Flight of the Tiger Moth (5 page)

Jack picked up the letter and gently ironed it with his hands, smoothing the wrinkles. He read it again and munched on a ­cookie.

Ivy began to polish the kitchen table with a damp crocheted cloth, even though there wasn’t a speck on ­it.

“Sandy will show up, Mom. He’s a pretty smart guy.”

“You should phone Harold if you aren’t going in to work, Jack.”

“I will.” He placed the letter on the small cherry wood table under the oak wall ­phone.

“Take that dog down to the store. Maybe your dad can find him a good home.”

“Why can’t we keep him? His mother’s been shot. I don’t know why they shot the mother. Buddy’s an orphan.”

She shook her head. “An untrained pup is a load of work.”

“I’d train him,” Jack said. He ached to tell her about Buddy, but she turned away from him and lifted her bib apron down off a hook, pulled it over her head and knotted the ties tightly behind her. She moved through her kitchen in a circular path as if it were a prison cell. The doors to the parlour and bedrooms were closed. Ivy’s universe was small and ­controlled.

Jack tried once more. “I’d take care of him, Mom.”

“You’re too busy to take care of a dog and I’ve got enough on my hands.”

“I’d build him a doghouse. He’d live outside.”

“No, Jack. We are not going to let things get out of control around here, not if I can help it.” Her face was flushed, her eyes blazing. She grabbed the watering can and pushed past him out to her ­garden.

Jack followed her out and patted the pup in the carrier. “Sorry, Buddy. I guess our timing was bad.”

He rode down the block to the store. Ivy had him worried. His solid, predictable mother, the one he’d known before the war, had disappeared. He wanted her ­back.

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The Waters General Store was on Railway Avenue,
the main drag of the village, next to the small brick post office and down from the drugstore. The larger and more impressive Cairn General Store and Dry Goods was further down the block beside the Chinese restaurant and the garage with its one gas pump. The ­two-­storey, ­four-­room school and the United Church were up the ­hill.

Cairn’s best feature was its hill. It wasn’t every prairie town boasted a ­hill.

But Jack’s dad said that Cairn’s hill wouldn’t be considered a hill in Alberta. Bill had been to the Rocky Mountains twice. He’d taken Ivy on their honeymoon. “Cairn’s hill is a glorified mound, an oversized anthill,” he’d ­said.

Jack didn’t care. He liked their hill. The village had a few birch and poplar trees and enough of a slope that you could sled down the hill in the winter, or catch a lift behind ­horse-­drawn carts by gliding on your ­rubber-­soled boots on the ice. Parallel to Railway Avenue ran the Canadian Pacific Railway tracks and on the other side of the tracks stood the tall green grain elevator inscribed with the Ogilvie sign and the ­brick-­red clapboard cpr station with its new ­roof.

Jack stroked the puppy as he rode slowly down the street, going back once more in his mind to happier times, trying not to think about Sandy dead or a prisoner of ­war.

Was he dead? Jack shuddered. He pulled away from that thought faster than a lone deer from a pursuing ­coyote.

Jack patted the pup’s head so hard Buddy ­woofed.

Chapter ­7

The bachelor twins, Arnie and Melvin Hobbs,
sat in their regular places on two wooden captain’s chairs on the front porch of the store. They wore their usual old suit trousers with wide-cuffed legs, held up by suspenders and a belt. Their work boots looked dusty and ­worn.

Arnie wore a crumpled straw hat and sported a ragged grey beard on his weathered face. “Well, if it isn’t Jackie Waters,” he said. “What have you got there?”

“Didn’t know you had a dog,” Melvin chimed in. “Where’d you get it?” He blew his nose on a blue cowboy hankie and lifted the stained grey fedora perched on his bald head and smoothed his pink ­skull.

“I found Buddy in the ditch on the road to the base. His mother had been shot in the head and there was a sack with three dead puppies, and this little fellow.”

Arnie nodded. “We know who in town has black dogs.”

“Thought I heard gunfire earlier this morning,” said Melvin. “Those Boyles use their guns too dang much.”

“Don’t care if I never see a gun again,” Arnie said. “The Great War chased away any love of guns we ever had, right Mel?”

