The Way the Crow Flies Read online

  He goes to the living room. Bay of Pigs was a textbook example of a failure of decision-making. Not the making of a bad decision, but the failure to make a clear one. All Kennedy accomplished was to inflame the situation—like poking at a hornets’ nest. Still, he’s doing the right thing now. Seeking the best advice—unlike our prime minister, who’s allergic to advice. Jack bends and flicks on the TV, then sits on the couch and waits for it to warm up. Kennedy isn’t backing down, but neither is he firing the first shot. “Speak softly and carry a big stick.” A war of nerves. It takes guts. And Kennedy has a few, if his own war record is any indication. More than just a pretty face from a rich family. Good old Irish bootlegger stock, and that’s what Jack and anyone with any sense is really pinning his hopes on—bare knuckles crossed with a Harvard education. He would love to be a fly on the wall in the White House Cabinet Room, where the Executive Committee is meeting round the clock. The Excomm. History in the making.

  The CBC comes on, and Pierre Salinger tells a Canadian reporter that Secretary of State McNamara and his team are living on sandwiches and coffee as they make and revise plans for every contingency. Across the United States, housewives are stocking up on canned goods as talking heads explain how to survive a nuclear attack, without explaining why anyone would want to. Meanwhile, in Canada, heads are firmly lodged in the sand. No new developments. He switches to CBS and watches while Walter Cronkite explains “the way it is.” If there has to be a nuclear war, just as well to hear it from him.

  There is a limit, however, to the amount of news that can be broadcast, even in the midst of an international crisis. Jack changes the channel and feels his shoulders begin to relax in spite of himself as he watches Wayne and Shuster.

  Up in her room, Madeleine is engrossed. Shortly Tom came upon the juvenile pariah of the town, Huckleberry Finn…. She knows she will have to turn off the light when Maman gets home. Huckleberry was cordially hated and dreaded by all the mothers of the town…. This is the first grown-up book that she has ever read silently to herself, unmediated by her own voice and her father’s. Reading has just become even more intoxicating. Huckleberry came and went at his own free will. He slept on door-steps in fine weather, and in empty hogsheads in wet—what’s a hogshead? A hog’s head?—he did not have to go to school or to church, or call any being master, or obey anybody; he could go fishing or swimming when and where he chose, and stay as long as it suited him; nobody forbade him to fight; he could sit up as late as he pleased; he was always the first boy that went barefoot in the spring and the last to resume leather in the fall; he never had to wash, nor put on clean clothes; he could swear wonderfully….

  If you believe hard enough, is it possible to enter the world of a book? If you pray to God for a miracle, can He transport you to St. Petersburg, Florida, long ago? Set you down by the Mississippi in a pair of tattered overalls, as a boy? Madeleine squeezes her eyes shut and prays. Please, dear God, turn me into a boy. God can do anything. Except change Himself into a rock with no powers, then change Himself back again, because then He would never have been a real rock. Don’t think about that—like infinity, it is a mystery and it will make you dizzy. Have faith. Keep reading, and when you wake up in the morning, perhaps the miracle will have occurred….

  By the time Mimi gets home with Mike, Jack has found another news special, another pundit, “… but do we have a viable emergency measures plan? My guess is….” He switches off the TV, she kisses him and asks, “How’s Madeleine?”

  “Oh, she’s fine. But I tell you, I’m going to have a word with that teacher, what’s-his-name.”

  “Mr. March. Why, did something happen at school?”

  “Fella needs a good thump on the nose.”

  She pauses, halfway out of her coat. “Why, what did he do?”

  “He’s scaring the life out of the kids with this nonsense over Cuba, that’s why she ran off after school.”

  “Oh.” She slips her coat off. “Well I don’t like her playing with the Froelich girl.”

  “The Froelich kid is harmless, it’s the wife you don’t like,” and he winks.

  “Dad?”

  “Yeah Mike?”

  “Are we on alert yet?”

  “Nope. How was the game?”

  “Great. Rick scored two baskets.”

  “Good stuff.”

  Mike heads for the kitchen to get the leftover bouillie from the fridge.

  “Jack, make sure you don’t, you know….”

