by Anne Degrace
The man who approaches is tall, bearlike really, and she knows at once it’s not Martin. She tucks her legs up against the suitcase and crosses her arms, looking up at him, waiting for him to speak. He has his hat in his hands and she watches it, a dun-coloured oval turning around and around.
“Miss McGrath?” he asks.
It’s not Martin. It couldn’t be. Could it? She stands up.
“I’m Peggy McGrath.”
“Arthur Stouffer. A friend of Martin’s. He asked me to come.”
There is a rush of wind all around her, and then she realizes it’s inside her head, her heart. A roaring. Something is wrong. “He did?”
“There was a riot. In Regina. More than a hundred arrested. There was tear gas. The police were firing into the crowd. A lot of injured.”
“Martin was injured?”
He looks down, his large fingers turning his hat, moving, she thinks, like small animals. “He was killed. They’ll tell you he wasn’t. They’ll tell you there was a policeman killed, and that’s all, nobody else. They’ll tell you we started it, that we were shooting, that we had to be put in our place. But it’s not true. We didn’t start it. And someone else was killed. I was there.” He pauses. “I stayed with him at the curb, in all that chaos, until he died. I don’t know where they took his body.”
When she crumples, he’s there to catch her, and then he apologizes awkwardly while she collects herself and sits back down on her suitcase. In her hands is a scarf, gold-coloured wool, blue on the ends. She didn’t notice when he pressed it into her arms, and now he’s handing something else to her. An envelope.
“He’d saved a little. He wanted me to give this to you. These two things.”
Overhead a small plane catches the light from the descending sun, glowing. She watches it for a minute, the scarf pressed tight to her chest like a bandage to a wound.
“Can I help you find a place to go?” he asks at last. He looks back over his shoulder, and she recognizes the gesture as awkward, embarrassed. Clearly he is as lost as she is.
“No. No, thank you. I just need to sit for a moment, catch my breath. Then I’ll be on my way. Please,” she says, looking at him, seeing the fear in his eyes. He’d rather be anywhere but here right now. “Go.”
“What will you do?” he asks, and she answers, absurdly: “I suppose I’ll start writing letters.” As soon as she says it, she knows it’s true. There are things that must be said.
He nods. “That’s good,” he says.
She watches as he steps onto Wellington Street and into the throng of day’s-end workers, watches while he places his hat back on his head and adjusts the peak. He doesn’t look back as he breaks into a long stride heading eastward. He would run if he thought he could, she thinks. If he knew I wasn’t watching. She closes her eyes for a moment, as if giving him permission. Sometimes, it’s good to run.
She turns her head to look west, blue descending into gold, and as she does her eyes catch the final flash of light on wingtip as the plane slips behind the skyline and out of sight.
SIX
ALL OF THE COLOURS
·1944·
WHEN ARMSTRONG FIRST saw Hirsch he was struck by how much the prisoner looked like his son, Stephen, who was overseas fighting the very Krauts Armstrong was paid to guard. At the time, Hirsch had just stepped from the mess hall and was chatting in low tones to another POW. Armstrong released the breath he had not realized he had been holding and watched for a moment. It was something in the tilt of Hirsch’s head, and in the flush that spread like a peony bloom from jawline to cheek. There was that blond, blue-eyed, downy look that for Armstrong recalled Stephen as a toddler, an adolescent, and later, a soldier. Stephen had seemed impossibly young when Armstrong had seen him off at the station two years ago, so that the father had had to turn away to hide his tears from the son. And now, there was Stephen’s easy smile in the strong face of this German, who himself seemed far too young to ever have been at war.
There was a short burst of laughter and the other man strolled off toward Bunkhouse 4, leaving Hirsch standing alone in the fading April light.
“Did you cut much wood today?” Armstrong asked as he approached; he assumed Hirsch would have been out with one of the crews. He spoke slowly and clearly and then waited, unsure if he was understood. Most had some English, but not all.
