Uprooted - a Canadian War Story

  At last we got them all out. We bathed poor Laddie’s nose with warm water with some disinfectant in it and fed him hamburger meat that was easy for him to chew.

  The ‘atmosphere’ was over – it couldn’t survive sharing something like that.

  I swore to myself that night that I would never, never have a dog. Too much agony! But we went on being very glad we had this one. Laddie got better and was more our dog than before.

  How can he forgive us for the pain we’ve caused him? I marvelled. But he did. He even learnt to ride the canoe to the island and go swimming with us.

  And he was my best comfort after the fatal day we heard the growing roar of a motorcycle along the track. This was so unusual, we all ran out to watch it pass. But it didn’t. It stopped. And who should be riding it but Hank.

  The first thing, the very first, that I did after I realised who it was, was to look at Mummy.

  Would she light up at the sight of him?

  Well, no. I wouldn’t call it that. But her face didn’t exactly fall, either.

  “Hank! Dear Hank, what a nice surprise!”

  I didn’t like the ‘dear’, but at least it wasn’t ‘darling’. And ‘nice’ – Mummy always said nice was a feak and weeble word, when I used it in a school composition, or in a letter to Daddy. “Try ‘wonderful’, try ‘marvellous’, try ‘fantastic’,” she’d say. She didn’t say any of those now.

  Hank was getting off the bike. He kicked the stand down, and lifted a rucksack and a bedroll off the back. He’d come to stay.

  Of course he has! I thought. You don’t travel hundreds of miles from Regina to Emma Lake for a cup of tea.

  Then he hugged Mummy, and tried to hug me, but I sort of backed away – not to be rude, I just did it instinctively.

  “How did you find us?”

  “You told me Emma Lake. How I found you after that is the clever part!”

  “Well, come on in.”

  Mummy led the way and Hank followed, grinning over his shoulder at us.

  “Where’s he going to sleep?” Cameron whispered to me.

  “In the canoe,” I whispered back sarcastically. “Or on the log pile.”

  As soon as Hank got into the cabin he took over all the ‘manly’ things. He made Mummy sit down, built the fire, trimmed the lamps (my job), got the stove going, put potatoes on to bake and started bashing the steaks he’d brought with him, while Laddie sat close to him, looking up at him hopefully. He also opened a bottle of red wine, and Cokes for us. I still hated Coke.

  “You’re going to have a rest,” he said to Mummy. And after a bit: “What’s that music?”

  We explained.

  Hank said, “Do we get anything from Panama Hattie? I love Ethel Merman, don’t you?”

  “No – it’s all lovely classical,” I said.

  “Aw … well, each to his taste, I guess.” He began to whistle ‘Let’s Be Buddies’ very loudly, as if to drown out the music from next door.

  I was very pleased about this as I thought it would put Mummy off him.

  But it didn’t seem to.

  Mummy hardly ever drank, and after two glasses of Hank’s wine she was tipsy, I could see. She actually got up, put her cigarette out, and began to dance to his whistling. Of course he came in from the kitchen, and next thing he was dancing with her. Laddie went under the dresser.

  “What’s your trouble, Cameron? Can’t dance? Go on, man, ask your pretty cousin to dance with you!”

  “No fear,” said Cameron, and slouched off upstairs.

  I’d rather Hank had offered me a ride on his motorbike, but still, I didn’t mind having a dance. I wanted to learn to jitterbug – Willie had started to teach me. I just knew the basic step, so I started doing that.

  Hank led Mummy politely to a chair, and said, “Look. More like this.”

  I couldn’t resist. I let him show me how to jitterbug. He even did the underarm thing so, thinking the next thing would be the bit where the man kind of slides the girl between his legs, I pretended to be tired, but that only made him go back to Mummy. Luckily, she’d sobered up by then and said it was time to lay the table. So Hank settled down by the fire and after a bit the lovely music from next door, and the wine, sent him off to sleep.

  While we finished getting dinner, I said to Mummy, “He’s nuts about you, did you know that?”

  “Don’t be silly,” she said, which I expected.

