Etta and Otto and Russell and James (20 page)

T
he recruits arrived on a sleepy Saturday afternoon. Some of the resident soldiers were napping on borrowed beds or couches or lawns, some of them were throwing bits of debris they found for a dog who belonged to nobody. Otto was writing a letter, and Gérald was up on the roof of the church they were bunked in, watching, even though he wasn’t on watch. So it was Gérald who first saw the trucks throwing up stones and birds from all the way down the road. So it was Gérald who was the first to know they were coming, then Otto, who heard him cry out,

Trucks!

then,

Etta, they’re here! Finally. More soon.

And then everyone, all out on the one strip of street that was the beginning and ending of this once-town, all the soldiers at once moving together in a rolling, shouting, punching, exhilarated wave, down toward the trucks. The captains called for them to fall in line, but nobody really listened, and the captains didn’t really care.

Otto wound up next to the second truck. All the current boys were gathered around the vehicles, shouting and jumping and clapping their hands against the warm metal, and all the new boys were inside, sat up strict-straight with eyes dead ahead. From the front seat of the front truck, a captain whistled. And then the doors opened and they all tumbled together, mixed, met.

Ralf MacNeil, said a boy with a halo of closely shaved orange
hair, from Labrador. He shook Otto’s hand vigorously. Really glad to be out here at last, really, really glad.

Lauren Ingersson, from Flin Flon, said the boy behind him, reaching around to take Otto’s other hand. Hope you got better food here than on the boats.

Ralf and Lauren were swept on to the next group and Otto found himself faced with another pair of new boys, one with long, pale features and one with tight, dark curls. Hi, said the former, I’m Adrian, I’m—

Owen, said Otto.

No, Adrian—

Oh my god, Owen, said Otto.

No, sorry, it’s—

Hello, Otto, said Owen.

Oh, said Adrian, you two know each other already?

Yes, said Otto.

Yes, said Owen.

And then the crowd surged and pulled and someone brushed into Otto’s shoulder and he turned toward them but they were gone and when he turned back Adrian and Owen were gone too and in their place were more new, unmet faces, their bodies taut with the ecstatic tension of something going to happen. Over their heads, Otto thought he caught flashes of Owen’s hair twenty or thirty boys away, but then again, Owen wasn’t tall, and the crowd was always moving, so he couldn’t be sure.

That night, Otto waited by the door to the town hall they used as a cafeteria while everyone filed in for dinner. Owen and Adrian
were nearly the last ones in; they didn’t know yet, thought Otto, that there was a very finite amount of everything here. He reached across Adrian, and pulled Owen out of the line, around the corner, into the unofficial coatroom.

Better food in here? said Owen.

What are you doing here? said Otto.

You just pulled me in . . .

No, not here,
here
, Owen. What are you doing
here
?

The same thing you are.

No, you’re not.

I’m not?

You’re too young, Owen. You’re way too young.

They didn’t ask about it. They don’t care anymore.

But I do. And you should.

Well, that’s nice, nice of you, Otto, but wrong.

Wrong?

Otto, there are other ways of being old, grown-up, other than just time. There are lots of things. I’m one of the oldest people I know. Sometimes it feels like I am the oldest of all. And that’s not necessarily a good thing. But it’s true.

Owen spoke in flat tones, his voice level, checked.

But thank you for your concern, he continued. It does mean something, it means a lot. It was shadowed in the coatroom, practically no light in here, just the bits that tumbled in along with the noise of dishes and voices from the cafeteria. Otto felt a hand on the small of his back, felt self-conscious about the sweat-wetness of his shirt.

I just don’t want you to get hurt, said Otto.

A person can get hurt anywhere, said Owen. He leaned in just a little, just a little bit closer. I missed you, Otto, he said, I really missed
you.

Okay, okay, said Otto. He inhaled and took a step backward, away. Exhaled. Sure. I missed you too, Owen. Sure I did. Now let’s go see if there’s any food left, okay?

Okay, said Owen, letting his hand drop, away.

. . . So now Gérald and me are sharing our room again. We’ve got ___ new recruits who have been assigned to slip their roll-mats in the bits of space between ours. They seem nice enough. One, Patrice, speaks pretty well no English, so he and Gérald get along, and the other is a relaxed, good-natured West-coast boy called Adrian. He says some of the new kids were really wound up on the way over, getting excited to get over getting scared, and just getting excited just to get excited.

And, of course, we were excited to have them arrive, too. I was. It’s good to have distractions, and it’s good to have their new hope.

