Tides of Honour (21 page)

Danny stared, disoriented, like a wave had just broken over his head. He wanted to look away. Worse, he wanted to run away. He couldn't stand the hurt in his father's eyes. The hurt he figured he'd put there. He'd been so wrong. So quick to hide behind that thick wall of pride they both had built. He dared himself to be as strong and as brave as his father in that moment.

“You asked me that day if I was glad to be back. Truth is, I'm more glad to be home than you could ever know,” he admitted softly. “I haven't spoken to anyone about what happened out there. I just couldn't. But it . . . it still hurts, Dad.”

“Your leg?”

Danny shook his head, distracted. He wished he had a cigarette. Something to do with his hands. He shoved them in his pockets instead.

“Not just that,” Danny said. He inhaled, then let his frozen breath out in a long stream. “Everything. Everything hurts. In my head and in my leg. Do you know, I still feel my foot sometimes? I don't even know where it is, and I feel it. Isn't that just the peachiest?” He took another deep breath and the words came faster, like
water shoving through stones, rushing to freedom. “I thought of you sometimes, when I was out there. At night it got so dark, so cold, I shook for hours. And when the night was clear the sky sparkled with a million stars. I remembered sitting with you when I was little. Do you remember that? And you'd point out the stars and constellations. I remembered your voice and your lessons. And . . .” Danny looked away and a tear spilled down his cheek. His father didn't move. “And I missed you so bad. I wanted to come home and hide from it all. I wanted you to tell me it was all going to be okay.”

Danny looked at the ground, staring at the moving reflections of clouds in the glass shards. “When I lost my leg, I figured somehow I'd let you down. Like when I got home, I wouldn't be the kind of man I used to be. The kind you needed me to be. I thought maybe I shouldn't even come home. I didn't want to be some circus show freak.”

A wagon shuddered past, its driver paying them no attention. Danny heard his brothers arguing on the other side of the dock. But Daniel Sr. said nothing.

“You know, it's funny,” Danny went on, surprising himself. “The whole time I was out there, I kept seeing my buddies get blown up, and I thought I was safe from it all. It never occurred it could happen to me. I had a life here on the shore. I was needed here.” He shrugged. “Turns out I wasn't safe. Truth is, Dad, when it happens, when God decides you ain't all that special, it really hurts.”

Daniel Sr. shuffled his feet, looked out to sea. A bird floated by, way out on the horizon. So peaceful.

“I prayed to God,” Daniel Sr. said after a moment. “I asked him to—” His voice broke and he cleared his throat. “I asked God to send you home, Danny. I was hearing about what was
happening over there, seeing stories in the paper, and I told him I didn't care how you got here. I just wanted you here.” He hesitated, and when he spoke again, it was barely louder than the water rustling against the shore. “Sometimes I think maybe that's why you lost your leg. God taught me a lesson about asking for too much, but he did let me see you again. If that's why this happened to you, well, I'm sorry. Maybe it was selfish of me, wanting you back so bad. But Danny, I didn't think I could bear to watch your mother lay flowers on an empty grave. I just couldn't.”

Their eyes locked. Blue on blue, hurt upon hurt. Neither mentioned Johnny, because they didn't need to. His ghost was right there, watching, listening.

“I'm glad to be home, Dad.”

Daniel Sr. smiled and nodded, though the expression in his eyes was sad. Danny knew what he was thinking. Home wasn't what it was supposed to be. Home had changed, come apart in big gaping wounds.

The older man stared at the ground. After a minute he looked up, his expression strained. “God has surprises for us all, Danny. I suppose that's what I should say here. I should tell you that it's meant to be, that there's a reason for all you went through, that there's a plan there somewhere. But I can't say that and still be true to myself. I don't understand what happened to you and those boys out there, and I don't understand what happened here. I don't understand why God would turn away from you all like that. I have been a devout Baptist these many years, preached the Word of God and never questioned how he gives colours and songs to the birds. How the water never stops. How spring always follows winter. But I don't understand any of this. How so many good men were sent to waste their lives and their
bodies for no good thing, how the people of Halifax have been blown apart. It has made me question every one of my beliefs, son, and that's the truth of it.”

“Yeah,” Danny said, giving a humourless snort. “Mine too.”

Daniel Sr. took a few steps away, toward the port, and Danny recognized the walk: the directionless pacing of his father deep in thought. He didn't dare say anything. Because if he did, if Danny said how he felt about God and all this devastation, his father might never forgive him.

Danny was pretty sure he knew the truth about God, and he wondered if his father knew it as well but chose to ignore it. There was no God. No God could allow what Danny had survived. Or if there was a God, the Devil had taken a hold of those desolate fields of Europe while God took a nap. The Devil had followed Danny here to Halifax and slaughtered women and children, left thousands homeless and scarred. The Devil had enjoyed himself thoroughly.

