‘Stay put. I’ll be right back.’ With a perky spin she disappeared between the sheets, leaving me wondering if she was simply being helpful or reciprocating the affection.
I hung the rest of the laundry with a giant grin on my face, hopeful that Chidori’s feelings had also deepened beyond the level of friendship, and that she might accept an invitation to accompany me on a date.
When she returned a few minutes later, she held my shirt by the shoulders so I could slip into it.
‘I appreciate it.’ I chuckled at the thought that she wouldn’t likely be as accommodating if I asked her to mend the missing button on my grey trousers, too. Thankfully, she couldn’t read my mind, but she did seem to sense that whatever I was thinking was cheeky, since she shot me a slightly maternal eyebrow-raise as she guided me by the elbow towards her father’s black stake truck. It was already loaded with wood crates overflowing with a rainbow of vegetables for the farmers’ market. I opened the passenger side door for her, and she climbed in as her brothers emerged from the greenhouse.
‘Not fishing today, Hayden?’ her brother Tosh asked.
‘The fall fair is only one day a year and who knows when we’ll have another one. The fish will still be there tomorrow.’
‘True. Hop on.’ He pointed to the back and slid into the driver’s seat. Chidori’s other brother Kenji and I both jumped up onto the flatbed to sit on the crates.
Toshiro was twenty-one years old and the eldest. Everyone called him Tosh. He was home for the summer after completing an undergraduate degree at the University of British Columbia. He planned to take a year off from studies and then enter law school. Tosh and Chidori were a lot alike. Kenji, on the other hand, was more like me. He was two years older than Chidori and me. He had been a good athlete and student in high school but, like me, didn’t apply to university. Kenji was also an accomplished pianist, but didn’t care much for music, so didn’t accept the offer to play for the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra – much to his mother’s chagrin. Baseball was his only real love – baseball and his sweetheart named Michiko. For the two years after he graduated high school, he lived with Tosh near the university campus in Vancouver and played two seasons with the Asahi championship baseball team. Kenji moved back home to Mayne Island at the beginning of summer when Tosh did, because he had injured his shoulder and couldn’t play baseball any more. He still hadn’t quite gotten over that disappointment and was extra-glum for a while because he wasn’t sure what he wanted to do as his career. But his mood improved when he took a job as an accountant’s assistant and he and Michiko started to go steady.
We drove out onto the dirt road that cut across the island. Chidori glanced over her shoulder and returned the smile I was already gleaming at her through the back window. If she had an inkling of what my ulterior motives were, then her amenable mood was a good sign.
A cloud of dust trailed behind us as we approached town, then billowed up to coat the two men on ladders who hoisted the 1941 Mayne Island Fall Fair banner to string it across the road. Chidori and I had both attended every fall fair since we were born. I hoped it wasn’t going to be the last one ever, but the war overseas had already been progressing for two years, with no end in sight. The fall fair tradition would more than likely be suspended once more government rations on staple goods were put in place.
Tosh parked the truck next to the split rail fence that enclosed the area for the farmers’ market, then hopped out of the cab. I jumped off the flatbed and strategically landed right in front of Chidori. Her palm grazed my waist delicately as she manoeuvred around me to lift a crate of tomatoes.
‘Hayden,’ my sister Rosalyn hollered from the porch of the Agricultural Hall. ‘Ma needs your help hauling in the boxes of preserves.’
‘All right. I’ll be right there,’ I shouted as I stacked two vegetable crates and followed Chidori and her brothers to their stand. Their wood setup was one of the bigger ones at the market, constructed like a small shed with angled display shelves along the base of the counter and a shingle shake slanted roof to shade from sun and protect from rain. It stood permanently on the fairgrounds during the growing season, so all they had to do was load up the shelves with the crates or baskets of vegetables and hang the hand-painted Setoguchi Farm sign from the hooks. An instant shop, and they were well known for their quality produce.
‘You should go help your mother,’ Chidori said quietly, not wanting to keep me from what I was supposed to be doing. ‘We can manage from here.’
‘You promise you’ll find me later?’
‘Yes, but if I don’t sell out before you have to leave for the dock, you and I could maybe go for a walk. Together. This afternoon, after the fair.’ She checked my reaction to the invitation briefly, but then, as if she worried she had been too forward, her cheeks blushed and she stepped around me to make another trip to the truck. Her red skirt brushed around her knees and distracted me for a few seconds before I followed after her.
