Come from Away

by Genevieve Graham

  Grace hoisted herself into the sleigh and burrowed into the back, next to her mother. “You’re being ridiculous. Just because he doesn’t live around here doesn’t mean he’s a bad person.”

  Her cousin shook his head. “It’s not just that.”

  “What do you think, Maman?”

  “He seems nice enough. Just . . . persistent.”

  Tommy climbed up front, then chirped to the horses. As the sleigh jingled along the road, Grace peeked out, hoping to catch another glimpse of her mysterious dance partner. Tommy’s sleigh should have caught up to them by now.

  But the men were nowhere in sight.

  FOUR

  Why, oh why hadn’t she gotten his name? She could have kicked herself for letting him leave the hall without at least telling her that. She could still think about him, imagine that they’d gotten another dance, but it would have been easier, somehow, if she knew his name.

  To everyone else, Grace waved off any teasing that hinted at her being whisked off her feet, but truthfully, she was flattered. Out of the whole room, he had wanted to dance with her. Not Linda, not any of the other girls, just her. She’d felt the belle of the ball in that moment, swept up in the magic of the night.

  Realistically, she told herself, it was probably good that he was from away. He hadn’t talked much, and she had no idea what she would say if she ever met him again.

  The excitement of the dance was eclipsed by Harry’s arrival the next day. Tommy went to pick him up at the railway station in Musquodoboit Harbour, and when he poked his head through the door Grace practically flew to him.

  “Hey, Gracie!” He was laughing, his arms around her. “You’re gonna choke me! Get off!”

  “Never!” she replied. “I’m gonna hang on and they’ll never be able to take you again.”

  He pried her off. “Happy Christmas, baby sister.”

  “Best present of all, big brother. I’m so glad you’re here!”

  The family crowded around, hugging and peppering him with questions and exclamations. He laughed at all the attention and answered what he could, but Grace could see the exhaustion in his eyes. She hoped he’d have time to rest.

  “How will they ever manage without you?” Linda gushed, her dark red lips drawn into a pout.

  Linda had conveniently dropped by the house, saying she wanted to talk to Grace about something or other, but Grace knew she had ulterior motives. Linda had had a mad crush on Harry for years, but he’d married Beth, his high school sweetheart. Then Beth—and the couple’s only baby—had died in childbirth six years ago, just about breaking him. Harry had always been a shy sort, hiding his scars, keeping his damaged eye from view, and grief had made it all worse. Linda had kept a respectful distance, but she never let Harry forget she was available.

  Today, Harry didn’t seem to mind Linda’s advances. “Well, I just don’t know,” he replied, deadpan. “How will the Canadian Merchant Navy stay afloat without their one-eyed sailor?”

  Linda’s pout deepened to feigned concern. “Without you there, the Germans will run amuck all over the place!”

  “Linda, you know what you need?”

  “What’s that?”

  “A dance.”

  That was perhaps the first time Grace had ever seen her friend speechless, and it made her laugh out loud. Harry held out a hand, then whirled a stunned but elated Linda around the living room, dancing to Glenn Miller’s “A String of Pearls.”

  “What do you think?” her mother asked Grace, appearing at her side.

  “They are adorable together. Harry never says anything, and Linda never stops talking.”

  Harry was to stay until just after Christmas, and during those few days he was home, the family settled into an almost familiar pattern. As Grace dusted the living room one afternoon, humming a Christmas song to herself, she dared to dream that things might someday return to what they were before. But Norman’s portrait, so lovingly painted by their mother so many years ago, stared back at her from across the room.

  “It will never be normal,” she quietly reminded herself.

  No sooner were the words out of her mouth than she heard a muffled boom in the distance. She rushed to the window, but nothing seemed out of the ordinary. The sky was blue, the snow undisturbed. Then she noticed a cloud of black smoke rising over the far inlet.

  The telephone rang just as two RCAF planes roared by, shaking the windows. She leaped back, stunned. What on earth were they doing out here? She picked up the receiver, still watching their smooth flight over the water.

  “Hello?”

