The arena he’s not prepared for is the macho garrison of boot camp—working, eating and sleeping with the pack, 24/7, and the lack of privacy in the barracks. Several years older than most of his fellow recruits, he’s an anomaly, a pensive aura still clinging to him. He dreads the predictable weekend prattle as the boys preen for a night on the town:
“Let’s see if those French chicks are as hot as their reputation.”
“Gotta pass that language course, eh. Best way to do it—immerse yourself!”
“Better tuck one of those French safes in your pocket.”
His roommate asks him, “Hey, you’re not coming out?”
Stretched out on top of his sleeping bag, his head buried in a book, Jeff glances up, tries to pull the corners of his mouth into a smile. “I’m beat after those drills. Can’t keep up with you young guys.”
“I’m sure you can find a bar that swings the other way, if that’s your preference.” Loud guffaws from the hallway ring in his reddening ears. And he suddenly understands—the smirks, the raised eyebrows, the whispers when he comes into the washroom. Unreal.
They troop out, and he settles into the serenity of solitude. He closes his Canadian Forces Code of Conduct manual, reaches into his backpack and retrieves Foucault’s Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. He flips through the pages, busy with yellow highlighting and his barely decipherable handwriting—notes revealing the ghost of his former self. And he laughs as he realizes the irony. Here I am in Foucault’s Panopticon: partitioned space, constant inspection, a disciplined community, permanent visibility, a hierarchy of power.… But I can always retreat, he thinks, to that other tower—ivory, safe and secluded. When he read Joselyn’s letter today, it all came back—that parallel world, that other hierarchy of power. He attempts to project himself into the role she describes—a sessional lecturer, trying to finish TDP (that damned paper!). But he feels a visceral chafing against his skin, the mould too rigid and confining. “I’m glad that you’ve finally gotten to where you want to be,” she writes at the end of her letter. But he’s not there yet—and still not sure how to get there. Lonely, he wanders through heavy clouds of confusion.
He’s back in Halifax by mid-December, returned in time to help his dad pick out the Christmas tree. They always go to the same family-run lot on the corner of Windsor and North streets; he loves the sense of tradition, now that their family home has actually been in one city long enough to establish it. On a snowstormy evening, he’s curled up by the fireplace, crystals hissing hard against the bay window, the lit-up tree glowing in the corner, the scent of balsam. The decorations twinkle with the geniality of old friends; and now his granny’s ornaments have joined them—the angel shining at the top and the tarnished silver bells that were her mother’s. He smiles to himself: Granny in her Santa hat, rousing everyone on Christmas morning—ho, ho, ho! outside his bedroom door.
Roasting chicken wafts in from the kitchen. The back door creaks open. “It sure is cold out there,” Russ says, stomping his boots on the mat, brushing the snow off his uniform.
“You’re just in time,” Marion says, carrying in a bottle of wine, a platter of cheese and crackers. She uncorks a ruby Merlot and half fills their glasses. They swirl and sniff its raspberry and cherry aromas, then clink their goblets.
“Here’s to you, Jeff,” Russ says, with a broad grin. “Congratulations on your graduation. Well done.”
“I can’t hold a candle to you.” Jeff smiles, alluding to his father finishing as the top candidate in his basic training. “You were amazing to do that well.”
“But there were only twenty-two in my group,” Russ says, “and a hundred and twenty in yours.”
“We’re proud of you, Jeff,” Marion says, her eyes beaming into his. “And it was nice to see you graduate for once. Three times lucky?”
They laugh and sip, savouring the warmth. Jeff sets his glass down. “I don’t think I can go back,” he says, wringing his hands together. The fire spits and crackles, filling the heavy silence.
“What do you mean?” Russ says. “What happened?”
“I get totally depressed when I think about returning. It’s like being in prison. Partitioned space … continual surveillance … permanent visibility.” He describes the homophobic remarks and the subsequent discomfiture he’s endured. “And this time it will be for eight months. In a classroom mostly, trying to learn French—one more time.” He’d hoped he was done with it after passing his language requirement for his M.A. Like a nemesis, it continues to plague him. And he realizes the irony, having been in a relationship with francophone Sylvie for the past eight years.