Hirsch was just lighting a half cigarette, and he blew out the match as he turned on one heel, in what was almost a parody of military precision, to address Armstrong. “Today? Not so much as was expected, I think. But it is hard, ya? Saws are dull. And we are not cutters of wood by trade.” He waved the short cigarette vaguely. “Not so many cigarettes left before Red Cross comes,” he said by way of explanation, in flawless if accented English. “And our mail is again held up.”
Despite the accent, the timbre was so like Stephen’s that Armstrong’s hand shook perceptibly as he lit his own cigarette. They stood side by side smoking, watching the rosy light fade over Whitewater Lake and the Manitoba forest beyond. Around them, men drifted back to the bunkhouses, talking quietly in small groups.
Hirsch took a final pull on his stub of cigarette and squinted at the last rays of sun before turning toward Armstrong. “Do you come out on the work crews? I have seen you out there, ya?”
“Sometimes. Not your crew, I don’t think. It’s good being out of camp, out at the work site.”
Hirsch laughed. “If you are not working, it’s good. If you are cutting wood, not so much. But we have not the bugs yet. And that is very good.”
Armstrong had been at Whitewater POW camp since Christmas, having volunteered to serve with the veteran guard the summer previous. He was fifty-five years old, he had run out of options, and when it became clear that the tide of prisoners being sent to Canada by the British would not abate any time soon, it was an opportunity. He was relieved, initially, to be stationed at Neys instead of the really big camps such as Medicine Hat or Lethbridge, where there had been so much trouble. But things had not gone well at Neys. Armstrong’s nervous nature had put fellow guards on edge; his behaviour courted danger within a prison populace who already regarded their captors with unconcealed contempt. Consumption of contraband liquor helped when he could get it, and this as much as anything hastened his transfer. He’d been dry since then.
Whitewater, with only a few hundred prisoners, came as a welcome reassignment. Perhaps it was the recreational atmosphere, for in fact this was a National Park, now seconded for double-duty in this time of war.
In an absurd way Armstrong was grateful for this war, because if he had to say what he’d done since the last he’d have been hard-pressed to come up with much: odd jobs, short-term positions. Cynthia had left, eventually, her mother’s decline in Montreal a welcome excuse, and then found reasons not to return until Armstrong had stopped asking. The wealthy Strattons had never really approved of the marriage anyway.
It’s hard to come home from war, he thought, not for the first time, and he felt freshly sorry for the boys in the camp, even if they were the enemy. You couldn’t ever come out of it the same as when you went in. Armstrong glanced at Hirsch again and wondered where, at this precise moment, Stephen might be.
“You are not on duty?” Hirsch asked after a bit.
“No. I’m off today, actually. They do let us off once in a while.”
“And you are still here? You do not go home to your family?”
“My wife passed away a few years ago, and my son’s overseas,” Armstrong told him, surprising himself to be revealing so much to a POW, but surprised more at the loneliness that crept into his voice. “There’s a card game later,” he added, masking it.
Footsteps from behind, and then Block’s voice, sharp. “Hirsch! Don’t you have something to do? Write a letter to your Führer or something?”
Armstrong
turned to catch the disapproving look on Block’s face. Must’ve been a formidable force at Ypres, Armstrong thought. Block had seen serious action in the Great War and lived to brag about it; others, such as McGrath, joining them now, were of gentler stock; McGrath himself had been a POW in the Great War, and although he didn’t like to talk about it, his feelings were evident in his empathy for the prisoners. Armstrong, whose first scuffle in the European Theatre had led to the injury that put him behind a desk for the remainder, kept quiet when talk arose. Now, Block waited impatiently as Hirsch took a final drag, smiled laconically at Armstrong, and ambled towards Bunkhouse 5.
Block snorted, then tossed a look at Armstrong. “Bloody Krauts. Act like they run the place.”
McGrath grunted. “Three more didn’t show up for roll call this morning. Col. Trevaine was close to calling a search.”
“But they came back,” said Armstrong, a statement. He didn’t know, but it was a good guess; they always did.
“About ten hundred hours. They just hiked in and went straight to work crew. Came back with the boys for lunch.”
