The Other Side of the Bridge (33 page)

Sitting on his bed that night, looking down at his feet, he went over it again and again in his mind. It seemed to him that something huge had happened, that his life had changed forever. In all his days he could not have imagined having such a conversation with a girl. He mustn’t kid himself that it meant anything, though. He knew it was just luck, though luck seemed the wrong word in the circumstances. She wouldn’t have chosen him to confide in if she’d had any choice. It was just that she was in despair and he happened to be there; if she hadn’t been in such a state, the conversation wouldn’t have taken place. In fact, if he hadn’t been feeling pretty sick about things himself, it wouldn’t have taken place, because he’d have fled—he’d have beaten Dieter/Bernhard down the stairs.

But she had thanked him for being nice. That meant something, didn’t it? Not much, maybe, but something.

The following week a German POW was murdered in the woods down by Crow River. Or at least, that was where his body was found. Arthur was there when they found him; he and the men he was with weren’t looking for bodies; they were looking for bears. Five sheep and two calves had been killed in the area in the previous weeks and one farmer, Frank Sadler, had had a visit from a bear while he’d been going about his business in his outhouse.

“Did me a favor, really,” Frank said, telling the story afterward. “I’d been havin’ a bit of a problem in that department, bit of a logjam, you might say, I was startin’ to think it’d take dynamite to shift it, but he scared the whole lot outta me in two seconds flat. But Lona and the kids, they’re all scared to go out there now. Nobody’s regular anymore, an’ it’s makin’ them bad-tempered. Somethin’s gotta be done.”

So half a dozen farmers, Arthur among them, set up a posse and went bear hunting. The truth was Arthur would rather have gone on his own—that way he would only have the bear to worry about and not half a dozen nervous guys waving Lee-Enfields around as well. But they had asked him along, which was good of them, granted that they were his father’s generation; and he hadn’t known how to say no.

Having bears on the brain, when they came across the body they assumed at first that a bear had done the killing. Then they saw that there were no teeth or claw marks. And then they saw the man’s hands were tied behind his back. From the look of him, he’d been beaten to death.

“Anybody know him?” Charlie Rugger asked. They were standing in a circle around the body, six burly farmers with their rifles pointing at the ground. It was early morning and the sun was filtering slant-wise through the maples, dappling the body with light. The man was wearing the prison camp uniform—dark blue jacket with a big red circle on the back—and the sun made gently flickering maple-leaf patterns on the circle as if the man were a Canadian and proud of it.

“Yeah,” Lennie Hogenveld said, squatting down so he could see the side of the man’s face. It was a mess but you could just about make out his features. “He was workin’ for Stan McLean.”

“Any guesses who might want to do it?”

“Sure,” Lennie said. “I could name you two dozen right off the bat. He’s a Kraut, isn’t he?”

“Yeah, but him in particular,” Charlie said.

Lennie shrugged. Every Thursday the
Temiskaming Speaker
carried a list of Northern boys killed, wounded, or missing in action on its front page and every week the list seemed to get longer. In the follow-up to D-day several families had lost all their sons. If the murder was the work of a madman—and from the state of the body it looked as though it were—well, there were plenty of madmen about nowadays, fathers or sons or brothers driven out of their minds with grief and rage.

It turned out that whoever had done it had gone for the man in the night. There were signs of a commotion in Stan McLean’s barn, where he’d been sleeping, straw all over the place. Arthur decided to bring the boys into the house to sleep. It was still warm enough in the barn and they protested, but he wasn’t taking any chances. He also didn’t like the idea of Dieter/Bernhard being all alone out in Otto’s fields during the day but there was nothing he could do about that. Thanks to the driest August for years the barley was ready to harvest, and they had to get it in. At least Otto’s place was occupied now and most of the fields were visible from the house.

He’d hoped that Dieter and Bernhard wouldn’t learn about the incident, but when the guard from the prison camp made one of his visits to check up on them there were other POWs in the truck, and of course the boys were keen to talk to them. Arthur saw by their faces afterward that they’d been told.

He’d hoped Laura wouldn’t hear about it—another death for her to deal with—but that was a vain hope too; Reverend March was one of the first to be called. Arthur saw her a couple of days after the murder. It was two weeks since the Marches had moved in but he hadn’t seen much of her in that time, or at least not close enough to talk to. In the mornings he and Dieter/Bernhard came over at about half past six and though her father was up and sometimes came out to say good morning, and though the tractor must have wakened Laura, she was never around so early. When Arthur came at the end of the day she and her father were usually eating their supper. He’d get the odd glimpse of her as she passed the kitchen window but that was all. At first it was a relief—he was almost as afraid of speaking to her as he had been the first day he saw her. But then he started to think she was avoiding him. Maybe she was ashamed of having broken down in front of him and never wanted to lay eyes on him again. Maybe it was simpler than that; maybe she had realized that he was nothing but a big dumb farmer and not worth the effort of speaking to.

