The Way the Crow Flies

  “Wow,” says Madeleine, peeling a perfect strip of translucent parchment from Auriel’s shoulder. “It’s got like fingerprints on it, and little holes like for your hair and everything.” They examine the gossamer moult, reducing it to powder between their fingers.

  The three have exchanged comics and promises of undying friendship. They have agreed to write, and not to start shaving their legs or having a boyfriend without first informing one another.

  “I know,” says Madeleine, “let’s meet in the schoolyard in the year 2000.” Auriel’s eyes widen, extra blue against her freckles, which are browner against her sunburn. Lisa opens her mouth in silent wonder, her hair almost white with summer.

  Auriel stretches out her hand, palm down. Lisa places hers on top of it, and Madeleine places hers on Lisa’s. All for one.

  It is on the tip of Madeleine’s tongue to suggest that they become blood sisters, but she hesitates. There is a whiff of disloyalty in the notion of being blood sisters with anyone but Colleen. There is also a corollary effect: the taint of knowledge—of some shame—that Madeleine associates with Colleen, even though she never told her about the exercises. Inside this pup tent, Madeleine is a normal, carefree girl. There is no need for blood.

  They have brought out their autograph books. Madeleine opens hers and flips forward, looking for the first blank page after Germany—the printing from grade three looks glaringly childish. The name Laurie Ferry rises from the page but it’s a moment before a face takes shape to go with it … your best friend.

  Lisa writes in Madeleine’s book, Yours till the U.S. drinks Canada Dry, love your best friend (not counting Auriel) Lisa Ridelle.

  Yours until Niagara Falls, writes Madeleine.

  And Auriel writes, If you get married and have two twins, don’t come to me for safety pins! Love Auriel Boucher.

  The smell of chlorine and canvas will forever be the smell of best friends and sweet summer.

  Auriel and Lisa hug each other. Madeleine looks away, worried lest things start to get mushy—parting is such sweet sorrow, doc. She stares at the crumbs on the floor of the tent, feels the flattened grass beneath it—this is the last time I will ever sit in this tent. The Bouchers are moving too. Mr. Boucher will roll up this tent tomorrow and pack it into their VW van.

  Lisa blurts out that she is in love with someone and now she will never see him again. “Who?” both Madeleine and Auriel press her.

  Lisa shakes her head, then finally cries out, “Mike McCarthy!”

  “You love my brother?”

  Lisa buries her face in her hands and nods.

  Then Auriel declares her love for Roy Noonan, “even though he’s such a square!” Madeleine gapes in amazement and switches on the transistor. Like a sign that they really will remain friends forever, their theme song comes on, “It’s My Party.” They stare at one another, open-mouthed with delight and disbelief, and sing their hearts out along with Leslie Gore, crying if they want to.

  Tears sting Madeleine’s eyes, still stripped by chlorine, and she sings louder.

  That afternoon, the moving van heaves away round the corner like a huge beast and disappears, and the Ridelles’ house sits empty and blank.

  REGINA VS RICHARD FROELICH

  “WERE YOU ACQUAINTED with Claire McCarroll?”

  “Yes sir. She lived four doors down from my house on St. Lawrence Avenue. My daughter Lisa attended Brownies with her, and they were to attend a flying-up ceremony together that evening.”

  Steve Ridelle is standing in the witness box. He is in uniform.

  “During the happenings in question here, doctor, what appointment did you hold?”

  “I was senior medical officer at the Royal Canadian Air Force Station Centralia.”

  Jack should be at work, but he has taken another day of leave. It is just after ten o’clock, the temperature outside in the square is eighty-six degrees today. Higher in here. In the row ahead of him, people have already begun to fan themselves slowly with hats and newspapers. In the back, the row of reporters bend to write.

  “Dr. Ridelle, are you familiar with the place referred to as Rock Bass?” asks the Crown attorney.

  “Yes sir, I am.”

  “Were you a quarter-mile west of there, between a cornfield and a woodlot, in a field lying fallow, on the morning of April fourteenth, Sunday?”

