Ann-Marie MacDonald - Way the Crow Flies

Dad tucks her in and says, “I’ve got something I want to give you.” A tattered book missing its back cover. On the front, a picture of a boy in old-fashioned britches, holding a can of whitewash, a half-painted fence behind him. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer . “It’s old. But I bet it still works.”

Madeleine opens it. Inside on the flyleaf is a bookplate: This Book Belongs To and, in a primary scrawl, John McCarthy . “It was mine when I was a boy. Now it’s yours.”

“Wow. Thanks Dad.” She holds it carefully. She can smell its old-book smell, mushroomy. “Are you going to read it out loud?” She wants to read it on her own but she doesn’t want to hurt his feelings if he has his heart set on reading it to her.

“Nope.” He gets up from the side of her bed. “I think that’s the kind of book best read on your own time, to yourself. And when you finish that you can read Huckleberry Finn.”

“Dad?”

“Yeah?”

“Maman said I’m not allowed to play with Colleen Froelich.”

He hesitates. Then, “Maman was pretty worried when you didn’t come home.”

“I know.”

“She probably figures Colleen’s not such a great influence.”

“She’s not an influence,” says Madeleine, as sincerely and respectfully as she can.

He smiles. “She knows how to fish, eh?”

“Yeah.”

“Well she can’t be all bad, then, can she? You leave it with me, okay?”

She bites her lip, this time to suppress her joy. “Okay.” He kisses her forehead and leaves her tucked in and reading.

He walks downstairs. Imagine, scaring a class full of eight- and nine-year-olds like that, what kind of a teacher—? Duck and cover, my eye, if this thing blows it’s sayonara, buddy, you can kiss your arse goodbye, never mind all the backyard bomb shelters the Yanks are selling to each other to go with their swimming pools. If Kennedy had had the guts to call off that half-baked invasion at Bay of Pigs a year and a half ago, the world might not be in this mess — he finds a beer in the fridge — or if he’d had the guts to all-out invade.

He goes to the living room. Bay of Pigs was a textbook example of a failure of decision-making. Not the making of a bad decision, but the failure to make a clear one. All Kennedy accomplished was to inflame the situation — like poking at a hornets’ nest. Still, he’s doing the right thing now. Seeking the best advice — unlike our prime minister, who’s allergic to advice. Jack bends and flicks on the TV, then sits on the couch and waits for it to warm up. Kennedy isn’t backing down, but neither is he firing the first shot. “Speak softly and carry a big stick.” A war of nerves. It takes guts. And Kennedy has a few, if his own war record is any indication. More than just a pretty face from a rich family. Good old Irish bootlegger stock, and that’s what Jack and anyone with any sense is really pinning his hopes on — bare knuckles crossed with a Harvard education. He would love to be a fly on the wall in the White House Cabinet Room, where the Executive Committee is meeting round the clock. The Excomm. History in the making.

The CBC comes on, and Pierre Salinger tells a Canadian reporter that Secretary of State McNamara and his team are living on sandwiches and coffee as they make and revise plans for every contingency. Across the United States, housewives are stocking up on canned goods as talking heads explain how to survive a nuclear attack, without explaining why anyone would want to. Meanwhile, in Canada, heads are firmly lodged in the sand. No new developments. He switches to CBS and watches while Walter Cronkite explains “the way it is.” If there has to be a nuclear war, just as well to hear it from him.

There is a limit, however, to the amount of news that can be broadcast, even in the midst of an international crisis. Jack changes the channel and feels his shoulders begin to relax in spite of himself as he watches Wayne and Shuster.

Up in her room, Madeleine is engrossed. Shortly Tom came upon the juvenile pariah of the town, Huckleberry Finn… . She knows she will have to turn off the light when Maman gets home. Huckleberry was cordially hated and dreaded by all the mothers of the town… . This is the first grown-up book that she has ever read silently to herself, unmediated by her own voice and her father’s. Reading has just become even more intoxicating. Huckleberry came and went at his own free will. He slept on door-steps in fine weather, and in empty hogsheads in wet —what’s a hogshead? A hog’s head? — he did not have to go to school or to church, or call any being master, or obey anybody; he could go fishing or swimming when and where he chose, and stay as long as it suited him; nobody forbade him to fight; he could sit up as late as he pleased; he was always the first boy that went barefoot in the spring and the last to resume leather in the fall; he never had to wash, nor put on clean clothes; he could swear wonderfully… .

If you believe hard enough, is it possible to enter the world of a book? If you pray to God for a miracle, can He transport you to St. Petersburg, Florida, long ago? Set you down by the Mississippi in a pair of tattered overalls, as a boy? Madeleine squeezes her eyes shut and prays. Please, dear God, turn me into a boy . God can do anything. Except change Himself into a rock with no powers, then change Himself back again, because then He would never have been a real rock. Don’t think about that — like infinity, it is a mystery and it will make you dizzy. Have faith. Keep reading, and when you wake up in the morning, perhaps the miracle will have occurred….

By the time Mimi gets home with Mike, Jack has found another news special, another pundit, “… but do we have a viable emergency measures plan? My guess is….” He switches off the TV, she kisses him and asks, “How’s Madeleine?”

“Oh, she’s fine. But I tell you, I’m going to have a word with that teacher, what’s-his-name.”

“Mr. March. Why, did something happen at school?”

“Fella needs a good thump on the nose.”

She pauses, halfway out of her coat. “Why, what did he do?”

“He’s scaring the life out of the kids with this nonsense over Cuba, that’s why she ran off after school.”

“Oh.” She slips her coat off. “Well I don’t like her playing with the Froelich girl.”

“The Froelich kid is harmless, it’s the wife you don’t like,” and he winks.

“Dad?”

“Yeah Mike?”

“Are we on alert yet?”

“Nope. How was the game?”

“Great. Rick scored two baskets.”

“Good stuff.”

Mike heads for the kitchen to get the leftover bouillie from the fridge.

“Jack, make sure you don’t, you know….”

“Don’t what?”

“Well I want you to be careful, don’t embarrass Madeleine when you talk to her teacher.”

“Why would I do that?”

“’Cause you’ll get mad, you know how mad you get.”

He laughs. “I won’t get mad.”

“Maybe I should go instead.”

“Naw, don’t worry, I’ll play it cool. Drop by the classroom tomorrow, right at three, once the kids have gone. Tap on his door.”

She kisses him again.

Sometime after midnight, Madeleine creeps from her bedroom to the top of the stairs.

“What’re you doing?” It’s Mike in his cowboy pajamas, on his way to the bathroom.

“Nothing,” she whispers, her arms full of sheets.

“You wet the bed.”

“I did not.” She starts to cry.

“Don’t blubber,” he whispers. “Get changed.”

He goes into her room, turns over the mattress, then takes the sheets downstairs, puts them in the washer and turns it on.