The Way the Crow Flies

by Ann-Marie MacDonald

  “Be that as it may—”

  “He raped us. Grace and Marjorie included, that’s why they lied, he played games involving strangulation—”

  “Even if—”

  “He did it.”

  “Yeah okay, look, number one, that was almost twenty-five years ago—”

  “So?”

  “Number two, he’s dead, all right? So much for that. Number three—”

  “Thanks for nothing, buddy.” She will hire a lawyer. “Goodbye.”

  “Wait! Wait. Number three: he had an alibi.”

  And she knows it as he says it. That day in the schoolyard. The afternoon of flying up.

  Bradley says, “You know, I’m sick and tired of people digging this up, I did my job—”

  She can hear it, fractured melody on the air, struggling out the windows of the gym. Flat trombones, hesitant woodwinds—the school band bleating out a song, reaching them where they lounged on the grass of the outfield, she and Colleen, as Claire rode up on her pink bike. It’s a world of laughter a world of tears …

  “Want to come for a picnic?” Her lunchbox in the basket between her handlebars. Two pink streamers. It’s a world of hope and a world of fears …

  “Hindsight is twenty-twenty,” says Bradley. “Your generation—”

  There’s so much that we share that it’s time we’re aware, it’s a small world after all…. Mr. March conducting the band from the piano, pounding out fat chords at odd intervals so it sounded as though the piece were ending every few bars.

  “We can look for a nest,” said Claire.

  “—you like to sit in judgement of every bloody thing we did,” says Bradley, pitch rising to a whine—

  Claire rode off on her own, and the band was still playing when Madeleine and Colleen left the schoolyard. Mr. March was still in the gym, at band practice, which always went till four-thirty. Madeleine has always known that. It’s a small world after all, it’s a small world after all, it’s a small world after all …

  “—but let me tell you something,” says Bradley, “we worked with what we had at the time—”

  … it’s a small, small world.

  “Thanks, Mr. Bradley.”

  “Wait now, I’m not—”

  She hangs up. Inspector Bradley is retired. He has all the time in the world. She has three hours to make it up to Tobermory, at the tip of the Bruce Peninsula, where the vastness of Lake Superior flows out into Huron. If she wants to arrive before dark. She opens the folding glass door of the booth and feels the sweat immediately begin to dry on her forehead.

  For a moment she can’t recall where she left her car. But she sees it, beyond the hangars, parked on the simmering tarmac. She has a vision of her tires sticking to the viscous black strands as she tries to leave Centralia. But she runs to it, starts the engine, shifts into gear and the bug leaps forward eagerly, like Noddy’s Little Car, parp parp!

  She doesn’t see the white buildings receding on either side of her car as she follows Canada Avenue, she doesn’t see the empty guardhouse up ahead. Everything shimmers and melts around her like a mirage, her visual cortex has taken over and will guide her off this old base and toward her destination without her conscious help, because she is seeing something quite different now behind her eyes. It fills the screen in Panavision. Shot from below in rich early sixties pastels, lusher than life, like an illustration from an outdated grade-school reader. Except that this is not a still photo or a drawing. There is a breeze. Caressing the long grass; rippling the leaves in the elm high above, where two or three crows dot the new foliage; lifting the yellow ringlets of the girl to his right. Marjorie. Kissing the curls of the girl to his left. Grace. Playing at the hems of their dresses, their innocent white knees. Mr. March is standing between them in his big grey suit. His glasses glint back the sun, he is holding their hands. All three of them are looking up and to their right, into the sunny blue. Then Mr. March disappears from the picture. And the two little girls are left on their own.

  Madeleine passes through the old gates where her father used to touch the brim of his hat to the guard. She passes the cement scar in the ground where the Spitfire once flew on its pedestal. She smells tar and resin and looks up at the telephone pole. Thrusting from a shambles of straw and twigs, a rusting mouth. The old air-raid siren. It’s still there, and so are the crows who made it their home so long ago. It hasn’t sounded since 1962, the crows have had no need to move. So many years of peace in our time.