But that morning, two days after the murder of the POW, he was at the farm a little longer than usual. He’d run out of nails (everybody had run out of nails, it seemed every nail in the country had been requisitioned) and it had occurred to him that there might be some in Otto’s shed. Which there were, a whole quart pickling-jar full. When he emerged triumphantly from the shed cradling the jar in the crook of his arm he saw Laura at the kitchen window. She saw him too. She raised her hand in a hesitant wave, then disappeared, and the kitchen door opened and she came out onto the veranda. Arthur made his way across the farmyard to her, his tongue drying in his mouth.

“I saw the shed was open,” she said as he came up, “and I wondered for a minute…you know…who it was. But then I saw it was you.”

She was wearing a short-sleeved dress, gray-blue with a white collar. Her hair was loose and drifting every which way about her shoulders and her feet were bare. Pale, slender, perfectly unblemished feet.

“Oh,” Arthur said. “Yeah. Sorry. It was me. I was lookin’ for somethin’. I shoulda told you I was goin’ in there.”

“I was just being silly,” she said.

She still looked unhappy, he thought, but much better than when he’d seen her last. And beautiful. So beautiful. As if her beauty had been hidden under the dark weight of her grief and now was starting to emerge.

There was a silence. Arthur tried to think what else to say. “Found these,” he said finally, lamely, holding up the jar of nails.

She leaned forward slightly. “Are they nails?”

“Yeah. It’s good, ’cause they’re short. I mean, not the nails are short—they’re all sizes—just you can’t get nails nowhere anymore.
Anywhere
anymore.”

He stopped abruptly. What was he
talking
about? She wouldn’t care about nails, she’d think he was crazy.

But she nodded. “Like everything,” she said. “Shortages.”

“Yeah,” he said gratefully.

He looked away. The tractor disappeared behind a clump of trees and reappeared on the other side. “Well,” Arthur said, but at the same moment she said, “Is he safe out there, do you think? On his own?”

“Should be okay in the daytime,” he said, though he still wasn’t happy about it. “I bring ’em in at night now though.” It sounded as if he was talking about cattle. “Dieter and Bernhard, I mean. They sleep in the house now.”

“Yes,” she said. “Good.” Then she added, “Which is the one who comes here? Is he Dieter? Or Bernhard?”

“I dunno,” Arthur said. “I never worked out who’s who.” He gave her an embarrassed smile and she smiled back.

“They’re nice. Both of them. You can tell.”

He nodded. They listened to the tractor grinding away. A German boy riding it, like in the days before the war.

“Normally it’s real peaceful here,” he said, afraid that she’d think Struan was the kind of place that had madmen and murderers in it in normal times. “We never had a murder before. There’s been fights and stuff, but never a real murder. Not that I know of.”

“I know,” she said. “It’s the war. It’s making people crazy.”

“Yeah.”

Another silence. He looked out over the fields and cleared his throat. “Well, should be gettin’ on.”

She said quickly, “Thank you for the other day. I didn’t thank you properly. I’m sorry I was…upset.”

She flushed, and his heart started to thump. But then there was a movement behind her and the screen door opened and her father came out.

“Good morning, Arthur,” he said. He smiled and rubbed his hands together briskly. “You’re bright and early as usual. You people here put us city dwellers to shame.”

“Mornin’.” Arthur felt himself go hot. What if Reverend March didn’t like him talking to his daughter? He looked friendly enough at the moment, but what if he got the wrong idea? What if he got the
right
idea? Anxiously, he held up the jar of nails as if they were proof of good intentions. “Found these in the shed,” he said.

“Nails,” Reverend March said. “I hope you’re not planning to set up a black market in them, Arthur.” He smiled. Then saw his daughter’s feet and frowned. “Laura, go and put your shoes on.” He spoke gently but you could see he was displeased, as if he thought she wasn’t properly dressed.

Laura said, “It’s just my feet, Daddy,” her tone a little impatient. Maybe they’d had this conversation before.

“Even so,” Reverend March said.

She sighed. “Well,” she said to Arthur. “Bye.”

“Yeah,” Arthur said, shifting his feet. “Bye.” He and Laura’s father were left facing each other with nothing to say. The old man smiled and rubbed his hands together vigorously to show his good will. Arthur smiled back and rattled the nails.

Chopping wood that evening, it came to him that there had been no danger of Reverend March getting the wrong, or the right, idea about his feelings for Laura. The Reverend would have had no fears on that score whatsoever, because the idea was so absurd it would never have entered his head.

It made no difference, the fact that it was absurd. She took over his life anyway. Milking the cows, he thought of her. Repairing the binder. Cutting the corn, threshing the oats, mending the fence. She was with him every minute of the day.

How long did it last, that perfect, golden period when he plainly and simply loved her, with no fear of any kind? Two weeks? Three at most. Three weeks lost in love, floating through the days. Not that he wasn’t working; it was September now, everyone was working. Every farmer in the province was cloud-watching, working with one eye on the sky, wondering if the rain could possibly hold off until they got the crops in. The whole region was up to its neck in oats; everyone who could be spared was helping with the harvest. So Arthur was living in a haze of work and love, and the weeks slipped by.