Ann-Marie MacDonald: Way the Crow Flies

“Dad,” says Madeleine, “tell the story of the crash again.”

“Yeah, Dad,” says Mike.

“How about you settle back and enjoy the scenery, and when we get there I’ll show you exactly where it happened.”

Mimi sings, “ O Mein Papa.”

Mike allows Madeleine to put her feet on his side of the seat. They sing for miles, until they forget where they are going, until they forget where they have been, and the drive becomes a dream, and that’s what a drive could be back then.

Welcome to Paris, Welcome to Brussels, Welcome to Dublin, New Hamburg, Damascus, Welcome to Neustadt and Stratford, and London… . Welcome to Ontario.

So many unseen companions in this countryside, so many layers of lives. A collective memory has risen from the land and settled over the Triangle like a cumulus cloud. Memory breeds memory, draws it out of new arrivals, takes it in. The soil so rich, water so abundant, the bounty so green; it has absorbed us many times over, then breathed everything out again, so that the very air is made of memory. Memory falls in the rain. You drink memory. In winter you make snow angels out of memory.

Twenty-five miles north of London lies the Royal Canadian Air Force Station at Centralia. RCAF Centralia. Don’t look for it now, it has lost its memory. A temporary place, for temporary people, it was constructed so that memory would not adhere, but slip away like an egg from a pan. Constructed to resist time.

The station is named for the nearby village of Centralia, but there the resemblance ends. The village is old and getting older. Gardens change in the village, shops go in and out of business, houses age, are altered, people are born, grow up and die there. But everything about an air force station is new. And it will stay that way for its entire operational life. Each house, each building will be freshly painted in the same colours they have always had, the cadets who jog across the parade square will always be young and about to get their wings. The families in the PMQs will always seem like the first families to move in, they will always have young children of about the same age. Only the trees will change, grow. Like reruns on television, an air force station never grows old. It remains in the present. Until the last flypast. Then it is demobilized, decommissioned, deconsecrated. It is sold off and all the aging, the buildup of time that was never apparent, will suddenly be upon it. It will fade like the face of an old child. Weeds, peeling paint, decaying big-eyed bungalows….

But until that happens, the present tense will reign. And were a wanderer to return after being lost in time, she could walk straight up to her old house and recognize it. Open the door and expect to see Mum with a pan of cookies—“I’ve laid out your Brownie uniform on the bed, sweetheart, where have you been?”

No, this part of the world is not the Bermuda Triangle. But from time to time people do come here in order to disappear.

“WAKE UP, MADELEINE. We’re here.”

Royal Canadian Air Force Station Centralia. Six hundred and thirty-eight acres of government issue dropped into the middle of one continuous agricultural quilt. A good place to train pilots, farmland being ideal for emergency landings. Jack trained here during the war. “Welcome to the MON,” his flight instructor had said: the Middle Of Nowhere.

He slows the car on the Huron County road. To their right, the station. To their left, the houses of the PMQs. “Let’s take a tour, shall we?” he says and turns right.

Just outside the main gates, a World War Two Spitfire speeds on a steel pedestal, legendary little fighter, its propeller welded to a stop, clear canopy bolted over the single seat. Per ardua ad astra , says the plaque, motto of the RCAF: Through adversity to the stars.

“Dad, can you show us where it happened?” asks Madeleine.

“We’ll get there, little buddy.”

Jack would have flown a bomber had it not been for the crash. A big heavy Lancaster with four Merlin engines, the opposite of the nimble Spitfire. “That little airplane is one of the reasons why we’re alive and free today,” says Jack.

Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few . When Churchill said that, he was talking about the pilots who flew in the Battle of Britain. The Spitfire helped save Britain from Nazi invasion in 1940. When England stood alone, ninety-nine Canadian pilots stood with them, fending off the might of Goering’s Luftwaffe while ordinary Britons watched from the ground.

The bolted and mounted Spitfire is another difference between Canada and Germany. Here the emblems of battle are proudly displayed, refurbished tanks and cannons, cenotaphs in town squares commemorating “our glorious dead” from the Boer War through to Korea. But in Germany there were no Messerschmitts shined up and on show. There were bullet-pocked buildings and heaps of debris, abundant ruins amid the “economic miracle”—the Wirtschaftswunder . It’s a long word, like many German words, but Madeleine remembers it because it sounds like a magic spell. Her father explained what it meant and told them how the women of Germany rebuilt their cities brick by brick with their bare hands after each bombing raid, as undaunted as Londoners during the Blitz. Madeleine pictures them as though in a black-and-white newsreel, die Trümmerfrauen —“the Women of the Ruins.” In head-scarves, bent over foothills of rubble.

Jack pulls up to the guardhouse, chats and chuckles with the guard, who says, “Welcome to Centralia, sir,” and salutes with casual courtesy — the type of salute that distinguishes air force from army. Jack touches two fingers to his forehead in response and pulls away. The Rambler drives slowly up Canada Avenue.

If her father had gotten to fly a bomber, he would have made more rubble in Germany. Unless they shot him down first. Hamburg, Dresden, Cologne…. Dad always shakes his head sadly at the mention of Dresden. When you hear the name Dresden, you picture beautiful china and wedding-cake buildings. They are gone now, bombs away. “Total war was Hitler’s idea,” says her father. Imagine going into someone’s house and breaking all the plates. That’ll teach you. All the women in the world couldn’t put them back together again.

Madeleine watches the buildings go by, silent white siding with green trim, all neatly landscaped, labelled and laid out. The Protestant chapel, the Catholic chapel, the fire hall, the library. Shopping carts parked outside the PX, all quiet on this Sunday afternoon. Turning onto Saskatchewan Street now….

They are driving very slowly. Like a military slow march, the muffled bootfalls a sign of respect or mourning. The McCarthys are carefully, reverently beginning to say hello to Centralia. Moving among a herd of unknown sleepy creatures, their future — don’t make any sudden moves, don’t anyone take a picture yet.

Up Nova Scotia Avenue, past administrative buildings where the dads work, past H-shaped barracks where the non-dads live. Heat shivering up from the parade square, chessboard black against the white buildings. The movie theatre— Pillow Talk is playing — the curling arena, the hockey arena — a flurry of activity behind the rec centre where kids are cannonballing into an outdoor pool. Madeleine watches it all inch by under the loving August sun. This is where whatever will be, will be.

As abrupt as a flock of gulls, a squad of young men jogs past, white sneakers in double-time, billowing singlets and blue shorts, sweat-stained cadets all sinews and Adam’s apples. Some are African, others Asian, the rest Heinz 57 Caucasian. Mimi watches them pass, then raises her eyebrows ever so briefly at Jack, who mutters, “Avert your eyes, woman.” She smiles. Jack underlines his mental note — he will definitely start running, once they’ve settled in.