Way the Crow Flies (83 page)

She gets into the back seat, alone. Mike is riding up front. Dad is staying here. It will be the back of Mamans head all the way to New Brunswick. The Rambler reverses out of the driveway. Slowly, because it’s her mother driving. She watches out the rear window as her house recedes, along with Colleen’s and Lisa’s and Auriel’s, and Claire’s; like the word repeated on the Donnellys’ tombstone,
Empty, Empty, Empty, Empty…
. Until they turn the corner and her white house with the red roof is out of sight.

“Goodbye Rex.” She says it very softly because her throat is sore. She asks, “When are we coming back?”

“When the holidays are over,” says her mother, annoyed.

“I never said goodbye to Rex.”

“Come off it,” says Mike in the front seat, and Maman doesn’t reprimand him.

Her tears feel hot as hot water from the kettle. Her mother and brother don’t see her crying. She lies with her face wedged in the crack between the seat and the backrest and feels her tears slime onto the plastic.
Poor Rex
. She whispers the words through her tears, dark and thick as woods and she can’t find her way out of the Black Forest,
poor Rex
. She takes a deep breath but she’s careful to make it smooth, so
that, if her mother or brother happens to glance back, they will think she is sleeping,
poor Rex will think, I went away without saying goodbye
.

She sobs quietly. Just before they get onto the 401, they pull over and Mike buys her a Nutty Buddy. He climbs into the back seat beside her. “Here you go, Rob.”

She is more grateful to have him hogging the back seat again than she is for the treat, which she takes with a stoic smile.

But all the way to New Brunswick, all the way to their next posting and the one after that, all the way to the day when Madeleine left home and got her own place and decided not to finish university, she could still cry fresh hot tears from the kettle every time she pictured Rex’s face. Even though he had already moved away with his family to the trailer park by then, she pictured him—and in future would insist to Mike that Rex had been—standing there on the front lawn of the purple house that day, watching as she drove away in the Rambler, wondering why she left without saying goodbye.

I
T TOOK THE JURY
all of two and a half hours to find him guilty, “with a plea for mercy.”

The judge said, “Richard Plymouth Froelich, the sentence of this court upon you is that you be taken from here to the place from whence you came and there be kept in close confinement until Monday, the second day of September, 1963, and upon that day and date you be taken to the place of execution, and that you there be hanged by the neck until you are dead, and may the Lord have mercy on your soul.”

Jack has no memory of leaving the courtroom. Henry Froelich was mobbed by reporters the moment the verdict came down, Jack couldn’t get near him. Nor did he seek out the inspector, the judge, the Crown attorney…. He needed to tell Simon first. He drove the staff car back to Centralia. He parked it at the ME and walked,
out of habit, toward the phone booth at the edge of the parade square—but there was no need. His wife and children had left him three days ago, no one would be home to overhear his conversation, so he passed the phone booth and continued toward the PMQs as the evening sun sank behind him.

There was a moving van in the Froelichs’ driveway—a new family arriving. A man and woman waved at him but Jack didn’t wave back. It was as though he were seeing them from behind a transparent barrier thick as ice; it didn’t even occur to him to wave back. He entered his empty house. His empty kitchen.

Now he picks up his phone and dials the night number but there is no answer.

He is alone. It is dusk. He reaches to the cupboard above the fridge and takes down a fresh bottle of Scotch. He will keep trying the night number. Failing that, he will wait until morning, call Simon at the embassy and ask how long his people in the Soviet Union will need to get themselves out of harm’s way, if they haven’t done so already. Then he will tell Henry Froelich the truth; he will put on his uniform and go to the police. He considers heading over to the airfield now, to see if he can find the key to the Ford Galaxy in the tall grass, but thinks better of it and pours himself a drink. The police will have plenty of time to get out there with metal detectors in the next few days.

He tries the night number every half-hour.

At three A.M. he opens the drawers of Mimi’s dresser, then her vanity, to find only winter things remaining. He buries his face in her sweaters but it’s no good, they have been dry-cleaned. He kneels at her side of the bed, not to pray but to smell the sheets. It’s useless, she changed them before she left. He returns to the kitchen and rifles it until finally, in the drawer beside the phone book, he finds something useful. Her recipe box. He opens it and up wafts vanilla, butter—he takes out a card covered in her indecipherable hand, the ink brighter in places where grease has stained it. He stares—a recipe for bran muffins, as far as he can make out—and begins to weep.

