The End of Music

by Jamie Fitzpatrick

The Memorial crowd finish their tea, toss the dregs into bushes and rinse mugs with water from the kettle. One of them is Morris, who did the Skype tour of the archaeology lab in February. Carter places them all around thirty years old, except the one they call Red. The faded copper of her hair places her closer to Carter’s age. The hair is woven into beaded dreadlocks that click and clack with her every move.

  There is much preliminary grooming. Velcro peeled back and pulled snug at cuffs and waists. Zippers zipped to the chin. Pants tucked into boots. It’s June, and still cool enough for extra layers. They’ve already cut away much of the brush around the foundation, roping off the footprint and opening several excavations. Carter is assigned to a patch of clay where the front entrance used to be. Next to him is a small grad student wrapped in clingy athletic fabric. Her name is Andi, and her Italian father came to Newfoundland as an offshore engineer and married a girl from La Scie. The dark hair and slender oval face look glamorously European. But she’s muscular, with thick calves and a belly roll that looks far sturdier than Carter’s ring of flab. She twists her hair into a bun and tucks it under a ball cap.

  He shudders at the slugs and centipedes, sweeping them away with his trowel. It’s reminiscent of childhood, when he used to poke around in newly-cleared building lots behind the house. He has no idea what he’s doing, but his trowel comes up against a lump of thick glass. Andi hears it and joins him, crouching and probing the dirt, their heads nearly touching, her breath strong and steady. Together they expose a clear glass bottle, fully intact, with Gordon’s Gin in raised letters across the front.

  “Looks new,” says Morris, leaning into his trowel. He’s wider and hairier than Carter remembers from Skype, with a ponytail halfway down his back.

  “Maybe,” says Andi. “Gordon’s haven’t changed their bottles much over the years.”

  “You know old liquor bottles?” asks Carter. His exhalations stir the strands of hair at her ears.

  “Some of them,” she says, brushing dirt from the thick glass and narrowing her eyes. “Pop bottles, too.”

  “How?”

  “Been to a lot of websites. A few stores downtown. Water Street Convenience has a nice collection.”

  They take turns examining their find, sniffing the neck and running fingers over the embossed letters. In Carter’s hand the bottle vibrates with the approach of an incoming flight. It passes to their right, thundering and sputtering, a FedEx logo on its tail.

  He stands because his knees are killing him. There’s a sting up his left arm, and the breeze gives him a shiver, chilling the sweat on the back of his neck.

  “Come on,” says Andi, bouncing on her haunches in their black-and-purple microfibres. “I bet there’s more.”

  Bottle pieces emerge all over. Red and Andi make their guesses: Coke, Pepsi, Canada Dry, Hi-Spot Lemon Soda, and Keep Kool. “Probably from the seventies, eighties,” says Morris.

  “Not the Canada Dry,” says Andi, stroking the green glass. “See the cross-hatch pattern? That’s gotta be from the war.”

  Coins are found, and chunks of ceramic. Red turns up two unopened packs of chewing gum, their labels washed white. Terry circulates, occasionally crouching to dig a probing hand in the dirt.

  After a standing lunch of gas-station sandwiches, the team splits. Red will stay on the Globe with two others. “The rest of us are going deep woods,” says Terry, his index finger picking out Carter, Andi, and Morris. “That egg sandwich was a mistake,” says Andi, as Terry’s car bumps up an old logging road.

  Using a trail originally cut for a memorial service, they easily access the B-24 Liberator. Terry leads them through survey exercises, and Carter is quickly exposed as the new guy, fumbling with the line-and-compass, incurring a nasty scratch on the waist as he stretches to pull the tape through a maze of trees. He steps into a puddle that is much deeper than it looks, and falls sideways, soaking one side. Morris offers a slow clap.

  A mossy furrow leads to an engine, rusting and stripped of its skin, aluminum scraps scattered about like confetti. Circling it, they disturb moths that flutter at their shins. The propellers disappeared years ago. “Scavengers love props,” says Terry.

  A rounded tail piece is wedged in the ground, still painted military green. Terry runs a finger over a scattering of small holes. “See this? Buckshot. Young local taking target practice.”