Because I also have this awful idea, which I know isn’t true, which I know is ridiculous. I have this idea that all these boys who have come to fill the places of the ones we’ve lost will fill their places exactly and be shot through or stabbed in the dark or blown up just like the last ones, exactly like them, one to one, and then new boys will be sent to replace them, and they’ll be shot through or stabbed in the dark or blown up, exactly the same, and then more new ones, again and again. And we, the others, will just watch and know and not know what to say or do. Whether we should warn them or just let them enjoy the last bits of their tiny lives. And I don’t know who it’s worse for, them or us.

I know it’s not real. But sometimes, when I’m so far away, that doesn’t mean much.

Take care of yourself, and, if you see them, of Russell and of Harriet and Josie and Ellie and Benji and mother and dad and of yourself.

Here,

Otto.

E
tta and Russell would go dancing every night now. They had asked around and made a list of all the events in all the villages and towns in the district. They rode on Russell’s horses or in Etta’s father’s car. Despite his bad leg, Russell danced pretty well, just in half-time to everyone else. Etta didn’t mind, it gave her more time to do turns. They started to recognize all the musicians, and tipped hats to each other walking in or out. Most of them were old men or farm girls. Everyone was exhausted from farm or factory work, circles under their eyes, calluses on their hands, but they still put on good shoes and pressed clothes and played and played and played and danced and danced and danced.

17

T
hey had just crossed into New Brunswick, the air getting thicker, heavier with salt in the tiniest increments, only barely enough to notice, when Bryony said:

I have a brother.

Just that. They had been walking in relative silence, broken only by the brush of their legs against the tall wild grass, which left all-day-dew marks in affectionate stripes on their legs.

That’s something, said Etta. That’s a story.

No, said Bryony, it’s just a person, not a story.

Well, it’s something, said Etta. What else about him?

. . . well, he liked stars. Still does, I bet. Astronomy.

Is he an astronomer?

No, just likes them.

Okay. There was once a woman who had a brother who was in love with the stars. That’s a story, isn’t it?

Maybe. Not a terribly good one. And not really mine.

Well, what are you in love with?

The sea, I guess.

Even though you’ve never been there?

He’s never been to the stars. Though he wanted to, when he was
little. To be an astronaut.

What about you, what did you want to be?

I wanted to be him.

Not a journalist?

That came later.

And, where is he now?

Her Majesty’s of St. John’s Penitentiary. The one right on the coast.

There were approaching the district of Ciquart. Etta could just make out the banners and signs held out and above the small crowd waiting for them. They chanted, ET-TA! ET-TA! GO! GO! GO!

Oh, I, said Etta.

Don’t, said Bryony. Don’t worry about it. . . . Do you have any brothers? Or sisters?

Fourteen, said Etta. Eight brothers and six sisters.

The crowd was moving to meet them. Soon cameras were flashing and people were shouting and crying and giving Etta and Bryony bigger things, like a bag of dried apricots and bottles of homemade beer and an angel-food cake, as well as smaller things, like a stalk of dried lavender and half a melted tea-light and a silver baby spoon with the handle bent back on itself, and then, soon enough, Etta and Bryony were through to the other side of the hamlet, and alone again. They spent the rest of the day walking in their something like silence.

Two nights later, sometime around two in the morning from the feel of her body and the look of the sky, Bryony woke up. They were camped under a patch of white and yellow birch trees. She took stock: she didn’t need to pee, she wasn’t thirsty or uncomfortable or cold or hot, her blazer was still in place over her as a blanket, and there didn’t seem to be any animal or insect on or near her. But she
was awake. For some reason. Etta? she half-whispered, turning onto her side to face Etta’s spot, two trees away.

Etta’s eyes were open, staring open at her, past her. Oh, she was saying. Oh oh oh oh oh. Help me. Help me. Oh, oh. Oh! My ear. My ear! My ear my ear my ear. Oh god oh god. Oh oh oh.

Etta, what’s wrong?

Oh god! Oh god oh god!

Etta! I’m here. It’s Bryony, here, what—

I’m on fire! My head! Please!

Etta, please, I don’t know—

On fire! Now Etta was on her back. Her arms and legs shook and flailed like she was drowning. Bryony couldn’t get close. My ear! My ear! My ear! My god! My god! My god!

Okay, said Bryony, stay here. Just, stay here.

She opened one of their bags, the closest one, and threw out buttons, paper, pens, a ring, a plastic horse, a child’s shoe, all onto the ground, until she came to a water bottle. She fumbled the cap off, then turned back to Etta, My ear my ear my ear my, and poured the water slowly, deliberately, onto Etta’s right ear, letting it pool under her head. There, she said, there, there, there, pouring and pouring until Etta’s breathing became regular and she stopped moving and yelling and just stared up, straight up.