  “No it’s not. Why do you think he came all this way to see you?”

  “He’s lonely.”

  “Isn’t he married?”

  “He’s a widower. Anyway, he’s far from home.”

  “Like you.”

  “Well, yes.” She pulled the potatoes out of our wood oven, and then said, “You’re not worried about it, are you? Even if he is a bit fond of me, I’m not fond of him, in that way, so you’ve nothing to worry about.”

  “Aren’t you lonely?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well then.”

  “I love Daddy,” she said shortly. “Go and call Cameron.” And she slapped the steaks on to the hot griddle.

  Though Hank really did his best to fit in and be a manly helper, we had nothing but bad luck after he came – some of it really bad.

  I do believe in luck. What else can you call it? So much that happens just happens – you can’t stop it happening or make it happen.

  We’d never had any trouble about swimming in the lake till he came. It was our happy watery heaven.

  The day after Hank arrived (he slept on the floor in his bedroll in front of the fire) we went across to the island for a picnic. Laddie sat up in the bow of the canoe like a figurehead on an old ship. Hank insisted on sitting at the back, and he wouldn’t let any of us paddle.

  That was because he could feather. Feathering was a way of paddling that meant you didn’t need two people to keep straight. He dipped his paddle in the water, pulled, and then kind of turned the paddle, so the nose of the canoe swung first one way and then back the other. Cameron was very impressed. I could see he was impressed with Hank altogether. Basically because he was in the navy.

  When we reached the island Hank jumped out and pulled the canoe right up the beach. Then he helped Mummy out, and unloaded the picnic.

  “First a swim, right, then lunch,” he said, like an order.

  Grrrrr!

  We took our top-clothes off – at the lake, all I wore were slacks rolled to below the knees, and a man’s long plaid shirt – and ran straight into the lake at our favourite place, where the sandbar sloped gently into deep water.

  Turning just before I went out of my depth, I saw Hank stripping off his clothes. He was what my Auntie Millie would have called ‘a fine figure of a man’, like Uncle Jack. Tall and muscly with a hairy chest … Mummy was sitting on the sand spreading out the picnic. Was she glancing at him? He did a few exercises (show-off!) and then raced into the water and flung himself face down and began to do a fast front crawl.

  Cameron swam out after him, farther than he’d swum before. He was a good swimmer but they did seem to be trying to reach the far shore, which was miles away. I sat with Mummy, and watched them.

  “Why’s he taking Cameron so far?” I asked. “He shouldn’t.”

  Then I stopped short because she might think I was really saying she wasn’t taking care of him.

  All she said was, “They’re coming back now.”

  Sure enough, their heads began to look bigger, and after about five minutes they both rose up out of the water and waded towards us. That was when I saw them.

  “What’s that on Cameron’s legs?” I said.

  Mummy looked, and did a double take. She jumped up and ran towards them. Just as she did, Hank noticed that he had the same thing – black lumps, like the Black Plague – among the hairs on his chest.

  He let out a shout – a shout of fear. “Ugh! Hell’s bells! Get them off me!”

  “What are they?” Mummy asked, very calmly.

  “L
eeches! Vile brutes! Get them off’a me, get them off!” Hank was shouting.

  He didn’t try to get rid of them. He was flapping his hands like a girl.

  But Mummy wasn’t bothering about him. She was crouched in the sand looking at Cameron’s legs. She tried to pull one of the black things off.

  “Don’t! You’ll leave their heads in!” Hank almost screamed. “Use a cigarette! Burn ’em off!” He let out a stream of swearing.

  Cameron meanwhile just stood there as if he was frozen.

  Mummy stood up, took Cameron by the hand, and led him back to our things. She found her cigarettes and lit one. The match flame trembled.

  “Hank. Come here and show me how,” she said.

  He ran up the beach, still flapping and swearing.

  “Make the end glow! Just touch them! Do mine first! No, no, I didn’t say that. Do Cameron’s first. Be careful.” He was making ugh-ugh groaning noises.

  “Cameron. Stand still. Close your eyes.”