  “I was.”

  “And did you see there a body?”

  “I did.”

  “Will you describe the scene as you saw it?”

  Jack is here because Henry Froelich told him that medical evidence would be presented today. He wishes to hear the total absence of direct evidence linking Rick to the scene. He is here because he cannot stay away.

  Yesterday the Crown attempted to read out Rick’s statement, which the police had taken immediately after his arrest, but the defence objected because neither a lawyer nor a parent had been present at the time. The judge sent the jury out while he listened. As Jack expected, apart from a couple of places where the boy was obviously rambling with exhaustion, there was nothing remotely incriminating. The jury returned and Jack watched their faces as they learned that the judge had ruled the statement inadmissible; surely they were bound to assume there had indeed been something incriminating in the statement—otherwise, why would the defence have objected? Couldn’t the judge have anticipated that?

  “The body was lying flat on its back with the lower limbs, the two legs, parted. Under a tree, an elm. The body was clad in a blue dress….”

  All the witnesses are repeating what they have said many times, and speaking as plainly as possible—the way one is trained to communicate in the military. No narrative inflections to lure the listener or to warn of a bump in the road.

  “It was—the body was covered by reeds, I should say bulrushes, and flowers, wildflowers, although due to the rain and, I think, probably animals—”

  “Was the face visible?”

  “The face was covered.”

  “With what?”

  “A pair of underpants.”

  “Cotton underpants?”

  “Yes sir.”

  Steve Ridelle received his posting in May, and he has lost no time moving his family. He has returned in order to testify.

  “Are these the underpants?”

  “Yes.”

  Jack watches the Crown attorney return the patch of yellowy cotton to the table up at the front. Exhibit number 49.

  Sharon McCarroll is no longer present. She has returned to Virginia to be with her mother.

  Photographs are produced, the jury is sent out, a voir dire ensues, the jury is brought back in and the pathologist is called.

  “The stomach was removed as a whole and was held over a sterile jar and was opened so that all the contents went straight into the jar which was then sealed and labelled….” Jack glances across the room. Blair McCarroll is still here. It isn’t right that he should hear this. “… the jar up to the light to see what we could see and we saw a small amount of brownish….”

  The next half-hour is taken up with parsing the contents of the snack. It is tricky, establishing time of death via stomach contents. Digestion is not an exact science. It can accelerate or it can slow, depending on circumstances—such as fear.

  McCarroll is staring at the back of the bench in front of him, his expression neutral.

  Blood was taken from her heart. Her heart was weighed. It was normal. Her height, her weight, everything was normal. “The patient had marks upon the neck….”

  The patient? Jack looks up.

  “… bruises on the windpipe but no sign of a ligature, and the face was grossly congested, was bluish black. Bluish, anyway….” A pair of hands. Thumb marks on the windpipe. Her non-fatal injuries were examined. Steve is recalled.

  “… there was no pubic hair, and on the right-hand side of the outer lip there was an area where the skin, the superficial topmost layer of skin, had been ripped right away over an area about the size of my
fingernail….”

  His Lordship says, “The right-hand side, is that what you said?”

  “I said ‘the right.’ As far as I can remember, it was the right.”

  “Is that the girl’s right?”

  “Yes, the girl’s right, I’m sorry.”

  Jack knows from the press that the child was raped, and yet….

  “… and it was bruised and the whole of the entranceway was widely dilated.”

  “Pardon?”

  “Widely dilated.”

  Is it a failure of his imagination that Jack never anticipated these details? He glances around and wonders if others did. Toward the back he sees a familiar face. The schoolteacher, Mr. Marks. He looks like an overgrown child. It would not have been worth beating the can off him. In the same row is the pretty young woman teacher who leads Madeleine’s Brownie pack. Did either of these teachers imagine they’d ever hear one of their pupils described in this way?

  “… masses of maggots about in this region, and on removing the maggots it was quite obvious this area was grossly bruised….”

