Ann-Marie MacDonald - Way the Crow Flies

“What does history tell you, Mike?”

“What do you mean?”

“‘Waddyamean?’”—imitating his son’s surly tone. “I mean, what did we do when war broke out in 1914?”

“We fought.”

“That’s right. And in 1939?”

“Yeah, but—”

“We were first in with the British both times and we fought and we died and we won.”

“Yeah, but the Americans—”

“The Americans were late into both wars.”

“Yeah, but this time the Americans—”

“The Americans are what stand between us and Communism.”

Mimi murmurs, “Jack.”

“We can’t even defend ourselves. Arnold’s dad says—”

“I’m not interested in what Arnold’s dad—”

“We’re too chicken to even go on alert!”

Jack mashes homemade chow-chow into his potatoes and doesn’t reply. Mimi says, “Madeleine, have you decided what you want to be for Halloween?”

Madeleine is surprised at the question. It has never occurred to her to abandon the sacred clown costume she has worn for the past two years. Halloween costumes are not to be traded in lightly, they are … like vestments. “A clown,” she answers.

“Encore? Mais il est trop petit maintenant pour toi .”

“Can’t you make it bigger?”

Mimi shrugs. “Sure, but I thought maybe we could make you a new one. You could be a ballerina or a—”

“I want to be a clown again.”

“We’re cowards, that’s all,” says Mike.

“I’ve got news for you, Mike….” Her father puts down his fork. Madeleine holds her breath — is Mike going to get it? But Dad sounds calm. “We are on alert.”

“Jack—”

“It’s true,” he says to Mimi. “You won’t see it in the papers but he’s got a right to know. We all do. As Canadians.”

Madeleine’s face is hot. She waits. Dad says each word slowly. “An elevation in the alert status of the armed forces is a routine precaution”—as if he were explaining something that would be perfectly obvious to anyone but a silly ass. “It’s called crisis management and it’s only common sense. It sends a message to the Russians: ‘Listen, fellas’”—he points his fork at Mike—“‘we mean business, so hands off our buddies ’cause if you mess with them, you’re messin’ with us.’” He jabs his potatoes several times in quick succession. “This whole thing’ll blow over. Castro is a puppet and it’s only a matter of time before his own people see that.” Castro is a puppet. Madeleine tries not to laugh. “What bothers me,” Dad is saying, “is we’ve got these jokers up on Parliament Hill who are indulging in the lowest form of Canadian nationalism.” He pauses. Madeleine bites away the grin on the inside of her cheek. “Anti-Americanism.”

The word hangs in the air, until finally Mimi says, “Can we have dessert now, ma grande foi D’jeu?”

Jack laughs. “You should be running the Excomm, Missus.”

After supper, Jack sends his daughter down to the basement to play with her brother so that she won’t hear his optimistic dinner-table dismissal of the crisis contradicted on the six o’clock news. He watches U Thant deliver his calm and desperate plea in the U.N. and wonders if he went too far over supper — will Madeleine have nightmares again? He listens for sounds of a squabble from the basement, but the kids are quiet down there. They’re getting all kinds of alarmist misinformation out there, at school and in the playground. They ought to hear some actual facts at home — not gloom and doom, but enough reality to inspire confidence in him.

Aerial photographs appear on the screen, taken by U-2 spy planes: launching pads, somewhere in the hills of Cuba. He switches off the TV and tells Mimi he is stepping outside to stretch his legs.

Over at the Froelichs,’ a living-room lamp stands in the driveway, lampshade and all. It casts a rosy glow on the exposed engine of the automotive heap. Froelich is in his apron and white shirt-sleeves, bent under the hood with his son. They work to the accompaniment of a tinny transistor radio. Jack saunters across.

“Hank, how’re you making out there?”

“Not too shabby, Jack.”

Ricky looks up and greets him, and Jack says, “I’ve seen you out there running with your sister, Rick, how far do you go normally?”

“Till one of us gets tired, I guess. Seven or eight miles.”

“Good stuff.”

Froelich fills his pipe with his grease-stained fingers, Jack takes out a Tiparillo.

“Forget the car, Henry, why don’t you build a great big bomb out here instead, and aim it straight at Ottawa?”

Froelich puffs his pipe to life. “You are angry, Jack.”

Jack is surprised. “Naw, I’m not angry, I’m just frustrated with how our fearless leader is handling things. Or not handling them as the case may be.” He puffs. “Yeah, you’re right, I’m angry.”

The boy disappears under the car and Jack lowers his voice. “How do you figure the chances we’ll all be blown sky-high this time next week?”

He is surprised at his own question — at how he has phrased it. He wouldn’t express himself this way at work. Like his fellow officers, he is not given to alarmist language — they are not Americans. Not yet, anyway. But he has blurted the question to Froelich, perhaps because he senses that Froelich is not easily alarmed.

Henry says, “Will you pass me the wrench? The middle one, ja. Danke,” and bends to the engine. “Jack. My first opinion is, this crisis is predictable.”

Jack nods. “Bay of Pigs.”

“Also the Americans still have their base in Cuba.”

“At Guantánamo, yeah.”

“And also America has already many missiles on the Soviet doorstep.”

“Turkey. But those’re obsolete. And the Yanks didn’t put them there in secret.”

“I don’t know how comfortable this is to people in the target.”

“True. But I trust the Americans not to use them.”

“The Americans have used them already.”

“Right.” Jack pulls on his cigar. “But that was to end a war, not to start one. I don’t trust the Soviets as far as I can spit.”

“I do not trust either,” says Froelich, and Jack finds it difficult to tell, knowing the syntactical idiosyncrasies of Froelich’s English, whether he means I don’t trust the Soviets either , or I don’t trust either of them . Such are the hazards of translation. Imagine trying to analyze the latest missive from Khrushchev. We’ll all go up in a mushroom cloud because of a preposition. But Froelich is saying, “I think they play a dangerous game, the Americans and the Russians, and they play this together.”

“Can I use the torch, Pop?” asks Rick.

“What do you mean, Hank?”

Froelich turns to his son. “Yes, no, find your safety glasses, then yes”—then turns back to Jack. “I agree with Eisenhower.”

“You liked Ike?”

“He warned of too much military industries. We force the Russians to keep up. People grow rich from these industries and they become to have political influence.”

“It’s called the arms race,” says Jack.

“I think it is what the British call, ‘silly bugger.’” He wipes carbon buildup from the old distributor cap.

Jack laughs. “So you don’t think the world is going to end tomorrow?”

“The world has ended many times, my friend.”

Jack thinks of the numbers on Froelich’s arm, concealed by the white shirt. He would like to find a way to apologize for … having been a jackass. But referring to a subject that Froelich has not seen fit to broach might only distress the man … and compound Jack’s faux pas.

Henry says, “Pass me the Robertson’s red.” Jack hands him the screwdriver. Overhead the stars are crisp and bright. Jack looks up at the moon, cold and calm. Look long enough and you may see a satellite. The Froelich boy’s transistor radio catches invisible signals from the air, as though netting schools of fish, and translates them into a male voice singing in a falsetto about the girl he loves — in Mecca.