by Donna Milner
The shadows grew in the room as River continued. ‘That night I met with three of my buddies, Ray, Frankie, and Art. Before Ray’s father left for work he placed a bottle of whisky on the coffee table. The four of us sat in front of the TV until the test pattern came on. Then we sat in the dark trying to make sense of it all. Which, of course, couldn’t be done. It was surreal. None of us wanted to accept that he had been murdered so easily. We were convinced it was the Russians. We all wanted something bigger to blame than the skinny little man they arrested. As the night wore on, and the whisky bravado grew, talk turned to the possibility of war. And to enlisting. Ray and Art already planned to join up as soon as they graduated. They saw it as a career choice. But neither Frankie, nor I, had any intention of becoming universal soldiers. Yet, the strange thing was there was a moment, a moment when I thought the Russians were behind it – that it could have really meant war – when I imagined myself in a uniform, with a gun in my hands.’ He shook his head slowly at his admission.
‘Half of us ended up wearing that uniform,’ he said. ‘Ray was no surprise. But Frankie? Frankie was such a gentle soul. His family had a chicken farm only a few miles from ours. He wasn’t going on to university, so he talked to his priest about refusing the draft on religious grounds. The priest convinced him to serve. As a conscientious objector, in a noncombative role. Sure, noncombative, but you still go through boot camp – learn to carry a gun.’ River leaned forward and studied his hands. His hair hung loose around his face.
‘I got a letter from Ray last spring,’ he said without looking up. ‘Three days after Frankie arrived in Nam, he and Ray ended up together on a medical supply boat on the Mekong River. They were caught in a sniper attack and ordered to take arms. As Frankie shouldered his gun he begged, “Please God, don’t let me kill anyone.” As the last word came out of his mouth, a bullet hole appeared in the middle of his forehead. Ray wrote that as Frankie slumped to the deck he was smiling.’ River sighed then said, ‘I guess his God answered his prayer.’
He looked up and tucked his hair behind his ears. ‘Ray’s still over there,’ he said. ‘He’ll probably come through this unscathed – come home a hero. I hope he does anyway. He deserves it. Anyone willing to risk everything, to die for what they believe in is a hero. Frankie was a hero. The boys – men – over there are all heroes. It’s the politicians, the leaders willing to sacrifice young men for their own political games, who are the cowards. Thank God we still have Robert Kennedy to stand up to Johnson and his lies. When Bobby’s president, he’ll put an end to this war.’
The room grew silent once again. After a few moments Boyer asked, ‘And your other friend?’
‘Art?’ River smiled. ‘He tried to volunteer. He failed his medical. An inner ear problem. He cried like a baby when he was denied enlistment,’ he said. ‘And then there’s me. I hid away in university. Nice and safe in classes. Until Norman Morrison lit that match.’
Unconsciously River again reached into the box on the table. He pulled out a small cloth covered book and let it fall open in his hands. I recognized the yellowed pages of A Book of Treasured Poems. Boyer’s favourite.
Boyer shifted in his chair. ‘Have you ever regretted your decision?’ he asked.
River studied the pages in front of him. ‘I don’t regret protesting the war,’ he said, then looked up and met Boyer’s eyes. ‘But, of course, I’m sorry I had to leave my home, and that I had to give up my education.’
After a moment he let his gaze return to the book. He started to read out loud:
And great is the man with the sword undrawn,
And good is the man who refrains from wine;
But the man who fails and yet fights on,
Lo! he the twin-born brother of mine.
‘“For Those Who Fail,” by Cincinnatus Miller,’ Boyer added without a moment’s hesitation. ‘Poet laureate, Oregon. Early nineteen hundreds.’
River shook his head in wonder. ‘Do you know every poem in this book?’ he asked.
‘Yes, he does,’ I answered knowing Boyer would never acknowledge this.
But my brother quickly changed the subject.
‘So what are your plans?’ he asked. ‘Do you think you’ll ever go back? To university, that is.’
I was startled by the question. Up until that moment I hadn’t thought about River leaving, but suddenly it made sense. Of course he would not stay forever. I waited nervously for his answer.