Mel reached over and patted his brother’s ­arm.

Inside, Jack could see his dad waiting on Mrs. Nelson, Repete’s grandma. He slipped in quietly and took a great swig of store air into his lungs. There was something reassuring about this place. He’d grown up playing blocks on the floor, surrounded by the comforting smells of the pickle barrel, the flour bins and the tall glass jars with the strong, ­molasses-­tasting hoarhound toffee, liquorice twists, sweet and sours and sugar sticks. He liked the cool and musty air, the dark wooden panels, the worn pine floors and the crowded shelves. He moved to the back of the store by the buckets of nails, screws, nuts and ­bolts.

He leaned against the rickety ladder they used to fetch goods from the top shelf, ­waiting.

“Can you deliver these this afternoon?” The old woman peeled a couple of dollar bills off a little stack she had in her leather purse. “Young Pete and his friend Jimmy Boyle have landed jobs working in Moose Jaw on construction. They wanted jobs at the air base, but they didn’t have any luck.”

She stared fiercely at ­Jack.

“That’s too bad,” said Bill ­Waters.

“They barrelled out of here really early this morning in an old truck Jimmy bought for a hundred dollars from a farmer. Took old Boyle’s favourite dog. Not that she’s much use now that she’s lame. Said they wanted to do some gopher hunting. Then they’d head to the city to look for rooms.” Jack waited for the old lady to take a breath, but she went right on. “So many people are moving to Moose Jaw, it’s a wonder anyone’s left in the smaller places.”

“Jack’s got a job at the air base, part time,” Dad said. “Why aren’t you out there, son?” They headed toward the front of the ­store.

“I didn’t make it this morning.” Jack pointed through the screen door to the puppy sitting in the carrier basket outside. “I got waylaid by that little fellow – whimpering in the ditch.”

“Looks like one of the Boyles’ pups,” reflected Mrs. Nelson. “Their old bitch tangled with our collie and threw a bunch of pups a while ago. They usually drown them, seeing as we’ve enough dogs running around. Where’d you find him?”

“I guess he was lost.” Jack didn’t want to tell the whole sad tale to Mrs. Nelson. It wasn’t her ­fault.

“I could bring these groceries over right away,” he said. He walked out onto the ­porch.

“I’ll be home in half an hour,” said Mrs. Nelson as she headed down the steps to the dusty main street, leaning heavily on a cane made of shellacked diamond willow with a rubber foot to stop it from ­sliding.

The brothers nodded as she passed. Arnie was down by the bike, patting the pup. “He’s a solid little fellow. Must be about eight weeks old or so. Hefty, too. Well over five pounds, probably the strongest of the litter. What do you reckon, Mel?”

“He’ll be a big dog. Look at his paws.”

Jack went down the steps and brought the pup up to the porch and stood by the door. He wanted to keep this pup so bad he could hardly ­swallow.

“Mom wants me to find the dog a home.”

“What did she say?” Jack’s dad asked, standing by the screen ­door.

Jack told him. “I’m afraid I really upset her. I didn’t mean to.”

“This isn’t about the dog, Jack. It’s about Sandy and the war and the accidents around here with young fliers.” Bill Waters stood in the shade behind the screen door. “Ivy’s always been a worrier, but now it’s worse.”

He sighed and walked back across the floor of his store. He closed the flour bin, tightened the lid on the sugar, wiped his hands on his canvas apron and sat down in a captain’s chair by the unlit woodstove, his legs stretched out in front of him, his long, pale fingers massaging his rarely lit pipe. “I should probably close up and go home, see how Ivy’s doing. I’ll deliver Mrs. Nelson’s groceries on the way.” His father motioned Jack inside with the ­dog.

Jack stepped back into the store, his eyes blinking from the darkness of the interior. “I really want to keep this dog, Dad.”

“You better phone Harold at the maintenance shop and tell him you’ll be late.”

“I’ll do that in a moment.”

“Now, tell me about the dog.”

Jack told him. “I didn’t have a chance to tell Mom how I saved Buddy’s life. If I hadn’t been going down the road when I did, he’d have died – suffocated or something. I feel responsible for him now.”