‘Hayden!’ Ma hollered from a window in the Agricultural Hall that overlooked the farmers’ market field. ‘We’re running short on time. I really do need your help with the jars, darling.’
Waving to let her know I was on my way, I trotted after Chidori. The air was fragrant from bushels of lavender, sun-warmed strawberries, and fresh honey that other families displayed at their stands. I dodged a carpenter who carried a chair made of woven cedar branches. I side-stepped between a booth with cinnamon-and-brown-sugar-drizzled baked goods, and a booth with wool-knit baby blankets, then snuck up behind Chidori. She surrendered a smile when I rested my left hand on her waist and leaned over her shoulder to whisper, ‘I accept your invitation for a walk this afternoon, but I’m also really hoping you can find time for at least one dance.’
Her lips pressed together as she pondered. After a worry-rousing hesitation, she said, ‘Maybe. Now, go on and help your mother.’
Satisfied with a maybe, I turned towards the Agricultural Hall with my hands in my pockets and whistled a tune as I swaggered with the confidence of hope and promise.
Rory Bauer and his cousin Fitz stood on the porch, arms crossed in confrontation, to block my way to the door. ‘You didn’t go and get sweet on that Jap girl now, did you?’ Fitz jeered.
Rory chuckled as he lit a cigarette and sat down on a wood-plank bench. They both directed hostile glares at me, waiting for an answer. Not interested in an altercation, I tried to inch past them on the narrow porch. Rory stretched his legs out straight and rested his scuffed boot on the rail.
‘Excuse me, Rory.’
‘Excuse you for what?’ Fitz laughed. ‘Being sweet on a Jap?’
My composure teetered precariously. Chidori didn’t approve of me getting messed up in quarrels, so I checked if she was watching – she was. Instead of confronting the Bauers, I said, ‘Move your ratty feet, Rory, I need to get by.’
Rory stood and blew stale breath and cigarette smoke in my face.
Barely able to contain my temper, I used all of my self-restraint to utter through a tight jaw, ‘Move. My ma’s waiting on me to help her with the displays.’
‘Is your ma a Jap-lover too?’ Fitz asked.
My frame tensed and I inhaled to supress my irritation but fired back, ‘I think you should be more concerned about who your ma’s been loving, Fitz. I heard she’s awful friendly with all the fellas down at the Springwater Lodge.’
‘Shut your filthy mouth,’ Fitz growled.
Rory shoved me in the chest, which launched me against the wood siding. My body made a loud thud and a few people, including my sister, poked their heads out the door to check what the ruckus was about. The only RCMP officer for all the Gulf Islands, Constable Stuart, stepped up onto the porch in his full Red Serge uniform that made him appear seven feet tall. ‘What seems to be the problem, boys?’
‘No problem,’ we all said.
Rory mumbled something I couldn’t quite hear, took another drag from his cigarette, and avoided making eye contact with
Constable Stuart. Fitz ran a comb through his overly Brylcreemed hair and shot a greasy wink at Rosalyn, which didn’t impress her in the slightest. Constable Stuart, who must have been stifling in his wool serge, used a hankie to wipe the sweat from the back of his neck and eyeballed us until Rory eventually walked away. Fitz followed. Constable Stuart directed his attention to me. I swallowed hard and focused on his bushy moustache as I waited for him to speak. ‘What was that skirmish all about, Hayden?’
‘Nothing I can’t handle, sir.’
He frowned for a good while before nodding in a cautionary way. ‘Let’s hope so.’ With the tip of his brown felt hat he stepped off the porch and crossed the street to give heck to a boy who wasn’t paying attention to his tethered goat as it chewed up the siding on the two-cell jailhouse.
I glanced across the fairgrounds at Chidori long enough to see the apprehension in her eyes about Rory and Fitz. Then I ducked inside to help my mother.
Chapter 3
The sortie went exactly as planned. The Typhoon bombers we escorted hit all the railway targets and headed back to the airfield to rearm. Gordie and I flew another pass over the Italian foothills and farmers’ fields to conduct reconnaissance. We were always on the lookout for aerodromes that had a large collection of enemy flying machines. Sending bombers in to wipe them all out on the ground was easier than fighting them in the air. Nothing much was going on, though, so we turned to head back to base.
