Ann-Marie MacDonald - Way the Crow Flies

Hi Si. Sorry, sir .

He hears Simon laugh at the same moment as he glances up to see his yellow airplane — in a headstand twenty-five feet away, skeleton wings drooping — burst into flames like a flower unfolding, burning pollen on the air.

He wakes up in the infirmary. Why is the nurse smiling? Why does Simon offer him a shot of whiskey?

“You did the right thing, mate.”

What is there to celebrate? His war is over. It ended thirty yards south of the runway at Number 9 Service Flying Training School, Centralia Aerodrome, April 7, 1943. SNAFU. Situation Normal All Fouled Up .

“And you got a medal,” says Madeleine.

“That’s right, I got my gong.”

“But you couldn’t fly any more.”

“Nope, but it turned out for the best ’cause otherwise I never would have met Maman and you never would have been born, and what would I do without my Deutsches Mädchen?” Jack gets up from the bed and leans to tuck the blankets around her.

“Dad, tell the story of Jack and Mimi.”

He laughs. “We said one story.”

“But it is one story, it’s part of the story.”

“You’re going to be a lawyer when you grow up.” He switches off the light.

“Dad, what was the name of that place again?”

“What place?”

“Where Johnny said Hitler’s secret weapon was?”

“Johnny …? Oh, that was Peenemünde.”

Pain Amunda . The name sounds like needles. “Did the Germans capture her?”

“I think so, yeah.”

“Did they torture her?”

“No, no … she got away.” He slips out the door.

“Dad?”

“Yeah?”

“What would’ve happened if you died in the crash?”

“… I didn’t die.”

“But what if?”

“Well. You wouldn’t have been born.”

“Where would I be?”

“I don’t think you’d be anywhere.”

What is worse? Being dead? Or not being born? How come we’re afraid to die, but we’re not afraid of before we were born? “Dad—?”

“Have a good sleep, sweetie, think nice thoughts.”

Jack closes her door halfway, to allow light from the hall to spill into her room. He goes to his bedroom and crosses to his dresser without switching on the light. That other Anson never should have been cleared for takeoff. The Air Force Cross was in recognition of his decision, in disregard of his own safety, to peel left into a certain crash, rather than risk trying to overtake the aircraft on the ground and land in front of it — a risk that, had it resulted in a collision with the fuelled-up airplane, would have killed its pilot, its instructor, its student navigator and its wireless operator. Along with Jack. For valour, courage and devotion to duty whilst flying, though not in active operations against the enemy . Jack reaches into his drawer and finds what he’s looking for.

He crosses the hall to his son’s room. On the wall, the Canadian Golden Hawks fly in formation, their gold and red Sabre jets in a starburst. Below the picture, the bed is neatly made, the boy is no slouch. He shakes his head at the new poster, however; where did he get that thing? The United States Marine Corps Wants You . Jack has a back-to-school gift for his son: a brand-new “RCAF 4 Fighter Wing” baseball cap from the boy’s old team in Germany. He tosses it onto the bed and it bounces. Regulation corners. He smiles and heads downstairs.

His wife and son are sitting at the kitchen table playing gin rummy. Mimi gets up and puts the kettle on. “Jack, would you like a cup of tea?”

He finds his copy of Time among Mimi’s women’s magazines with their hairdos and recipes, and relaxes on the couch. In East Berlin a boy is shot attempting to escape over the “Wall of Shame” and takes an hour to die while people on the west side scream across at the guards to do something. He flips through — the sound of his wife and son chatting in the kitchen is all the more soothing because Jack doesn’t understand French — President Kennedy in swim trunks, surrounded by women in bikinis. Infighting at NASA. Jackie Kennedy on waterskis. From the kitchen comes the whistle of the teakettle. Rockets and bikinis, what’s the world coming to? Wernher von Braun demonstrates the Saturn booster engine for the President. U.S. military advisers are helping the South Vietnamese in “the most successful operation yet carried out against the Communist Viet Cong.” Rocket-size crates on the Havana docks….

Mimi places a cup and saucer on the side table next to him. He registers its arrival as though from a great distance — from the blackness of outer space, so that his failure to say thanks is not rudeness, merely a consequence of a law of physics. Time’s view is that Castro could have been easily “erased” if only Kennedy had properly backed the Bay of Pigs invasion last April, which it now terms “a synonym for fiasco.” Jack reaches for his cup. The pundits at Time think Kennedy is being soft on Communism, but what do they suggest? An unprovoked invasion? We might as well become Soviet citizens if we’re going to adopt their tactics. He turns the page. “OPINION Toward the Year 2000. The U.S. will defend Canada whether Canada likes it or not….”

“Jack?”

“What’s that?” He looks up from his magazine as though surfacing from sleep.

Mimi is standing over him with the tea pot. She says, “I said, do you want some hot?” “Oh. Oh, yeah. Merci.”

In Madeleine’s room the ceramic face of a little Bavarian boy, surprised by a bumblebee on his nose, shields the night light. Tomorrow is the first day of school, the dawn of a bright new era. She closes her eyes. Colours flit rapidly behind her lids. She floats up, the bed listing like a sailboat. Was there really such a person as Peter Pan? If you believe hard enough, will you hear him crowing? Are there still talking ravens? When I grow up I will have a dog. I will have a red sportscar . The bed slips gently down the stream … when I grow up… .

THE CROWS WAITED until things had cooled down there. When the blue dress with the girl inside it had become just that, they dropped down — one, two, a third — to stand at a polite distance. And began to work the charms. Tug. Tugging at the bracelet. And one charm was free. The successful crow rose into the air with a flashing silver prize in its beak. Her name. Then the others flew away, and she was left alone.

MADELEINE DOES NOT NEED to be walked to school by her father, but it was their first-day-back tradition when she was little. St. Lawrence Avenue is full of kids in new clothes — cotton dresses and ankle socks for the girls, plaid shirts and high-top sneakers for the boys — all freshly ironed, barbered, braided and brushed. Some are being walked to school by their parents, but those kids are younger than Madeleine. She had intended to go with Auriel and Lisa, but at the last minute couldn’t bear the thought of Dad watching his old buddy walk away without him.

Jack whistles through his teeth and glances about at the sunny pageant. Madeleine takes his hand to make up for the fact that she would rather not be seen walking hand-in-hand with him to grade four. He winks down at her. “Don’t be nervous, old buddy.” There is no harm in letting him think that’s why she has taken his hand. She smiles for him.