  Cameron was incredibly brave. He stood like a soldier, stiff, his fists clenched, his eyes shut. Mummy very delicately pressed the red glow to one of the black things. It shrank and dropped off into the sand.

  “Did you feel anything?”

  “No.”

  She did the next one, and the next, puffing in between to get a glow.

  There were about six altogether – horrible black things, like long slugs. The thought of them, sticking their nasty little heads into Cameron’s flesh and sucking his blood, made me feel sick.

  When she’d finished with Cameron, she did the ones on Hank’s chest. She singed some of the hairs, but she never burnt him. He stood there shivering like Laddie. When they’d all dropped off, he stamped them into the sand furiously.

  “Of all the horrors in the world, I hate leeches most!” he said. Then he shook himself, looked at us as if he’d woken up, and suddenly said, “God, I’m sorry. They give me the creeps … You were so brave, Cameron, much more than me. Big brave sailor-man versus little English boy.” He grabbed Cameron’s wrist and held it up like a boxer. “The WINNER!” he shouted, and we all laughed.

  “And you,” he said, turning to Mummy. “You are a heroine and a nurse and our saviour all in one. You’re also beautiful.”

  And he put both arms round her and kissed her. A real kiss. Then, before even she could do anything, he snatched her Black Cat from her and had a good drag.

  “Let’s eat,” he said.

  I sometimes think I’m a bit of a witch. Not that I believe in witches. Still …

  I have to be careful I don’t wish harm on people. Even if I hate them. Because sometimes things happen to the people I hate. It started with Hank. After he kissed Mummy like a man kisses a woman, not like friends, I hated him.

  I didn’t wish he’d die. I just wished he’d go away. But if I am a bit of a witch, that was enough to make a very bad thing happen.

  I didn’t swim that day. Although Hank said the leeches probably didn’t come close in to shore. He also told us that the best way to make them drop off was by shaking salt on them. We agreed to always take a bag of salt with us in future, as soon as we got over our fear. Hank said he’d never swim in a lake again.

  That didn’t save him, though.

  Hank only had a short leave. He told us he could only stay with us for five days. On the last day he said he’d like to go for a walk in a part of the forest we hadn’t been to, beyond the Kaldors’ place.

  “There’s an artist called Ernst Lindner,” Hank said. “He’s got a cabin around here. I’ve seen his work in a gallery in Calgary. He paints old tree stumps and moss and fungus. I’ve never seen anything like that, in the pinewoods. There must be somewhere around his cabin where he finds these fabulous mosses.”

  We all walked to the Kaldors’ store together. Laddie was bounding ahead. Cameron called him to heel every few minutes to stop him going into the forest. Mummy and Hank walked side by side. I was watching every minute to see if he touched her. Since the kiss, two days before, I was all screwed up inside. I hadn’t slept properly. I lay awake, listening through the loons and the frogs to the grown-ups talking downstairs. I was listening for silences. I couldn’t sleep till Mummy came to bed.

  I was waiting for her to say again that I had nothing to worry about. She didn’t say it. I thought that was because she knew, since the kiss, that I did.

  I was mad at Cameron again, because he didn’t have to worry about Hank and was free to like him. He was always sitting around with him, asking questions about the navy. The night before, he’d asked how old you had to be to join up. Hank had laughed and said, “Grow another few inches, and you’ll pass for seventeen!”

  Cameron was twelve. How dumb could you be, telling him that! He even joked that Cameron could already join the merchant navy as a cabin boy. I told Cameron afterwards that if he believed that, he’d fall for anything.

  “Don’t you remember how he pulled our legs about hunting our breakfasts, and catching gophers with condensed milk?”

  “He wouldn’t joke about the navy. Not in wartime. He loves the navy.”

  “You couldn’t join the Canadian navy anyway!”

  “You don’t know anything about it, Lind, so be quiet.”

  “Quiet? Like you, you mean, telling Mummy she doesn’t look after you, and spoiling any chance we have of doing stuff on our own!”

  “You don’t understand.”

  “What don’t I understand? I understand you’re stupid and ungrateful!”

  “I hate—” he said violently, then stopped.