Fifteen minutes out from our landing strip a solo Junkers flew low beneath me – a common decoy of the German Luftwaffe air force. They often sent in a solo airplane to draw us down while hiding their fighter pilots up higher. I didn’t take the bait. Instead, I scanned the airspace above me. Six enemy aircraft were indeed flying above in loose formation. I called Gordie on the RT, but he didn’t confirm receipt so must have had the receiver flipped to transmit. Fortunately, he noticed me tip my wings as a signal and he spotted them too. We split up and I headed for cloud cover. My Spitfire was faster than the Messerschmitts the German fighters flew, so I was confident I could outrun them. But my sureness that we could escape without a battle waned when I emerged from the cloud cover.
Gordie’s airplane was being attacked by two Italian Macchi aircraft. Normally, flying machines from the Italian Regia Aeronautical would be poorly matched against us, but if the squadron of Luftwaffe above backed the Italians up, we were dangerously outnumbered. I feverishly tapped the thumb lever to flash my lights in a Morse code, hoping some friendlies were close enough to see it, then I banked and doubled back to chase behind a machine that was firing on Gordie.
My pulse pounded in my temples with all-out fear and zeal as I wound her up well over four hundred kilometres per hour and gained on them. Breathing deeply didn’t help steady my hands, but there was no time to wait for them to stabilize. I increased the oxygen flow to my mask and then squeezed the ammunition trigger to fire. The tracer bullets sparked out of my wing-mounted machine guns and hit the belly of the enemy Macchi with a satisfying direct blow. My cannon shell caused black smoke to pour out of his fuselage. He went into an uncontrolled dive and I lost visual contact. Gordie rolled as the Luftwaffe enemy machines descended on us to join the fight. Overly wired from my survival instincts kicking in, I yanked and banked at the last possible second, and the burst of turbulence from the passing Messerschmitts jolted my airplane violently as I followed Gordie.
Sucking back oxygen to tame the jitters, we looped around in a tighter radius than their machines were capable of and Gordie fired a cannon, hitting the wing of one of the machines after it flew past us. It lost vertical speed rapidly, then disappeared into the clouds. Gordie gave me a triumphant thumbs up until three machines flew right up on us and opened fire.
Metal dings reverberated through the cockpit as incendiary bullets hit and sparked off my armour and wings, nearly nicking my leg and threatening to ignite my fuel. Every muscle in my body restricted, like iron cables cinching my chest to the point that my lungs couldn’t expand. Gordie peeled off. It was an escape or die situation, so with the control column jammed to the dashboard, I sent my airplane into a dive. Dropping full throttle from thirty thousand feet to one thousand in seconds caused painfully intense compression in my ears, but it was my best option to shake them. I waited until the last possible moment to increase altitude and prayed not to black out from the abrupt change in air pressure as I climbed. A violent shudder and buffeting indicated a wing stall, so I thrust the control column forward again to avoid a spin. Dizzy from the exertion, I levelled the horizon and fired another cannon. It hit one Messerschmitt in the tail, which broke off. His airplane plummeted and the pilot ditched.
Frantically scanning the air space, I searched for Gordie. When I finally spotted him, I sped to saddle up next to his left wing. Before we had a chance to fly out of range, a shell hit the armour plate behind my head. The detonation blast concussed me. After a delayed reaction to recover my wits, I stomped full left rudder and sharply tipped my wings, which regretfully caused Gordie’s airplane to be hit by the next round.
‘Damn it.’
Smoke billowed out of Gordie’s fuselage. Rapid calculations for the best way to help him, while also keeping the enemy off my tail, charged through my brain. The only option was to take down the rest of the airplanes and give Gordie a chance to limp back to the airstrip. Statistically achieving that by myself was highly improbable. But what choice did I have? I refused to abandon him. I climbed higher and looped around. Two more Macchis flew through broken cloud cover below, likely looking for me. With blind determination to save Gordie, I dropped altitude, fired my machine guns, and hit one Italian in the wing. The other one climbed. Before he disappeared into the clouds, he turned so he would be able to sneak up behind me. I slowed down and waited for him to unwittingly fly by. Once he was in front of me, I fired a direct cannon hit. Flames burst out and a projectile of shrapnel from his tail cracked the acrylic of my cockpit canopy.