“Once you make it through this next phase,” Russ says, “you’ll be into your officers’ training. It’s a lot different. You begin to be treated like a normal human being.”
“If you don’t return,” Marion asks, “would you resume your work on your Ph.D.?”
He looks down at his hands and shakes his head. “Can’t go back, and can’t go forward. I’m in limbo.”
“That’s a dark place to be,” Marion says, “but you’ve been there before.” She refills their glasses. “Maybe you should talk with Bhanti.”
“He’s somewhere in India,” Jeff sighs. “We haven’t been in touch for a while.” Bhanti dropped by Williams Street one afternoon while Jeff was in Saint-Jean. When Marion told him about Jeff’s enlistment, he was surprised, said he had no idea Jeff was contemplating the military. He left a Toronto phone number where Jeff could contact him. But it was too late—he’d already left the country.
“Think about how you’ll feel if you drop out now,” Russ says. “Becoming a soldier is not a cakewalk. There are times you’ll want to give up. But you let that feeling pass. Then dig in again.”
“I’ve got a couple of weeks yet,” Jeff says, settling a pillow behind his head, “time to reread the books Bhanti lent me, time to think about his words.”
He descends into his basement study, enfolds himself in the woollen blanket his grandmother’s fingers fashioned, stitch by stitch. Her needles click hypnotically in his head. He stares down the many-headed hydra of despair, fights the whirlpools threatening to pull him under. He sees Bhanti pouring the tea, slowly, as in a ritual, the sheen of his head in the candlelight; the steaming scent of cinnamon and honey. He hears his voice, as warm and rich as his coffee-toned skin:
Unless we understand the nature of the void within us, we will always feel emptiness, disappointment, despair.
Freedom really means freedom from mental suffering. If the mind is clear and compassionate, whether you are in prison or have six months to live, you still feel peaceful because your mind is free.
It is easier not to take the journey … but then life can dry up.
He faces down his fears, and returns to Saint-Jean in January 2002 for French-language training. During the eight months, he develops a sustaining friendship with another “mature guy”—Scot Lang, married with two children. They swore into the military on the same day, and completed their basic training together, in different platoons, but sharing the milestones and the misery. Scott also studied sociology in university, so they have a common background of books. As they stand at attention during their graduation ceremony in August, the gravelly voice of a grey-moustached general resounds in the cavernous drill hall: “You never know when or where, but at 3 a.m. in some rain-soaked tent, someone will come through the door that you knew from your basic, and you will instantly remember the trials, and you’ll feel that reminiscent and instant camaraderie.… There will be people whose career circle will constantly intersect with yours.”
IN LATE AUGUST, just after Jeff has completed his language training, we’re savouring the last summer weekend at Fanjoy’s Point. We buy a cornucopia of vegetables from Slocum’s Farm, just down the road, and cook a harvest dinner—cobs of sweet Peaches-and-Cream corn, a hodgepodge of steamed green beans, peas, carrots and potatoes, slathered in butter and cream. The long dining table i
n the porch shines with Alma’s gilt-edged china and wedding silverware. After dinner, we linger in the candlelight, sipping oaky Chardonnay as the sun burns orange into the lake, and the crickets call—summer’s gone, summer’s gone.
From the kitchen, the clatter of pots, swooshing of water, trills of laughter as Jeff and Sylvie clean up the dishes. Van Morrison croons in the background. I turn in my chair, about to go to the fridge for some wine, but sit back down, not wanting to disrupt the tableau in the kitchen. Her honey-brown curls waterfalling against his shoulder, Jeff and Sylvie dance in a close embrace:
Out on the highways and the by-ways all alone
I’m still searching for, searching for my home …
It’s a hard road even my best friends they don’t know
And I’m searching for, searching for the philosopher’s stone
It was their last waltz—or embrace—for many, many months. Van’s lyrics were like an oracular summation of Jeff’s restless spirit, and the detour it would take him on over the next two years.
