Way the Crow Flies (57 page)

I
T WAS VERY LATE
when Madeleine’s father came home. She had placed her new brass wings on her dresser for him to see. He came into her room and she woke up when he sat on the side of her bed, but she pretended still to be asleep. He tucked the covers up around her and smoothed her bangs back from her forehead. “My good old buddy,” he whispered.

She sighed “in her sleep.”

He kissed her forehead and crept from the room. She considered calling him back and asking where Claire had been and what she had said when they found her. But she didn’t wish to wreck the moment of being tucked in by Dad when he thought she was sleeping. She would find out tomorrow. She would ask Claire.

Madeleine pours puffed rice into her bowl, tolerating the dry fodder for the sake of the plastic sword and sheath that come with the bomb-shelter–sized bag. Mike spoons sugar onto his Cap’n Crunch as well as his egg.

“There won’t be a tooth left in your head by the time you’re twenty,” says Dad behind his newspaper.

Mike’s eyelashes are crinkled. He has told his parents he singed them “at Scouts” but Madeleine knows better.

“Maman
,” he says,
“j’ai besoin d’une chemise blanche pour ce soir, c’est le banquet de hockey.”

“Oui, Michel, je sais, mange tout, c’est ça le bon p’tit garçon.”

“Maman.” He groans. “I’m not a little kid any more, okay?”

She squeezes his face between her hands.
“T’es toujours mon bébé, toi, mon p’tit soldat,”
she says in a kitchy-koo voice to tease him, and covers his cheeks with kisses. He writhes away but he’s grinning, wiping off the lipstick.

“Dad?” says Madeleine.

“Yeah, sweetie?” He turns a page of his paper.

“Where did you find Claire?”

The newspaper stays put.

Mike says, “They didn’t.”

The newspaper is lowered to the table. Her father gives Mike a look, then says to her, “We’re still looking.” Adding in his reassuring tone—the one that sounds slightly amused—“She probably hid out from the rain somewhere overnight and she’ll turn up all waterlogged and hungry.”

Mike stares at his plate.

Jack gives Mimi a peck on the lips, pats Madeleine on the head and heads for the door. “Have a good day, fellas.”

Mike speaks in French to his mother, so fast that Madeleine can’t follow. Maman replies but less rapidly, so Madeleine is able to ask her, “How come Dad doesn’t want me to worry? How come I would worry?”

Mimi looks at her daughter and reaches for her pack of Cameos on the counter. She says, “I want you to say a little prayer for Claire McCarroll,” and lights a cigarette. “You too Michel.”

“Why?” says Madeleine.

“Don’t ‘why’ me, Madeleine, why is it always ‘why’?” She inhales the cool menthol. “Because it might be difficult to find her. But they will. Now go get dressed.
Attends, Michel, je veux te dire un mot.”

Oddly enough, Madeleine is more reassured by her mother’s testiness than by her father’s gentleness. And yet fear forms in the pit of her stomach, the way it does whenever her mother tells her to say a little prayer for someone. It means they’ve had it.

Madeleine was delighted when Mike told her to walk with him to school. Now she hurries along beside him and Arnold Pinder and Roy Noonan, taking two strides for their every one. Roy said, “Hi,” to her for which he received a swift punch on the arm from Arnold. Mike gave up Arnold for Lent. Maman and Dad thought that was a very mature decision. They have no idea that he “broke his fast” yesterday, and that his eyelashes got burned when Arnold lit a frog on fire with gasoline in a jar.

“Mike?”

He ignores her, going on with what he was saying: “Ricky Froelich’s got one made out of balsa wood, we could easily make our own.”

Roy says, “Yeah, all’s you do is adjust the scale upward and—”

“We could just go to the scrapyard and steal one,” says Arnold.

“Mike,” says Madeleine.

“What?” he says, exasperated.

“Where do you think Claire is?”

“How should I know?”

Arnold Pinder says, “Kidnapped, my dad says—”

“Shut up, Pinder,” says Mike.

Arnold bristles, his fist retracts. Mike indicates his little sister with a glance and Arnold clams up. Mike says, “She’s lost.”

“Oh,” says Arnold, “yeah.”

Roy Noonan says, “Don’t worry, Madeleine.”

“You guys must think I’m retarded,” she says, slowing her pace.

Mike reaches back without looking and grabs her by the wrist.

