Howard Norman - What Is Left the Daughter

My uncle continued on his own volition: "That evening, the German student got to the house. Like I said, Wyatt had fetched him as requested. Then, I recall the heft of the runner. Oh, yes, also the rain, I remember the rain, and I brought the runner down. I don't know what he might've felt, but it wasn't the hand of God caressing the lamb, like Constance Bates-Hillyer used to call it when a breeze ruffled a child's hair at a church social, say."

"I'd imagine it wasn't like that at all," Magistrate Junkins said flatly.

"No, it wasn't. No, it wasn't."

"And once Mr. Mohring was deceased, you took him out to sea."

"We wrapped him in a tarp. We tied him to a toboggan. We put him in the flatbed. We drove to the Parrsboro dock. We took my old friend Leonard Marquette's boat—"

"For any other reason under the sun, you could have borrowed my boat without asking, Donald," Leonard Marquette said from three rows back. "But now I can't ever wash down that deck well enough, can I? I might as well sell the damn thing."

"Leonard, I can't take back what I did," my uncle said.

"This testimony is over," Magistrate Junkins said. "It's finished. I have your complete statement written out by hand here in front of me. Everyone rest assured I will study it at great length."

"— out on your boat, Leonard, the strangest thing," my uncle said. And Magistrate Junkins could see it was necessary to the crowd and even proper in some way to let my uncle finish. "I had a terrible vision, out in the dark like we were, my nephew and me. This German U-boat rises to the surface and somehow it catches the toboggan right on its deck, and the hatch opens, and out climb a bunch of German sailors. To catch a breath of good Canadian air. So they come up and 'Lo and behold, will you look at that!' Of course that couldn't happen. Of course it couldn't. But it goes to show, I was in the throes of a desperate imagination — God strike me dead, eh? — desperate as my imagination was that night."

SOME OF THE OLDEST people living in Middle Economy may still use the phrase, Marlais, but it was once quite common, that a child lost before birth was referred to as a ghost child. Said child being gone but still present. For instance, when a friend of Constance's, a woman named Lillian Swinaver, miscarried, my aunt said, "Poor little ghost child." Then there was a woman named Anna How, who lived in Glenholme and had miscarried four times. Story goes that one summer afternoon at a church social, she sat with her husband at a table set with plates, forks, knives and napkins for six. "We're simply a quiet family," she'd said.

Then there was Tilda Hillyer, who lost a child on January 2, 1943. Cornelia had informed me of this in her one letter to me at Rockhead Prison, which was on a bluff behind Afric-ville, in the northern part of Halifax. The letter, dated January 5, took, through channels, ten days to reach me.

Wyatt,

Our Tilda lost her child and I am looking after her for a while since no nurse's training, just good common sense, is necessary according to Dr. Bryce Stady of Montrose, who did the examination and kept Tilda overnight in his guest room. Mrs. Stady has a steady hand in such matters and she was fully present as well. I have enclosed a flowery Get Well card and postage stamp as I imagine you don't presently have such homey items available for purchase. You should send it.

From Reverend Witt's pulpit Sunday prayers are offered, less on Hans Mohring's behalf, I must say, than for forgiveness for Donald, and that doesn't sit well with some of my customers, whereas with others it seems just fine. I'd say it's cut opinions in our village pretty much in half. At any rate, Tilda has sent a long letter to Hans's parents in Denmark. She obtained their address from the president of Dalhousie University himself, so I was told. Tilda of course has a way with words but I could scarcely imagine that task. She hopes that the war allows her letter to arrive. Well then, Wyatt, see you — I'm afraid later than sooner. That's presuming your decision is to return home, though maybe you no longer see Middle Economy in that light. Which to my mind would be understandable but a mistake.

Cornelia Tell

Immediately after the hearing, Donald had been escorted by two RCMP officers back to the lockup in Truro and, after sentencing, to Dorchester Prison, where he'd spend the remainder of his life. Then, on December 10, Cornelia drove me to Halifax. Since I was officially in the RNC, I was assigned to the military prison near the Citadel, in the middle of Halifax, but within a week I received my Navy discharge papers.

Therefore, Marlais, your father had served Canada in the war for exactly not one single day.

Since there were a lot of cases backed up on the docket, I didn't have my own magistrate's hearing in Halifax until December 15, 1942. A Magistrate Quill presided, and Lenore Teachout was the stenographer. It was nice to see a familiar face. My hearing took less than an hour. I didn't have to go through the murder again myself. More, I agreed with a detailed indictment read by Magistrate Quill, who got it right. The truth is the truth, and in the end it can't be lost to excuses, cowardice or lies. There wasn't any doubt that I'd conspired in the whole sordid incident. "You aren't to be exonerated" is the one sentence I perfectly recall from my hearing. Despite everything — separate from everything — I loved Tilda to the point where her grief, sadness and anger became my conscience, so how could I not own up? Convicted of "aiding and abetting a homicide," I was remanded the next day to Rockhead Prison. My release was to be in early June 1945.

Hans had been murdered. I thought it was a fair sentence. Especially as Cornelia had told me to expect worse.

In prison, the days and nights were empty but for the radio. The prison library saved me. I read all of Charles Dickens in there. All of Victor Hugo. Three works by another Frenchman, named Stendhal, my favorite being The Red and the Black. As for my spirits, well, on any given day — and especially at night — standard-vintage melancholy would've been a reprieve. For my whole sentence, I was assigned to the wood shop, where I made bird feeders that were sold all over Canada, the proceeds going to the War Orphans' Fund in Ottawa.

The library had a fairly large window overlooking Halifax. In fact, close enough so that I saw the fire that ripped through Barrington and Sackville streets, which caused $130,000 worth of damage. Saw the Queen Mary tie up at Pier 20, and the thousands of people who awaited the arrival of Winston Churchill. "This is not the first time I've visited Halifax," I heard him say on the radio, "but it is the first time I have been accorded such a welcome." The Mail had a front-page photograph of Churchill holding up a London Times whose headline read: ALLIES HAMMERING AWAY TOWARD SIEGFRIED LINE. I hadn't had any contact, none at all, with Uncle Donald, except for an envelope he sent me from Dorchester Prison that contained only newspaper articles about how, on December 24, 1944, a U-boat had sunk the minesweeper HMCS Clay-oquot five miles off the Sambro lighthouse at the entrance to Halifax Harbor. I imagined the walls of his cell were covered with headlines.

And, Marlais, though I kept up with all the now-it-can-be-told stories in the Mail, the fact was, I sat out much of V-E Day itself — Tuesday, May 8, 1945—bedridden with a hacking cough and grippe. But that night, and for a few nights after, through the library window, I saw and heard some V-E Day celebrations run amok, police flares above buildings, sirens and rioting and what the Mail called "sailor-led lootings."

I forgot to mention that, late in my sentence, a new policy was instated, and we prisoners were allowed a movie. On April 30, 1945, eleven of us — accompanied by three RCMP officers — went to see Mr. Winkle Goes to War, with Edward G. Robinson in the starring role.