She picks up the loaf of bread she bought earlier; tears off a chunk and eats it. It tastes like dust but she chews until it’s moist enough to swallow. Keeps going until her stomach feels not full but less empty.
Miss Greeley’s money is almost gone. The room is paid up for a month, but in a few days she won’t be able to buy bread.
CHAPTER 24
Hope
April, 1916
By the end of April, there’s more sunshine and Taras feels something warm slip inside him. It takes him a while to name it, but at last he realizes it’s hope. He sees it in the others as well, Yuriy especially, but he’d expect that. Tymko shows it by a desire to wash his clothes. Taras, Myro, Bohdan, Yuriy and Ihor also believe they’ll feel better with clean clothes.
In the wash house they sort garments, light a fire in the stove and set water to boil. Bohdan has carved a wooden shim, and he wedges it under the door to make sure no one comes in unexpectedly. Definitely a prohibited use of the knife Sergeant Lake gave him. And over several weeks, each man has stolen a cup from the dining hall. Each dips into the potato wine and drinks.
“Dobre,” Taras says, his throat burning. “It’s not that bad.”
“Well, it is,” Yuriy says, eyes watering. “But it’s better than you’d expect.”
Taras sips again. Feels the alcohol hit his brain, his muscles. He hasn’t had a drink for such a long time. He wants to laugh. Everyone drinks.
Myro and Yuriy dump the clothes in the tubs and pour in soap, humming to themselves. They drink and wait. The room is getting warm. The water bubbles and they pour it on the clothes and set more to heat.
The first cups of wine are gone. These are their first real drinks, beyond quick tastes to see how it was developing. Now that it’s not too bad, Taras thinks it would be foolish not to drink it down before someone else finds it. He looks at the others.
Tymko’s eyebrows rise to their highest peaks. One by one each man nods. Yuriy grins and leads the way to the closet. Each fills his cup again.
“A toast to the humble potato, boys.” Tymko raises his cup.
“Barabolya!” Yuriy cries. “You’ll always have a place on my farm.”
“Kartopliya!” Bohdan says. “Oh, if we only had some varenyky. Then we’d be set.” He tosses back half his drink and so do the others.
“If only we had some beautiful women to make them for us,” Tymko says. “Warm, shapely women with breasts like soft pillows, and hips –”
“Beautiful women with black eyes and curly black hair, yes,” Ihor says. “But with breasts a little smaller than pillows...” He stops when he sees the longing on the faces of the other men.
They go back and stir the clothes around. Throw in the rest of the water. Myro rubs his shirt against the washboard, trying to get out stains. Singing a little song.
“So it’s spring,” Tymko says. “Time to clean everything out and start fresh. Not just clothes, either. We can clear out old ideas that aren’t helping us. We can analyze our lives and figure out what to do when we leave here.”
Yuriy throws a wet snotrag at him. Tymko grabs somebody’s shirt and wraps it around Yuriy’s head. Bohdan protests. It’s his shirt. Socks fly around the room. A couple land on the stove and start to sizzle.
Taras leaps to rescue what he believes to be his own socks and catches a sopping shirt in the back of the head. Suds stream down his sweater. Soap bubbles fly past him, flashing small rainbows.
Tymko ties a hankie on his head like a woman’s headscarf and stuffs a pair of wet socks under his shirt for breasts. He starts to hum, deep in his belly. He begins to dance, light on his feet as a young woman, weaving between the other men. They clap their hands and shout. Stamp their feet. They pinch Tymko’s sock breasts as he passes. The melody spins around the room. The cups are empty.
Whuuump! Suddenly there’s pounding on the door. “Quiet down in there!”
This sets them laughing. They know that voice. It’s Jackie Bullard, now dubbed Bullshit by most of the men. He never learns, never knows when to walk away from trouble. Any moment now he’ll be calling them slackers.
He tries to open the door, finds it won’t budge. It can’t be locked from the inside, so what’s keeping it shut?
“Open this door at once! Or I’ll get an axe and break it down!”
Again they laugh, but not as much. Bullshit is spoiling their mood. If they let him in now, he’s going to find the boiler. They were going to keep the rest for another day. At least they’re almost sure they were going to keep it.