  “Don’t what?”

  “Well I want you to be careful, don’t embarrass Madeleine when you talk to her teacher.”

  “Why would I do that?”

  “’Cause you’ll get mad, you know how mad you get.”

  He laughs. “I won’t get mad.”

  “Maybe I should go instead.”

  “Naw, don’t worry, I’ll play it cool. Drop by the classroom tomorrow, right at three, once the kids have gone. Tap on his door.”

  She kisses him again.

  Sometime after midnight, Madeleine creeps from her bedroom to the top of the stairs.

  “What’re you doing?” It’s Mike in his cowboy pajamas, on his way to the bathroom.

  “Nothing,” she whispers, her arms full of sheets.

  “You wet the bed.”

  “I did not.” She starts to cry.

  “Don’t blubber,” he whispers. “Get changed.”

  He goes into her room, turns over the mattress, then takes the sheets downstairs, puts them in the washer and turns it on.

  Their parents wake up and Mike tells them that she was sick.

  “Not feeling well, old buddy?” Dad asks, picking her up. Madeleine rests her head on his shoulder and slips her thumb in her mouth for just an instant. Maman isn’t fooled. Nothing is said, but a plastic sheet appears on Madeleine’s bed. She can tell because of the crinkle.

  I CANNOT TELL A LIE

  “I just don’t see any other solution except direct military intervention right now.”

  General Curtis Lemay to President Kennedy, October 19, 1962

  Best advice: keep your cheeks up. Do this by starting to smile ever so slightly. This gives the muscles of the face a lift, uptilts the corners of the mouth and relaxes the forehead muscles.

  Chatelaine, 1962

  AT BREAKFAST, Jack looks up from his paper. “They’re going to test all the sirens in southern Ontario today.” He asks Madeleine, “You remember hearing the sirens once or twice in 4 Wing, when I’d have to go off on a drill?”

  Madeleine remembers—that is, her insides do. Her knees do.

  “Well it’s the same thing,” says her father. “Nothing to worry about.”

  After breakfast, Mimi says, “Madeleine, come here, what’s this?” She is standing in the bathroom with the laundry hamper open. Madeleine’s underpants are in her hand. There is a brownish stain.

  “Um. I don’t know.”

  “Did you have an accident?”

  Madeleine turns red. “No!” Mimi sniffs the underpants. Madeleine turns away; Maman is horrible.

  “It’s blood,” says Mimi.

  Madeleine can’t swallow. She just looks at her mother.

  “Are you bleeding now? Let me see”—reaching under Madeleine’s school dress, pulling down her underpants—

  “Maman!”

  “Don’t ‘maman’ me, je suis ta mère.” She examines Madeleine’s underpants—spotless—then pulls them back up. “What have you been doing?”

  “Nothing.” Madeleine can feel her cheeks on fire.

  “Sit down, Madeleine.”

  She sits on the toilet lid.

  Mimi says, “Look at me.”

  Madeleine does.

  “What happened to you, chérie?”

  Madeleine swallows. “I fell.” She sees the air begin to float sideways, as though it were slightly liquid.

  “What were you doing?”

  Madeleine blinks to make the air stand still. It works. Maman is still looking at
her.

  “It’s okay, Maman’s not going to be angry.”

  Madeleine says, “On a bike.”

  Mimi sighs and says, “Madeleine, did you take your brother’s bike again without asking?” Madeleine nods yes—I’m not lying, I have taken his bike a couple of times without asking. “And you hurt yourself on the crossbar.”

  Madeleine nods again. It’s true, that actually happened once and it really hurt. “It really hurt,” she says.

  “I can see that,” says her mother, stroking her cheek. “Oh Madeleine, when I was your age my papa wouldn’t let me have a bike.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because of this.” She holds up the underpants. “Écoute bien. I’ve said I don’t want you riding boys’ bikes, not your brother’s, not anyone’s, do you understand why now? Next time you find blood on your panties, ma p’tite, you have to tell Maman.” She tosses the underpants back in the hamper. “Because that’s part of growing up.”

  She kneels in front of Madeleine and strokes her pixie cut. “A few years from now you’ll bleed a little bit once every month, and that’s how God prepares your body so that one day you can get married and have babies.”