Block ground his cigarette under his heel. “Trevaine’s too lax. It’s a joke.”
“Aw, c’mon, Sid,” McGrath said. “Where are they going to go? And what are we really going to do to keep ’em here, with no fence and no tower?”
“There’s a war on, for Chrissakes.” He looked pointedly at Armstrong and nodded in the direction Hirsch had gone. “Who’s he, one of your new bosom buddies? You gonna play cards with your new friends, or with us?”
“I’ll see you later,” Armstrong addressed McGrath. He headed for his quarters through the gathering dusk, left leg just a little slower than the right.
THAT’S WHERE IT began. After a while, Hirsch didn’t really look like Stephen anymore — clearly he was older, his face a little rounder — but by then the friendship had taken on an easy camaraderie, despite the almost thirty years between them, never mind the war itself, and despite the fact that when his shift was over Armstrong could go home if he wanted to, and Hirsch could not. Block didn’t like Hirsch, and made no secret of it. Armstrong could not be sure why Hirsch, exactly, except that Hirsch was everything Block was not: charming, intelligent. It became worse when Hirsch was elected Camp Spokesman from within the prisoner ranks.
“Arrogant bastard,” Block said one evening as he dealt a fresh hand to the table. Armstrong sat to his right, with Carruthers and McGrath across.
“You wait: they’ll be wanting their own copy of the Geneva Convention — in German. And more privileges. It’s already a bloody holiday camp.”
And so it was, in a way. The food was decent, the work not particularly hard, and as the war went on crews cutting firewood were often left to police themselves, a few trusted officers responsible for a crew working their paced way through a stand of fire-damaged poplar. The YMCA and the Red Cross ensured that educational and cultural opportunities were present, and the recruitment of volunteers for the work camp from the big camp at Medicine Hat included cooks, clerks, tradesmen, doctor and dentist, and in this way almost all needs were satisfied, save a notable lack of women.
For the most part, the camp was a welcome alternative to combat, and nobody wanted to risk jail time for a failed escape. In any case it would be hard to get very far with a big red circle on your back, and not just stitched onto the shirt, either; the cloth was cut out and the patch inserted, so if you didn’t have a two-foot bull’s-eye between your shoulder blades, a hole in your shirt the size of a dartboard would surely attract attention. But mainly, there was just nowhere to go. In the summer, blackflies and mosquitoes; in the winter, cold. And miles and miles of nothing. There were times when every resident of Whitewater felt something of a prisoner, regardless of the uniform he wore.
Now, McGrath spread his hand out and whistled under his breath. “There’s a bunch haven’t got mail for ages. Dunno if it’s the censors or what,” he offered.
“Gah,” said Block. “You guys ready to roll here or what?”
“Who’s on lookout tonight?” Carruthers asked, laying down a ten of hearts.
“Peabody,” McGrath offered, laying down the jack. “Horgan. Carter.”
Block played a king. “Good thing there’s nowhere to go, then.”
“Nowhere to go,” Armstrong agreed, setting down the six of hearts, the highest card in his hand.
“My trick,” said Block.
Armstrong put his cards down and pushed his chair back. “You know what?” he said. “I’m knackered. Next time, okay?”
“Sore loser,” Armstrong heard Block mutter as he closed the door.
IN HIS BUNK, Armstrong picked up the letter he’d been crafting to Stephen for the past week. Mail pickup was Tuesday; he really needed to get something down, and yet his days seemed identical. But perhaps to Stephen, some mention of the day-to-day would be a comfort, wherever he was. He took the pages out from inside his leather writing folder and scanned what he had written.
Son,
I hope this finds you safe and out of the line of fire. It’s been some weeks since I’ve received a letter from you, and of course that is always cause for concern. In your last letter, you were waiting for your orders, and relatively comfortable. That dance sounded like great fun. I’m sure your observations of young women being a little “freer” during wartime are not so far from the truth, although I am sure in your conduct you remained the gentleman that your mother raised you to be, God rest her soul.