He’s dead, you know, said Etta.

Shhh, said Bryony.

He’s dead.

Listen, I’ll tell you a story.

I can barely hear you.

I’ll speak clearly.

Okay, okay.

And then Bryony took a breath, and then she told a story:

Okay. Once upon a time there was a family. In suburban Ontario, where so many families were, or, are, I guess, but this family was special, maybe just because it’s the one we’re going to talk about, but, well, that’s something. There was a mother and a father and a son and then, just a couple years later, a daughter too. And the son would spend evenings, before bedtime, out in the yard with his mother and the telescope, and the mother would point the telescope at just the right place, somehow she knew, just the right space, and tell her son to look and he would look, closing one eye and pressing the other one up to the lens, seeing things so far away he could only understand if he thought in numbers and not in thoughts. So the mother pointed and the son looked and the daughter watched them through the window, night after night.

And I watched them and wanted to be with them and wanted to know what he was seeing, night after night, until one day when everyone was doing something else, distracted enough that I was able to wander unnoticed to the backyard and pull up a green plastic lawn chair and climb up onto it and stare into the eyepiece of the telescope. All I could see was a vast blur of blue. Oh, I thought. The Sea. Of course.

Two years later the mother died, long and slow and dripping, her body slowly eating itself in the way the bodies sometimes, often, do. And we just watched, because that was all we could do. We were not doctors and the doctors themselves couldn’t do anything. They sat beside us in hospital rooms and we all watched together.

A couple of weeks after she died I asked my brother to show me how to use the telescope, to point it for me, but he wouldn’t. He was nice about it. Just said, No, Bryony, I can’t, even though I still saw him looking through it, late at night.

The father was good and kind and raised his kids well despite
being alone and everyone grew up together relatively happily, the son thinking the constellation-straight thoughts of numbers, the daughter thinking the wet-heavy thoughts of the sea.

When he was eighteen the brother moved away to go to university. Engineering in the East. I missed him like crazy. I was still in school, still young and at home. His absence throbbed for the first few weeks like starving, then less, then less, then life pushed on and I continued as an only child to an only parent.

He didn’t come home at Christmas, so I wrote him a card. Do people really become astronauts, still? I asked him, inside. Isn’t that era kind of over?

His reply came three weeks later, at the end of the holidays. Yes, it said. People still do.

Back at school that January, I was talking to an older girl between Career-and-Life Management and Sports. She was barely a friend, Bette Robbins with the fuzzy blond hair. I told her that Christmas had been all right, but not great because my brother hadn’t come home.

Of course not, she said. They wouldn’t just let him out.

Of course they would. Reuben’s sister came home from the University of Alberta.

They wouldn’t let him, Bryony, because your brother’s not in university, he’s in jail.

No, he’s at university.

Jail.

University.

Jail.

T
he girl waited a week and then asked her father. And her father
said, I’m sorry, Bryony, I’m sorry. . . . And then he said, They have classes there, for them. He can take classes in there. Engineering. And he said, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m, I should, I should have—

And the girl said, No, Dad, it’s okay. No, no.

And that’s all they ever said about it. Not why. Not for how long.

S
o I waited and waited and waited and eventually my father died too and all was quiet, nothing but quiet from the East, and eventually I was an adult and got an adult job and met you, walking east, to the water, and you said, I have a sister, and, You can come too. I can’t, thought the woman, even though she had a far-away sibling too, so far away, I just can’t, she thought, until one night she looked up at the sky and the stars she still didn’t know the names of, one night, not long ago, not long at all, and realized, yes. Yes I can. Of course I can. Of course I have to. I will. It wasn’t a big discovery. It was terribly, wonderfully, small. And, and here I am, Etta. And here we are.

E
tta was asleep. Bryony pulled her coat back up over her, then lay down beside her. She stared up through the birch leaves, counting the stars and stars and stars until, finally, she fell asleep too.

When she woke the next morning, late, after the sun was already full, Etta was up, sat on the long body of a fallen tree. She had her hands over her face and was crying into them.

Hello, said Bryony. Good morning.

Etta didn’t look up, just kept weeping.

Is it your ear? asked Bryony. Is it still bad?

It’s my fault, said Etta. She spoke through her hands, through her
sobs, in wet, shallow breaths. He was following me.

Who was?

Owen, said Etta. The skin around her ear was red and white in splotches; she kept scratching at it.

