crunching over gravel, then dirt, until they come to a farm—at least, it used to be a farm. The barn is in a state of slow collapse, its boards half consumed by the earth already, and the yellow brick farmhouse has had its eyes nailed shut with planks. In the field there are not crops but rows of trailers. A hand-printed sign announces “Bogie’s Trailer Park.” They drive slowly over ruts, Jack looking to left and right. They pass a shed with another scrawled sign, “Office,” followed by a list of “Camp Rules,” the letters jamming up toward the bottom of the board. Some trailers have flower boxes and paper lanterns. Some even have patches of grass. Others have rusty barbecues and no awnings. They pass the showers, equipped with another list of rules. Madeleine says, “There’s Colleen.”

  She has had no time to worry about how to act when she sees Colleen again because she had no idea where they were going. Now she is unsure. Is Colleen mad at her? Is Madeleine supposed to talk about Ricky, or not mention his name? Is she supposed to act really serious? Or really funny?

  Jack pulls up and Colleen sees them. She is carrying a bucket of water. “How do you like your new digs, Colleen?” he calls out.

  “It’s okay.”

  Madeleine decides to try to act normal, but not disrespectfully so. Like at a funeral; you shouldn’t
stare at the dead body, but you should remember it’s there.

  “Hi,” she says.

  Colleen leads them a short distance down a rutted “street” to where a wooden ramp zigzags up to the screen door of a dirty white aluminum box, rust stains bleeding from the eaves. Rex barks and gets to his feet.

  “How come you got him tied up?” asks Madeleine.

  “Rules,” mumbles Colleen, as she hauls the bucket from the car and heads for the trailer.

  Madeleine hugs Rex and feels his warm breath down her back. Oh, it’s good to feel his fur against her face and to smell him again. His fangs glisten in his pink gums as he grins at her.

  “Don’t put your face so close to the dog’s,” said Dad quietly, as the screen door opens. “Howdy, strangers,” he says.

  “Jack,” says Karen Froelich, and walks toward him with hands outstretched.

  Henry follows and shakes his hand. “Come in, come in, have a glass of wine.”

  Karen says, “Let’s sit outside, Henry, it’s nicer.”

  “Yes, it’s nice out.”

  “How are you, Madeleine?” asks Karen.

  “Fine thank you, Mrs.”—then blushes as she remembers Mrs. Froelich’s long-ago request—“Karen.”

  Karen puts an arm around her, laughing. “Go in and find Colleen, she could use a good laugh, go on, babe.”

  Madeleine hesitates, then walks up and opens the screen door. Behind her she hears her father say to the Froelichs, “We can’t stay long.”

  Jack takes the groceries from the car and piles them onto the wooden ramp, over Henry and Karen’s protestations. He holds his glass as Henry fills it with red wine, and he tries to keep his eyes on him, aware they keep straying to Karen. Somehow, despite her dusty black flip-flops and the dirt between her toes, she manages to look oddly elegant, her long fingers pale and perfect, a beaded bracelet around her wrist….

  “How are you, Jack?” And he is struck by it again, that quality she has—alone among women, in his experience—of seeming to see him, to address him, directly, as who he is, without any accessories.

  “Can’t complain,” he answers, and shifts his eyes back to Froelich.

  Madeleine enters the trailer, and treads carefully amid the rubble of toys and clothes so as not to wake the babies, who are sleeping on a cot. The interior is positively neato, with miniature everything—a real icebox that uses a real block of ice, bunk beds and shelves that fold into the walls. A Coleman stove, a blackened pot. There is no electricity and no tap over the sink. The Froelichs are on a permanent camping trip.

  “Hi Elizabeth.”

  “Ay Ademin.”

  “Watcha got?”

  Elizabeth shows her. A paperweight from Niagara Falls. Shake it and snow drifts down over the Maid of the Mist. Naturally, as long as Elizabeth holds it, it is always snowing.

  “That’s beautiful.”

  In the dusk of the trailer, Colleen turns to Madeleine. “Want to see something?” She leaves the trailer through a low flap at the back, and Madeleine follows. It feels so good in the dying light, the cool of early summer, to be following her friend over ruts and ridges through the tall grass. Colleen is barefoot but Madeleine has on new plaid runners, her bare ankles already wet with “snake spit.” She does not call, “Wait up!” because Colleen stays the perfect distance ahead, brown and bright in the last light like a copper penny.

  Colleen stops at a wire fence and says, “Shhh.” She slips between horizontal metal strands, careful not to touch them, whispering, “It’s an electric fence.” Madeleine ducks and slips between the wires, death three inches above and below her, thrilled with fear. “Don’t worry, it won’t kill you, just scares the cows,” says Colleen when Madeleine is through.

  But there are no cows in the field, which is rapidly shifting from gold to pink; only ponies. Three of them. Colleen walks toward them and, as though they have been expecting her, they turn and canter over. Serious tall dogs, they vie with one another to nuzzle her. She gives them something from her pocket and strokes their soft noses. She encircles the neck of one with her arms and, in a motion so effortless it could be from a film played in reverse, slides up and onto his back. She pats his neck. “Hop on.”

  Madeleine doesn’t want to ask how. Colleen reaches down, Madeleine grasps her arm just below the elbow and jumps as Colleen pulls. “Hang on.”

