Ann-Marie MacDonald - Way the Crow Flies

“Ayyy!” An old-young quaver.

Madeleine lifts a hand. “… Hi.”

Head rolling, the girl says, “Umeeah.”

“… Pardon?”

The girl’s head jerks back and, suddenly loose and loud: “Haahaaahhh!”

Madeleine is alarmed. Is the girl in pain? The corner of her mouth is pulled up. Is she laughing? At what? Well, she’s retarded, maybe everything is funny to her. Madeleine gets up. Now the sound is like moaning, but it’s only the dregs of the girl’s laughter — a naked sound and infinitely gentle, it makes Madeleine feel afraid that someone may come along and do something terrible to the girl. It makes her want to go back inside her own house. But the wheelchair girl waves her closed hand again and repeats, “Umeah!” … Come here!

Madeleine picks up her bike and mounts it. She clothespinned a playing card to one of her spokes this morning — the joker — and it makes a putt-putt sound now as she coasts across the street. As she nears, she notices something unusual about the girl’s chair — its wheels are attached by two heavy-duty coiled springs. Perhaps it’s some kind of souped-up wheelchair. She realizes now that the girl wasn’t waving; she’s holding something. Offering it. Madeleine hopes it isn’t a sweaty candy.

“What is it?” she asks in a kind tone of voice, leaning forward on her handlebars. The girl’s eyes slide like marbles, then her chin drops to her chest and she appears to be looking for something in the grass, her head moving from side to side. As Madeleine draws closer up the driveway, she sees that the girl is actually looking at her out the corner of her eye. The way a bird might.

Madeleine hesitates, about to turn back—

“Wayyy!” The girl flails her hand. Clear drool flows from the corner of her mouth.

Madeleine comes closer. “Watcha got?”

The screen door of the purple house flies open and the German shepherd bounds out. Madeleine feels for her pedals but her feet get tangled up in her bike and she topples backward. The dog barks and lunges. Madeleine covers her face and feels the soft tongue on her elbows — the feel of pinkness — and an ache at the back of her skull where she has banged it on the driveway.

“You shouldn’t never run away from a dog when it’s chasing you,” says a dead-level voice. “It just makes them chase you more.”

Madeleine uncovers her face and looks up. The girl with the knife. Blue eyes. Husky eyes.

She sits up. The dog’s tongue pulsates like a slice of wet ham between his fangs, and he stares off past her shoulder the way dogs do.

The girl says, “What do you want, kid?” She has the knife in one hand, a whittled stick in the other, its tip white and pointed.

Madeleine swallows. “What’s your dog’s name?” The girl squints and fires a neat round of spit from the side of her mouth. Madeleine wonders, does she cut her own hair with that knife? Shaggy rust to just below the ears.

“Eggs,” groans the wheelchair girl, her head lurching forward with the effort of speech.

“What?”

“She told you,” says the girl.

Madeleine rises cautiously to her feet and looks at the huge black and tan dog. Can his name possibly be Eggs? He turns and goes to the wheelchair girl, flops down and rests his chin on her twisty feet. He blinks but doesn’t move when her hand drops down to pet him and her zigzagging fingers poke him in the eye.

“What are you doing here?” says the girl with the knife.

“She called me.” It feels rude to call someone “she” when she’s sitting right there, but Madeleine doesn’t know the girl’s name. Probably the girl doesn’t know her own name.

The knife girl turns to the wheelchair one and says, “Was she bothering you?” Madeleine inches toward her bike. Me go home now.

“Noohhh,” sighs the wheelchair girl, followed by the slight sobbing that is her chuckle. “I ju wah teweh my nay.”

The girl turns to Madeleine and says, “She wants to tell you her name.”

Madeleine stops and waits.

The wheelchair girl says, “Ahm Ewivabeh.”

Madeleine doesn’t know what to do. The tough girl shears a curl of bark from her stick. Around her neck is tied a leather shoelace that disappears beneath her grimy white T-shirt. At the corner of her mouth, Madeleine can see a paper-thin scar — it traces a line down toward her jaw, pale pink in the tanned face. She senses that this girl would fight like a dog. Sudden, savage.

Madeleine turns to the retarded girl and says, “Um. Hi.”

“Well say her name, can’t you?” says the knife girl.

Madeleine hesitates, then says, “Ewivabeh.”

The wheelchair girl’s head jerks back at an angle and her laughter shreds the air: “Ahhhhaaahaaaa!”

The knife girl stops whittling. “Is that supposed to be funny?”

“No,” says Madeleine, honestly.

“’Cause if it is, you’re dead.”

“I know.”

“Her name is Elizabeth.”

“Oh,” says Madeleine. “Hi, Elizabeth.”

“Ayyy.”

Madeleine looks at the tough girl. “What’s your name?” she asks, surprised by her own nerve.

“Who wants to know?”

“Um”—she can feel a grin tiptoeing across her face, and tries to suppress it, along with Bugs Bunny, who threatens to take over—“Madeleine.” Charmed, I’m sure, doc .

The girl spits again and says, “Colleen.” Then she folds her knife, sticks it in the back pocket of her denim cut-offs and leaves, walking away barefoot up the street with her stick over her shoulder.

Madeleine picks up her bike. “’Bye Elizabeth.”

“Wayyy!”

Madeleine waits with her hand outstretched while Elizabeth’s closed fist wavers over it, then opens and drops something into her palm. Not a candy. Madeleine looks down at her hand. “Wow.” A beautiful green boulder, swirled sea smoke. A glassie. The most valuable marble you could own. “Thanks Elizabeth.”

Jack waits in the stifle of the phone booth beside the PX. He has fed the phone enough dimes to cover the call to Washington but he’s concerned his time will run out before he gets to talk to—“Crawford here.”

“Simon.”

“Jack, how are you, mate?”

“Not so bad, yourself?”

“Can’t complain. What’s your number there, call you straight back.” Jack reads the number into the phone, then hangs up.

It was an obstacle course getting through to Simon — First Secretary Crawford. A series of English accents, from Eton to London’s East End, told him he had reached the British Embassy in Washington. Bureaucracy, vast and self-perpetuating. Jack knows; he is part of it. Thank goodness there are people like Simon, who know how to cut through. The phone rings, Jack picks it up.

“Back in Centralia, eh? How’s the old place look?”

Jack glances out — an airman carries groceries to his station wagon, where three kids bounce in the back seat and a beagle haroos in the back-back. “New,” he says.

“Not a great deal to report, Jack. Our friend is still on hold. I’ll let you know when he arrives.”

“Do you have a ballpark?”

“Not really. I should think we’ll move when the time is right.”

Jack wonders how they’ll get the man out. Through Berlin, perhaps. Will “our friend” be concealed in a car? Jack has heard about defectors being brought in that way — folded into the false trunk of a Trabant. “What about when he gets here? Do you want me to track down an apartment for him in London?”

“It’s all taken care of.”

“Good, that’s good.” Jack doesn’t want to sound too eager. “Where do I pick him up when the time comes?”

“All you’ve got to do is look in on our friend once he arrives. See that he’s comfortable, not too bored. Take him out for an airing once in a while. Usual care and feeding of your common garden variety defector.”