“Open the door! Don’t make me tell you again.” He thumps until their ears ring unpleasantly. Or is that the wine?
“Oh shit, boys,” Tymko says, “I guess that’s it.” He takes the socks out of his shirt, leaving two big wet spots, and removes the hankie from his head.
The thought of Bullshit dumping out their wine after all their work and scheming is too cruel. Only one thing to do.
There’s a little left after each man fills his cup. The first man to knock his back – Bohdan, surprisingly – gets that. Myro takes the boiler to the washtubs and sloshes water around inside it, then dumps the rinse water in the drain. Tymko carries the boiler, cradling the six cups, back to the closet and shuts the door on it. Taras is grateful to them, because it’s taking all his concentration to stay standing up.
The thumping is now like artillery fire.
Bohdan gets ready to open the door. Myro resumes rubbing his shirt against the washboard. Taras splashes warm water on his face and rubs it with his shirt sleeve.
Tymko breathes into his hand, sniffs and shakes his head: Don’t breathe in Bullshit’s face. They nod.
Bohdan removes the shim and slowly opens the door. Jackie Bullard rushes in, red in the face, his bayonet thrust out in front of him, and almost trips in the puddles of water and clothes strewn on the floor. He sees Myro’s black hair dripping water, Ihor’s curling moustache flecked with foam.
“Clean this up at once! It’s disgraceful. We don’t give you this wash house just to make a mess, you know.”
Taras almost chokes from the need to laugh. Who knew Bullshit could scold like an angry baba? He hears a strangled noise in his throat.
“You think it’s funny, do you?” Bullshit’s face is getting dangerously scarlet.
Now the others, even Myro, stagger around laughing.
“You’re drunk! Aren’t you? All of you, drunk!” Bullshit sounds outraged.
Tymko is immediately calm and serious. “Certainly not,” he says. “We just like to let off a little steam while our clothes soak.”
“We were practising a Ukrainian dance,” Yuriy says. Bohdan nods.
“Don’t worry,” Tymko says. “It’ll be clean and tidy when we leave.” But he can’t suppress a small snort of laughter.
The guard tries to smell Tymko’s breath. Tymko smiles but doesn’t exhale.
“See that it is. Or there’s going to be trouble.”
“Absolutely. It’ll be clean as wissel.” Bullard stares. “Clean... as...a...whistle.”
Bullard heaves a great sigh. They can guess what he’s thinking. The men are plastered. He could get them all in big trouble. And yet, they’ve obviously drunk the evidence. And they’d have the mess tidied before he could be back with reinforcements. The look crosses his face that he’s tired of being mad and making people do things. And then there’d be a huge stink as the brass tried to find out where the raw materials came from. It’s most likely potatoes from prisoners working in the kitchen and they’d all be punished, and it’s all so bloody boring, and wearying.
“All right, get the mess cleaned up, and I’ll forget all about this. And stay here until you can walk straight. And shut up about it with the other men.” Or I’ll make you pay later, he doesn’t say, but it’s understood. Still, for Bullshit, this is pretty decent.
The moment he’s gone, Bohdan shuts the door and replaces the shim. They all collapse onto the floor. It’s warm in the shack. T
here are no guards making them grub roots or chop wood. They’ll have to finish their laundry in a bit, but for now they sit smiling. They’ve created something, Taras realizes. Yes, it was only something to get pleasantly drunk on, but achievement can be measured by the difficulty of the task as well as by the end product. Sometimes getting pleasantly drunk among good friends is a noble goal.
The hope Taras has begun to feel continues, but he doesn’t think the guards feel very hopeful. As the weather warms and the number of escapes goes up, they get testier, hold their bayonets more grimly at the ready. Even Bud Andrews, the most affable of them, looks ready to take someone’s head off. Like all the guards, he hates being sent after escapees. Taras thinks this is because it’s most likely to end in failure. And if it doesn’t, there’s a good chance he might have to shoot someone.
Often so many soldiers are out searching that there aren’t enough left to guard the internees. So one day Taras’s bunkhouse is assigned to tidying up around the camp. They work up to the woods above the bunkhouses. In the trees the snow’s still deep, but meltwater trickles through the cleared areas, an image in miniature of the great river system it feeds.