That fall, he severed communication with Sylvie. He didn’t answer her calls or e-mails. “It’s over for now,” is the only response he gave to his parents’ questions. And all that Sylvie could fathom is that they “weren’t on the same page.” Now that Jeff’s career was underway, she had a vision of them living together—finally, after ten years of long distance. In her early thirties, she heard her biological clock ticking, loudly, and wanted to start a family. But Jeff didn’t share her domestic dream. He was still polishing his sword, trying to see himself clearly in its sheen. Unable to handle the pressure of her expectations, he withdrew.
Sylvie left Halifax, and moved to Toronto. She put a down payment on a condo under development on King Street West, a trendy new area of coffee shops and restaurants near the lakeshore. She had a busy cosmopolitan life—flying around the world with Air Canada, attending film festivals, holidaying in the tropics with her girlfriends. But she never gave up hope that she and Jeff would reunite; nor did Marion and Russ, with whom she still kept in touch by phone and e-mail. Sylvie intuited that something wasn’t finished between them. Even though her friends told her she was crazy, she waited, weaving and reweaving her tapestry’s vision. She warded off the suitors and waited for her Odysseus to find his way home.
The Hero’s journey is a lonely one, Joseph Campbell writes. Privation and suffering alone open the mind to all that is hidden to others.
THE FALL OF 2002, Jeff comes full circle, back to the New Brunswick town nestled between the two rivers where he was born thirty-two years earlier. At CFB Gagetown’s Combat Training Centre, he marches on the same parade squares, traverses the same open fields; tromps through the same jungle-like woods and swamps, hikes up the same hills as his father and his grandfathers before him. The British officer instructing in the infantry school is harsh and demeaning, so Jeff—along with eight of the eleven other soldiers in the course—transfer into the artillery school.
Phase three of officers’ training is technical: artillery instruction, involving trigonometry, angles, graphs.… So he finally has to confront his fear of mathematics. “You’re a bit resistant at times,” says his instructor, Captain Shawn Fortin, “because you’re too smart for your own good and can see through the crap.” Jeff fails the course, and has to weigh his options. Go back into infantry? Quit? He heeds his father’s advice and repeats the course. He buckles down, studies hard and passes. Phase four, the final stage, focuses on the dynamics of leadership. He excels, and at graduation he’s awarded a silver watch for top candidate—Lieutenant Jeff Francis.
His first posting in September 2004 brings him back to the big skies of southern Manitoba, to the sand dunes and rolling hills of CFB Shilo. He joins the First Regiment of the Royal Canadian Horse Artillery, the oldest unit of the Canadian Forces. On a crisp fall morning, hoarfrost whitening the lawns in front of headquarters, he enters a theatre-style room, a smaller version of a lecture hall at Carleton—blue upholstered seats in rising tiers, a podium and a whiteboard at the front. The chattering and chuckling subside as thirty soldiers in green relish-pattern uniforms straighten in their chairs. Jeff nods. His sweaty hands open his black hardcover notebook to the list of tasks and reminders; written in military acronyms and shorthand, they’re now an indecipherable blur. Sixty eyes size him up—their new leader, fresh out of officers’ school—green horns to match his uniform. Many are seasoned soldiers—like the tall blond sergeant smiling in the front row, a senior NCO with seventeen years’ experience and deployments to Cyprus and Bosnia.
He clears his throat, and wishes to god he could control the blood rushing to his face: “I’m Lieutenant Francis. I’ve just arrived from Gagetown where I’ve been training for the past two years. I studied sociology at Carleton University before enlisting. I’m originally from … everywhere, man … Oromocto, Halifax, Winnipeg, Ottawa …,” he says in a mock singing voice. A few grins and twitters of laughter loosen the tension in the air. “I’m brand new to the regiment, so I’ll be relying on the sergeant major and master bombardier for guidance and advice.” He acknowledges two soldiers seated side by side in the front row. “My intent today is to give you an overview of where C Battery will be headed in the next year. I’ll keep it brief and try not to bore you to death.