  It hurts, but Madeleine would not choose to be anywhere else as they walk, then trot.

  “Use your legs,” says Colleen.

  Across the field, onto a path between the trees, ducking branches, then out again onto a smoother meadow, tender green-to-mauve alfalfa. Madeleine hangs on for dear life, her legs around the pony’s wide back, arms hooked around her friend’s bony ribs, wondering how Colleen manages to stay on and steer at the same time.

  “Rick showed me,” Colleen says.

  They slow to a walk and Madeleine turns to look back at their wake, a darker green gash already closing up behind them. They rock slowly toward a dip lined with trees and the most magnificent willow she has ever seen, a palace of a tree with a west wing, an east wing, turrets and a moat. “Here’s my camp,” says Colleen.

  There is a small firepit and, under a rock, her tobacco, rolling papers and matches. She lights up. The pony drinks from the stream below. They lean back and look up at the first stars appearing in the intensifying blue. This is the life, pardner. “Hey Colleen. Is it an Indian custom—I mean, Métis?”

  “What?”

  “Being blood sisters.”

  “How should I know, I got it off a movie.”

  Colleen passes her the cigarette and Madeleine takes it, careful to betray no surprise. She holds it smouldering between index and middle finger, flooded with forbidden glamour—but she does not yield to the temptation to do Zsa Zsa or Bogart. She simply takes a puff and is immediately seized with a fit of coughing, eyes streaming, marvelling through the pain at how something so insubstantial as smoke can sear like a hot blade. When she can breathe again, she hands it back and says, “Ci pa gran chouz.”

  Colleen laughs.

  Madeleine reaches for a blade of grass. “We could light outta here,” she says, chewing the tender pale shoot. Head for the territories.”

  “What territories?”

  “Well. You know, we could just ride away.”

  Colleen takes a drag from her cigarette. “You always run into something no matter where you go. Turns out you’re someplace after all.” She exhales. “Know what I mean?”

  Madeleine feels her eyes widen in mystification, but she nods and, in a tone she hopes sounds both weary and comprehending, replies, “Yeah.”

  She is about to suggest that they make a fire when Colleen says, “That’s what happened when we exscaped from the training school.”

  “Is that when you rode to Calgary?”

  “Yeah.” Colleen spits out a speck of tobacco, narrows her eyes and runs the tip of her tongue along her lower lip. “They brung us back.”

  “How come you …” Madeleine doesn’t want to sound as though she is correcting Colleen, so she likewise says, “exscaped?”

  “’Cause there was one or two sick fuckers there, eh?”

  Madeleine’s desire to build a fire dies even as it occurs to her to wish she had brought a jacket. When she speaks again she tries to sound casual, this time not in order to convince Colleen that she knows what Colleen is talking about, but in order to reassure herself that she does not. She forms a polite question. “What did they have?”

  “Not a disease, Dummkopf,” replies Colleen.

  Madeleine swallows and waits. She doesn’t know the way back to the car. She doesn’t know where they are or how long it has taken to get here.

  “They were sick in the head,” says Colleen. “They liked little kids.”

  Madeleine stares at the cold firepit and doesn’t ask.

  Colleen says, “Know what I mean?” Madeleine shakes her head. “Good,” says Colleen. “Hope you never find out.�
� She takes a big drag.

  Madeleine starts to shiver. She concentrates on the red ember glowing at the end of Colleen’s cigarette. The world seems suddenly huge and chilly, a place where she might roll and rattle about endlessly, like a marble. She watches the red dot arc from Colleen’s fingers down into the stream, where it sizzles and disappears. She wants to go home and watch television, she doesn’t want to live in a trailer after all.

  Colleen stands up and makes a clicking sound with her mouth, and the pony turns and shambles up to them. Madeleine gets up. She waits for Colleen to mount first, but Colleen says, “Hop on.” Madeleine feels too heavy to jump up this time, but before she knows it Colleen is boosting her. She swings her leg over and lurches forward, grasping a handful of mane as the pony shifts his weight. Colleen says, “Hang on,” and starts to run. The pony follows, and Madeleine does hang on.

  By the time they get back to the trailer it’s dark, the crickets are singing and Madeleine’s legs are still trembling, her heart still ping-ponging.

  Colleen says, “You can come back and ride any time you want.”

  The grown-ups are sitting out front on kitchen chairs, with glasses of wine, and Elizabeth is wrapped in a Hudson’s Bay blanket, asleep in her wheelchair. A kerosene lamp burns on a stump and Mrs. Froelich is bent over Ricky’s guitar, strumming and singing softly, “‘Where have all the flowers gone, long time passing, where have all the flowers gone, long time ago …?’”

  A lump forms in Madeleine’s throat, and she hangs back in the deeper shadow of the trailer. She watches Colleen walk into the pool of light and Mr. Froelich’s encircling arm. Madeleine skirts the light and comes up behind her father. She leans on the back of his chair and he says softly, “Did you have fun, sweetie?” She nods, even though she is behind him. They wait until the song has ended, then Jack gets up.

  Karen puts her arms around him and says, “Thank you,” in his ear. He feels her about to step back again, and holds her briefly. He feels her return the pressure of his embrace for an instant, then she turns away. It has taken all of a few seconds. Henry Froelich grasps his hand with both his own. “Danke, Jack. You are a mensch.”