  “Idiots,” says Morris.

  “So this one went down in a snowstorm,” Terry continues. “1945. We found good stuff a couple of years ago, including the radar array, in good shape. This is our greatest hit, you might say.” Using the metal detector, Morris and Andi turn up several buckles, likely from disintegrated kit bags, and a lapel pin bearing an eagle insignia.

  They’re packing up when Carter spots what seems an ordinary piece of metal trash in the tall brush. “Looks like an old video game,” says Morris. “Like the Atari my brother had.” Terry helps Carter hack away a couple of branches, and Carter peels off a layer of moss. The piece is too chunky to be anything recent. It has a black facade and a switch with the instructions, “return slut before cocking” printed below. Morris snickers. Terry takes the object, turns it in his hands. “This is the bomb release console.” He touches the switch. “The bombardier flicks this and lets fly.” He flicks the switch. “Still works! Well done. Good find.”

  //////

  Though he tucks his cargo pants into his socks, Carter takes fly bites at the back of each knee, and a big one dangerously close to the groin. The itch is maddening, he sleeps poorly, and endures the next day in fretful exhaustion.

  The morning starts with a look at a Hudson bomber from ’42, down an old woods road, surveyed and catalogued a few years ago. “This is not the crash site,” says Terry, as they size up crushed landing gear and a flattened aluminum frame. “It was pushed aside back when the Trans Canada went through. Where we parked on the highway is actually much closer to where she went down. The lesson is, always consult historical records. You’ll only get part of the story on the ground.”

  Turning the hatchback down a nearby logging road, they set out for the Maritime Central Airways Canso from 1954.

  “Fresh survey,” says Terry. “Never been down here before. Post-war crashes are a different kettle of fish. Commercial airlines, casualties generally in double figures. Eleven killed with this Canso. Flew too low and clipped the trees.”

  The logging road narrows, branches closing in and slapping the windshield. When they can go no further, they leave their cars and walk the rutted road until it opens to a meadow of knee-length grass. Horse flies and stouts hover on the thick, warm breeze. Birds arrive and depart with sudden violence, crashing through the tops of trees. The ground begins to suck at their boots.

  After a lot of pointing and squinting, Morris leads an approach from the west, only to sink (“I’m up to my tits!”) within minutes. Rounding the bog on a more arduous southwest approach, they come up against a muddy creek, where Andi belly-flops in the muck. Fat stouts circle happily in the sun as she pulls herself up and bends to retrieve her sunglasses.

  “Maybe next year,” says Terry.

  They retreat for lunch, Morris and Andi use Terry’s hatchback as a shield while they change into spare clothes, and they head up the highway to try their luck with the RCAF Hurricane and USAAF A-20, which collided during manoeuvres in ’43. They spread out and cut a wide circle. But an afternoon of fighting the brush reveals no sign of either wreck. Carter gets another soaking on the way out. Waving at mosquitoes and half-blinded by the sinking sun, he goes to his knees in a quiet stream.

  //////

  “What’s the matter with you guys?” says Isabelle. “You can’t even find the stuff? Didn’t anyone bring a map? A compass?”

  Carter rakes at his fly bites, nudges the bed with his knee so he can open the closet. “We did see one. A Hudson bomber they dug out years ago.”

/>   “Did people die in it?”

  “People died in all of them.” Carter tries to recall Terry’s potted history of the Hudson. “Four of them in this one.”

  “Who were they?”

  “I don’t know. Two from Australia, I think.” He’s pretty sure Terry mentioned Australia.

  “But you want to know, don’t you? Otherwise you’re just looking at junk.”

  “Two Aussies for sure. They’re buried in the old cemetery next to the airport..”

  “You’ll have to get me on the cell tomorrow,” says Isabelle. “We’ll be at the hospital.”

  “His appointment’s not till Thursday, though.”

  “Dr. Kim wants us to check in tomorrow and stay overnight.”

  “Why?” Do they already know something? Are they anticipating trouble? Some horrible flaw requiring emergency surgery?

  “They’re doing a test where the results take twelve hours,” says Isabelle. “So it’s easier.”

