by Mary Lawson
I didn’t bother replying to my father. I turned and went down the ladder fast. My mother and the girls had left the pump and were clustered together at the foot of the ladder, looking up at us. Amy, the smallest, was clutching Margaret’s legs and crying with fear.
I said quietly to my mother, “I think the wind’s changing. You need to take the girls to the lake before it gets too dark to see the path.
She was nearly wringing her hands with distress. She said, “Edward, we cannot leave the house to burn. We cannot.”
From the top of the ladder my father roared, “Bring up the buckets! What’re you waitin’ for?”
My mother started to run back to the pump but I grabbed her arm. “Mother! You have to take the girls! It might still miss us, but we can’t take the chance.”
My mother turned to Margaret and said, “Margaret, you take them. Edward and I will stay and help your father.”
“I will not!” Margaret said, furious and terrified. “We will all go together!”
My mother didn’t reply. She was looking past me, over my shoulder. She said, “Edward …” her voice scarcely above a whisper.
I turned and saw that the wind had swung around and was blowing the fire straight towards us. Above it, darkness was rolling out across the sky.
The worst thing, the most terrifying thing, the thing that has stayed with me over all these years, was not the sight of the fire’s approach, though it seemed to be coming at the speed of an express train, but the sound. It was like nothing I had ever heard. It bore no relation whatsoever to the spit and crackle of branches when you throw wood on a campfire; it was a deep, cavernous howl, like some gigantic creature gone insane. Trees were exploding at its approach—they weren’t “catching fire,” they weren’t “bursting into flames,” they were literally exploding—huge fireballs belching 150 feet into the air, clouds of smoke and sparks roaring upwards. The sound of it. I’ll never forget it. If hell has a sound, that is it.
For a moment I couldn’t even draw breath. Then I turned. Margaret was holding Amy. I picked up Jane and tried to press her into my mother’s arms.
“Take her!” I said. “Go! Now!”
But my mother wouldn’t take her. She backed away from me. “You have to go with them, Edward. I’m not leaving your father.”
“I’ll bring him!” I shouted. “We can run faster than you!”
“He won’t come with you, you know that! He won’t listen to you!”
“I’ll make him!” I shouted, or started to shout, because at that moment there was the most desperate, terrifying shriek and we turned and saw that my sister Becky’s hair was alight. It was flaming out around her and she was spinning in terror, shrieking above the roar of the flames. I ran, tearing off my jacket, and flung it over her head and Mother joined me and we put out the flames. The other girls were screaming hysterically. I lifted Becky and gave her to my mother and put my mouth to my mother’s ear and said, “Take them now, Mother, or they will die. We will catch up with you.”
She was shaking violently but she nodded, and kissed me, and she and Margaret gathered the girls together and they ran.
When I turned back to the house my father was standing on the roof, silhouetted against a sky that seemed itself to be exploding with flame. The urgency of the situation had driven everything else, even the state of war between us, from my mind, and until that moment I hadn’t given him a thought. Now, as I watched, he raised his fists to the flames and roared his defiance and I suddenly realized that after all those sleepless nights planning his death, all I had to do was turn around and walk away. Just leave him, because left to himself you could guarantee that he would leave it too late. Just walk away, and all our problems would be solved.
I would like to be able to say that I couldn’t do it, that in the name of humanity I could not leave without at least trying to make him come down. Or that in the horror of that moment I had some sort of revelation and saw in my father, this man who had battled the Fates and lost time and time again, a nobility that I hadn’t recognized before. But it’s the truth I’m trying to write here and the truth is, I could have walked away without a qualm. The sole reason I didn’t was because I couldn’t have faced my mother if I had.
I ran to the foot of the ladder and shouted up to him, but he couldn’t hear me above the roar of the fire. Cursing, my guts cramping with terror and frustration, I climbed the ladder and scrambled across the roof to him. He was standing with his back to me, facing the approaching flames. I grabbed his arm and he turned and looked at me. I yelled, “Come on! If you don’t come now it’ll be too late!”