Afterwards no one knows who started it. The prisoners are warm from the work but not as tired as usual. Guards stand around in groups talking. The first snowball hits Yuriy, then Bud Andrews catches one in the head. Each looks ready to punch somebody. In seconds, Taras, Bullshit, Ihor, Bohdan and Barkley have wet snowy circles on their clothes. Taras lobs a big sloppy one. Tymko catches it in the forehead and goes down as if shot. He gets up laughing and runs into the trees, where he makes beautiful, hard snowballs and wings them at everyone, with no discrimination between prisoner and guard.
Some are small and deadly accurate. The bigger ones, almost cannonball size, have a shorter range but usually hit something. It’s a blizzard of snowballs. War without death or wounds. Everyone’s panting. Yelling. Snow fills boot tops, slides down collars, soaks every coat, sweater and pair of trousers, right through to long underwear.
Andrews laughs so hard he has to be pounded on the back. Even Bullshit isn’t mad.
Tymko looks around and nods. He brushes off what snow he can and flops to the ground. As if it’s a signal of surrender, soldiers and prisoners fling themselves into the snow, gasping. Those who have cigarettes pass them around. Tobacco smoke and the aroma of wet wool fills the air.
Taras is warmed through, almost as warm as in the hot pool.
On May 10 two men, known as the dvi Wasyls – the two Wasyls – because they have the same first name, escape on the way to the Spray Bridge worksite. Sadly, they’re recaptured the next day, putting an end to the song Taras and Yuriy were making up about their heroic deeds.
A few days later a clutch of well-fed men in suits turns up to see the commandant. Who are they? Men from the government? The American consul, who’s supposed to make sure the internees are being treated correctly? The Red Cross, who also monitor the camps?
No. They’re from the Canmore Coal Company. The reason for their visit spreads through camp like an outbreak of dysentery. It seems that so many men have enlisted in the armed forces that many industries are now short of workers. Industries like the Canmore Coal Company. They want to talk to some of the prisoners about working for them. They ask for five men, former employees, and are willing to guarantee their good behaviour.
For a week or two nothing happens – the government must be mulling it over – but everyone knows coal is once more in demand, for the navy and for industry.
May 13 is a bathing day, followed by a glorious soak in the pool. Taras can still hardly believe it. Back home, anything this good would be reserved for pahns. Here they’re allowing in peasants, agitators, foreign scum. An hour’s small reparation for unjust imprisonment.
Or at least, to use Tymko’s words, it’s a contradiction.
The next day, the American Consul does appear, to check on conditions in camp. But no one Taras knows even sees him. Later, they hear that he found everything satisfactory.
“Let him try it if he thinks it’s so satisfactory,” Taras says.
“It is satisfactory,” Tymko says. “For him. He gets to inspect things, ask nosy questions, annoy the commandant – a good thing in itself, let us remember – and then take the train back to Calgary for a good dinner.” Is that all there is to it? Taras wonders.
The miracle of the snowballs persists in the prisoners’ memories. Then on May 20, one of the guards, Private Brearly, walks into the woods near his house in Banff and cuts his throat. The news spreads through camp, and Taras can see that the death shakes the other soldiers. It seems to Taras that escape is also difficult for guards.
The men in suits from the Canmore Coal Company return. The five men they asked for are “paroled” to work in the mines. Taras is even more outraged than Tymko. Apparently the internees are all too dangerous to be on the streets. Spies. Saboteurs. Revolutionaries. Isn’t that what the government thinks? Suddenly it doesn’t matter, because now the country needs more workers. Before it didn’t need them, in fact there were too many.
Taras will not forget this lesson. It’s the closest he’s felt to the socialists, who at least have theories about why there are concentration camps in a supposedly free country.
Concentration camps for people who were invited to come to Canada.
Could Taras one day be offered the same chance as these men who walk quietly out of camp to a waiting truck? He doesn’t believe it will happen.