He fell asleep at some point, on the couch. When he opens his eyes, the morning sun is blaring through the living-room window. He sees with relief that the bottle of Scotch on the coffee table is only half empty—it’s safe to stand up, so long as he does so slowly.

He doesn’t open the door to get the paper off the front step—he knows what the headline will be. He waits until nine o’clock, when the British Embassy in Washington is open for business, and reaches for the phone, but it rings, startling him.

Karen Froelich’s voice asks, “Jack, has Henry been out to see you?” Henry drove off in their car last night with a reporter.

“Henry called a reporter?”

No, the reporter was present throughout the trial. After the verdict, he helped them to their car, escorting them through the crowd of other reporters and photographers. He got in and drove to the trailer park with them. He said he had heard through his police sources that Henry had spotted a war criminal, and he wanted to know why it hadn’t been brought up at the trial. When Henry told him, the reporter said he believed Rick had fallen victim to a grave miscarriage of justice. He said the investigation might have been tainted by anti-Semitism.

“Our lawyer said not to say anything before the appeal,” says Karen, “but Henry was so relieved that someone finally—”

“Where’s he from,
The Globe?”

“No,” says Karen.
“The Washington Post.”

“The
Post
, that’s great.”

So it will all be coming out soon. Jack will have only to fill in the missing piece of the puzzle, and this thing will be all over the American and Canadian papers in a matter of twenty-four hours. He’s relieved.

“Don’t worry, Karen, it’s going to work out, I guarantee your boy will—”

“Jack, he isn’t home yet.”

“No, but he’ll win on appeal—”

“No, Jack. Henry. He hasn’t come home. I told you. Last night. He hasn’t called, I’m—” He hears her voice catch, but she sounds calm again when she continues. “I called the police but they told me they can’t consider him missing until—”

“Karen, don’t worry. He probably stayed out all night with this reporter—you know Henry, once he gets talking….” He can almost hear her smile, eager to believe him. “This is great news about
The Washington Post
. Did he tell you where they were—?”

“No, I figured they’d go into Goderich for dinner, but—”

“Have you been to—?”

“I don’t have the—”

“Right, Henry’s got the car. Listen, don’t worry. I’ll drive up to Goderich right now, if you like, and—”

“No, you don’t have to—”

“I’ll come out to the trailer park—”

“No, Jack. Don’t come out.”

He pauses. She’s right, he shouldn’t go out there. “Karen, keep me posted, okay? Okay?”

“Okay.”

“And if Hank turns up across the street, three sheets to the wind and looking to get into your old house again, I’ll drive him straight home to you.”

“Thanks, Jack.” Her voice already sounds far away, as though she is diminishing, like the picture on a television screen, toward a vanishing point.

He calls Washington.

“British Embassy, good morning.”

The same pleasant female voice—she’ll put him straight through when she hears who’s calling. “Major Newbolt here for First Secretary Crawford.”

“I’m sorry, sir, there’s no Crawford here.”

“This is the British Embassy.”

“Yes sir, but—”

“Then give me Crawford, this is urgent.”

“Sir, I’m afraid you have the wrong—”

“Like hell, you tell him Jack is on the line.”

“I’m afraid I can’t help you, sir.”

And she hangs up. He calls back and gets a busy signal.

He stays by the phone all day in case Karen calls, in case Henry calls, in case Simon calls, in case Mimi calls. But it’s silent. He doesn’t sleep that night. He lies on the couch, attuned to every sound, every car headlight panning across the ceiling.

In the morning he picks up the newspapers from the front step; he throws yesterday’s away and unfolds today’s. In the bottom left-hand corner of the front page, just above “Your Morning Smile,” a reproduction of Henry Froelich’s school board photo and three
inches of print.
The father of convicted sex killer Richard Froelich is missing and feared dead. Henry Froelich’s station wagon was found parked on the U.S. side of the Peace Bridge yesterday morning by New York State troopers. No suicide note was found, but…
.