I don’t think he even knew me. He was covered in soot and ash and his hair was wild and his eyes, bloodshot and streaming from the smoke, were completely mad. He batted me off as if I were an insect, a mere distraction, and turned back to the fire, and I realized that God himself could not have made him leave. I turned to go, but a flaming branch landed on the roof beside us and instantly the roof shingles caught alight. Before I’d managed to stamp them out another firebrand landed, and then a third. I yelled a warning but my father didn’t even turn to look. That was it for me. My courage broke and I scrambled back to the ladder and climbed down, coughing and choking from the smoke, and ran.
When I reached the path I looked back and saw him, almost obscured by smoke and flame but still facing that towering wall of fire, arms raised, fists clenched. And that is my last memory of my father: shaking his fists at the sky. Shaking his fists, for the love of God! Shaking his fists at a holocaust.
By the time I reached the lake it was so dark and the air so full of smoke that you couldn’t see two feet in front of your face, so it wasn’t until the fire burnt itself out early the following morning that I found the others. They were sitting on a small crescent of beach, soaking wet from having spent most of the night in the lake, huddled together like refugees from some bloody but nameless war.
My mother stood up when she saw me and came to meet me. There was no question in her face—there could only be one reason why I was alone. I told her that I had tried. I am glad I was able to say that.
I have comforted myself over the years with the thought that the fact that I tried means that, strong though my father’s influence on me was, my mother’s was stronger still. I don’t know if that is true.
We made our way back along the shore until we reached the edge of the fire’s destruction and then worked inland back to Jonesville. I was afraid there would be nothing left of the town, but though the stench of burning was thick in the air and a layer of ash covered everything, it had largely escaped the fire. Emily’s parents took us in. After a few days with them, we went by truck and train to my mother’s family, thirty miles away. When everyone had settled in I told my mother I had decided to enlist. She didn’t try to stop me. I imagine she knew that I had to get away.
Emily did try to stop me. I returned to Jonesville to tell her and she wept and pleaded with me not to go. Finally, when she saw that I was adamant, she asked me to marry her, saying she’d be able to bear it better if we were married. I said yes. I could see no reason not to, given that I was sure I’d be killed.
The following day we were married. I was still so dazed from the fire that I have no recollection of the wedding. We had one night together before I was shipped off to training camp and six more nights before I was sent overseas. During one of those nights we created Tom.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Tom
Struan, March 1969
Overnight the wind swung around to the south and when he left the house in the morning he could feel the difference in the air and hear it in the snow under his feet—a wet crunch rather than a dry squeak. He knew better than to think spring had arrived—another blizzard was on its way—but it gave you hope.
When he passed Reverend Thomas’s house the porch light was on again. Tom slowed down and anxiously scanned the house and front yard but there was no sign of the old man, barefoot or otherwise.
He was so busy looking for him he almost failed to notice that the car had been partially cleared of snow. The top, and the sides down as far as the bottom of the windows, were exposed; it no longer looked like a hump but instead like an island or the back of a whale. The driveway hadn’t been cleared, so Reverend Thomas couldn’t have gone anywhere even if he’d been able to open the doors, but maybe that would come next.
Tom searched around in his mind for conclusions to be drawn and decided it was a good sign. If you lived in the centre of town like Reverend Thomas did, you didn’t really need the car on a day-to-day basis, so it suggested he wanted to go somewhere, and that in itself could be considered a positive thing. Maybe he was thinking of driving down to wherever it was his wife had gone. Maybe eventually they’d be okay. Not happy, of course, but okay.
Luke Morrison was in Harper’s reading the paper, the box of models beside him on the bench seat. He glanced up when Tom came in and nodded a greeting. Tom paused at his table.
“How’d the interview go?”
“Okay,” Luke said. “Nothing definite but I think he liked the stuff.”
“That’s great.”