  She turns north on Highway 4. She will pass through Exeter, Clinton, Goderich … the dust will turn to gold behind her car, the lake will wink crystal-blue beyond the dunes, the pines will become more numerous, the landscape rockier and more grand, but she will not see any of it. Instead, she will see what happens after Mr. March vanishes from the picture.

  The truth was always there. And it’s far sadder than anything she has imagined. But she knows now: it could never have been her, left lying in that tamped-down spot.

  “WE’RE NOT GOING TO HURT YOU.” And they weren’t.

  “We just want to see something.”

  “Yeah Claire.”

  They have given her the robin’s egg. She has taken it from Marjorie’s outstretched palm, its shell perfectly intact. Boys are rough with delicate things, but girls know how to be careful. Marjorie says they know where to find more eggs. “Alive ones,” adds Grace.

  Claire cups her hands around the egg, hollow and weightless, and follows Marjorie and Grace.

  The cornfield is on the other side of the ravine, and beyond it is the meadow where, if you are lucky, you might see a deer—if you are very quiet. And bordering the meadow are the woods.

  “That’s where the nest is,” says Marjorie.

  They climb the embankment out of Rock Bass. Marjorie leads the way, and Grace lets Claire go ahead.

  A buzzy afternoon, warm for April. Trickle of the stream newly liberated from ice. The sound of insects clicketing in the grass. The sound of the sun.

  They enter the cornfield and walk single file between freshly turned furrows, careful of last year’s cornstalks sticking up like bones from the ground. Behind her, Grace starts turning round and round as she walks. She says, “Get dizzy, then look up at the sky.”

  Claire tries it. She and Grace laugh with their heads thrown back.

  Up ahead, Marjorie turns. “Hurry up, you two, I’m not partial to dilly-dallying.” She sees an ear of corn on the ground, still bound in yellowed leaves. She picks it up, light and lean with age, and peels back the papery husk. The kernels are withered, some darkening like bad teeth. She is about to toss it away when Grace grabs it.

  “Guess who I am?” says Grace, the cob between her legs, wagging it up and down.

  Claire smiles politely but turns away, embarrassed. Marjorie rolls her eyes in disgust and walks on.

  Grace swaggers behind Claire—“Squeeze my muscle, little girl”—laughing. She pretends to pee out of it, “Psssss….”

  “Don’t be so rude, Grace,” says Marjorie.

  Grace runs ahead of Marjorie, spins around and walks backwards, spraying her with imaginary pee.

  “I’m warning you, Grace.”

  Grace turns forward again, loses interest in the ear of corn and drops it. Marjorie picks it up.

  The cornfield gives way to the meadow.

  Cows do not even graze here, it’s empty but for the long last summer’s grass collapsed over new growth, and the few cattails left standing—some broken like spars, others split at their furry tips, spilling seed. The tiny white bell-heads of the lily of the valley release their scent, crushed underfoot, and here and there, brushstrokes of blue like spilled sky, the spreading bluebells. This meadow is lying fallow; in a year or two it may be the cornfield and the cornfield may be the meadow. The ground becomes marshy. They are nearing the woods.

  “Are we there yet?” asks Claire.

  Grace glances at Marjorie but Marjorie is unconcerned, twirling the cob of corn like a ba
ton.

  “Not much farther,” says Grace.

  Up ahead—standing alone, announcing the woods—is a stately elm.

  Claire stops. “I’m not allowed to go in the woods.”

  “Well I’m afraid you have no choice, that’s where the nest is,” says Marjorie.

  “No,” says Claire.

  “How come?” asks Grace.

  “My mommy said.”

  “The cornfield is worse than the woods, Claire,” says Marjorie.

  “Yeah,” says Grace.

  But Claire shakes her head.

  “It’s your loss, little girl.” Marjorie shrugs. “Oh well, you might as well show us your underpants.”

  Claire looks at Grace. But Grace is looking at Marjorie.

  Claire smiles and raises her dress obligingly, as though to make up for spurning their invitation to enter the woods.

  “Oh, they’re pretty.”

  “Yeah, they’re really pretty, Claire.”

  Tiny yellow butterflies. White cotton.

  “Take them off.”

