Ann-Marie MacDonald - Way the Crow Flies

It is out of hand. Mr. March quells the merriment. “Enough mirth. You may sit down now, Miss McCarthy.”

Madeleine instantly sobers up, gropes for her recipe cards where they have fallen under Mr. March’s desk and returns to her seat. It’s just as well that she has been cut short. It means that she didn’t have to pass Bugsy around the class — standard operating procedure for show-and-tell. She doesn’t like the idea of everyone handling him — although Bugs probably wouldn’t mind. Nothing sticks to Bugs.

Grace Novotny has brought in a rag doll named Emily. It’s homemade. “My sister made it for me.” One of the sluts, thinks Madeleine involuntarily, then feels terribly sorry for Grace having a kind slut for a sister. Grace can’t pronounce the letter “r.” She says sistew .

Grace whispers something into the side of Emily’s soft dirty head, then Emily gets passed around. Some kids are openly mean, handling the doll with their fingertips, holding their noses. Grace doesn’t seem to register any of it. Madeleine holds Emily in both hands, not by her fingertips. Emily is grimy, but a lot of dolls are if they are loved. What if there is pee on Emily? There probably is if Grace sleeps with her. She is missing a felt eyebrow, her mouth is stitched in red wool. The effect is not of lips but of lips stitched shut with red wool. She wears a bikini, yellow polka dots like the song.

When Emily has been passed back to Grace, she tucks her in her arm and, without warning, starts singing, “Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polka-dot Bikini.”

There’s a difference between kids thinking you are funny, and kids laughing at you. The class is laughing as much as they did for Madeleine but it’s different, and Mr. March is not stopping them. Madeleine doesn’t find it funny but she tries to laugh in the way of “you’re funny” as opposed to “you’re retarded,” in order to make the laughter okay, but it doesn’t work. She gives up and waits for Grace to finish. Luckily Grace doesn’t know all the words — she repeats the first line a few times, then sits back down.

Mr. March reads the name of the next person on the list, “Gordon Lawson.” Gordon, with his clean freckles and tucked-in shirt, shows and tells about fishing flies. It’s a relief even if it is terribly boring.

Jack takes a walk over to the Flying School. He plans to inquire about lessons for his son at the civilian flying club but he has an errand to do first. He heads down a corridor identical to the one in his own building, with its battleship-grey linoleum, until he gets to a door with “USAF Exchange Officer” painted in block letters on the frosted window. Through the half-open door he sees the USAF hat hanging on the halltree in the corner. He taps his knuckles against the glass. He expects to hear the usual hearty “It’s open,” and is prepared to extend his hand with a joke — something about IFF: identification friend or foe. Prepared for a super-friendly hotshot American pilot. But there is no sound. Instead, the door opens all the way and a young man stands before him. He salutes with the velocity of a karate chop and says, unsmiling, “Hello, sir.” He looks just about old enough to be a Boy Scout. Jack says, “Wing Commander McCarthy,” and shakes McCarroll’s hand. “Welcome to Centralia, captain.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“This is a robin’s egg.” Claire’s palms are cupped around a pale blue shell. It was in her Frankie and Annette lunchbox, nested in tissue paper. “It fell and I found it.”

Does she have an accent? It’s hard to tell, she speaks so softly.

“Speak up, little girl,” says Mr. March.

“I found it,” says Claire, and yes, you can hear a little sway to her words.

Claire goes to offer the blue egg to Philip Pinder in the front row, but Mr. March stops her. The egg is too delicate to be passed around the class. “Especially to the likes of Mr. Pinder.” The class laughs in agreement. Even Philip Pinder laughs. Madeleine is relieved that Claire will be spared the agony of a broken robin’s egg. Mr. March is kind at heart.

Everyone wishes Claire would talk more, in her American accent, but all she says in conclusion is “I collect them sometimes.” Sometahms . That does it. At recess the girly-girls want to be her friend and several boys show off in her vicinity. Philip Pinder sings at the top of his lungs, “‘Roger Ramjet he’s our man, the hero of our nation, the only thing that’s wrong with him is mental retardation!’”

Cathy Baxter, the boss of the girly-girls and their skipping ropes, puts one hand on her hip and says fed-uppedly, “Philip,” and he squeals away like a racing car. Joyce Nutt, who is the prettiest, is her second-in-command. They all surround Claire to marvel at her bracelet. Claire doesn’t brag or say a thing, just holds out her wrist obligingly as Cathy goes through the charms one by one—

“Marjorie, don’t butt in.”

“Sorry, Cathy.”

Thus, while Madeleine can see the physical resemblance, she knows — heading for the swings, climbing on and glimpsing the shiny pixie cut in the centre of the small crowd below — that she and Claire McCarroll are nothing alike.

“The following little girls will remain after the bell”—and he consults his seating plan even though he knows everyone’s name by now—“Grace Novotny….”

Well that’s not surprising, Grace didn’t “tell,” she sang, and not terribly well.

“Joyce Nutt….”

Joyce Nutt? What did she do? She is one of the skipping-rope girls and they never get in trouble—

“Diane Vogel….”

Diane is also a skipping-rope girl, but not a bossy one. It seems she too requires improved concentration because, as Madeleine has just noticed, Diane has suddenly become a tortoise in spelling.

“And Madeleine McCarthy.”

After all her efforts at concentration, she is required to remain after three. Due to mirth. Her stomach goes cold. She showed off and now she’s in trouble. And yet she wasn’t trying to show off. How do you tell the difference?

She and the others wait at the back of the empty classroom, ranged along the wall with the coat hooks, while Diane Vogel does her backbend up at the front. Mr. March spots her by holding her steady between his knees so that she won’t fall and hurt herself.

“Can you spell Mississippi, little girl?”

“Thank you, sir,” says Blair McCarroll as Jack slides a glass of beer to him along the bar at the mess.

McCarroll is, as Simon predicted, fresh-faced. His jaw has a freshly chiselled look, his profile clean and buffed. The hardness of youth is apparent behind the pleats and creases of his uniform, and in his neck rising from his starched collar, which has yet to wilt against any excess of flesh. The wings over his left breast pocket attest, along with a row of stripes, to his service as a fighter pilot. But in his manner there is none of the swagger of his trade. He has not seen fit to rumple his lapel, push back his hat, loosen his tie or look Jack in the eye with the force of a punch. A flush stains his cheeks at the slightest provocation.

“So what are you doing up our way, McCarroll?” asks Jack. “Going to learn to fly?”

The men laugh — two or three flying instructors here to welcome McCarroll, along with several non-aircrew officers from the school.

McCarroll glances down at the high gloss of the bar, then up again. “Well your pilots are some of the best in the world,” he says in his mild drawl. “I consider it an honour to help out with the training.”

A few men exchange looks, nod. Okay.

“You seem like a reasonable man, McCarroll,” says Jack with a grin.

“Please call me Blair if you like, sir.” He glances at the others. “And you all.”