I am grateful to be a member of the Veteran’s Guard, and yet I feel almost unpatriotic when I say that a little excitement would not be such a bad thing. The days are relentlessly the same for the Guard, and I daresay the prisoners have found more innovative ways to amuse themselves. Sometimes there is a soccer game, or ping-pong, and cards, of course. Last winter the hockey became quite skilled despite the fact that there are only 19 pairs of skates for a population of more than 400. Now with spring, I hear baseball will start, inmates against staff.
There’s a blacksmith shop, where some of the men are learning the craft and turning out decorative things such as hooks and fire pokers and the like. Many are excellent craftsmen, carving some of the animals they see when they are out cutting wood, and they seem endlessly fascinated with our wildlife. Not so fascinated with the pigs we are raising, and yet there are a few who tend to them as if they were children, much to the amusement of others. Perhaps they miss their own.
And we have music, with a hodgepodge of instruments from the YMCA, and a rather good baritone choir. Sometimes the prisoners put on a play, with men playing women’s roles, of course. Which is the other thing these young men must very much miss.
As for me, I miss you, Stephen, and I miss your mother still.
This was as far as Armstrong had got, and as he read his words, he felt the weighty impossibility of continuing, every cheerful word sure to be exposed for the lie it was. He had reached the bottom of the page with the words I miss your mother still; starkly honest, it was clear he could not leave his letter there.
For me, he continued, the day is structured around roll calls and meals, and if it is my duty to accompany the men to the work site, and it is a fine day and not raining, the forest lifts everyone’s spirits. On patrol we walk the perimeter of our camp, and on inspection there is sometimes the thrill of discovery when we find some wire beneath a mattress, a radio receiver in the works, foiled by us.
Armstrong stopped there. Much of this would not get past the censors. It wouldn’t do for word to get out about how relaxed things were at Whitewater, and anyone reading it would have no concept of the futility of barbed wire and hard rules in a place such as this. Instead, he got a fresh sheet and wrote:
Of course, it is no holiday camp, as these prisoners well know. Last year, they cut more than 33,000 cords of firewood for destinations from Dauphin to Winnip
eg — not as much as was hoped, but something to improve upon. With better discipline, we hope to see 50,000 cords this summer. Three-quarters of a cord per man per day is what Wartime Housing wants; we’re not there yet, but these men are relatively new to the job.
Armstrong imagined the censor reading this last paragraph and felt reasonably confident it would make it to Stephen unscathed. He closed the letter with an expression of hope that the next mail delivery would include a missive from Stephen, and that his son was keeping as safe and well as could be expected.
IT WAS A sunny Sunday in May when Armstrong agreed to accompany a group of men who wanted to hike up the mountain. Maybe it was the grin Hirsch gave him, the easy hand on his shoulder. Col. Trevaine had approved it, hoping to keep morale up, the better to encourage increased firewood production, the need for firewood pressing with so many men overseas. It was unusual for the veteran guard to accompany the prisoners on such an outing, the job more often left to civilian guards. Armstrong wondered what magic Hirsch had worked on the camp commandant to get approval for what was clearly the guard of his choice, and Armstrong felt complimented.
“You need the exercise, no?” Hirsch laughed, nodding towards Armstrong’s waistline, and Armstrong found himself grinning back. Hirsch leaned in, still smiling. “Unless you think it would be too hard for you, my friend. Your leg?”
“It won’t slow me down,” Armstrong told him.
“No,” Hirsch said. “You are still a young man. We’ll go then. When?”
Armstrong found himself nodding, distracted. It hadn’t occurred to him he might be seen as old. “After mail call,” he said.
Armstrong was waiting in the mess hall with a week-old newspaper when Weiler approached with a letter. Around him, cookhouse staff were cleaning up; the midday meal was over. Weiler, originally at the camp as a conscientious objector due to his Mennonite background, had been part of the work detail to build the camp, and when the German Afrika Korps arrived he’d slipped into cookhouse duty, a reasonable way, he said, to pass a war. He held the letter out, the others to be delivered tucked into the crook of his arm.