‘I have a trust fund from my grandmother that matures when I am twenty-four,’ River said. ‘When I first came up here I thought I would get to know Canada by travelling around doing odd jobs. But I’m content to stay here if your family will put up with me until then. When I come into my trust I guess I’ll apply to university in Vancouver or Calgary.’ He smiled at Boyer. ‘Which one do you think is best?’
Boyer shrugged. ‘I haven’t given it much thought.’
As they spoke I did a quick mental calculation. River was twenty-one. In three years I would be finished high school. For the first time I considered going to university.
But it was Boyer to whom River directed his question. ‘Well, why don’t you? Why don’t you think about coming with me?’
‘That’s not an option.’ Boyer attempted a laugh.
River stared intently at Boyer as if he were weighing his thoughts. After a moment he said quietly, ‘You once asked me how I could deliberately give up a university education. But isn’t that exactly what you’re doing?’
‘It’s not the same thing,’ Boyer said looking taken aback by River’s remark.
‘Isn’t it?’
Boyer avoided his eyes. ‘All the education I need is right here,’ he said and waved at the books surrounding us.
‘And the real world is out there,’ River nodded toward the window. ‘Just be certain you’re being honest with yourself, man. That you’re not using the farm – or your father – as an excuse to avoid that world.’
Chapter Twenty-Five
I SMELL IT in the air.
In Kelowna, I waited inside the bus depot for my connection and still I could not escape the clinging odour of smouldering forests. Now, as the bus pulls away from the Okanagan town heading east, I can still smell it. I avoid looking out of my window. I don’t want to see the destruction caused by the recent wildfires.
It seemed all of British Columbia was burning this summer. The yellowed skies were heavy with the smoky haze for months. Now I am unwilling to look out at the evidence of destroyed forests, naked black skeletons dotting a desolate landscape. I don’t want to deal with my own memories of charred and blackened buildings.
It’s a strange feeling to travel on a bus, like being in a humming vacuum, a separate world, a time machine, carrying me – in slow motion it now seems – back to my past. Why do I always take the bus home? It’s more than my aversion to flying. I could drive. I drive everywhere else. Except when I go back to Atwood. Is it because once I’m on the bus I’m not in control? Cannot change my mind? Cannot turn back?
The first time I travelled by bus was when I left home in 1969. The next time was after my father’s funeral.
I remember an elderly couple on that bus. They must have been in their eighties, or more likely their nineties. I found myself feeling irrationally impatient with them at each stop as they climbed on and off the bus with the careful slowness of old age. I felt an irritating resentment, even anger, at the unfairness of it all. They got to live, to be old. And my father did not. He was too young to die. I’m startled by the sudden thought that when my father died he was only four years older than I am now.
In the end it was not the cancer that killed him. It was the farm. My father died on the cold concrete floor of the machine shed, underneath his Massey Ferguson tractor.
Morgan called to tell me. I took the first flight home.
Jenny and Vern tease me about my fear of flying, but they wouldn’t if they’d seen me on that flight. They have no idea the extent of my phobia.
I hadn’t either until I strapped myself into an aeroplane for the first, and last, time. As soon as the stewardess pulled the cabin door closed I nearly bolted from my seat. My hands gripped the tiny armrests. I felt the perspiration run in rivulets under my sweater as the plane began to taxi down the runway. I forgot how to breathe. Then, as we lifted into the air, it was all I could do not to scream out to be let off. I kept my eyes squeezed shut until someone tapped my shoulder. I looked over to see the woman in the seat beside me hand me an air bag. Just in time.
The airport shuttle-bus delivered me, shaken and weak, into Atwood. As we arrived on Main Street I was startled to see the old milk truck angle-parked in front of Gentry’s – the small magazine store and soda counter that served as the bus depot. Behind the dark windscreen of the cab, I glimpsed a familiar silhouette. My father! The amber glow of a cigarette hung from his mouth. I sat frozen in my seat and watched as his head turned and a half-finished cigarette came flickering out of the window. It sailed, end over end, through the air before falling to the dark asphalt. The cab door opened and he climbed out of the driver’s seat. Morgan.