Jack reads and rereads the brief article. There is, of course, no mention of a mysterious war criminal. No mention of a reporter from
The Washington Post
. He pictures the row of sweltering men at the back of the courtroom, in wrinkled suits, notebooks in hand. Reporters—except for one of them. And he was there from the beginning. When did Simon tell the CIA about Froelich? When Jack threatened to come forward with the alibi? Or earlier? When Jack first mentioned Froelich’s name? Is that what happened to Froelich? Is Jack next? The question doesn’t frighten him; it makes him weary.

He puts the newspaper down and calls the movers. He will pay out of his own pocket to have his household put in storage at a warehouse in Toronto. Either his contact in Ottawa will come through with the posting—any posting—or Jack will retire from the air force. Regardless, at the end of this week, he will fly to New Brunswick and get his wife and children back.

He doesn’t tell himself that he won’t let Ricky Froelich hang. Anything he says now will be like shouting into a storm at sea. And if someone actually did hear him, where would that leave his family? Without a provider? Like the Froelichs?

He goes down to his basement and rummages until he finds the cardboard moving boxes neatly collapsed and stacked by Mimi last August. He begins unfolding and reassembling them.

When stories are not told, we risk losing our way. Lies trip us up, lacunae gape like blanks in a footbridge. Time shatters and, though we strain to follow the pieces like pebbles through the forest, we are led farther and farther astray. Stories are replaced by evidence. Moments disconnected from eras. Exhibits plucked from experience. We forget the consolation of the common thread—the way events are stained with the dye of stories older than the facts themselves. We lose our memory. This can make a person ill. This can make a world ill.

In 1969 a rocket piloted by men reached the moon. Men walked there. They were changed by the sight of the milky blue jewel of Earth across that vast darkness. But we were not changed. If anything, the story of flight and the dream of space were treated to a cold shower of the “it really happened” variety. We had moon rocks for a while, parades, and a sense of Western military superiority extrapolated from the physical feat of reaching an impressive target. Then we forgot about it. On to the next.

We continued, however, to have faith in Armageddon—a myth that will never disappoint, because either it will never happen or, if it does, we will not be around to puzzle over the pieces of the shattered story. Space race was outstripped by arms race. Our weapons became even more terrifying because they could now be delivered anywhere, any time. And there were so many more of them. The Bomb was like democracy—only a few countries could be trusted with it. This fact justified our preference for tyrants, and the contained wars that kept the dispossessed busy buying weapons and killing one another, far from our doorsteps. It made us rich.

In the meantime, we lost interest in the moon. We have some difficulty now in looking up to her for inspiration, or for confirmation
at the moment of a kiss, because, after all, we’ve been there. We’ve had her. She put out. We think we know all about her, we think we know how NASA did it. How Apollo, the sun god, got to her. But the fuel, the thrust, the heat shield, they are not the whole story, they are just the evidence, part of which is missing. Not hidden—the facts lie scattered and dismembered. In plain sight. Perhaps, if we collected all the pieces where they lie snagged like bits of Lego, tiny army men in the grass, and laid them all out, they would turn back into a story and we could discern its meaning. We could begin, once more, to care that three brave men went to the moon in 1969.

“To tell” means to count. Like a bank teller. Even an accountant deals in narrative, and the storyteller too is a kind of accountant. Each provides an audit of events and their cost, and it’s for the listener to decide—was it worth it?

The price of the rockets is the account of how they were born, not simply of how they flew to the moon. The latter account—on its own—is a story with its feet cut off. Lame, like the child who was spared the mountain fate when the Pied Piper led the children away. Until we listen to the story, we have not paid the Piper. And he will continue to take our children.

The evidence shows that the rocket was launched from Cape Canaveral, but the story tells us that it was fired where it was forged, deep within the earth—illuminating a giant grotto, its ceiling lost in shadow, its floor littered with bones and rust, embedded with the vertebrae of train tracks. And that when it rose, clean and white, to breach the mouth of the mountain cave, it trailed flames and blood and soil as it flew all the way to the moon.

The cave is yawning open still. Emitting a draft, exerting a pull.

We were supposed to think it all began with NASA. But it began with the Nazis. We knew this, half remembered it, but a great deal was at stake and we put it from our minds. Events without memory. Bones without flesh. Half a story—like a face gazing into an empty mirror, like a man without a shadow.

What do shadows do? They catch up.