Gordie glided dangerously low, just above the treetops. Smoke spewed out of every seam and rivet of his damaged rig as the last two Luftwaffe machines positioned on each of his wings. The pilots would definitely report to ground troops to pick Gordie up as a prisoner of war, so with zero sympathy, I used up the last of my ammunition to take down both airplanes. They each hit the ground with a shuddering explosion and ball of flames, which would have felt like a victory if Gordie wasn’t still going down.
‘Come on, Gordie. Keep her off the ground,’ I pleaded under my breath. He glided on no power and slowly lost more altitude. He was going to hit terrain. ‘Come on, Gordie, get out. Get out. Slide the canopy, pal.’ He was too close to the ground to deploy the parachute properly, even if he did eject, but I circled and waited on edge for a glimpse of the ballooning fabric. He didn’t bail. His airplane skidded on its belly across a farmer’s field and erupted into flames.
‘God damn it. No!’ Fraught with remorse, my throat choked for air as I climbed in altitude to race back to base.
Before I could gain top speed, a cannon blew through my left wing and jolted me nearly out of the restraint, then my cockpit filled with gritty black smoke. Blinded by the toxic fumes, my fingers searched and pulled the release lever to slide the cockpit hood. The air cleared enough to see my instruments – temperature hot, oil low, petrol extremely low. My engine sputtered from the hit and then failed, so I yanked the hand pump to inject fuel, then viciously kicked the rudder bar in an attempt to keep speed. It didn’t work. I was dead stick, no control of the airplane. The Sperry horizon indicator tilted sideways and the propellers spun ineffectively in the wind. Only two scenarios remained – go down with the fatally wounded machine or bail out. I didn’t have much choice.
I closed my eyes, said, ‘God forgive me. Have mercy on my soul,’ and crawled out of the cockpit onto the slipstream. At ten thousand feet above the ground, it required complete defiance over every natural human survival instinct to balance on the edge of the wing, but I forced myself to mano
euvre into a crouch, and then jumped.
The drone of my Spitfire engine was replaced with the intense shuddering of the air against my ears as I free-fell. The parachute released from my seat pack but, to my dismay, it suspended above me pitifully like a crumpled wad of wet paper. A strange amalgamation of utter abandonment and sheer terror waged a battle over my emotions as I plummeted through the sky towards the earth. Then, as if it had been playing a cruel joke but knew the gig needed to be up or I’d pancake, the fabric of the parachute snapped like a schooner sail catching the ocean wind. The jarring of the upward deployment nearly dislocated my shoulder joints, but the fact that my body was no longer plunging towards death was a welcome relief. The reprieve was short lived, though, as the harness straps cut across my chest and throat with crushing power. My fingers clutched desperately to fight the opposing forces of flight and gravity that strangled me as I drifted. Gasping for air was futile since I was only sucking in the suffocating black smoke of aviation carnage below. Ten metres from the ground, flames from a downed airplane ignited my parachute. It disintegrated, causing me to fall the rest of the way. I slammed into a cow pasture in the Italian countryside, hard enough to blow the seams of both my boots apart from the impact.
Sprawled out on my back, my smoke-irritated eyes blinked open. Maybe I’d been unconscious for a spell. As my head slowly cleared, I was thrilled to discover my fingers and toes responded to my mental commands to wiggle. Good news, I wasn’t paralysed or shattered. Bad news, I was surrounded by flames. I sat up to remove the parachute harness, then with extreme effort rolled to my knees and stood. Stumbling blindly in socked feet, I assumed the gagging stench of burning flesh was the enemy pilots burning up, but then realized it was my own exposed skin, scorched and already peeling away. My attempt to avoid blistering-hot scraps of metal didn’t go well and the pain became excruciating as my socks melted. I needed to make a run for it but didn’t know which way to go, until a cross wind blew the smoke all in one direction and made my decision for me. I ran through the roaring and crackling flames to where the air was clearer. Eventually, I emerged from the wreckage scene and tumbled to the tufty grass – a meadow that was reminiscent of my acreage back home on Mayne Island, or at least I imagined it was before I passed out.
All We Left Behind Page 2