The awkwardness of returning home for the first time was lost in the need to bury our father. My brother took me into his arms without a word. Behind his welcoming smile was a steely determination not to shed tears. I was grateful for that.
On the drive home, he filled me in on the details of Dad’s accident. ‘The jacks slipped,’ he told me. ‘The tractor engine landed in the middle of his chest. His silver cigarette case was actually imbedded in his chest. Her gift broke his heart, Mom says.’ He shook his head and continued. ‘He must have been pinned there for quite a while. Carl and I were out working in the wood lot. Mom and Boyer were in town, so there was no one there.’
‘Oh.’
‘Yeah, I can just hear his final words.’
‘Every time the sun shines upside down!’ we murmured the words together. Morgan smiled, his Adam’s apple going up and down in a swallow. I wanted to reach over and touch his face, his face so much like our father’s. Instead I turned and stared straight ahead while I held back my own tears. And the sneezes.
‘How have you been?’ he asked.
‘I’m okay.’
‘You’re working at a newspaper I hear. Gonna be a famous reporter, eh?’
‘No.’ I tried a laugh. ‘I’m just selling advertising. But it’s a start.’
The truck slowed down as we turned onto South Valley Road. ‘How’s Mom?’ I asked.
‘Oh, she’s, ah, well, she’s Mom. You know. Busy feeding and comforting everyone who shows up to offer sympathy.’
While Morgan parked the truck in the carport beside the dairy, I walked up to the house. I stood in the shadows of the enclosed porch. And I smelled him there. My father. The musky scent of Old Spice and tobacco wafted from his barn jacket which still hung by the screen door. How could he be dead when the scent of him was so alive, so warm? I wanted to lean my face into his coat and inhale him.
Then, through the mesh screen, I saw my mother. She stood at the kitchen table, her back to me. Exactly where she was standing the last time I saw her.
She turned at the first creaking of the screen door. Over two years had passed since I last saw my mother’s face. Her eyes took me in as if it was only yesterday. Her smile was open, warm, vulnerable, and naked with love.
‘Natalie,’ she rushed over and threw her arms around me. And just like every hug that Nettie Ward has ever given any of her children, she hung on a little too long, a little past the point of comfort, and then she kept hanging on, until you gave into it.
I stood there, stiff and remote. My unyielding arms hung at my side, still holding my suitcase and an oversized book-bag. A part of me wanted to melt into the hug – as I always had as a child – to melt into the love, the acceptance, the arms of home. But I could not. I could not, even in that moment of shared sorrow, let go of my resentment. The unnamed resentment I’d carried with me out the door the day I left. I carried it every day, like some animal clinging to my back that wouldn’t let go because I kept petting it, stroking it, enjoying the perverse pleasure of letting it hang on.
‘I’m so sorry, Mom,’ I heard myself say.
‘Hush, darling. There’s nothing to be sorry about.’ She said it as if she thought I was apologizing.
I’m sorry. It’s what you say, a greeting, when someone dies. Those words fill the empty air. She couldn’t brush them away as if they were an unwanted apology. What did she think I was apologizing for? Sorry for? What did she mean, ‘there’s nothing to be sorry about?’ Of course there was. I was sorry my father was dead. I was sorry her husband of twenty-nine years was dead. For the way he died. I was sorry I wasn’t there, that I hadn’t seen him for over two years. Sorry I would never, ever have the chance to be with him again, to talk to him again. And I was sorry I did not have another chance to tell him I love him. To tell him I was sorry.
And I was sorry our family was even more broken.
Mom reached up and brushed the hair from my face. Her eyes filled. She pulled a tissue from her pocket and pressed it to her nose. After three quick sneezes, she squared her shoulders. ‘Just look at all this food.’ She waved at the table and counters. Every available space was covered with casseroles, cakes, and pies. ‘Burnt offerings,’ she said, then cringed at the thoughtless words. ‘Whatever will I do with all this food?’
