Ann-Marie MacDonald - Way the Crow Flies

“We can look for a nest,” said Claire.

“—you like to sit in judgement of every bloody thing we did,” says Bradley, pitch rising to a whine—

Claire rode off on her own, and the band was still playing when Madeleine and Colleen left the schoolyard. Mr. March was still in the gym, at band practice, which always went till four-thirty. Madeleine has always known that. It’s a small world after all, it’s a small world after all, it’s a small world after all …

“—but let me tell you something,” says Bradley, “we worked with what we had at the time—”

… it’s a small, small world .

“Thanks, Mr. Bradley.”

“Wait now, I’m not—”

She hangs up. Inspector Bradley is retired. He has all the time in the world. She has three hours to make it up to Tobermory, at the tip of the Bruce Peninsula, where the vastness of Lake Superior flows out into Huron. If she wants to arrive before dark. She opens the folding glass door of the booth and feels the sweat immediately begin to dry on her forehead.

For a moment she can’t recall where she left her car. But she sees it, beyond the hangars, parked on the simmering tarmac. She has a vision of her tires sticking to the viscous black strands as she tries to leave Centralia. But she runs to it, starts the engine, shifts into gear and the bug leaps forward eagerly, like Noddy’s Little Car, parp parp!

She doesn’t see the white buildings receding on either side of her car as she follows Canada Avenue, she doesn’t see the empty guardhouse up ahead. Everything shimmers and melts around her like a mirage, her visual cortex has taken over and will guide her off this old base and toward her destination without her conscious help, because she is seeing something quite different now behind her eyes. It fills the screen in Panavision. Shot from below in rich early sixties pastels, lusher than life, like an illustration from an outdated grade-school reader. Except that this is not a still photo or a drawing. There is a breeze. Caressing the long grass; rippling the leaves in the elm high above, where two or three crows dot the new foliage; lifting the yellow ringlets of the girl to his right. Marjorie. Kissing the curls of the girl to his left. Grace. Playing at the hems of their dresses, their innocent white knees. Mr. March is standing between them in his big grey suit. His glasses glint back the sun, he is holding their hands. All three of them are looking up and to their right, into the sunny blue. Then Mr. March disappears from the picture. And the two little girls are left on their own.

Madeleine passes through the old gates where her father used to touch the brim of his hat to the guard. She passes the cement scar in the ground where the Spitfire once flew on its pedestal. She smells tar and resin and looks up at the telephone pole. Thrusting from a shambles of straw and twigs, a rusting mouth. The old air-raid siren. It’s still there, and so are the crows who made it their home so long ago. It hasn’t sounded since 1962, the crows have had no need to move. So many years of peace in our time.

She turns north on Highway 4. She will pass through Exeter, Clinton, Goderich … the dust will turn to gold behind her car, the lake will wink crystal-blue beyond the dunes, the pines will become more numerous, the landscape rockier and more grand, but she will not see any of it. Instead, she will see what happens after Mr. March vanishes from the picture.

The truth was always there. And it’s far sadder than anything she has imagined. But she knows now: it could never have been her, left lying in that tamped-down spot.

“WE’RE NOT GOING TO HURT YOU.” And they weren’t.

“We just want to see something.”

“Yeah Claire.”

They have given her the robin’s egg. She has taken it from Marjorie’s outstretched palm, its shell perfectly intact. Boys are rough with delicate things, but girls know how to be careful. Marjorie says they know where to find more eggs. “Alive ones,” adds Grace.

Claire cups her hands around the egg, hollow and weightless, and follows Marjorie and Grace.

The cornfield is on the other side of the ravine, and beyond it is the meadow where, if you are lucky, you might see a deer — if you are very quiet. And bordering the meadow are the woods.

“That’s where the nest is,” says Marjorie.

They climb the embankment out of Rock Bass. Marjorie leads the way, and Grace lets Claire go ahead.

A buzzy afternoon, warm for April. Trickle of the stream newly liberated from ice. The sound of insects clicketing in the grass. The sound of the sun.

They enter the cornfield and walk single file between freshly turned furrows, careful of last year’s cornstalks sticking up like bones from the ground. Behind her, Grace starts turning round and round as she walks. She says, “Get dizzy, then look up at the sky.”

Claire tries it. She and Grace laugh with their heads thrown back.

Up ahead, Marjorie turns. “Hurry up, you two, I’m not partial to dilly-dallying.” She sees an ear of corn on the ground, still bound in yellowed leaves. She picks it up, light and lean with age, and peels back the papery husk. The kernels are withered, some darkening like bad teeth. She is about to toss it away when Grace grabs it.

“Guess who I am?” says Grace, the cob between her legs, wagging it up and down.

Claire smiles politely but turns away, embarrassed. Marjorie rolls her eyes in disgust and walks on.

Grace swaggers behind Claire—“Squeeze my muscle, little girl”—laughing. She pretends to pee out of it, “Psssss….”

“Don’t be so rude, Grace,” says Marjorie.

Grace runs ahead of Marjorie, spins around and walks backwards, spraying her with imaginary pee.

“I’m warning you, Grace.”

Grace turns forward again, loses interest in the ear of corn and drops it. Marjorie picks it up.

The cornfield gives way to the meadow.

Cows do not even graze here, it’s empty but for the long last summer’s grass collapsed over new growth, and the few cattails left standing — some broken like spars, others split at their furry tips, spilling seed. The tiny white bell-heads of the lily of the valley release their scent, crushed underfoot, and here and there, brushstrokes of blue like spilled sky, the spreading bluebells. This meadow is lying fallow; in a year or two it may be the cornfield and the cornfield may be the meadow. The ground becomes marshy. They are nearing the woods.

“Are we there yet?” asks Claire.

Grace glances at Marjorie but Marjorie is unconcerned, twirling the cob of corn like a baton.

“Not much farther,” says Grace.

Up ahead — standing alone, announcing the woods — is a stately elm.

Claire stops. “I’m not allowed to go in the woods.”

“Well I’m afraid you have no choice, that’s where the nest is,” says Marjorie.

“No,” says Claire.

“How come?” asks Grace.

“My mommy said.”

“The cornfield is worse than the woods, Claire,” says Marjorie.

“Yeah,” says Grace.

But Claire shakes her head.

“It’s your loss, little girl.” Marjorie shrugs. “Oh well, you might as well show us your underpants.”

Claire looks at Grace. But Grace is looking at Marjorie.

Claire smiles and raises her dress obligingly, as though to make up for spurning their invitation to enter the woods.

“Oh, they’re pretty.”

“Yeah, they’re really pretty, Claire.”

Tiny yellow butterflies. White cotton.

“Take them off.”

Claire takes them off. Modestly dropping the skirt of her dress first. A voice in the back of her head says, Don’t take off your underpants when people ask, it’s not good for people to ask that . But there is a lovely breeze and she is out in a field, not among houses or in the schoolyard, where it certainly would be rude to be taking off underpants.