Ann-Marie MacDonald - Way the Crow Flies

Jack watches them walk up the street and, when they have disappeared around the corner, turns and calls over his shoulder, “Where’s my little buddy?” Then, “Hop in the car, I’m going to get my ears lowered.”

In Exeter, Madeleine chats with the barber and the men who play checkers outside, and they get her to do her impression of Sammy Davis Junior. The barber gives her a Crispy Crunch bar and she and Dad head over to the A&P to pick up a few things.

It’s fun grocery shopping with Dad. He buys all kinds of things Maman never would: store-bought cookies, precooked ham in tins, a barbecued chicken, ready-made potato salad and Wink, the world’s best lemon-lime soda. They shop quickly, without looking at any price tags, and Dad tells her to pick out a treat from the store freezer. She chooses a rainbow Popsicle, which she splits in half by cracking it against the curb in the parking lot.

“Where are we going?” she asks, because he has pointed the car north, instead of south toward Centralia.

“We’re going to drop in on some old friends.”

They drive fast up Highway 4, then veer left on Number 8 toward Lake Huron. “Are we going to Goderich?” she asks— maybe we’re going to visit Ricky at the county jail . But they turn inland again just south of Goderich, crunching over gravel, then dirt, until they come to a farm — at least, it used to be a farm. The barn is in a state of slow collapse, its boards half consumed by the earth already, and the yellow brick farmhouse has had its eyes nailed shut with planks. In the field there are not crops but rows of trailers. A hand-printed sign announces “Bogie’s Trailer Park.” They drive slowly over ruts, Jack looking to left and right. They pass a shed with another scrawled sign, “Office,” followed by a list of “Camp Rules,” the letters jamming up toward the bottom of the board. Some trailers have flower boxes and paper lanterns. Some even have patches of grass. Others have rusty barbecues and no awnings. They pass the showers, equipped with another list of rules. Madeleine says, “There’s Colleen.”

She has had no time to worry about how to act when she sees Colleen again because she had no idea where they were going. Now she is unsure. Is Colleen mad at her? Is Madeleine supposed to talk about Ricky, or not mention his name? Is she supposed to act really serious? Or really funny?

Jack pulls up and Colleen sees them. She is carrying a bucket of water. “How do you like your new digs, Colleen?” he calls out.

“It’s okay.”

Madeleine decides to try to act normal, but not disrespectfully so. Like at a funeral; you shouldn’t stare at the dead body, but you should remember it’s there.

“Hi,” she says.

Colleen leads them a short distance down a rutted “street” to where a wooden ramp zigzags up to the screen door of a dirty white aluminum box, rust stains bleeding from the eaves. Rex barks and gets to his feet.

“How come you got him tied up?” asks Madeleine.

“Rules,” mumbles Colleen, as she hauls the bucket from the car and heads for the trailer.

Madeleine hugs Rex and feels his warm breath down her back. Oh, it’s good to feel his fur against her face and to smell him again. His fangs glisten in his pink gums as he grins at her.

“Don’t put your face so close to the dog’s,” said Dad quietly, as the screen door opens. “Howdy, strangers,” he says.

“Jack,” says Karen Froelich, and walks toward him with hands outstretched.

Henry follows and shakes his hand. “Come in, come in, have a glass of wine.”

Karen says, “Let’s sit outside, Henry, it’s nicer.”

“Yes, it’s nice out.”

“How are you, Madeleine?” asks Karen.

“Fine thank you, Mrs.”—then blushes as she remembers Mrs. Froelich’s long-ago request—“Karen.”

Karen puts an arm around her, laughing. “Go in and find Colleen, she could use a good laugh, go on, babe.”

Madeleine hesitates, then walks up and opens the screen door. Behind her she hears her father say to the Froelichs, “We can’t stay long.”

Jack takes the groceries from the car and piles them onto the wooden ramp, over Henry and Karen’s protestations. He holds his glass as Henry fills it with red wine, and he tries to keep his eyes on him, aware they keep straying to Karen. Somehow, despite her dusty black flip-flops and the dirt between her toes, she manages to look oddly elegant, her long fingers pale and perfect, a beaded bracelet around her wrist….

“How are you, Jack?” And he is struck by it again, that quality she has — alone among women, in his experience — of seeming to see him, to address him, directly, as who he is, without any accessories.

“Can’t complain,” he answers, and shifts his eyes back to Froelich.

Madeleine enters the trailer, and treads carefully amid the rubble of toys and clothes so as not to wake the babies, who are sleeping on a cot. The interior is positively neato, with miniature everything — a real icebox that uses a real block of ice, bunk beds and shelves that fold into the walls. A Coleman stove, a blackened pot. There is no electricity and no tap over the sink. The Froelichs are on a permanent camping trip.

“Hi Elizabeth.”

“Ay Ademin.”

“Watcha got?”

Elizabeth shows her. A paperweight from Niagara Falls. Shake it and snow drifts down over the Maid of the Mist . Naturally, as long as Elizabeth holds it, it is always snowing.

“That’s beautiful.”

In the dusk of the trailer, Colleen turns to Madeleine. “Want to see something?” She leaves the trailer through a low flap at the back, and Madeleine follows. It feels so good in the dying light, the cool of early summer, to be following her friend over ruts and ridges through the tall grass. Colleen is barefoot but Madeleine has on new plaid runners, her bare ankles already wet with “snake spit.” She does not call, “Wait up!” because Colleen stays the perfect distance ahead, brown and bright in the last light like a copper penny.

Colleen stops at a wire fence and says, “Shhh.” She slips between horizontal metal strands, careful not to touch them, whispering, “It’s an electric fence.” Madeleine ducks and slips between the wires, death three inches above and below her, thrilled with fear. “Don’t worry, it won’t kill you, just scares the cows,” says Colleen when Madeleine is through.

But there are no cows in the field, which is rapidly shifting from gold to pink; only ponies. Three of them. Colleen walks toward them and, as though they have been expecting her, they turn and canter over. Serious tall dogs, they vie with one another to nuzzle her. She gives them something from her pocket and strokes their soft noses. She encircles the neck of one with her arms and, in a motion so effortless it could be from a film played in reverse, slides up and onto his back. She pats his neck. “Hop on.”

Madeleine doesn’t want to ask how. Colleen reaches down, Madeleine grasps her arm just below the elbow and jumps as Colleen pulls. “Hang on.”

It hurts, but Madeleine would not choose to be anywhere else as they walk, then trot.

“Use your legs,” says Colleen.

Across the field, onto a path between the trees, ducking branches, then out again onto a smoother meadow, tender green-to-mauve alfalfa. Madeleine hangs on for dear life, her legs around the pony’s wide back, arms hooked around her friend’s bony ribs, wondering how Colleen manages to stay on and steer at the same time.

“Rick showed me,” Colleen says.

They slow to a walk and Madeleine turns to look back at their wake, a darker green gash already closing up behind them. They rock slowly toward a dip lined with trees and the most magnificent willow she has ever seen, a palace of a tree with a west wing, an east wing, turrets and a moat. “Here’s my camp,” says Colleen.