“He’s bringing his wife up today. Wants her to see the models, help decide which ones they want to go for.”
“They’re here,” Tom said. “I saw the plane coming in just now.”
“Thanks. Better get things out, I guess.” He opened the box and started unpacking various pieces of furniture.
Tom slid into his half-booth, across from Luke and one row down, and spread out his paper. Nobody dead on the front page. Prime Minister Trudeau was shaking hands with a sleazy-looking guy with dark glasses. They were smiling at each other like sharks.
A glass of water landed on the table.
“Same old thing?” the Amazon asked.
“Yes. Thanks.”
“Boring, boring.” She sped away.
The door opened and the boss-guy came in accompanied by a woman wearing dark glasses and more dead animals than Tom had ever seen all together in one place before. Fur from head to toe. The hat on its own had to be a whole silver fox, the coat … Tom did a quick count and reckoned it had to be at least fifty mink, maybe double that. Her feet and legs up to mid-calf were each inside a baby seal. Conversation in Harper’s ceased altogether for a count of ten, then resumed in an awed murmur.
The woman seemed at ease with that. She stood in the doorway, smiling faintly behind her dark glasses, and waited to be shown to her seat.
The boss-guy spotted Luke, waved to him, then guided his wife down the aisle. Luke got up and stepped out of the booth. His back was to Tom, which was a pity, Tom thought, because he would have liked to see his face, but on the other hand he got to see the woman and that was an experience you didn’t get every day.
“This here is Luke Morrison, furniture-maker extraordinaire,” the boss-guy said with a wide smile. “Luke, I’d like you to meet my dear wife, Cherie. She’s the brains of the business. As well as being the beauty, of course.”
“Nice to meet you, ma’am,” Luke said.
The woman took off her dark glasses and smiled at him. Her face was a work of art.
“Isn’t this a cute place you have here,” she said. She allowed her husband to help her out of her coat and slid into the booth opposite Luke. Without the coat she was a bundle of twigs.
“And this is the furniture,” she said. “And isn’t it cute too.”
The men sat down and watched her. The whole of Harper’s watched her. She picked up a miniature circular table, turned it around, turned it over, put it down, picked up a chair.
A hot beef sandwich and fries appeared in front of Tom. Perched on top of the sandwich was a solitary pea. Tom’s retinas registered the pea but the optic nerves were busy with the woman and failed to pass the message on to his brain. Despite five years in Toronto he’d never seen anyone who looked quite as unreal as the boss-guy’s wife. Every eyelash looked as if it had been meticulously crafted and glued in place that very morning.
Bo was setting down iced water in front of the newcomers. Seeing her beside the woman, Tom suddenly realized that Bo was a knockout. He wondered how he’d failed to notice it before; maybe he’d never really looked at her, in case she started talking to him. In addition to being tall and blond, she was clear-eyed and long-legged and looked fit as hell. If the boss-guy’s wife worked at it for a million years she’d never come close to looking as good as Bo did without lifting a finger, which when you thought about it was kind of unfair.
“Very nice to see you again, sir,” Bo was saying. “How are you today, ma’am? Isn’t it a lovely day?”
“Lovely,” said the woman.
“Are you ready to order yet?”
“Um, no,” said Luke quickly. “Give us a minute.”
“Absolutely, sir,” Bo said. “No problem. The menu’s on the table mat in front of you when you’re ready, ma’am.”
“I know what I’m having,” the woman said, making a little rocking chair rock with the tip of her finger. “This is delightful,” she said, smiling at Luke. “May I have this?”
“Sure,” Luke said. “Sure, of course.”
“I’ll have an omelette,” the woman said. She balanced the rocking chair on the palm of her hand and raised it to eye level. Everyone watched.
“That’s a good choice, ma’am,” Bo said, taking out her notebook.
“Please tell the chef to use two eggs, fill it with fresh spinach and grate a little Parmesan on top.”
“Fresh spinach?” Bo said, her pencil pausing.