  “Oh.”

  “But you’re a long time from that, don’t look so worried.”

  “I don’t want to get married.”

  Maman winks and sings, “Someday, My Prince Will Come.”

  She leaves the bathroom. Madeleine stays to pee. It takes a while because it stings.

  Mimi hands Jack his hat as he heads out the front door and says, “I love you.”

  “I love you too, Missus.”

  “When are you back today?”

  “Why, are you entertaining the milkman?”

  “I can do better than that.”

  He grins. “That’s what I’m worried about.”

  They made love last night. It’s a likely time of the month. Whether it was reckless or hopeful to risk conceiving a child at a time like this makes no difference to how she feels at the thought. So happy.

  Jack kisses his wife—not the usual peck goodbye, almost a going-off-to-war smooch—right on the front step. She laughs and pushes him away. “I’ll be home early,” he says. “I’m dropping by Madeleine’s classroom.”

  “At ten o’clock this morning, the quarantine began,” says Mr. March. “I don’t have to tell you what that means.”

  The class is silent. Someone is in big trouble.

  Mr. March says, “If one single solitary Soviet ship crosses the quarantine line, it will be sunk.” He taps his pointer across his palm. “How many of you have bomb shelters at home?”

  No hands go up.

  “Well what are your parents waiting for? Nuclear winter?”

  Obliging laughter.

  He whacks the pointer across his desk and everyone dives.

  “Ricky Froelich babysat me last night,” says Marjorie at recess.

  “Tell us another one, Nolan,” says Auriel. Lisa and Madeleine have been carefully threading Auriel’s oxfords with red licorice shoelaces.

  “He did so,” says Marjorie, widening her blue eyes. “Honest Injun.”

  She has joined Majorettes. She has brought her baton in for show-and-tell and is twirling it in an arc over her head. Showing off.

  “That was so funny I forgot to laugh,” says Lisa.

  “For your information,” says Madeleine, “Ricky had a basketball game last night.” The baton falls to the asphalt and bounces on its rubber tip. Madeleine looks up and sees Grace Novotny hovering behind Marjorie.

  “Hi Grace.” She feels a bit mean, aware that she has greeted Grace only in order to enjoy Marjorie’s annoyance when she sees that she’s being followed by the class reject. But Grace says “Hi” back and Marjorie doesn’t seem the least bit surprised.

  “You’re just jealous,” she says.

  “Jealous of what, pray tell?” Madeleine’s voice drips with scorn.

  “Of me ’cause I’m Ricky’s girlfriend.”

  The three of them laugh sarcastically, “Hardy-har-har.”

  “And!” shouts Marjorie. “I happen to be the boss of the exercise group!”

  “Shut up,” says Madeleine, getting up and walking away casually, willing her friends to follow her. They do.

  “And you’re not,” Marjorie chants. “You-ou’re no-ot—”

  Madeleine stops and faces her. “What’s so big about the exercise group?” It’s a dangerous question. Marjorie puts on a simpy smile, tilts her head and swivels in place.

  “You know what, Marjorie?” says Auriel. “If you had a brain you’d be dangerous.” Auriel always knows what to say. “Come on you guys, let’s go to the teeter-totters.”

  When the bell goes, Madeleine catches sight of Colleen, but they don’t greet each other. Colleen is in grade six, after all. But more than that; it’s impossible to imagine playing with Colleen at recess. She is an after-school friend. And after-school is as far from the grade four class at J. A. D. McCurdy as the Mississippi is from Centralia.

  Jack leaves his office at a quarter to three. He will just make it in time. He quickens his pace to avoid a knot of fellow officers strolling across the parade square; he knows what they’re talking about and he’s sick of talk. The mood around the station started out energetic this morning, almost upbeat—typical air force, chipper in the face of danger. But a general frustration set in when the advancing afternoon brought nothing new from Ottawa. Dief has yet to endorse Kennedy’s “atomic diplomacy” or place the military on alert. He’s stalling. Waiting to see what the Brits will do. Jack shakes his head: are we a country or a colony?