Danny pressed his peg leg deeper into the ground, grinding the end of it into the glass.
Forget the past. All of it,
he ordered himself as a piece shattered under the weight.
Leave it buried. Leave it be. I lived. I lived, goddamn it. The bastard aimed to kill me, but he missed. I shot him first. The explosion should've killed me, but it took Johnny instead. And Audrey too, maybe. That's the way it is. Leave it be. Look ahead, not back.

His father turned back, jarred out of his reverie by the sound made by the peg. Then Daniel Sr. did something that he'd never done before. He asked Danny a question. Not a question like
Will it rain? Will we have haddock for supper?
A real question.

“Have you thought about it, Danny? Have you wondered why God would do that to you? To all those boys?”

Danny stopped hitting the ground and looked at his father. “Have I thought about it? Yeah, I did. I've had a lot of time to
think, and I wondered about a lot of things. But the only answer I could ever figure out was that it don't matter. Nothing matters. It only happens.”

His father stared at him for a few breaths, looking shocked. Then he swallowed, regained his composure, and nodded. The air around them eased. “I am so proud of the man you are, son.” His lips trembled, then pulled tight. He glanced at the younger boys, sitting on the pavement and trying to comfort each other. “I reckon we should be going now.”

Danny walked to his brothers and gave Lionel a hug. “Good to see you boys. I'll see you soon, I'm sure. You help out all you can at home, now. You and Thomas, you're the oldest. Hey, Thomas. Come on over here. I'm sorry I snapped at you. Things are just . . . kind of difficult for me these days.” Thomas hugged Danny for as long as he could, then turned away, hiding tears.

“Keep well,” Daniel Sr. said, shaking Danny's hand.

“Please bring my love to Mother and the others. I would write, but—” Danny gestured toward the city. “I don't think there's much of a post office anymore.”

Thomas and Lionel stood beside their father, looking miserable. Lionel wiped his nose with his sleeve and looked out to the sea, away from Danny.

“I shall pray for Audrey every day, son. I shall pray you find her.”

“Thank you, sir.”

Daniel Sr.'s eyes studied his oldest son, as if trying to see more, remember more, know more. “And I shall pray you find forgiveness for yourself. Blame and guilt do nothing to heal a man's soul. Make yourself into the man Audrey would be able to forgive. Free yourself, Danny.”

Then he turned away, climbed into the wagon seat with his two younger sons and headed slowly down the snow-covered
street. Danny watched them go, fighting the urge to chase after the rattling wagon.
Wait for me! I'm coming!
Johnny's bare foot poked out from under his shroud. The wagon hit a bump, and the foot waggled back and forth, as if it were waving.

“Yeah,” Danny said with a wry smile that hurt so, so bad. “Goodbye, Johnny. You take care now.”

THIRTY
-
ONE

January 1918

Soldiers and sailors began to
arrive, building temporary shelters as quickly as possible so people could get out of the lethal cold. Day by day the wounded began walking again, often with patched faces and bodies, trying to pull together what they could of their lives.

Danny didn't know if his father was right, about earning forgiveness and all, but he did make a decision after their talk that day. Everything he'd been doing before was over, he decided, including the drinking. He'd made a mess of his life, just like this city was a mess. This was his chance to clean up both. He got involved in just about every aspect of the physical recovery of Halifax. It had started with rescue and cleanup, then followed with rebuilding. He joined the work crews, hammering and sawing through frozen January days, erecting walls to protect some eight thousand homeless people.

When he wasn't building, he was stopping by the hospitals, checking name lists, always looking for Audrey. He had noticed Pierre Antoine's name listed under “Known Living,” but it was a couple of days before he could work up the nerve to go see the man. Found it hard to admit that he'd chased his wife into that night and into the house of a better man.

Once in a while he paused at the beds of people who had lost limbs in the blast. He tried to reach them, to tell them life goes on, even on one leg. But it was hard to convince them of something he only partially believed.

He caught a job for sixty cents an hour with Thomson & Theakston, the big contractor and construction company around town, building new homes and the new orphanage, which, by necessity, would be larger than the original. Dozens of children had lost parents, siblings, aunts, and uncles and had nowhere else to go. The new building was still on Barrington Street but had relocated farther down, to where the Halifax Yacht Club had been.

Pierre Antoine appeared at the job site one day, his long black coat spotless, his narrow eyes just as dark and cold. Nearly shaking with restrained hatred, Danny watched the man as he spoke with the foreman, slapping his leather gloves against one palm, nodding emphatically, then shaking his head in turn. The hammer in Danny's hand seemed the perfect weapon, but he held himself in check. The stuffed peacock might be his only link to learning anything of Audrey's fate. He waited behind Antoine until the meeting came to an end, then he cleared his throat.