“You’re walking with me,” he says, dragging her.

“Why?”

“And you wait for me after school too.”

“As if!”

“Maman said.”

At least she has found out what really happened to Claire McCarroll:
kidnapped
. At this very moment, she is sitting in a cobwebby shed somewhere with her hands tied behind her back and a gag around her mouth. If Madeleine were kidnapped she would get away. She would rub the ropes against a rock like the Hardy boys. She would knock the kidnapper out, or jump from a speeding car and roll into the ditch, then hitchhike home. But it’s impossible to imagine Claire doing anything but sitting there politely with her tied-up hands.

Madeleine doesn’t consider anything beyond that. There is nothing beyond that. She does, however, wonder when the ransom note will arrive. Do the kidnappers think Claire is rich because she’s American? Maybe President Kennedy will pay the ransom.

By the time Jack got through to the office of First Secretary Crawford at the British Embassy in Washington, it had begun to rain again. Grey streaked the glass and obscured the view from the phone booth. The McCarrolls’ little girl was still out there somewhere. At best, she had fallen and broken a limb, was frightened and disoriented and unable to make her way back to the PMQs. It was possible.

“Crawford here.”

“Si, McCarroll’s nine-year-old daughter has gone missing.”

A pause, then “Poor bastard.” Simon agreed that Jack ought not to brief McCarroll until and unless his daughter turned up safely. “Call me at the night number the moment you hear anything.” He sighed. “This operation has been plagued by more gremlins….”

“What do you want me to do with the car, Si?”

“Oh right, the bloody car. Keep it.”

“What am I supposed to tell my wife? That I robbed a bank?”

“I’ll have to have someone pick it up, or … Christ. Where is it now?”

“I moved it to Exeter. I’ll have to move it again at some point or it’ll be towed for scrap.”

“Let it be. Finders keepers.”

“CIA’s budget, I hope.”

“I’m going to miss you, sunshine.”

Jack was still smiling when he left the phone booth, but his smile faded when he saw an OPP cruiser pull up to Number 4 Hangar. McCarroll came out and got in the car. Jack was wearing his government-issue rain poncho and rubber overshoes. He made his way quickly to the hangar to join one of the search parties. All male personnel, including kitchen staff, were out looking.

Miss Lang is taking Mr. March’s place while he talks to the police. They are interviewing the staff, trying to find clues. He has been gone for half an hour already. There was a knock at the classroom door and Mr. March went to open it, singing, “‘Who’s that knocking at my door?’” But he stopped when he saw the police officer standing there, and said, “Just let me get my glasses.” He returned to collect them from his desk, took his hanky from his pocket and cleaned the lenses. It was the first time Madeleine had ever seen him use his hanky for anything but his wiener.

Miss Lang asks what the class would like to do and the choice is unanimous: art. Never before has the grade four class had art on a Thursday afternoon; one good thing has come of Claire McCarroll getting lost. Even Grace puts up her hand and votes for art, although it’s difficult to see how she will be able to hold a crayon with her
hands bandaged. They are bound in thick white gauze that has frayed and turned grey with the passage of the day. Mr. March seemed not to notice, but Miss Lang asks if Grace has hurt herself. Grace manages to explain that her father has had enough of her with her fingers always in her mouth. He gave her a choice: “I’ll break them or bandage them.”

The class is quiet. Miss Lang is allowing them to draw anything they like as long as it’s on an Easter theme. They are permitted to use any kind of medium—pastels, water colours, anything but fingerpaints. Madeleine has chosen to work with pencil crayons, drawing a day in the life of the Dynamic Duo. In the cocoon of the classroom, with its school smells, the comforting fug of orange peels, pencil shavings, damp wool and chalk, with the soothing rain against the windows, Miss Lang puts on an LP she brought from home. The Mantovani Strings release their magic in a slow waterfall of sound,
The-ere’s … a sum-mer place…
.

Madeleine bends to her drawing, her tongue toying with a molar that has come loose, concentrating on the Boy Wonder disguised as a baby in a rocket-powered pram in pursuit of the Joker. The afternoon glows grey outside although it is not yet two-thirty. The patient rain embroiders the puddles that have formed in the shallow depressions at either end of the teeter-totters, beneath each swing and at the foot of the slide. Beyond the baseball diamond, the bungalows and duplexes of the PMQs are hunkered down but cheerful in their rainbow colours, all the brighter against the pewter sky.