The woman looked at her for the first time. “You don’t have fresh spinach?”
“Not at the moment,” Bo said, looking out of the window at several million square miles of snow.
“I wasn’t assuming you grew it in your garden,” the woman said, her mouth going thin. “I was assuming you would have it flown in.”
“I’m afraid not, ma’am,” Bo said. “I’m pretty sure we have tinned spinach, though. Would that do?”
“It’s not that kind of town, Cherie,” the boss-guy said jovially. “This is the North.”
“Have you frozen spinach?”
“I’m afraid we don’t have that either. How about peas? We have frozen peas.”
“A pea omelette?” the woman asked glacially.
“Or how about potatoes?” Bo said, warming to the subject. “They’re fresh. Potatoes are great in an omelette. And onions—how about a potato and onion omelette with cheddar cheese? That would be delicious! We could add some peas as well for colour if you like. It would be healthy too.”
“Are you saying you have no fresh vegetables apart from potatoes and onions?”
“Oh no, we have carrots, cabbage, squash, turnips … a turnip omelette would be different. How about that?” There was a dangerous light in Bo’s eyes.
Luke was squirming in his seat. Tom knew it would have been a kindness to look away, but it was too good to miss.
The boss-guy said, “Why don’t you have one of their hot beef sandwiches, Cher? They’re damned good and it wouldn’t hurt you for once. I eat them all the time and look at me.”
“I have looked at you,” his wife said, not looking at him. “I’d like to speak to the chef.”
“Sure,” Bo said. “I’ll just get her.” She sailed away.
“Do you think people who have enough money to be flown all the way up here by seaplane will be happy to stay in a place where there are no fresh vegetables?” the woman asked her husband. Her tone was enough to freeze your balls off, Tom thought. Which might explain why the guy looked as if he didn’t have any. It was funny, when you thought about it, how many rich guys looked like eunuchs.
“We can get them flown in if they really want them,” the man was saying. “But this isn’t Toronto, Cher. That’s the whole point! People will be coming up here for a new and absolutely authentic experience.” He stretched his arms out to encompass the magnificence of the Canadian North. “That’s w
hat we’re offering them—that’s why it’s so special. They’ll experience the North as it really is, up to and including the food of the region.”
“I think you should be very worried about this,” his wife said, scanning the menu.
“Not everybody likes raw spinach, dear. Some people prefer normal—”
“I think you should be losing sleep.”
Luke was scrabbling frantically around in his box of models. He brought out something wrapped in newspaper and began unwrapping it with great care.
“I, um, brought this in to show you,” he said. “Just in case you were interested. It isn’t something I could do in quantity; each piece takes a long time to make. But I thought … you know … you might be interested in having one or two.”
He set a small chair down on the table in front of the woman. The seat was a smooth silver-grey disc of driftwood resting on slender legs. The back was formed from a delicate branch, or maybe several branches, each twig arching up or curving around to lend itself to the whole.
Wife and husband looked at it.
“I want twelve,” the woman said.
“Twelve?” her husband said. “I mean it’s gorgeous, I agree, but do you think it’s right for what we—”
“Not for the hotel,” the woman said impatiently. “People up here wouldn’t appreciate how unique they are. I want them for us. For the dining room.”
She turned to Luke. “Can you do me twelve? And I want a table to match. I’ll leave the design to you.”
“I couldn’t do it in the time frame we’re talking about, ma’am. I’m sorry, but they’re handmade and each one depends on me finding just the right-shaped branches. Takes a really long time, so they’d be kind of expensive. Actually, very expensive.”
Mrs. Harper appeared, Bo at her elbow. “I’m the chef,” Mrs. Harper said. “Bo here says you wanted to see me.”
“Just bring me a plain omelette,” the woman said. “I’m sure it will be fine.” To Luke she said, “You can discuss the price with my husband. It doesn’t matter how long it takes, send me each one as you finish it. As for furniture for the hotel, I think this style here would be most suitable for the lounge …”