“Wondered if I might have a moment of your time, sir,” Danny said.

Antoine turned in a huff, clearly annoyed. He didn't appear to recognize Danny.

Danny pulled off his cap and held it in his hands, giving the man a quick, obligatory smile. January immediately set in, biting at the newly revealed flesh of Danny's brow.

“Danny Baker, sir. We met when my wife—”

“Audrey!” Antoine's reaction was swift, as if he'd been slapped. He dropped his chin and shook his head slowly.

Danny's heart sank.
I will not cry.

“I am sorry, Monsieur Baker.” The dark eyes welled with
sympathy, and for a moment Danny forgave the man for most likely being the last person Audrey had ever seen.

“You—” He cleared his throat, determined to know. “You were with her?”

“She arrived at my house the night before, but I left the city to go to Boston early in the morning. On the train, you see. I had a meeting there. But my family . . .” The men stared at each other's chests, unwilling to see the pain in their eyes. “I'm sorry. Everyone in the house was killed.”

Yes, he'd seen the man's family, slaughtered and stiff. He'd seen the damage done to the house. But he hadn't seen Audrey there. Could she have gotten out? But why? What could have prompted her to get out of the house before nine o'clock in the morning?

“I didn't see her name . . .”

One black eyebrow rose and fell, admitting fault. “I apologize. I have not had time to do so. I will speak with my secretary about that.”

Danny went back to work, staring at the nails in the boards, stopping only when tears obscured his vision.
I am sorry, Monsieur Arnold. I'm sorry Fred's not with me. Truly I am. I'm so sorry he isn't here. I'm so sorry, Mrs. Mitchell. I'm so sorry. I couldn't save him. I couldn't—

He'd handed those boxes to his friends' parents, given them what little was left of their loved ones so they could say goodbye. Letters from home. A Bible. Bits of nothing.

Antoine hadn't handed him anything.

How could Danny ever say goodbye to Audrey?
I'm so sorry, Audrey. I couldn't save you. I can't save myself . . .

All he could do was work. He put everything he had into those nails.

The city had put together a relief committee, and they supplied all the furniture for the orphanage as well as for other places. The building was put together quickly, and children began moving in. Three of the orphans were well-known to Danny: the twins Eugene and Harry and their baby brother, Norman. Danny tried to visit the little boys as often as he could and found the routine suited him well. He enjoyed their innocence, no matter how scarred it was.

It was during one of those visits that Danny heard a familiar voice. “Well, I'll be. If it ain't Danny Baker himself.”

Danny swung around and ended up face to face with Mick. Or rather, face to cap, since Mick was a foot shorter than Danny. Mick didn't seem to have changed much since the war, other than a brand new line of stitches across one cheek which disappeared beneath a black eye patch. How ironic. To survive so much, then end up getting torn apart on your own home soil.

“Mick! Jeez, I never thought I'd see your ugly mug again!”

“I've been back about a month,” Mick told him. “You know a newsman couldn't miss a story like this. I got here just in time for the fun.” Both men smiled grimly. “You're looking good, Danny my boy.”

“So are you. Hey, am I glad to see you.”

Mick gave him a familiar, toothy grin, and the new scar lifted with it. “I'm glad to see you too,” he said, then winked his remaining eye.

“Suits you, that patch,” Danny said. “Makes you look more like the pirate you are.”

Mick threw back his head and laughed, though not with quite as much energy as Danny'd seen him do before. “Yep. And now I'm here to uncover buried treasure, I guess.”

“You're working?” Danny asked. He spotted the paper and pencil in Mick's hand. “What are you writing about?”

“Oh, this whole thing has made national—even international—headlines, you know. This is a great opportunity for someone in the middle of everything to get himself known. I'm writing all about this, then sending it around the world.”

“Jeez. Good luck with that, Mick.”

“Yeah. We'll see.”

They stared at each other for a moment. As usual, it was Mick who spoke first. His voice, though, was uncharacteristically soft.

“Not sure if I'd rather be here or there, you know?”

Danny nodded. He closed his eyes for a moment, then opened them and really looked at Mick. “At least there's something we can do to help here, instead of just waiting for the next bullet.”

“Is that what you're doing?” Mick asked.

“Yeah. Building. You know.”

Mick nodded toward the twins. “You know those boys?”

Danny gave the boys a pat on their slender shoulders, then led Mick toward the door, out of their hearing. “A bit,” he said. “I found them in their basement right afterwards.”

“They got a story?”