In the meantime, escape is possible if you want it badly enough. Yuriy and Ihor have kept track of the number of prisoners who have freed themselves since the camp opened. Sixty-one men have run – or more likely walked – away. Almost two thirds of them – thirty-nine – are still out there. Free. And it’s nearly time for the camp to move back to Castle Mountain for the summer. Its wire fence is tall, but tents are more porous than wooden bunkhouses. Anyway, at least it’ll be warm.
The guards tell tales of sudden snowfalls in July.
CHAPTER 25
Back to Castle Mountain
June 27, 1916
Once again Taras rides a train to Castle Mountain, windows raised to warm breeze, to sky a hard deep blue. He and fifty others are going to get the camp ready. He plans to take it as slow as possible and hopes the guards get the point: Let’s everybody not get excited. It’s too tiring. It’s a reasonable hope. The soldiers are usually more relaxed when there aren’t so many prisoners to guard.
Prisoner. Enemy alien. Internee. That’s what he’s been for almost a year; back then another train brought him this way.
He lets the swaying motion open up memory: wind knifing rain into his face, lightning searing his eyes, mud running like a river. The storm a reckless giant stalking the valley. A spirit, his own, howling like wind.
That night three men escaped. So, he’d thought, it can be done. Over the year he kept track of the ways people got away. He found no real pattern, just that you had to get into the trees. After that, rain, smoke or fog could help a man hide there.
In his favourite escape story, three men helping carry the prisoners’ lunches took off in the opposite direction from the work gangs, along with the lunches. He imagines having all he wanted to eat for a day or two. Even it was only the pokydky the government feeds them.
He wonders what happened to the ones who got away. He imagines lives for them, pleasant, comfortable lives. Warm, clean beds. Delicious, wholesome food and, yes, an occasional drink. Church on Sunday.
The train pulls into the siding, and the immensity of Castle Mountain asserts itself once more. It’s some kind of change, but he’s also back where it all began.
Their first job is to unload a freight car full of tents and equipment and clean up the site. But they don’t even reach camp before a new guard, Private Edwards, takes Taras, Yuriy, and a couple of other men, Tony Rapustka and Panko Marchuk, on a mission to carry baggage to the Parks foreman’s camp west of the internment camp. T
he foreman himself comes along to direct them.
What kind of trouble can four prisoners, an armed guard and a foreman get into, especially when the four prisoners are carrying heavy burdens?
Foreman Wilson also needs trees cut and trimmed to make poles for tipis. No one explains why he needs tipis, but then no one ever explains anything to internees. Wilson leads them into shade-dappled woods and they fell the trees he points out – tall, slender trees with very straight trunks. The guard is calm and quiet, just the way Taras imagined it, and he works at his own pace and lets time pass.
As he trims branches from one more lodgepole pine, he hears a small, strangled sound and looks up. A tree plummets toward earth – or rather toward Tony Rapustka. Straight for his head and shoulders. A moment earlier Rapustka might easily have been daydreaming or imagining there would somehow be a good dinner back in camp, but now he suddenly realizes the enormous importance of his head and shoulders – if only to himself. He leaps out of the way of the tumbling, plunging trunk; and having leapt and found it pleasant, he leaps again; and yet again. Finding himself now in the shelter of the forest, he begins to run, and it must be that he finds that good also. He moves deeper into the trees.
“Halt!” screams Private Edwards as Rapustka crashes through the trees. He raises his rifle and fires. Rapustka stumbles. He must have hit the man.
“You got him! I’m sure of it,” the foreman yells.
Edwards tears into the trees. No sign of Rapustka anywhere. He makes a half-hearted search, but he has to keep an eye on the other prisoners. Edwards has the only weapon, and even if Wilson did have a gun, a Parks foreman has no authorization to go around shooting people. So they’ll all have to go back so Edwards can talk to his captain. The captain will send soldiers to cover the places a man might be most likely to come out of the trees.
Taras and Yuriy flash each other happy grins. Rapustka is their hero for the day. They can still see him leaping: once, twice, three times. He’s flown like a bird. And he’s got a nice head start. A squirrel high up in a tree makes a chattering noise as if warning them all to leave, and the internees start to laugh. Until then they wouldn’t have dared. Wilson laughs too, but Edwards merely tightens his grip on his rifle.
Blood and Salt Page 26