Madeleine directs her gaze across Algonquin Drive, to the farmer’s field—the farmer with the fabled shotgun. There is activity over there. Cars are pulling up and parking on the shoulder of the road—ordinary ones and several black-and-white OPP cruisers.

She recalls the poor dog trapped in the stormpipe. Did it get out? Did it drown? She feels a terrible sorrow coming on, and consoles herself with the prospect of asking her father what happened to the dog. He’ll know. She returns her eyes to her drawing and remembers that they were supposed to do art on an Easter theme. She draws a speech bubble for Robin and in it she prints, “Holy Thursday, Batman!”

She lifts her eyes from her drawing with satisfaction and studies the back of Grace Novotny’s head and shoulders. Grace’s profile is
partially visible, contorted as she is over her desk in the manner common to all when colouring. She is licking her chapped lips, breathing through her mouth because her nose is plugged. Grace doesn’t usually do anything without her eyes wandering a great deal, but today she is concentrating extra hard, perhaps because of the bandages on her hands. Madeleine can see the yellow pencil crayon sticking up from Grace’s filthy fist. What can she be drawing?

Madeleine looks out the window again and sees cars parked on both sides of the road now. In the field, a line of men in rain ponchos comes into view, walking slowly, shoulder to shoulder, across the field. They are looking for something very small, thinks Madeleine. And valuable. A watch, or a diamond.

Beside the window, Claire’s desk sits empty. It’s as though she were away sick with the flu. She will be back tomorrow.

Madeleine raises her hand. “Miss Lang, may I please sharpen my pencil?”

“Yes, Madeleine, you may.”

On her way back from the pencil sharpener, Madeleine slows when she gets to Grace’s desk and gazes in wonder on Grace’s picture. A storm of yellow butterflies.

There are so many, so many it’s dizzying, each one perfectly drawn and coloured in, each wing intricately outlined, no two the same, like snowflakes. It’s so good, you could probably make wallpaper out of it.

Miss Lang lifts the needle from the record and it’s as if the whole class has been in the court of Sleeping Beauty. Everyone looks up groggily, tousled and calm. They hand in their work, and it turns out there was some very good art done that day.

“They were looking for Claire,” says Colleen. “I seen them too.”

“That’s a dumb place to look,” says Madeleine. “Right out in the open? In a field?” They are walking up St. Lawrence Avenue. While they never leave the schoolyard together, they have taken to drifting toward one another at some point if Madeleine is on her own.

“No it isn’t,” says Colleen.

The world is suffused with rain glow, the air soft and scented, all so vivid and promising; as though the three o’clock bell had
heralded a widening of the world, a release into the future, unknown and yet contained within a frame, like a movie screen. Madeleine savours a keen anticipation. Something is going to happen. Something wonderful.

She says, “It is so, Colleen, it’s dumb, because if Claire was in a field in broad daylight they’d see her right away, unless she was hiding, and who would hide in a field, and besides she’s lost and you can’t get lost in a field right across from the school.” Madeleine takes a breath and adds, “Stunned one.” She steps back, hoping for a reckoning. But Colleen neglects to take the bait.

Madeleine glances over her shoulder to see Mike and his friends following at a secure distance, like bodyguards. She is about to point them out but Colleen has said something. “What’d you say?”

“That’s because they don’t expect to find her alive,” Colleen repeats.

It takes Madeleine a moment, and then it’s as though she had stumbled down an unexpected step. And the world is a different colour. Metallic now, no longer lambent. The warm feeling of being in a movie is gone. Now she is not in anything. Except the rain. And it has no borders that mean anything at all.

That night, she requests
Winnie the Pooh
. There is no shame in returning to old favourites. And her father says one is never too old to appreciate great literature. She opts not to do the voices, requesting that he read it all. She contemplates the stick in the water rushing beneath the bridge and it soothes her mind. But when it comes time for him to turn out her light, she asks, “Dad, do they expect to find Claire alive?”

Jack pauses, his hand on the switch. He returns and sits on the edge of her bed.

“Sure they do.”

“Then how come they were looking for her in a field?”

He turns and glances around the room. “Where’s old Bugsy?” He finds him under the bed, plucks the nap off his ears and tucks him in beside her, saying, “They figure maybe she dropped something in the field and that’ll help them find her.”