Danny snorted. “Yeah. Four-year-old twins with a baby brother, three dead sisters, and a dead mother. The end.”

Mick shrugged. “Can't blame a guy for trying. Hey, want a smoke?”

“I don't have any.” Danny grinned. “That was the funniest thing. When the explosion happened, everything blew out of my pockets. My brother lost just one boot. Just one boot, his hat, and his coat. Imagine that? What kind of explosion does that?”

Mick was nodding. “Tore a lot of people's clothes off. I've seen far too many birthday suits lately.” He chuckled, then reached into his coat pocket. “Well, you may not, but I still have cigarettes. You can bum one off me. Nothing new about that.”

They stepped outside, and Mick handed Danny a little white
cylinder that fit like an old friend between Danny's lips. He leaned forward, and Mick lit the end of it behind his cupped hand as Danny inhaled, long and slow. He closed his eyes, enjoying the sensation as the smoke curled through his body. Danny had always thought the best part of smoking was how the moment seemed to slow as he breathed in. He used that time to ponder what he was about to say. The action calmed him, settled his thoughts. Not for Mick, though. Mick was a talker. Danny knew that well. He enjoyed the differences between him and Mick.

“Quite a thing, this,” Mick said, giving him an uncertain smile. “I don't even remember what happened, you know? Started off standing outside the
Chronicle
office, ended up in some woman's garden a block away. Wish I'd been awake for that. Now that'd be a great story.” He puffed on his cigarette as if it were a pipe. “They've found over a thousand people dead, you know. All dead in under a second. Think of that. I bet more Nova Scotians died that one day than in the whole damn war.”

“What are you doing here, Mick? Why aren't you up front?”

Mick lifted one sardonic eyebrow. “Came home for leave.”

Danny nodded but waited. Mick got a look in his eye when he wanted to say something. He had that look now.

“I ain't going back,” Mick announced.

“But—”

“Nope, I ain't. I had thought about that for a while, you know, considered making a break for it. And there were all those worries about getting caught and all that. But this—” Mick spread his hands apart, indicating the disaster. “This makes everything so much easier.” He jabbed his thumb toward the eye patch. “They're not going to want me back now.” He flicked off the spent ashes on the end of his cigarette. “Trust me, Danny. This explosion'll be the best thing to happen to me and to a lot of other people too.”

Danny thought that over. “Huh. Well, I can't really agree with that.”

“Well, no. Of course not. Not the way you're thinking, anyway. But what about the construction boys? All the building right now is being done for free, right? After everyone's got their emergency homes built, they're going to want real houses, right? Not just tarpaper, but brick and mortar. And the companies that get those contracts are going to go through the roof. Imagine window companies! Just you watch. Plenty of people are going to do well as a result of this tragedy.”

Danny felt a little sick at the thought, but he didn't say anything. Mick took a long drag on his cigarette, then looked down at the snow by his feet and blew out the smoke.

“You know me, Danny. I'm not a bad guy. But I see opportunity. And with opportunity comes so many things—some good, some real, real bad. The next few years are going to be interesting ones.” He grinned again and his scar stretched tight across one cheek. “Just you watch, Danny. Stick with me, huh? We'll take an interesting ride, I'm sure.”

Danny shook his head, smiling. “You know, I told my little brothers about you,” he said. “I told them you never really took the war too seriously. And we all thought you were a loon, but you kept us going when we'd had more than enough of it all. I told them about that Christmas Eve. Do you remember when you—”

“Yeah, yeah,” Mick said.

“Well, I thought about you, you know. After I was back here. You were really the only one I thought about. You and Tommy Joyce. I figured the rest of them were probably blown to bits along the way, but you'd pull through. At least I hoped you would.” He lifted an eyebrow. “But I never thought I'd see you again, Mick.”

“Ah, Danny. There's too much living to be done, I figure, for them to get rid of me that easy. Too many stories to be told
that wouldn't see the light of day if I wasn't here to write 'em.” He smiled carefully. “And yeah, Tommy was alive when I left. He wasn't . . . the same, but he was alive.”

“Are you going to write about the front?”

“Already started on that. It's gonna take a whole book to cover it all. So many things to write about. Maybe now you're here we can write them down together, huh?”

“Oh, I don't know. I'm not good at thinking about that.”

“No?”

“Can't remember much, really,” Danny said. “And when I do, I'd rather not.”

“Yeah, I guess that's about right. Maybe it's just me. I see it all like a great big bunch of stories that need to be told. Kind of like this one, only longer.”

“I wish you luck, Mick.”

“Luck ain't got nothing to do with success, Danny. It's imagination and stubbornness that'll get you there. Just never give up. You remember that if you remember nothing else.”