  Jack has told Mimi to be prepared to move within weeks. She has already cancelled next fall’s dental checkups for the kids. Madeleine will testify some time next week, and her testimony will put the kibosh on this travesty.

  “Concerning the injury in the outer labium and to the vagina,” asks the Crown attorney, “has that any significance to you?”

  Any significance? “A female child at that age would have a hymen, which is something through which you cannot normally insert a little finger, and that was completely missing, it had been completely carried away….”

  Jack permits his mind to run elsewhere. He is expecting a call from his contact in Ottawa any day now. A teaching post has opened up at the Royal Military College in Kingston. He is a shoo-in for it.

  Although just about any place will do.

  The Crown attorney says, “In your opinion, Doctor, how were these injuries caused?”

  “In my opinion—”

  The defence says, “My lord, I don’t want to unnecessarily interrupt, but might I suggest that in view of the changes, post-mortem changes that this man found in this area, that it would be extremely dangerous for him to express any opinion at this time because he told us he found some very serious post-mortem changes in this area …”

  Is the defence logic garbled or is Jack merely having difficulty concentrating? His mind drifts sideways again. Changes. A gentle word, yet not a euphemism. We change from the moment of conception and we do not stop changing until we change back into earth. It’s a kind of miracle, thinks Jack. This return to earth … to land a man on the moon, and return him safely to earth. That indeed would be a feat, but to return a man to earth after he has died is far more complex.

  “No, listen to the question as put—”

  As miraculous as conception. The intricate particle-by-particle detachment and falling away of our bodies. It takes years. A longer gestation than birth.

  “Are these lesions a type of injury you would expect to see with some large object dilating this area?” asks the Crown.

  The defence attorney interrupts, “My lord, I suggest that it would be dangerous for the doctor to—the doctor is not a pathologist, my lord.”

  “You might demonstrate later on that it is of no particular weight,” says the judge, “but I think the doctor is entitled to give his opinion as to what caused these changes, since he was at the autopsy, and we shall see what the pathologist says later.”

  Jack looks at the defence lawyer, expecting him to object again, but he doesn’t. Things seem to have speeded up. Something is changing….

  The Crown says, “Dr. Ridelle?”

  “Would you repeat the question, please?”

  Why is Steve even up there? He’s a GP, not a—

  “Is it possible these injuries are consistent with a very inexpert attempt at penetration?”

  Dr. Ridelle says, “Possibly.”

  “Such as by an inexperienced or immature male?” says the Crown attorney.

  The defence attorney interrupts, “My lord.”

  The judge says to the jury, “Gentlemen, you are to disregard the Crown attorney’s last question, you are to put it from your minds.”

  Lunch.

  THE HOME FRONT

  JACK STEERS THE RAMBLER into the PMQs, hoping to get a glimpse of his kids before they head back to school for the afternoon. He has no more patience for the courtroom. Besides, he has heard all he needs to hear—or not hear—of the day’s proceedings: there was no physical evidence to place Rick at the scene. There was not even semen, nor a trace of the chemical that semen changes into after it decomposes. The rain may have destroyed it. The maggots. But there would have been something left, inside her, and there wasn’t. Had there been, the police lab could have determined blood type and ruled Rick either out or in. As it is, there is not a scrap of direct evidence. The defence will make this clear after lunch, surely, during cross-examination. How much is Hank paying that guy? He’d better start living up to those letters after his name.

  He turns onto St. Lawrence and sees a moving van in the Bouchers’ driveway. Perhaps it’s time to pass his hat around the mess again, before everyone is posted away. As he slows toward his driveway, he notices that the Froelichs’ front lawn is yellowing—he’ll get the sprinkler out this afternoon and run it for them. After he mows it. He pulls into his driveway.

