Ann-Marie MacDonald - Way the Crow Flies

Madeleine says, “Maybe they’re going to bury her one streamer with her, or else keep it as a souvenir.”

When Madeleine is grown up, Claire will still be in a box in the ground. She will still be little, still in the same dress they buried her in. No matter what I am doing, no matter where I go, Claire will be there in that one spot .

“They can’t do that with evidence,” says Colleen.

Evidence . Imagine your bike, or your running shoe, or any old thing; one day it’s just your stuff lying around, and the next day it’s evidence . Police. Do Not Touch. Top Secret.

They search the area around the spot carefully without touching anything. They speak sparingly, in whispers. They walk lightly. This is a grave.

“We should have a funeral.”

“Yeah.”

Mike and Madeleine had a funeral for a fly once. They put it in a matchbox and prayed for it and Madeleine composed a poem, “Goodbye fly, the time is nigh. You flew too high, goodbye, good fly.” A poem is coming to her now, “Claire, you were fair, but it was no fair….” She can get no farther because all she can think to rhyme with it is “underwear.” “But where is your underwear, fair Claire?” Lost and gone forever.

“Her underpants were off,” says Colleen.

“How do you know?” asks Madeleine.

“I heard Mrs. Ridelle tell my ma.”

“That’s sick.”

“Yeah.”

They stand in silence, gazing down at the fading circle. Rex stands next to them. On guard.

“Maybe the murderer got her other streamer,” says Madeleine.

“She coulda just lost it.”

“No, she had it,” says Madeleine, “’cause remember? We saw when she was going to Rock Bass with Ricky and Elizabeth.”

“She wasn’t going with them.”

“I know, but I saw she had both of them then”—Madeleine looks back down—“and that was the day.” She moves to pluck a weed to chew, then stops herself, not wanting to chew or eat anything from around here.

“We were the last ones who saw her,” she says. Everyone in the world will have a last person who they see, who sees them. Who will mine be?

“No, Ricky and Elizabeth and Rex saw her after we did,” says Colleen.

“Oh yeah.”

“And someone else.” Colleen has taken out her knife but she doesn’t open it, or flip it and catch it, the way she usually does.

Madeleine says, “Who?” Colleen narrows her eyes and doesn’t answer, doesn’t look at Madeleine. Madeleine gets it: the murderer, that’s who .

She can hear grasshoppers fiddling, insects crawling up blades of grass. Sun burns the centre part in her hair. Nearby, the woods are dark and cool. Rex sniffs the edge of the tamped-down circle, but he doesn’t venture in either. Colleen reaches out and passes her hand over it. “To feel if it’s still warm.”

“Is it?”

“A bit. Feel.”

But Madeleine doesn’t want to. “Wanna go home now, Colleen?”

“No, I wanna tell you something, and if you ever tell, I’ll kill you.” Rex’s ears prick up and he lifts his head. “What is it boy?”

They follow Rex’s gaze, toward the woods. A crash — Madeleine’s heart leaps, she grabs Colleen’s arm, Colleen doesn’t push her away, they stand stock-still. Heavy footsteps. The leaves are shaking. Madeleine sinks her fingers into Colleen’s arm and Colleen says, “Shhh.”

There, amid cool green shadows — light brown jacket through the branches — a doe. Huge brown eyes. She looks at them from behind the jigsaw green and black of the forest fringe. Like a creature up from an underwater world, about to sample oxygen, that dangerous and irresistible nothing.

Rex goes into a crouch, growls softly. His shoulders move, he inches forward. “It’s okay, Rex.” He stops.

The deer steps from the woods into the meadow. Bends her head and starts to graze. They watch her, the three of them, oh for a long time, for five minutes, until the deer lifts her head and bounds away like a wave, diving back into the dark pool of trees.

That was Claire’s funeral.

“What were you going to tell me?” asks Madeleine.

They have turned away from the woods, from the small circle, they are leaving the spot. Madeleine sees a piece of blue shell in the grass — it looks like a piece of robin’s egg. She stoops to pick it up but, before she can, Colleen seizes her wrist and turns her face-on. In her other hand she holds her knife, open. She slaps the handle flat into Madeleine’s palm and closes Madeleine’s fist around it. Then she holds out her own palm and says, “Do it.”

“What?”

“Cut me,” says Colleen. “Then I’ll do you.”

“Why?”

“’Cause I won’t tell you a goddamn thing if you don’t, that’s why.”

Madeleine feels the carved weight of the knife handle and looks at Colleen’s open palm. “Don’t make it deep,” says Colleen, “just enough for blood.”

Colleen watches her. Madeleine hesitates. Colleen looks gritty as highway dirt, but her palm looks so soft. Madeleine lets the sharp edge rest across the fleshy part of Colleen’s palm. Then she presses, and pulls the blade toward herself. The skin parts and a row of red seeds sprouts, then seeps into the hollow of Colleen’s hand.

Colleen holds out her other hand for the knife. Madeleine gives it to her. Colleen waits, her cupped palm collecting blood. Madeleine extends her own left hand, palm up, clutching it around the wrist with her right as though to keep it from running away.

Colleen lifts the knife. Madeleine shuts her eyes and gasps. Then opens them. Colleen is looking at her, her mouth in a sarcastic tilt.

“You ready, Mighty Mouse?” Madeleine nods. She forces herself to watch, but before she can put on a brave face it’s over, and she has barely seen the knife move, neither did she feel it, but the red stripe has appeared like magic across her palm, widening, gracefully overflowing its banks. Colleen slaps her palm into Madeleine’s, holding tight, smooshing them together. Madeleine pushes back; it still doesn’t hurt.

Colleen lets go. “There,” she says. “On ai seurs de san.”

Their two hands are smeared as though with fingerpaint. They let Rex lick their wounds, because everyone knows that dogs have antiseptic spit.

Colleen resumes walking and Madeleine follows. Colleen seems to have forgotten about her. They walk in silence.

“Hey Colleen, what were you going to tell me?”

“Not here,” she says.

At Rock Bass, Colleen sits next to the flat stone by the stream and reaches down her white school blouse for the leather string she wears around her neck; tawny brown, softened with age. It’s almost the colour of her skin. She lifts it out, its end enclosed in her palm — the unscathed one.

“I’m going to show you something,” she says. She opens her hand to reveal a tiny deerhide pouch closed with a delicate leather drawstring. She opens it, picking the fragile knot. She reaches in with thumb and forefinger and takes out the secret. A crumple of paper.

“What is it?” asks Madeleine.

Colleen smooths it out. “It’s from a catalogue.”

The once glossy fragment is flannelly with age. Madeleine can make out part of a red bicycle — a boy’s bike — and underneath, a caption, “Pony Express.”

“I’m adopted,” says Colleen.

The earth tilts soundlessly, the maple tree lists, suddenly rootless. Adopted . Madeleine concentrates on the charred flat stone between them. Behind Colleen is a blank. No — behind her are dead parents. That’s why kids get adopted. “Are you an orphan?”

“No stupid, I got parents.”

“I know, I mean … before.”

“My blood parents are dead.”