  Although the other NATO allies including the British have all made statements supporting the Americans, neither Britain nor Europe have obliged Kennedy by elevating their state of military alert, but that’s not unreasonable—any sudden move in Europe could light the spark in Berlin. But Canada isn’t Europe. Twenty-five Communist-bloc ships and several submarines are now on course for Cuba. If they breach the quarantine, the Americans are ready to fire the first shot. This is no time for Canada to play wait-and-see.

  “Bonjour Jack.”

  Jack waves but doesn’t pause. The U.S. military has gone to defcon 2: Strategic Air Command is patrolling the skies, more than forty ships and twenty thousand men are in position to enforce the quarantine. The American CINCNORAD—Commander-in-Chief of NORAD—has requested that Canada increase the alert status of its Voodoo fighters, allow USAF to disperse aircraft to Canadian bases and permit U.S. aircraft in Canada to load nuclear weapons. None of this is a secret; it’s all there in black and white, delivered to your front porch with the milk. But the Canadian armed forces are obliged to prepare for war under a cloak of secrecy, while trying to decode coy signals from elected leaders who want us to be kind of ready, but not to appear at all ready. Jack clenches and unclenches his fist.

  Dief is courting disaster. Apart from the fact that we all stand to be killed, his mixed messages have put the government in danger of abdicating civil control over the armed forces, at the very least creating a gulf between the military and the civilian population. This is supposed to be a democracy. If the prime minister wants us on alert, why doesn’t he say so? And do it publicly? The Globe and Mail summed it up this morning: Any attempt to sit on the fence in this period of crisis, to remain uncommitted, would be interpreted around the world as a rebuke to the United States and as aid and comfort for her enemies. Such a course is unthinkable. Unfortunately, it’s the course we are on.

  Jack checks his watch as he passes the PX and the phone. He is angry, but feeling less useless than he did this morning. He has a job to do.

  “The following little girls will remain after three….”

  Madeleine stands against the coat hook, waiting. If it bleeds again, what will she tell Maman?

  Jack enters the Mobile Equipment building and walks across the concrete floor past a tractor mower, a bus and several forklifts, to a rank of black staff cars, and
signs one out.

  He pulls out into the full force of the afternoon sun. He touches his breast pocket but he has left his sunglasses at home—he had no way of knowing he’d be driving today. No point going home to get them, that would entail telling some silly fib to Mimi. Besides, the windows of the Ford are tinted and Jack does have his hat. He lowers the brim over his eyes, he’ll be fine.

  He points the car south on the Huron County road. It’s a nice day for a drive. If anyone asks—which nobody will—he has zipped down to London to meet with a guest lecturer for the COS.

  Simon called this afternoon. Oskar Fried is here.

  “Proceed to the front of the class, little girl. Yes, you. The one with the pixie cut.”

  The Spitfire is still visible in Jack’s rearview mirror when he returns his eyes to the road and recognizes the Froelich boy running on the shoulder, coming toward him. He is pushing his sister in her wheelchair with its homemade shock absorbers—sharp little rig—the big German shepherd trotting alongside, the little convoy kicking up a halo of dust. Jack smiles and touches two fingers to the brim of his hat as he passes. Rick waves.

  He watches them retreat in his mirror and it occurs to him that the Froelich boy is missing school this afternoon—unless this outing counts as part of his athletic training—because it has barely gone three o’clock. He adjusts his mirror and gets the feeling he’s forgetting something. What?

  Madeleine has left by the side door and is halfway across the field, running all the way home, when the siren sounds. Her legs seem to decelerate and—even though she can still feel the wind in her hair, still see her Mary Janes carrying her as fast as they can—everything goes slow-motion. The siren has changed the air, made it thick, her legs are heavy, thighs like wet cement; the sound rises, rises, wailing; she squints against it as against a blare of light, she cannot look up, the siren is obliterating the sky, painting it metal, it is thickening the liquid in her body and liquefying what was solid. She is cold, cold, there is terrible sorrow in the sound, it is the real sound of what it was like to be Anne Frank, and nothing can save you now, even the birds can’t be saved, even the grass…. And then it stops. It’s a normal sunny day again.