  The absence of sperm makes it impossible to prove that she was penetrated by a penis at all. The child was raped, but perhaps with something else. Perhaps with a blunt object used by some sicko who turns to little girls because he can’t get it up the normal way—or can’t climax and therefore can’t ejaculate. Neither would describe a healthy teenage boy. Surely that will not be lost upon the jury, who were all teenagers once. Teenage boys can be brutal, but only an older man could be that warped and impotent. He gets out and slams the car door shut, picturing some sorry specimen in his fifties, thick fingers, thumb marks on the windpipe—he locks the car door—then unlocks it, because he never locks his car, no one does—then locks it again, because Mimi may wish to use the car after dark and what if …? Then he unlocks it, because this is ridiculous.

  No one is home. Of course, they are across the street. He tosses his hat onto the halltree. It’s Mimi’s day to look after the Froelich kids. The women have been wonderful—although there are fewer hands since the Ridelles moved away, and now Betty Boucher is all but gone. Vimy Woodley has been good about pitching in but they’re moving too. That leaves Mimi.

  By September, a quarter of the PMQs will be filled with new families. They won’t know the Froelichs personally. They will only know what they have read in the papers. Jack pours himself a Scotch and takes the newspaper to the couch.

  Mimi is standing over him.

  “What’s wrong?” she says.

  “What?” Where is he? On the couch. Must have fallen asleep.

  “What are you doing home?”

  He grins—his mouth is dry—and gets up. “Playin’ hooky,” he says, heading for the kitchen with his empty glass.

  “You were at the trial.”

  “I dropped in this morning.” He runs the cold water.

  “You took another day of leave.”

  “We’ve got the whole afternoon to ourselves, what do you think, Missus?” He winks at her and gulps the water.

  She joins him at the sink, pulls on a pair of rubber gloves, opens the cupboard below, bends, takes out that ragged dress and puts it on. Ties an old diaper around her head and kicks her high heels into a corner. He watches as she fills the bucket at the sink, clunks it to the floor, plunges a brush into the foam, then gets down on her hands and knees and starts scrubbing. “Move your feet,” she says.

  “Hi Dad.” It’s Mike.

  “What are you doing home from school?”

  Mike rolls his eyes, but Jack remembers as soon as he asks: it’s summer holidays. “Don’t be smart
,” he says. “Where’s your sister?”

  “How should I know?”

  “What did you say, mister?”—his hand opening, lifting.

  “Jack,” says Mimi, and he stops himself.

  Mike ducks out of the kitchen. A crescent of soapy water sloshes past Jack’s shoes. “She was in the front yard this morning,” says Mimi. “Mike took her swimming this afternoon, now she’s in the Bouchers’ backyard, I’m her mother, if you want to know where she is, ask me, not your son.” And keeps on scrubbing.

  Jack leaves. Winds up at the mess; it’s peaceful this time of day. He settles in by a window overlooking shrubs and the green sweep down to the tennis courts. He sips a Scotch and reads Time. President Kennedy has committed sixteen thousand combat troops to Vietnam.

  When he gets home, the table is set for two, the kids are nowhere to be seen and Mimi says, “I’m sorry, Jack.”

  He’s tired and his head is aching, but she has made coq au vin and he must be hungry, he has had no lunch. “Holy liftin’, a gourmet meal,” he says.

  She pours him a glass of wine. “Jack, I don’t want to be a bitch, I’m just worried.”

  “I don’t think they’ll convict, honey, I really don’t. Can I have a glass of water?”

  “No, I’m worried about Mike.”

  “Mike?”

  “He quit.”

  “Quit what?”

  “Baseball. And he broke a window—”

  “He—?”

  “Don’t be mad, it was an accident. Over at the rec centre.”

  Jack sighs, nods.

  “And I’m worried about—” Tears fill her eyes.

  “What’s wrong, baby?”

  “Our holiday.” She weeps. “You’re using up your leave and you—I want to see my mother.”

  He takes her in his arms. “We’ll go right after the trial, I promise. I got plenty of leave left.”

  “Jack,” she says. She has put on perfume, he can smell it. He feels silk brush his back as she gets into bed next to him—the emerald negligée he gave her for Christmas. “Jack.” She strokes his shoulder.