  “Grace!” It was Linda, and her voice sang with excitement. “Did you hear that? Did you hear the explosion?”

  “I did! What’s going on?!”

  “You’re not gonna believe it.”

  “Try me.”

  “There was a U-boat out there.”

  “What?”

  “A German submarine! By Borgles Island.”

  “Oh, come on.”

  “It’s true! The boys at the logging camp out by Debaie’s Cove spotted it yesterday, and they called to report it.”

  “What? We have Nazis here, and you didn’t think to tell me until now?”

  “They told me I wasn’t allowed to say a word. You know, ‘loose lips sink ships’ and all that.”

  It didn’t make sense. “Linda, why would a U-boat go there? It’s just a boring little island with nothing to it. Not even the stupid Nazis would want it.”

  “For spying!”

  “Oh, for Pete’s sake.”

  “Grace, I’m telling you. That noise you just heard? Well, that was our plane blowing up the sub!”

  Ever since the start of the war people living along the shore had seen things in the distance: flares in the sky, planes, ships of all sizes, but this was something completely different. Debaie’s Cove was only ten miles from Grace’s home.

  When Harry walked quietly into the room, she pointed out the window at the smoke. Covering the telephone mouthpiece, she whispered, “Did you see that?”

  He leaned slightly to the side to get a better view, then turned away without a word. That was odd. She’d expected him to at least react.

  “But what about the men inside the sub?” she asked her friend, still watching Harry. “They’re all dead?”

  Linda paused. “I wouldn’t think you’d have a thought to spare for them, Grace. They’re Nazis. They’re killers, remember? Don’t worry about them.”

  Linda was right, of course. What she should be worried about was that the Germans had been so close, and she should be glad they had been thwarted. Except . . . she couldn’t help feeling sick at the thought of their sudden, violent deaths. Was this really what war was like? Did her brothers see this sort of thing all the time? Worse, was it possible that they might sometimes cause it? She looked at Harry, still apparently unconcerned by the event, and wondered how he could live that way. Yes, that bomb had killed a boatload of Nazis—Nazis who had no place slinking around near her home!—but still . . . death was death, no matter which side they fought for.

  PART TWO

  Rudi Weiss

  FIVE

  Rudi Weiss’s cheek was stuck to the ice. Other than that, he didn’t feel any pain. Either he was numb, or he’d been extremely lucky. Moving carefully, he peeled his face off the ice and cracked his eyelids open. When his vision cleared he saw a bulbous mass of dark smoke rising from the water and filling the sky, turning the day black with confusion.

  U-69 was gone. One minute he and the others had been climbing from the submarine onto the ice, and in the next, two planes had appeared. There had been no time to escape before the first rattled off a killing round of bullets, and the second dove low to drop its lethal load. How the hell had the enemy spotted them? This was a tiny, unobtrusive cove with no inhabitants. They should have been invisible. That was the whole plan: surface on the edge of the island, disembark, then set up a bunker from which they could monitor the comings and going
s of enemy ships. But something had gone terribly wrong.

  He rested his cheek back on the ice and closed his eyes—only for a moment—hoping for clarity. He needed to think straight, and quickly. The headache that had started to pound in his temples was no help. Where were the other men? A mix of just over forty officers and seamen had lived aboard that craft, but the ice around Rudi was bare. He listened hard for voices, but the explosion had deafened him. Nothing came to him but a high-pitched whine, nothing moved save the smoke. And yet . . . it couldn’t be possible that he was the only survivor.

  Except he was alone.

  He hadn’t been the first man to exit the ship, he knew. That meant some must have reached the island. Had Kuefer, the radioman, been ahead of him? Yes . . . yes, he remembered seeing him, hunched across the ice under the weight of his pack. If he’d made it out safely, maybe he could contact someone, get help. What about the others? Had there been anyone ahead of Kuefer? Otto had been behind him in the corridor, he recalled, chattering about family members who lived in Nova Scotia. Rudi had heard it all before, so he’d put Otto’s voice in the background. If only he could ignore the predictably foul words coming from Franz, one of the senior officers.

