Ann-Marie MacDonald - Way the Crow Flies

“Dad!” Madeleine scrambles from the living-room floor and runs to him.

“Hi old buddy.”

“Hi Dad,” says his son, absorbed in a Meccano creation.

The Froelichs’ living room is chaotic — laundry hamper, newspapers, playpen, toys. The young gal in the wheelchair doesn’t seem to register his arrival so Jack doesn’t greet her. He finds his wife in the kitchen, feeding the two baby boys, one screaming. He grins at the sight; he’ll tease her about it later, but it looks good on her, a baby at the end of each spoon, strained peaches in their hair. But she doesn’t smile back, just says, “There’s soup on the stove. Ricky Froelich’s been arrested.”

“What?” Jack hesitates, but the soup smells good. “What for?” He reaches toward the stove and lifts the lid on the pot.

“Claire,” says Mimi.

The metal is hot but it takes a second for that message to get through, so that, by the time Jack replaces the lid on the pot, the pads of his thumb and forefinger are shiny and seared.

“Claire?” he says, his lips drying. The word dissolves like a capsule in his gut, spreading outward. Claire . He takes a breath. Sits at the kitchen table, the little boys racketing their fists against their high-chair trays. Mimi is sliding peach goo from their faces, folding it expertly into their mouths. He watches her lips move and struggles to follow what she is saying — the Froelichs have gone to look for their son, the police came and took away his clothes, claimed not to know where the boy was being held. She goes to the sink to rinse the bowls.

“Why?” says Jack. She hasn’t heard him over the din. “Why?” he repeats.

Mimi says, “They don’t believe his alibi.”

Jack examines the word “alibi”—like a strange fish on the end of his line. He sees Colleen in the doorway. She says, “I’ll put ’em to bed, I’ll change ’em,” barely moving her mouth, eyes more guarded than ever.

Mimi says, “You’re a good helper, Colleen, let’s you and me do it together.”

Jack is alone at the kitchen table. In the living room, Shirley Temple’s intimate tones boom from the hi-fi, a certain plaintive sexy catch in her voice. His alibi . How did he miss it? What he should have known. The boy on the road with his sister and his dog … a trick of perspective. Jack makes the realization that his memory of the event has been from Rick’s point of view: the blue car, oncoming into the sun, bounce of light off the windshield obliterating all but the shape of a hat behind the wheel; a hand raised in greeting, a man waving. And as the car passes, the dent in the rear bumper, the yellow sticker.

Now Jack plays the same memory from his own vantage point behind the wheel. He sees Rick jogging on the road with his sister and dog, pushing the wheelchair. The boy lifts a hand to shield his eyes against the sudden glare of sun. Then he raises an arm, tentative, in response to Jack’s wave. Wednesday afternoon. When the little girl went missing.

The police were never interested in what the boy saw. They were interested in whether or not anyone saw the boy. “On the afternoon of Wednesday, April tenth,” is what Bradley asked. That must have been the time of the murder. Even thinking or saying “the time of the murder” seems to bring order to an obscenely disordered event. No one should call it anything; to name it is to include it in the world, and it should not be included.

Jack stares at the kitchen table; grey Formica sparkles blend with crumbs, a ring of milk. He folds his hands next to a wad of bills blotched transparent with butter.

He was just doing his job, it never entered his mind…. But who in his right mind could have imagined the police were after Ricky Froelich? He shakes his head — now that the “war criminal” is out of the picture, the picture is suddenly clear: Rick was the last one seen with her. Rick found the body —knew where to look for it, according to the police. And now, thanks to Jack, they can say, Rick lied about his alibi . The police were not impeded in their deductions by the knowledge of what a nice boy Ricky Froelich is. To them, he is just a male juvenile.

A sizzling — Jack looks up, the soup is boiling over. He gets up, turns off the heat. Warms his hands over the mess.

From the hi-fi a pert command, “Wake up, wake up! Wake up, friend Owl!”

Inspector Bradley’s face is inscrutable, his voice as expressionless as if he were reading from an instruction manual. “You left your sister in her wheelchair and, accompanied by your dog, you lured Claire McCarroll into the field, where you attempted to rape her, and when she threatened to tell, you killed her.”

“What’s so funny, Rick?” asks the cop from the chair.

“Nothing.”

“Something must be funny, you’re laughing.”

“It’s crazy, that’s all.” He tried not to laugh, but it turned out that tears were easier to fend off. It is funny. It’s eight-thirty and he has been in this room for five hours, he hasn’t peed, he hasn’t eaten, he has told the same story countless times, they are saying he would leave his sister alone in her wheelchair—“I would never leave my sister alone in her—” He is laughing so hard that tears trickle down his face. He lays his head down on his arms on the table. Heaving.

“What did you say?”

“You should ask her,” says Rick, wiping tears.

“Ask who, Rick?” says Inspector Bradley.

“My sister. She was with me the whole time. She knows.”

Inspector Bradley says nothing. The big cop sips his Coke and asks, “What good’s that going to do, Rick?”

“She can tell you, I didn’t do it.”

“She can’t tell us diddly-squat, Ricky.”

“Yes she can, she was—”

“She’s retarded.”

Rick is so tired. He looks from the man in the suit to the man in the uniform and says, “Fuck you.”

Madeleine reaches into the Lowney’s candy tin that Mike brought from home and fishes out a green army man poised to hurl a grenade. Like a good book, it’s impossible to tire of the Bambi story record. Shirley Temple’s grown-up voice compels you to listen to the bittersweet end, her voice tearful yet brave, it’s the sound of your own heart. “When Bambi and his mother came to the edge of the meadow, they approached it with great caution for the meadow was wide open.”

She surveys the impenetrable phalanx she has arranged around Elizabeth’s wheelchair, repositions a prone sniper and feels a wet drop on the nape of her neck. Oh no, she realizes, Elizabeth drool. But you can’t get mad at her, she can’t help it. Madeleine looks up.

It wasn’t drool. It was a tear.

“Don’t worry, Elizabeth,” says Madeleine, in the exaggerated kindly tone reserved for cats and toddlers. “Ricky will be home soon.”

They have stripped him. They are searching his body for traces.

“How did this happen, young man?”

Rick says nothing. He looks down at the unknown doctor genuflecting before him. He has lifted Rick’s penis with a wooden tongue depressor — a Popsicle stick.

“You stick it in a tree knot?” asks the cop.

The doctor gives him a look and the cop folds his arms, muttering, “This is making me sick.”

A lesion on the side of the shaft below the glans, about the size of a dime. The doctor writes, then asks again, “What is it?”

Rick says, “ Ci qouai ca?”

“I beg your pardon?” says the doctor.

“What the hell did you just say?” asks the cop.

Rick says nothing. Inspector Bradley waits impassively. A second uniformed officer takes a picture of Rick’s penis. There is the sound of a commotion outside the room.

Rick knows the sore on his penis is from his denim shorts. From swimming in the freezing quarry on Sunday, then putting them back on without underwear. He says nothing as he zips his fly back up.