  “Maybe I better come home.”

  “No. It’s just part of the test. If we had somewhere in Toronto we could probably stay there. It’s just overnight at the hospital because it’s easier. Seriously.”

  “Tomorrow night.”

  “Yes, just for tests.”

  “This new doctor, he’s young, right?”

  “She. Fairly young, yes.”

  “A bit keen.”

  “Why is that…What do you mean?”

  “I don’t want some young hotshot who sees every kid as a science experiment.”

  “She’s thinking for herself instead of just reading his file. How is that a bad thing?”

  “How many kids like Sam has she had?”

  “You can ask, if you ever meet her.” Her shoes clop-clopping into the hallway. “Come on, Sammy, please. Shoes. Have you called your mom?”

  “Yes,” Carter lies. “Going to see her tomorrow, probably. I’d just feel more confident with an experienced specialist, is all.”

  “You’re arguing against the best possible care for your son. I have to admit, you always find new ways to surprise.”

  //////

  Red joins them on the third morning, and demonstrates how to walk when a stretch of bog can’t be avoided. Quick and light. Lift the back foot before the front is fully landed. Feels almost like gliding. Carter prances like a dancer.

  “Anyway, it doesn’t always work,” she says. “But try to avoid water, even if it looks like nothing. If there’s bog, stick to the tree line. And if you need to grab a branch, try for the var because the needles are softer.”

  “Var?”

  “Var, yes. I thought you were from here.”

  “Never spent much time in the woods.”

  Red smiles and her dreads go click-clack as she shakes her round head. She has a creamy brown complexion, but no foreign accent. “It’s a brighter green than the spruce, and not so prickly,” she says.

  A man inherits the outdoors from his father. But Art Carter never held a rifle or set a rabbit slip, knew nothing of outboard motors or snowmobiles, owned no hip waders or heavy plaid shirts, and burned grocery-store fire logs in the fireplace. An occasional gift of wild game from a neighbour was eaten with great respect, in the manner of travellers at a foreign table who know they must scarf down the strange national dish. To have no interest in the woods was an embarrassing secret for a man who grew up in Bonavista Bay in the 1930s. Carter recalls his father amongst men, feigning comprehension and laughing too loud at anecdotes of fishing, snaring, and shooting moose and turrs.

  They make the 30-minute drive to Benton, set out on a snowmobile trail, and are thrilled to find the RAF Ventura on a stretch of open, dry land, as if laid out by a curator.

  “Another one from ’42,” says Terry, looking over his notes. “Went down a few weeks before the Hudson.”

  The chunk of fuselage is a crumpling grey husk, as if the aircraft had molted and returned to the sky in fresh skin. Carter bends at the waist to enter it, a protective hand to his head as he steps through puddles of brown water on the floor. The inside of the hull is scrawled with messages.

  “This one says, ‘Kyra I love you. You bitch,’” shouts Morris, following behind him. Everyone laughs.

  “People often date their graffiti,” says Terry. “Let’s record it. It’s part of the site.”

  Carter and Morris crouch in the fuselage to record the dates. The earliest is from Tony in February of 1974.

  The rest of the wreck is easily accessed around the clearing. Carter asks whether the pilot might have aimed for this spot, in hopes of a survivable landing.

  “Could well be,” says Terry. “No casualties, so full credit to him.”

  Wind pulls the measuring tape off line, so the site has to be mapped with a theodolite and surveyor’s level. Red stumbles over the tripod and nearly smashes her head on a boulder, escaping with a nasty scratch at one temple. Terry calls everyone together for a brief refresher on site safety.

  Andi and Morris make their way to a smaller section of fuselage, which stands on end.

  “The crash didn’t do this,” says Morris, as Carter approaches. “He points up to the ragged edge, just beyond his reach. “See that cut? That’s an axe. That’s scavengers. Looks like they chopped away a piece and dragged it this far and gave up. Couldn’t get it through the bushes.”

  Andi leans against the fuselage, wedging one heel in an oval window, and raises her camera. Part of the serial number appears over her head: AJ47. “Oh no!” she cries. “Look!”

