Ann-Marie MacDonald - Way the Crow Flies

“To friendship,” the others join in.

Over by the barbecue, the kids are roasting marshmallows. Mike has made a torch of his, claiming to prefer it well done, à point . Madeleine approaches Elizabeth. “Would you like a roasted marshmallow?”

Elizabeth nods and sighs. Madeleine blows on the marshmallow, then holds the skewer out to her. Lisa and Auriel join her and watch as Elizabeth slowly savours the toasty white, her eyes half closed, a creamy moustache forming on her lip.

“Is it good?” Auriel asks.

“Yahhh.” Elizabeth’s head rests almost on one shoulder, then moves slowly in a half-circle and tilts back. Madeleine follows with the marshmallow. Elizabeth makes it look delicious.

Lisa says, “Know what, Elizabeth? If you take a marshmallow and squish it, it shrinks and you get ghost gum. Want to try it?”

“Yahhh.”

Betty Boucher settles into a lawn chair and cuddles one of the Froelich babies. “With luck we’ll get a family moving into that little green bungalow down the street, with a daughter over twelve.”

“Wouldn’t that be grand,” says Elaine Ridelle. Most children in the PMQs are no older than Mike, hence babysitters are at a premium. Vimy’s daughter Marsha is not able to babysit for the Bouchers Saturday night; the Woodleys are going away for the weekend.

Karen Froelich says, “Ricky can babysit.” Perhaps she misinterprets the awkward silence that follows her offer as confusion because she adds, “My son.”

Vimy turns to Mimi. “Ricky is a good friend of my daughter’s, he’s a lovely boy.”

“He’s a doll,” adds Elaine.

Karen nods vaguely. The other women smile and change the subject.

Mimi has not yet met Ricky Froelich. She has no way of knowing what Betty and Elaine will tell her later: that Ricky is a good-looking youngster of fifteen, so responsible and well adjusted that many women in the PMQs wonder how he could possibly be a product of the Froelich household — not that the Froelichs aren’t good people, they are just … far from average. But the fact that Ricky is a fine boy is not the point. The point is, boys do not babysit. What kind of mother would volunteer her son for a girl’s job?

Vic crosses the lawn, heading for the street, and says over his shoulder to the women, “I’m not sure but I think he’s just got the two dependents.”

Betty asks, “Who?”

Vic stops and turns. “The American moving into the bungalow. They’ve just got the one child.”

“Vic, you never tell me anything!”

“You never ask!”

“He’s the new exchange officer,” says Hal, joining the women. “A flying instructor.”

“We’ll have to have them over, Jack,” says Mimi. “They’ll be a long way from home.”

“Aren’t we all,” adds Betty Boucher.

Vic was on his way home to fetch his accordion, but Mimi stops him: “Stay right where you are!” She turns to her daughter and orders, “Madeleine, va chercher ton accordéon.” Her daughter groans but Mimi overrides her. “C’est pour monsieur Boucher, va vite, va vite.”

Madeleine returns with her big red, white and black beast. Vic seats himself in a lawn chair, settles it onto his broad lap, undoes the snaps to let it inhale, then proceeds to bounce and hug the music out of it, elbows working the bellows, stocky fingers flying up and down the keys. Before long he has the children singing with him, then the women join in and so does Steve Ridelle. The young couple next door come out and join the crowd with their infant.

Madeleine sings “Alouette” with the others, and wonders where Colleen Froelich is. Did she do something bad and have to stay home? Is she spying on us right now?

Vic strikes up a jig, and Mimi sings, “‘ Swing la bottine dans l’fond d’la bôite à bois.’” Mike dashes behind the house and returns with the baseball bat. He holds it end to end and jumps over it back and forth in double time to the music, like a wild boy, throwing it up, catching it, step-dancing. Mimi whoops, everyone claps time. Madeleine is painfully proud. She watched her boy cousins and one of her big huge uncles do the same dance this summer while Tante Yvonne played accordion — except in Acadie they used an axe handle, not a bat.

Across the lawn, Jack and Henry join in the applause. Then Henry fills his pipe, tamps it down, tops it up, tamps it down. Jack takes out a pack of White Owl cigars and lights up. “You know, Henry, there is nothing I’d like better than to get rid of these things altogether. All the nukes. Hell of a thing to leave our kids. But we can’t stick our heads in the sand. What about the missile gap?”

“If you believe in this gap.” Froelich finally strikes a match, stroking the open bowl of his pipe with the flame, puffing it to life.

“Can we afford not to believe it?”

“Even their Secretary of Defense does not believe it.”

“Yeah, McNamara backtracked pretty quick on that one, eh? Still, you never know what they’ve got in the pipeline.” Jack spits out a speck of tobacco. “What’s that you’re smoking, Hank? Smells familiar.” More acrid than Amphora, a Continental edge to it — dark, as opposed to milk, chocolate.

“Von Eicken. Deutsch tobacco.”

“That explains it.”

“Eisenhower warned his country it could be very dangerous to make a war economy during peacetime.”

“Are we living in peacetime?” asks Jack, aiming a stream of smoke up into the deepening blue of twilight.

“Right here? Right now? Oh yes.”

Jack nods a little, in time with the music— If you’re happy and you know it clap your hands, if you’re happy and you know it clap your hands, if you’re happy and you know it and you really want to show it… .

“Friede,” says Froelich.

Jack looks at him sharply, then recalls. Of course. Peace . “You know, Henry, we can ban the bomb and do all that good stuff but we can’t stop mankind exploring.”

“You want very badly to go to the moon, my friend.” The stem of Froelich’s pipe is moist; his face has filled out with conversation, shadows turned to creases.

“Come on, Henry, you’re a scientist—”

“I was.”

“How can you not be excited about it? Pure research—”

“There is no such thing. Some questions receive funds, others do not. Who is rich enough to ask the questions?”

“Yeah but just imagine how it’ll change our point of view if we do get there.”

“The world will still be a dangerous place, perhaps more so if—”

“That’s where you’re wrong,” says Jack, his cigar unfurling slowly. “Think how our petty wars are going to look from nearly three hundred thousand miles up. Think how we’re going to feel flying through the dark. Can you imagine? Dead silence. And way down there behind us, there’s the earth. A beautiful blue speck, lit up like a sapphire. We won’t give a damn then who’s a Russian or who’s a Yank or whether you’re red, white, black or green. We might finally figure out that we’re all just people and we’ve all just got one shot at it, you know? This little life.” He glances over at the others, gathered round the music. Mimi has her eyes closed, singing with Vic. “‘Un Acadien errant —a wandering Acadian— banni de son pays —banished from his country….’” The mournful minor key of folk songs the world over.

Henry Froelich says, “This is a beautiful idea.”

Jack looks at him. The man looks sad all of a sudden, and Jack wonders what he has seen in his time. In his war. He is of an age to have seen a great deal. Past fifty, easily. Old enough to remember the first one — The Great War. Men who fought tend not to talk about it, but they readily acknowledge that they are veterans, even to a former enemy. Indeed, by now a fellow feeling exists among pilots who once strove to shoot each other out of the sky. But Jack cannot picture Froelich in uniform. He was more likely part of the war effort at an industrial level. Jack can easily see him on a factory floor: white shirt and clipboard, peering into the guts of a jet engine. Is he atoning for something? Maybe Centralia is a form of self-exile.