‘I’m sure you’ll see that it all gets eaten,’ Boyer’s voice came from the doorway to the parlour. I had not seen him through the film of tears I was blinking back. Cowardice stifled them. I avoided looking at him, just as I have avoided thinking about what I would do when the eventuality of this moment arrived.
‘Hello Boyer,’ I said. ‘Good to see you.’ But it was a lie. I looked anywhere but his face.
‘I’m really tired, Mom,’ I said. ‘I’d like to lie down for an hour.’
‘Of course, dear,’ she said. ‘Go on up to your room. It’s exactly as you left it.’
‘The wake is at seven o’clock tonight,’ Boyer said, a tired resignation in his voice. ‘We should head into town at six-thirty.’
He withdrew back into the parlour. I heard the murmur of hushed voices coming from the living room and wondered which neighbours, which of the few friends we Wards had left, were gathered there. There was no other family to come. We were it: Mom, Boyer, Morgan, and Carl. And me. Our entire family – such as it was.
I slept. I slept in a bedroom that was, as Mom said, exactly as I had left it. My books still lined the shelf above my bed. The patchwork quilt she made for my tenth birthday lay on my bed, fresh, clean, and inviting. My knitted slippers waited under my bed along with forgotten boxes of marbles. Everything right where I left it. The family photograph, taken four years before I moved away, still sat on my desk. A jar of pennies, silver dimes scattered amongst the copper, sat next to it. The room had the appearance of a dead child’s bedroom. It was.
‘Natalie?’ I woke to the soft knock at my door and Carl’s voice calling my name.
In the late afternoon darkness, it took a moment to realize where I was. I reached over and switched on the bedside lamp. The door opened and Carl leaned in.
Beautiful, sweet-faced Carl. He was the first one to cry in front of me. He sat down on the bed and put his arms around me.
‘I’ve missed you, you brat,’ he teased. ‘And I miss the old beggar too,’ he attempted a laugh, failed and wiped at his tears.
Then he asked, too wistfully for my teasing brother, ‘When did it all start to go so wrong?’ He sighed, ‘I expected it to last forever, you know, the way it was when we were growing up. What did we ever do to deserve this?’
I stared at him, not knowing how to answer his rhetorical question.
Then I reached up and touched his face. ‘Nothing,’ I whispered. He had done nothing to deserve the way things had turned out. But I had.
The drive into town is not long, but it stretched out in the silence that day,
each of us lost in our own private memories of our father. I sat on the padded red leather seat, between Morgan and Carl, in the back of Boyer’s Ford Edsel.
I watched the familiar road through the right hand window, not wanting to look straight ahead. Not allowing myself, even accidentally, to look at Boyer, to catch his eyes in the rear-view mirror. He sat stiff and formal behind the wheel of the only passenger car our family had ever owned.
Before we reached the highway, Mom shifted around and said to me. ‘This accident may have been a blessing for your father.’
I was stunned by her words. I couldn’t imagine any blessing in dying pinned under a tractor, with the motor crushing your chest.
‘When they did the autopsy, they found he was full of cancer. Allen Mumford told me it was a wonder he was still walking around at all. He said your Dad couldn’t have lasted much longer without feeling it, if he wasn’t already.’
I don’t remember my father ever missing a day’s work, even when sick with a cold or flu. He had no patience for illness. And a strong aversion to hospitals.
‘They smell of death,’ he always said. ‘All the antiseptic and chlorine in the world can’t get rid of that smell.’
He refused to enter St Helena’s Hospital to visit friends, or to take any of us in with childhood ailments. My father, who could plunge his bare arms up inside a birthing cow, then turn and pull out a stuck calf while the blood, slime, and mucus gushed over him, cringed whenever he pushed through the hospital doors with Mom when she was about to give birth. She let him off the hook. She sent him away each time saying she couldn’t stand to see him so green around the gills.
‘God spared your father from suffering a long and painful illness,’ she said as she turned back around in her seat. Then, as if it gave reason to his bizarre death, she added. ‘It would have killed him to be in the hospital.’
I put my fist to my mouth to choke back the sudden unexpected urge to laugh.