  “My brother said girls in Canada will go with anyone,” Franz had said. “Easy pickings. Like the ones at that pathetic little dance. Rudi took the easy route, going to that brazen girl with the red lips. Like Rita Hayworth. She would’ve—”

  “Shut up,” one of the others cut him off, saving Rudi the trouble. “Let’s just get out of here.”

  “Rudi?” Otto said, blinking through spectacles, his hands full of provisions. “Would you mind? I left my bag over there.”

  “Go ahead. I’ll get your things.”

  He’d slung his bag and Otto’s over his shoulder, then followed the others. More men were behind him, eager to get onto land at last, but . . . where were they now?

  It came to him that the fire from the explosion would be visible for miles; locals would flock to see what was going on, and they certainly would not miss a lone U-boat sailor lying on the ice. He chanced a look around and realized he had landed surprisingly far from the sunken ship, close to the bush line of another island, halfway between Borgles Island and the mainland. A cluster of large granite boulders formed a kind of gateway to the shore, and beyond them waited a quiet forest, dense with winter trees. He hoped it was as uninhabited as it appeared. If he could just get—

  Movement caught his eye: people emerging from an area up the shore. Behind them he noted a small cluster of rooflines. How many lived here? How many would come to see the destruction? Did he have enough time to escape detection? Fighting dizziness, he started to rise, then collapsed again as pain shot through his side. His shoulder, he recognized, was dislocated again. Yet another reason to get moving right away. He gritted his teeth and got to his feet, then staggered a few steps to regain his balance before sprinting towards the rocks until his lungs burned.

  The swish of his own breathing began to push through the whine in his ears as he ran, but his shoulder shoved a blade through him with every step, so he hugged that arm to his chest to stabilize it. Nearly there, and stars danced in his vision. He could barely see through his streaming eyes anyway. Would he make it? Could he—

  One foot slipped from under him and he crashed onto his side, the momentum sweeping him all the way to the bank. Had he cried out? He didn’t know, the pain was so bad. He watched the approaching crowd, listened hard, but no one was yelling or pointing in his direction—a stroke of luck.

  His shoulder was seizing up, screaming for attention, and though he felt sick at the prospect, he knew what he had to do; he’d done it before. Biting down on the agony, he struggled back onto his feet and sought out the largest of the boulders. He leaned over and curled his fingers into a sharp crevice on the bottom of the granite, its surface slick with dormant lichen. Gripping the rock hard, he twisted his body to the side, stretching the spasmed muscle to the limit, urging the joint back into place. The effort bathed him in clammy sweat, but he kept pulling and somehow managed not to scream. The eventual pop! brought instant relief. With his sore arm pressed against his body he scuttled farther up the bank, seeking shelter in the thick brush.

  The instinct was to run, to leave this islet behind and lose himself in the relative safety of the mainland. He needed to get as far as he could from this place—except the small crowd of curious locals continued to advance towards the shattered ice between the sub’s last position and the island, and the late-afternoon sunshine would illuminate anyone fleeing the scene. From his refuge behind the trees he counted twenty or so people in the group, suggesting this area was rather remote, but they could still catch him. He was cornered. He couldn’t go back, couldn’t go forward. Not yet, anyway.

  He still saw no sign of any of his crewmates at the site of the disaster. If anyone from the boat was alive, he would assume Rudi was dead. He realized that for now, he might as well have been.

  For more than an hour Rudi sat on the island, wondering what to do. The smoke still burned his eyes, but at least his shoulder was getting some rest. Most important, his heartbeat had slowed so he could think more clearly. Across the ice the fire was done, smothered along with the ship, and dusk had swallowed the smoke. And somewhere in the liquid cavity beneath rested the remains of the men he had known, the friends with whom he had laughed mere hours before. The hollow ache in Rudi’s bruised chest constricted with guilt. How could he just leave them?

  How could he not?