“The next year is filled with uncertainty. But we know that Operation Athena, the Afghanistan Mission, is our main priority up to January 2005. The army wants two brigade groups ready to deploy sometime in 2006. C Battery will probably get another FOO party, and we’ll have to be ready to provide fire support to 2 Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry and brigade operations.
“On a more personal note,” he says, meeting their eyes as he scans the rows, “I have to stress the importance of not getting in shit on the weekends.” Feet shuffle, glances and smirks dart sideways. “Whenever you are drinking, remember you are not a civilian. They can get away with fucking up. We can’t! We will be held accountable for what we do outside of work. I don’t want to see any of your careers affected by something stupid like ‘misuse of alcohol.’ We are professional soldiers, proud of who we are and what we do.
“Now I’d like to open up the floor to you, and answer any questions.” He closes his notebook and folds his hands on the podium.
“Sir, what are we in for as far as physical training goes?” a voice from the back row calls out in a lilting Newfie accent. “Rumour has it that you’ve been seen at the gym every day since you arrived.” Laughter peals around the room.
“Let’s just say, you’ll get fit, if you’re not already.” Jeff grins. “I subscribe to the ‘train hard, fight early’ philosophy. Let’s face it; that’s what we’re here for. And I truly believe in the ancient Chinese proverb The more we sweat in training, the less we bleed in battle.”
After the last soldier has left the room, he turns out the lights and exhales in relief. He steps into the corridor and halts, clicks his heels together. “Sir,” he says with a brisk salute. The C Battery captain looks over his shoulder as if to check for a senior officer behind him.
“It’s okay, Jeff,” the dark-haired man says, and smiles. “Relax. I’m not ‘sir,’ or ‘Captain Etherlston’ but ‘Craig.’ ”
“Yes sir,” Jeff blushes. “I mean Craig, sir.” And they both erupt into laughter.
“How about joining us for happy hour tonight?” Craig asks. “A bunch of us are driving into Brandon around five, meeting at the usual watering hole.”
“Thanks,” Jeff says. “I have a match at six—at the Brandon Boxing Club. So I’ll catch up with you later.”
“Such dedication,” Craig shakes his head, “… even on a Friday night!”
Accumulate practice day by day, and hour by hour. Polish the twofold spirit heart and mind, and sharpen the twofold gaze perception and sight.
On November 11, 2004, Jeff is falling thousands of metres through the herringbone sky above Trenton, Ontario—developing his wings. He requested the posting to
C Battery, the “Light Battery” that performs airborne operations, so he could take the military parachutist course and earn his parachute wings. He’s in the hangar of the Canadian Forces Advanced Land Warfare School, still in his parachute harness, when the instructor enters to tell him there’s a phone call.
“ ‘Happy birthday to you,’ ” his parents sing over the line. “How does it feel to be thirty-four?”
“Awesome!” He describes tumbling head over heels out of the back of an airplane. “Remember that feeling, Dad?” His father also took the parachutist course, decades ago. “What a rush!” They can practically hear the big grin lighting up his face, and remember him soaring through the air on his BMX. He doesn’t tell them about his hard landing last week—the bloody gash to his head, the ambulance ride to the hospital—only about the weightless thrill of free-falling through pillows of clouds.
It’s a crystal-clear starry night in Eastern Passage, the day after Christmas 2004. Jeff is helping his parents load up the dishwasher when the phone rings. “Hi, Sylvie,” Marion says, glancing over at Jeff. “Good to hear from you. How’s the weather in Toronto? Oh—you’re in Halifax overnight on a layover?”
Jeff takes the receiver and they talk for a few minutes. Then he gets into his parents’ Mazda van and makes the half-hour trip across the harbour to pick up the woman he forsook, but could never forget. She’s standing alone under the indigo canopy of the Lord Nelson, shivering in the cold light of the entrance, her chin tucked into the collar of her black coat. Her eyes brighten as he pulls up to the curb. “Secours,” he whispers into her hair, wrapping her in his arms.
For Your Tomorrow Page 10