“I can understand that.” His dad ­nodded.

“But Mom had Flo’s letter in her hand. She’d been reading it again and making cookies. She said there was no way she’d let me keep a dog. She didn’t trust them. Then she said something about chaos.”

“One thing you don’t know about your mother, Jack. She was bitten by a black dog when she was a little girl growing up in Arcola.”

“But Buddy’s just a baby. We’d train him.”

Bill Waters smiled. “Ivy wouldn’t let Spike in the house and he was my dad’s dog.”

“I always wondered why the dog had to sit in the yard.” Jack remembered Spike whining pitifully, sitting by the ­pump.

“My dad didn’t like leaving him outside either. But it kept the peace.”

Jack perched on the other captain’s chair, holding Buddy on his lap. He wasn’t built like his dad, long and lanky. He was shorter, like his mom. Everyone said he looked like his Uncle Jack, who’d flown with Wop May, a flying legend and a Canadian prairie ­hero.

“The least we can do is get the wee fellow well equipped.” Dad took the pup in one arm and walked behind the counter and over to the section with pet supplies. He chose the smallest collar, a leash and a couple of bowls and brought the dog back to Jack. “Hold him while I make a hole in this collar so it’ll stay on.”

Bill went to his workbench in the back room and came back shortly with a new hole drilled for the buckle in the small leather collar. He wrestled with the pup, finally doing the collar up and attaching the leash. Jack put the puppy down. Buddy promptly squatted and peed on the wooden ­floor.

“You’ll have to train him.”

“I know.”

His dad filled one bowl with water and another with dog food and put them down on the floor. Jack mopped the ­floor.

“Why don’t you tie him to the front stoop?” Bill cut a ­ten-­foot length of ­half-­inch rope and handed it to Jack. “I’ll try talking to your mother. It may take a while. You watch the store. And don’t get your hopes up, Jack.”

“I won’t.” But he knew he would. Buddy was his ­dog.

Jack tied the pup up outside and washed his hands in the back room before he phoned the airfield and told Harold why he hadn’t gotten to work on ­time.

“Why don’t you bring Buddy out to meet the new students?” laughed Harold. “These kids are so young and lost they could use a little cheering up. As usual, I can’t understand a word they’re saying.”

“I have to watch the store for a couple of hours. I’ll be out after lunch.”

“Good.”

Jack was about to hang up when Harold shouted into the phone. “Don’t forget to bring Buddy.”

The puppy yipped and yapped as Jack hung up the receiver. Jack climbed the ladder that slid on a track along the high shelves to put away some tins his father had left out on the counter. Before he could get down, a farmer came into the ­store.

“Where’d you get the dog, Jackie?”

They didn’t need a weekly newspaper in Cairn – they had the Waters store. Jack wondered if people really came to shop or just to discover what was going on in town.

Chapter ­8

Jack reached the guardhouse shortly after one o’clock
and showed the guard his civilian pass with his photo on it and the typed note with his job description. The new Royal Air Force boys were on parade in the square, marching in precise formation in their blue ­uniforms.

“They don’t look any older than you, Jackie,” said the guard. Then he did a double take as Jack rode through the gate. “You smuggling a pup onto the base?”

“Harold wanted me to bring Buddy – to show the guys in the maintenance shop.” Jack told the guard his story. “Can I take him in with me?”

“Don’t know any rule against it.” The guard went into his little house and back to his reading. Jack had been inside one rainy day. The guy must have had a ­two-­foot-­tall stack of comic ­books.

Jack and Wes each had a pile of comics themselves. They saved up to buy them whenever they went into Moose Jaw, then traded back and forth. Some were so ­dog-­eared they hardly held together. Superman was Jack’s favourite, because he flew into Metropolis and rid the city of the bad guys. Jack wasn’t any superman, but he knew he was hooked on ­flying.

Jack suspected he was too old for comics, but some nights, after studying algebra or chemistry, writing an essay or reading Shakespeare, he liked to give his brain a rest. As far as he knew there wasn’t any rule against it, as the gatehouse guard would ­say.