  As afternoon dwindled so did the crowd, returning to their homes in twos and threes. Rudi watched them go as the sun moved farther west, and wondered at his next step. The cold pressed against his coat and threatened to invade, sending a shudder through him. He couldn’t stay here any longer or he risked freezing to death. It was time he found a place to dig in for the night, and it would have to be far from this useless little island. Vowing silently to return and search for his crewmates when it was safer, he stepped back onto the ice, then ran for the banks of the mainland.

  A recent thaw followed by a hard freeze had turned the surface of the snow solid, so his boot prints through the trees were minimal, but being tracked was just one of his worries. He had nothing with him, no idea where he was going. The bitter night would come in fast, so he would have to find his way even faster. Once he was farther inland the crusty snow softened, and he discovered a well-used game trail. He checked behind him once more. The hole left by the explosion was in the distance now, and in the semidarkness Rudi’s immediate fear of discovery eased. Walking more easily, he followed the path to an opening in the trees, paused at the edge of a snow-covered field, and took in his surroundings.

  For most of his life, Rudi had lived in the city. He had gone to the best school, and his mother had ensured that his excellent education was bolstered by a deep immersion into culture. His uniform was always pressed and spotless, his manners just as impeccable, his discipline unquestioned. He could recite most of Wagner’s libretti as easily as he could calculate mathematical equations or answer questions of politics. But if anyone had asked, he would have said that his favourite memories were of those rare times when his father had taken him away for a few days in both summer and winter, taught him to trap and hunt, to understand a whole different way of living. Young Rudi had watched in awe as his father lit fires, trapped small animals, then skinned them without any apparent effort. He’d been nervous but eager—maybe seven or eight years old—when his father handed him his first knife, shown him how to fend for himself.

  “Not like that, Rudi. Cradle the handle in your fingers like I am doing, you see? Put your thumb against the piece between handle and blade. That’s the quillon. That way you have more strength behind you if you are cutting upwards. Now show me how you do it.”

  He missed his father with a physical ache. That knife had stayed with Rudi from that day until just a few hours earlier, when the world had exploded around him. Now it would
rust at the bottom of the Atlantic.

  “You must check your traps often, Rudi,” his father had said, showing him how to walk a trapline. “That last rabbit was frozen. We were fortunate it had not been eaten already.”

  From twenty feet away he could see his next snare had been a success and dashed towards it. “Look, Father! I set that one!”

  “You did, son. You’re getting better all the time.”

  He stared down at the small corpse. “Do they suffer, Father?”

  “Sometimes.” His father swung his hands out to the side. “See how the snow here is messy? Looks like he struggled.” With one finger he lifted the head, inspected the neck, then untangled the creature from the snare. “It panics, you see. Tries to get free, but it cannot. Its attempt to escape the snare hurts it the most in the end.”

  Young Rudi blinked hard. He wanted to be brave and strong and please his father, and he felt weak for pitying the creature. “Your sack looks heavy, Father,” he said, burying his shame. “Can I carry this one?”

  “You’re right, mine is full. Put this rabbit in your pack instead, and you can carry any others we find.”

  With every catch it became easier to steel himself against the sight of dead animals. The rabbits became no more than items to place in the pack.

  What would his father think if he knew those lessons would soon be tested in the Canadian wilderness? That his son would be forced to depend on them to survive? He’d certainly be relieved that Rudi was still alive, but what would he say of the circumstances? Of Rudi abandoning his sinking ship and crew then fleeing the scene?

  But Rudi could not think that way. He had no time to wonder about such things. He had to get somewhere warm soon or he would die.

  Once the sun was completely gone, there was less darkness than he’d feared. The snow reflected the rising moon, cloaking everything in a dull grey light. Rudi scanned the trees in the distance, needing some kind of structure to use as shelter, and after a while he spotted a broken-down log cabin that hadn’t lodged anyone in a very long time. It looked barely capable of holding up for even one more night, but the age-blackened walls cut the chill, and Rudi hunkered down in one corner, piling spruce boughs on top of himself to serve as a blanket. He thought he would never fall asleep, then he worried he might never wake up, but adrenaline, pain, and exhaustion pulled him down, down, down, until he sank like his ship under the ice. He couldn’t have surfaced even if he’d wanted to.