  Next to her, in black paint, is an expertly rendered pair of legs rising in a V. The feet are turned out, and a black triangle fills the space where the legs meet. Below the triangle is a large black dot in the centre of rounded buttocks. The artist’s caption reads, Pink or stink, take your pick.

  “That’s disgusting,” says Carter, in deference to Andi.

  “Oh, it’s just…boys,” she says, and giggles.

  There were boys in Carter’s class who circulated such pictures, but he had always been too fastidious to laugh. It was another of his youthful failings, this excessive seriousness that scorned the absurd and the vulgar, and scorned the boys who reveled in it.

  “What’s interesting,” says Morris, “is their urge to write themselves into this scene.” He slips away to perch on a rock. Produces a notebook, and chews on the end of a pen.

  “What’s his story?” asks Carter.

  “Morris?” Andi raises her camera and stalks the piece from several angles. “Morris is all in.”

  “All in on what?”

  “We all know where the job market’s at. Of course we’d all love to be Terry in twenty years. But you may as well buy lottery tickets. So you’ve got to think about alternatives. Not Morris. He’s going for it.”

  On his rock, Morris looks skyward, and bends over his notebook, scribbling quickly.

  “Seems to have a lot on his mind,” says Carter.

  Andi waves at a persistent fly and ducks into the bushes to capture the hidden side of the fuselage. “Morris really wants to be the professor type. He’s working on a paper for a big conference this summer, and likes to make a show of it.”

  “About all this?”

  “Plane wrecks and modernism, something along those lines.”

  She emerges with needles in her hair. “Can’t go without capturing this,” she says, and shoots several close-ups of the vulgar picture.

  “I guess it is well done,” says Carter. “Look at the calves, and the backs of the knees.”

  “Well done, except for this part,” says Andi, tapping the back triangle. “He got to the most important bit, and couldn’t finish it. So much agony over one little opening. He lost his nerve.”

  The site is rich—iron spikes, aluminum framework, an engine and wing piece they still haven’t looke
d at—so they stay through lunch, sharing Vienna sausages, cereal bars, and cans of Coke. Andi asks Carter to follow her up a shallow hill and keep a discreet watch while she relieves herself. Terry has a habit of rambling, and last year nearly walked into her with her pants at her ankles.

  He’s standing guard when his phone chimes in the zippered, waterproof chest pocket of his jacket.

  “There’s a signal up here,” he says.

  “Order a pizza,” calls Andi.

  Leah has checked into hospital and the doctors have left no doubt that she will soon be released from her pain. She mostly sleeps now because of the morphine. But she has clear and lucid moments, and has left directions for when she is gone. These directions have been witnessed by the family and family lawyer and captured on video. Please accept my assurance that there is no doubt or ambiguity as to her specific wishes.

  //////

  His eyes race over the email twice more before he registers it’s from Kevin. Kevin from North Bay, back in the picture after all these years.

  Andi comes to his side, tugging at her jacket. “Anything urgent?”

  “My ex is dying.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “I sort of knew it. I had this feeling it was going to be now.”

  “I felt like that first time I was pregnant. Before I knew, I kind of knew.” She looks at him. “But are you sorry? I’m not sure I’d be, to be honest. I’ll tell everyone you need a minute.”

  She leaves him at the crest of the hill. She has kids?

  Can he see Leah? What would he say?

  I may be in Toronto soon, he writes to Kevin. Would like to have a final moment with her.

  Below him, the group has already set out towards the wing-and-engine array, which is half-submerged in a small pond. Terry says the pond was likely created by an exploding depth charge.

  As he expected, the travel site quotes obscene prices for Gander-Toronto on short notice. But if his first priority was Sam, Isabelle might agree to it.

  He writes Jordan. Any progress with the festivals? Singer auditions? Session players? But sending the message brings on a rush of doubt. How foolish, to be in a band. The posing and posturing and heaving dramatics. The childlike need to be heard and applauded and taken seriously. Picking a silly band name, as if they were a gang of boys in a tree house. And isn’t there something pathetic about fans? A little gang of followers sniffing at your heels like lost dogs.