  Claire takes them off. Modestly dropping the skirt of her dress first. A voice in the back of her head says, Don’t take off your underpants when people ask, it’s not good for people to ask that. But there is a lovely breeze and she is out in a field, not among houses or in the schoolyard, where it certainly would be rude to be taking off underpants.

  There is another reason why she is taking off her underpants. It’s difficult to explain, but she is doing this mainly because she knows how. As if there were already a Claire, an invisible one, perpetually in the act of removing her underpants on demand. So this Claire—the one in the meadow—may as well do so too. And it’s not even as though she herself is taking off her underpants, it’s as though this is something that is simply going on.

  She slips her underpants to her ankles and steps out of them. Grace giggles. Claire laughs. Marjorie picks up the underpants. They are warm.

  “Now bend over, little girl,” says Marjorie.

  Grace giggles, Claire laughs and runs through the grass with no underpants on. Oh it is a lovely feeling. So fresh, like when you first go out without your woollen hat in springtime, the free feeling of your ankles flashing along in running shoes for the first time after a long winter in galoshes.

  “Get her,” says Marjorie.

  Grace runs after Claire, who is delighted to have someone join the aimless race. Let’s run and run until we come to an enchanted clearing. There we will meet a fairy princess who will serve us tea in walnut shells, and her attendants will be wearing acorn hats. Grace runs heavily—the more she chases, the more she is weak with laughter, but excited too, and it’s the excitement that keeps her going, gradually gaining on Claire, who is politely slowing down. They are about fifteen feet from the elm tree.

  Marjorie follows, unhurried, tapping the corncob into her palm the way a teacher does with a pointer.

  Claire nears the elm and stops for Grace, and Grace grabs her arm. “Ow,” says Claire.

  Grace looks back at Marjorie.

  Claire scans the ground for her blue egg, which she dropped when Grace grabbed her just now. She spots it in the grass, the shell looks fine, but Grace’s grip prevents her from stooping to pick it up. “Excuse me Grace, could you please let go?”

  Grace looks at Claire as though noticing her for the first time. There is a look in Grace’s eye. Excited and scared, as though at the sight of something just beyond Claire’s shoulder. Claire turns to see what’s behind her, but behind her are the woods.

  Grace hollers, “Hurry up, Marjorie!”—too loud, because Marjorie has almost caught up. Huwwy up!

  Marjorie is not laughing. She has a grown-up expression on her face. Like when grown-ups are past the end of their tether, they are not even angry any more, but you know that means that you are in even more trouble than if they were. They are just sick to death of you, that’s all.

  “I’m sick to death of you, little girl,” says Marjorie, a worn-out disgusted look on her face.

  Claire giggles, because what game are we playing now?

  “Bend over and touch your toes,” says Marjorie.

  “Um,” says Claire, “I don’t—I want to play—let’s pretend—”

  “Are you deaf, little girl?”

  Grace gives a delighted shriek and holds tighter to Claire’s arm, with both hands.

  Claire whimpers, “Can I go home now? Want to come to my house and play?”

  Grace pushes Claire down.

  “I warned you,” says Marjorie.

  She tosses Claire’s underpants onto Claire’s face. Grace jumps onto Claire before she can get up. She holds the underpants stretched over Claire’s face and hollers, “Smell your bum!” Shrieking with laughter.

  Marjorie stands over them, watching. She sees the outline of Claire’s nose and open mouth through the taut fabric. It’s not enough. “Get off her.”

  Grace gets up, grinning, her tongue working the chafed corners of her mouth. Claire lies motionless.

  Marjorie removes the underpants from her face with the tip of the corncob.

  “Get up.”

  Claire gets up. “I have to go now.”

  “It’s okay, Claire,” says Grace.

  “Put your hands around Grace’s throat,” says Marjorie.

  Claire obeys.

  “Squeeze. Harder.”

  Grace says, “Mar—!”

  “Shut up.”

  Claire lets go of Grace and waits for the next instruction.

  Marjorie tells her, “Pee.”

  Claire’s forehead wrinkles. “I can’t,” she says, and begins at last to cry.

  Marjorie says, “Hold her still.”

  Grace takes Claire by the elbows, locking them together from behind, and Marjorie puts the cob of corn up Claire’s dress, and presses.