  “What?”

  “Every time anything bad happens I want to get away. I want to go home.”

  “Well, why don’t you?” Oh, why did I say that?

  For once I had the last word. He’d just walked away.

  Now we were passing the store. Mr Kaldor was outside, watering his geranium pots. He’d heard all about the porcupine, of course. He said something to Cameron about being a big game hunter.

  “Next time you shoot you a grizzly! Somet’ing to take home show your Papi!”

  As we walked on past the store, he said again, “Look out for de muskeg, ja?”

  I asked Hank, “What’s a muskeg – are they dangerous?”

  “Oh sure! They’re bigger than grizzlies!” He did a looming monster.

  “No, really.”

  “Truth to tell, I haven’t an idea. Never heard the word. Maybe it’s Cree for a beaver.”

  The track, after another half-mile or so, opened out into a strange, empty-looking place. The trees stopped, except for a few dead ones sticking up out of a bunch of grass and, yes, mosses.

  And what mosses! I’d never seen anything like them. Big beautiful cushions of different kinds – pink, bluish, greens, browns. Some of the cushions had toadstools growing out of them, like the kind you see in fairy-tale pictures – red with white spots, pointed ones like elves’ caps, white ones growing like tiny snow-covered Christmas trees out of the moss. I knelt down to look at them closer. They were beautiful. Mummy was kneeling beside me, letting out little gasps of pleasure.

  “No wonder this Lindner man wants to paint them! They’re amazing! Look at this one – have you ever seen anything so exquisite?”

  Cameron and Hank hadn’t stopped to look at the mosses. With Hank leading the way, they’d just gone striding ahead, jumping from one beautiful moss-cushion to the next, among the strange dead trees, laughing as they bounced. But suddenly the laughter stopped. Laddie started barking madly, the way he had at the porcupine.

  Our heads had been bent low over the miracle mosses. We both straightened up at the same time. There was Cameron, standing still about twenty yards ahead of us. Hank? Hank had become a dwarf. He was suddenly shorter than Cameron. Because he was sunk up to his hips in the moss-cushions.

  Mummy and I jumped to our feet, but before we could move, Hank shouted at us: “No! Keep back! It’s bog!”

  “Cam, come back!” screamed Mummy.


  He came running. But Laddie stayed where he was, close up to Hank, barking frantically.

  “Laddie! Come! Heel!” yelled Cameron over his shoulder as he ran towards us. But Laddie didn’t come.

  As soon as he was within reach, Mummy grabbed him and clutched him to her in a frantic hug. Then she let him go.

  “Run, Cam. Back to the Kaldors’. Tell him to bring a rope – and bring his truck! Run, don’t stand there!”

  Cameron took off. He got back on the track and disappeared round a bend. Mummy had hold of my wrist. We were both staring across the open ground at Hank. He was sunk up to his waist by now. He was heaving and struggling.

  “Hank!” Mummy called. “Don’t struggle. Help’s on its way.”

  That was obviously more than she knew for sure. But she sounded calm and certain.

  Hank was panting. His eyes were wild. “Spread your arms,” Mummy called.

  Suddenly I understood properly. Spread your arms. That meant he could sink in past his shoulders. He could sink in over his head. He could disappear.

  “Mummy—”

  “What?”

  “We should help him! Cameron was standing right next to him, it mustn’t be boggy there! Look – Laddie’s standing next to him – he doesn’t go in!”

  “That’s because they’re lighter.”

  “I could go. I weigh less than Cameron. I could lie on the ground and hold Hank’s hands.” (Hadn’t I wanted Hank to disappear? But not like this!)

  “Don’t you move.”

  She let go of my wrist. I panicked.

  “Mummy! You can’t go! You’ll sink—”

  “Stay here. Don’t you dare move.”

  She walked carefully away from me towards him.

  I followed at her heels. I could feel the moss-cushions giving under my feet. I realised this was the muskeg – moss growing on top of a deep mass of mud.

  She turned on me. “Lindy. Go back. If you don’t go back I can’t go to help him. Go back. Now.”