Are you sure, Etta? said Bryony. Are you sure it was
you
?

I am sure, said Etta. She was heaving a little, shaking, from the exertion of the crying, her skin all transparent brown-blue in the daylight. She looked, for the first time, as old as she was.

Absolutely? said Bryony.

Absolutely, said Etta.

Okay, said Bryony. But, we still have to eat. She opened one of her bags and took out a packet of crackers and the apricots. Here, she said, as she handed them one at a time, one cracker, one apricot, one cracker, one apricot, to Etta. Here, here, here, here, here. Then she took the second water bottle, the one she hadn’t emptied last night, unscrewed the cap, and passed it to Etta. Here. Etta drank and drank.

Now, said Bryony, we have to walk.

Without the others? said Etta.

Without the others.

They walked west, backtracking. Bryony led, and Etta followed a few steps behind. They made it to Grand Falls Hospital And Care Home a few hours before sunset.

Bryony sat Etta down in one of the lobby chairs and approached the welcome desk.

Hello, said the reception nurse. He was enormous, maybe seven feet tall. Dark skin and hair. Can I help you?

She’s lost herself, said Bryony.

The nurse nodded. Are you next-of-kin? he said.

No, said Bryony. I’m sorry.

The nurse slid a form across the desk toward her, leaving his hand on it longer than he needed to. A comfort.

I really am sorry, said Bryony. I really, really am.

I know, said the nurse.

Those are her things, said Bryony, to be kept with her. She motioned toward the little pile at Etta’s feet. A worn bag, a coat, and

A gun? said the nurse.

No bullets, and rusted through inside and out. Just a toy.

Okay, said the nurse, that’s fine. I’ll be sure it all stays with her.

Once all the forms were filled in, they walked with Etta to a small room in the middle of a hall of similar rooms. Etta sat down on the bed. Bryony sat beside her. The nurse stood back, just inside the door. I’m going on to St. John’s now, Etta, said Bryony.

To the jail, said Etta.

Yes, said Bryony.

Okay, said Etta.

I’ll come back here afterward, on my way home, said Bryony. She looked at Etta, then at the nurse. They both nodded.

Good luck with your brother, said Etta. I’m sure he is sorry. I’m sure he is.

Thank you, said Bryony.

Goodbye, said Etta.

Goodbye, said Bryony.

A
fter Bryony left, the nurse walked Etta back halfway down the hall to a door that was a slightly darker green than all the others. The showers and toilets, he said. Let’s get you proper clean. Are you okay to undress yourself? Deal with the water?

I’ll be fine, said Etta.

The taps are all safety, he continued, you can’t get burned. And the towels are folded in a pile in the cupboard by the sinks.

I’ll be fine, said Etta.

Good, good. I know it. Just making sure. I’ll wait out here till you’re done. I’ll walk you back to your room after.

I think I can—

Of course, I know. I just like the company.

As she pushed open the door into the washroom, Etta remembered, turned back to the nurse. Do you know if Gérald is here too? If he’s okay?

He’s fine. He’s gone home.

You’re sure? The boy with the accent? The torn-up trousers?

I’m sure.

Okay. Be kind to him. He seems hard and mean but really he’s just scared, he’s really scared.

Okay. I will, we will. And, for now, I’ll wait here. Right here.

Okay, right here.

T
hat night Etta slept and slept. Her legs and her feet and her hips all so tired, all at once. She slept through midnight, when the nurse came to check on her, through morning, when another nurse, Sheila, with five grown daughters of her own, came by with tea and eggs and juice and toast, leaving them on the table by the bed, through afternoon, when Sheila looked in again with more tea, through to night again. It was dark when Otto woke. He stretched his legs and toes under the sheets. There was just a bit of light in a thin strip from under the door and a bit of light in pale tones from through the window’s curtains. He looked around the room until her eyes adapted, then got up and stretched his legs and toes again, feeling
strong, alive. He made his way to the door and out into the hall to find the bathroom. Three doors down, dark green door. Although it was fully lit, there was no one else in the hallway. All quiet.

In the bright light of the single bathroom stall, Otto took stock. He was wearing a half-fabric-half-paper gown, in the same light green as the door to his room, the same light green as the regiment’s trucks. So they know who I am, thought Otto. There was a bandage on his ear. He touched it lightly, still painful. He ran a hand through his hair and came away with a few loose strands, bright white.

When he went to use the toilet, Otto found he was wearing a diaper. He took it off and put it in the bin by the cistern, emptied his bowels and bladder, flushed, washed his hands, and headed back to his room.