  “Ow,” says Claire, biting her lip. “Don’t do that please, Marjorie.”

  Marjorie presses harder and Claire yelps. The scene resembles agreement, for Claire is not writhing, despite pain, despite fear. It’s terrible. The only thing that it isn’t is surprising. To any of them.

  “Ow-hahoww….” Claire is not screaming, just whimpering. Like a child who knows she is going to be punished.

  “Don’t hurt her, Marjorie,” says Grace, still holding Claire.

  Marjorie’s arm thrusts upward with a twist, because it can. Claire screams and jolts forward, but Grace prevents her from falling and hurting herself. Marjorie watches. Isn’t it strange that someone right in front of you can be screaming about something that you don’t feel? Like rain falling two inches away and you stay perfectly dry. “What are you screaming about, little girl?”

  Marjorie takes the corncob out from under Claire’s dress. There’s blood on it. Claire is sobbing.

  Grace lets go of her. “It’s okay, Claire—hey Claire—Claire, can I see your charm bracelet?”

  Marjorie tosses the corncob away, into the grass. A crow drops down to investigate. Claire raises her wrist, hiccuping, and shows Grace her bracelet.

  “Oh, that’s the prettiest one I’ve ever seen,” says Grace, fingering the charms. “Can I try it on?”

  Claire shakes her head, and Grace says, “Okay I won’t, Claire, it’s yours.” Grace lets go of the bracelet.

  “Lie down, little girl,” says Marjorie.

  Claire doesn’t move.

  “She doesn’t want to,” says Grace.

  Marjorie sighs and says, resigned, “Strangle her, Marjorie.”

  Grace obeys. She doesn’t shriek with laughter at Marjorie’s mistake in calling her by the wrong name, because she doesn’t notice. She squeezes and squeezes.

  Now Claire looks surprised. That’s how people look—as though they have just remembered what it was they meant to say. Marjorie watches.

  It’s all very quiet. Grace isn’t grinning, just staring, and it ceases to be funny, ceases to be anything at all. Not anything, just doing this, quiet quiet like under the ocean
, the air has slit open. What was there all along, behind the air and woods, and grass and the sky, that painted sheet, is Nothing. You can’t stop. You aren’t doing anything.

  It goes on, it goes on, Grace not doing anything, just not stopping. Marjorie watches.

  Falling so fast, all is still, so empty there is no change. It goes on, it goes on, it happens, nothing happens, doing nothing doing nothing doing nothing.

  And finally, Claire pees.

  Grace lets go and Claire drops to the ground.

  It’s a sunny day again. They are in a field. Claire McCarroll is there. Insects are there, and from the dirt road beyond the woods, the sound of a car going by. It’s Brownies tonight. We are flying up.

  “Get up, Claire.”

  Marjorie will remember that the grass was yellow, but it is newly green. Grace will remember that they were in a cornfield, but there is no corn here. There is the long pale grass. There is the high elm. The corn-syrup sun. All around them is the month of April. It’s twenty-five to five.

  “Stick your tongue back in.”

  Claire does not obey.

  “Get up.”

  She will not do as she is told.

  “Marjorie …,” says Grace, going wavery. “Ohhh,” moaning, “ohhh nooo….” Oh no Marjowieeee….

  “Shut up Grace”—fed up and bored, the teacher marks the failed spelling test.

  “Ohhhh…,” Grace is turning round slowly, pulling tall grass, bending over, hugging herself, “oh noooo….”

  Marjorie relents, as a long-suffering mother might, when her child’s misbehaviour has run its course and been replaced by contrition or exhaustion. “It’s all right, Grace,” she says. “I won’t tell.”

  Grace must make things nice. Pull Claire’s dress down. Fold her arms. Bluebells to cover her, Queen Anne’s lace, which some people call stinkweed but which is pretty like a doily. Marjorie helps with two long cattails for a cross over her chest, because we may as well do this properly.

  “She’s sleeping,” says Grace, and bends to kiss Claire good night but can’t because of the eyes. Claire’s face is already changing. Grace finds Claire’s underpants in the grass, tiny yellow butterflies on clean white cotton, and places them over her face.

  It is time to get out of here.