Blood and Salt (37 page)

They go back and stir the clothes around.
Throw in the rest of the water. Myro rubs his shirt against the washboard, trying to get out stains. Singing a little song.

“So it’s spring,”
Tymko says. “Time to clean everything out and start fresh. Not just clothes, either.
We can clear out old ideas that aren’t helping us.
We can analyze our lives and figure out what to do when we leave here.”

Yuriy throws a wet snotrag at him. Tymko grabs somebody’s shirt and wraps it around
Yuriy’s head. Bohdan protests. It’s his shirt. Socks fly around the room.
A couple land on the stove and start to sizzle.

Taras leaps to rescue what he believes to be his own socks and catches a sopping shirt in the back of the head. Suds stream down his sweater. Soap bubbles fly past him, flashing small rainbows.

Tymko ties a hankie on his head like a woman’s headscarf and stuffs a pair of wet socks under his shirt for breasts. He starts to hum, deep in his belly. He begins to dance, light on his feet as a young woman, weaving between the other men. They clap their hands and shout. Stamp their feet. They pinch Tymko’s sock breasts as he passes.
The melody spins around the room.
The cups are empty.

Whuuump!
Suddenly there’s pounding on the door. “Quiet down in there!”

This sets them laughing. They know that voice. It’s Jackie Bullard, now dubbed Bullshit by most of the men. He never learns, never knows when to walk away from trouble. Any moment now he’ll be calling them slackers.

He tries to open the door, finds it won’t budge. It can’t be locked from the inside, so what’s keeping it shut?

“Open this door at once! Or I’ll get an axe and break it down!”

Again they laugh, but not as much. Bullshit is spoiling their mood. If they let him in now, he’s going to find the boiler.
They were going to keep the rest for another day.
At least they’re almost sure they were going to keep it.

“Open the door! Don’t make me tell you again.” He thumps until their ears ring unpleasantly. Or is that the wine?

“Oh shit, boys,” Tymko says, “I guess that’s it.” He takes the socks out of his shirt, leaving two big wet spots, and removes the hankie from his head.

The thought of Bullshit dumping out their wine after all their work and scheming is too cruel. Only one thing to do.

There’s a little left after each man fills his cup.
The first man to knock his back – Bohdan, surprisingly – gets that. Myro takes the boiler to the washtubs and sloshes water around inside it, then dumps the rinse water in the drain. Tymko carries the boiler, cradling the six cups, back to the closet and shuts the door on it. Taras is grateful to them, because it’s taking all his concentration to stay standing up.

The thumping is now like artillery fire.

Bohdan gets ready to open the door. Myro resumes rubbing his shirt against the washboard.
Taras splashes warm water on his face and rubs it with his shirt sleeve.

Tymko breathes into his hand, sniffs and shakes his head:
Don’t breathe in Bullshit’s face.
They nod.

Bohdan removes the shim and slowly opens the door. Jackie Bullard rushes in, red in the face, his bayonet thrust out in front of him, and almost trips in the puddles of water and clothes strewn on the floor. He sees Myro’s black hair dripping water, Ihor’s curling moustache flecked with foam.

“Clean this up at once! It’s disgraceful. We don’t give you this wash house just to make a mess, you know.”

Taras almost chokes from the need to laugh. Who knew Bullshit could scold like an angry
baba?
He hears a strangled noise in his throat.

“You think it’s funny, do you?” Bullshit’s face is getting dangerously scarlet.

Now the others, even Myro, stagger around laughing.

“You’re drunk! Aren’t you? All of you, drunk!” Bullshit sounds outraged.

Tymko is immediately calm and serious. “Certainly not,” he says. “We just like to let off a little steam while our clothes soak.”

“We were practising a Ukrainian dance,”
Yuriy says. Bohdan nods.

“Don’t worry,” Tymko says. “It’ll be clean and tidy when we leave.” But he can’t suppress a small snort of laughter.

The guard tries to smell Tymko’s breath. Tymko smiles but doesn’t exhale.

“See that it is. Or there’s going to be trouble.”

“Absolutely. It’ll be clean as wissel.” Bullard stares. “Clean... as...a...whistle.”

Bullard heaves a great sigh. They can guess what he’s thinking. The men are plastered. He could get them all in big trouble.
And yet, they’ve obviously drunk the evidence. And they’d have the mess tidied before he could be back with reinforcements.
The look crosses his face that he’s tired of being mad and making people do things. And then there’d be a huge stink as the brass tried to find out where the raw materials came from. It’s most likely potatoes from prisoners working in the kitchen and they’d all be punished, and it’s all so bloody boring, and wearying.

“All right, get the mess cleaned up, and I’ll forget all about this. And stay here until you can walk straight. And shut up about it with the other men.”
Or I’ll make you pay later,
he doesn’t say, but it’s understood. Still, for Bullshit, this is pretty decent.

The moment he’s gone, Bohdan shuts the door and replaces the shim.
They all collapse onto the floor. It’s warm in the shack
.
There are no guards making them grub roots or chop wood.
They’ll have to finish their laundry in a bit, but for now they sit smiling.
They’ve created something, Taras realizes.
Yes, it was only something to get pleasantly drunk on, but achievement can be measured by the difficulty of the task as well as by the end product. Sometimes getting pleasantly drunk among good friends is a noble goal.

The hope
Taras has begun to feel continues, but he doesn’t think the guards feel very hopeful.
As the weather warms and the number of escapes goes up, they get testier, hold their bayonets more grimly at the ready. Even Bud Andrews, the most affable of them, looks ready to take someone’s head off. Like all the guards, he hates being sent after escapees. Taras thinks this is because it’s most likely to end in failure.
And if it doesn’t, there’s a good chance he might have to shoot someone.

Often so many soldiers are out searching that there aren’t enough left to guard the internees. So one day Taras’s bunkhouse is assigned to tidying up around the camp. They work up to the woods above the bunkhouses. In the trees the snow’s still deep, but meltwater trickles through the cleared areas, an image in miniature of the great river system it feeds.

Afterwards
no one knows who started it. The prisoners are warm from the work but not as tired as usual. Guards stand around in groups talking.
The first snowball hits Yuriy, then Bud Andrews catches one in the head. Each looks ready to punch somebody. In seconds, Taras, Bullshit, Ihor, Bohdan and Barkley have wet snowy circles on their clothes. Taras lobs a big sloppy one. Tymko catches it in the forehead and goes down as if shot. He gets up laughing and runs into the trees, where he makes beautiful, hard snowballs and wings them at everyone, with no discrimination between prisoner and guard.

Some are small and deadly accurate. The bigger ones, almost cannonball size, have a shorter range but usually hit something. It’s a blizzard of snowballs. War without death or wounds. Everyone’s panting.
Yelling. Snow fills boot tops, slides down collars, soaks every coat, sweater and pair of trousers, right through to long underwear.

Andrews laughs so hard he has to be pounded on the back. Even Bullshit isn’t mad.

Tymko looks around and nods. He brushes off what snow he can and flops to the ground.
As if it’s a signal of surrender, soldiers and prisoners fling themselves into the snow, gasping
.
Those who have cigarettes pass them around.
Tobacco smoke and the aroma of wet wool fills the air.

Taras is warmed through, almost as warm as in the hot pool.

On May 10
two men, known as the
dvi Wasyls
– the two Wasyls – b
ecause they have the same first name, escape on the way to the Spray Bridge worksite. Sadly, they’re recaptured the next day, putting an end to the song Taras and Yuriy were making up about their heroic deeds.

A few days later a clutch of well-fed men in suits turns up to see the commandant.
Who are they? Men from the government? The American consul, who’s supposed to make sure the internees are being treated correctly? The Red Cross, who also monitor the camps?

No
.
They’re from the Canmore Coal Company.
The reason for their visit spreads through camp like an outbreak of dysentery. It seems that so many men have enlisted in the armed forces that many industries are now short of workers. Industries like the Canmore Coal Company.
They want to talk to some of the prisoners about working for them. They ask for five men, former employees, and are willing to guarantee their
good behaviour.

For a week or two nothing happens – the government must be mulling it over – but everyone knows coal is once more in demand, for the navy and for industry.

May 13
is a bathing day, followed by a glorious soak in the pool. Taras can still hardly believe it. Back home, anything this good would be reserved for
pahns.
Here they’re allowing in peasants, agitators, foreign scum. An hour’s small reparation for unjust imprisonment.

Or at least, to use Tymko’s words, it’s a contradiction.

The next day, the American Consul does appear, to check on conditions in camp. But no one Taras knows even sees him. Later, they hear that he found everything satisfactory.

“Let him try it if he thinks it’s so satisfactory,”
Taras says.

“It is satisfactory,” Tymko says. “For him. He gets to inspect things, ask nosy questions, annoy the commandant – a good thing in itself, let us remember – and then take the train back to Calgary for a good dinner.” Is that all there is to it? Taras wonders.

The miracle of the snowballs persists in the prisoners’ memories. Then on May 20, one of the guards, Private Brearly, walks into the woods near his house in Banff and cuts his throat.
The news spreads through camp, and Taras can see that the death shakes the other soldiers. It seems to Taras that escape is also difficult for guards.

The men in suits from the Canmore Coal Company return. The five men they asked for are “paroled” to work in the mines. Taras is even more outraged than Tymko.
Apparently the internees are all too dangerous to be on the streets. Spies. Saboteurs. Revolutionaries.
Isn’t that what the government thinks? Suddenly it doesn’t matter, because now the country needs more workers. Before it didn’t need them, in fact there were too many.

Taras will not forget this lesson. It’s the closest he’s felt to the socialists, who at least have theories about why there are concentration camps in a supposedly free country.

Concentration camps for people who were invited to come to Canada.

Could Taras one day be offered the same chance as these men who walk quietly out of camp to a waiting truck? He doesn’t believe it will happen.

In the meantime, escape is possible if you want it badly enough. Yuriy and Ihor have kept track of the number of prisoners who have freed themselves since the camp opened. Sixty-one men have run – or more likely walked – away.
Almost two thirds of them – thirty-nine – are still out there. Free. And it’s nearly time for the camp to move back to Castle Mountain for the summer. Its wire fence is tall, but tents are more porous than wooden bunkhouses. Anyway, at least it’ll be warm.

The guards tell tales of sudden snowfalls in July.

CHAPTER 25

Back to Castle Mountain

June 27, 1916

Once again
Taras rides a train to Castle Mountain, windows raised to warm breeze, to sky a hard deep blue. He and fifty others are going to get the camp ready. He plans to take it as slow as possible and hopes the guards get the point:
Let’s everybody not get excited. It’s too tiring.
It’s a reasonable hope. The soldiers are usually more relaxed when there aren’t so many prisoners to guard.