Tell (9 page)
Authors: Frances Itani
“You sing. Don’t forget that.”
“If I talk about the concert, Tress, my nerves will undo me.”
“It’s almost sold out, you know. There won’t be a ticket left by the beginning of December. That means more than five hundred people.”
“Which worries me even more,” said Maggie. “I’ve never performed on a stage. Not in a real theatre.”
“You sing at your church every week. Can’t you think of the concert as a different sort of choir?”
“I can’t think of it like that at all.”
“Will Uncle Am be there to offer support?”
“He will. I’ve already bought his ticket.”
Maggie looked down at the street below, where two schoolchildren were heading home. They were laughing together, hand in hand, slipping and sliding along the boardwalk in their boots. She glanced down again, but they had vanished.
“If I’m not allowed to ask about your singing, tell me about the farm,” said Tress. “I’ve lived in town all my life and the only farm I ever get to visit is my grandfather’s.”
“There’s nothing to tell. After Am and I married, we bought our own small place. We had a bit of land, a few animals, a few rows of apple trees.”
“Did you sell the land when you moved to town?”
“We did. And I don’t miss it, not one bit.”
What she did not say was that during the weeks and months before they moved to town, she had begun to dream of small hands combing through her long hair. Even now, thinking about the dreams, she remembered the sensation of her hair being sifted through fingers. The dreams stopped when she and Am moved to the apartment. She’d have gone mad if she’d stayed there, on the farm. She’d have gone mad if the dreams had continued.
She passed the knitted shrug back to Tress. Over the bay, a new chain of clouds was about to snare the sun. One cloud broke free and skittered along the horizon, a beetle looking for cover. She shuddered.
Tress understood that Aunt Maggie wanted no more questions today.
K
ENAN HELD A PHOTO IN HIS GOOD HAND
. T
HREE
soldiers in uniform in France. Hugh on the right, Kenan on the left, the third soldier between. Out of the depths, grappling for a name.
Bill,
the soldier in the middle, killed only days after the photo was taken. No body found, presumed dead,
was
dead. Kenan dropped the photo to the floor as if it were in flames. He bent forward and picked it up again. Details surfaced quickly, too quickly, firing into his brain from unknown directions.
Bill
. A lean, hard-muscled man whose words rattled out of him like rapid-fire bursts from a machine gun. He’d always cursed a blue streak. Told the others that his two biggest fears were being gassed and being buried alive. After the war he planned to work with the Great Farini so he could be shot out of a cannon. As a human cannonball he’d be able to withstand the noise, he said. If he ever got out of the trenches alive, he’d be deaf by then anyway.
But Bill had become a different kind of cannon fodder and had disappeared. A short time after that, Kenan had been wounded and sent to England. Bill’s disappearance was one of the gaps in Kenan’s memory. Maybe Bill—or his body—had been found while Kenan was in hospital in Blighty.
Now it was Hugh who had tracked Kenan down. Hugh remembered the name of the hometown Kenan had spoken about, and acted on the impulse to write. Kenan could not help wondering what contact would be like if he and Hugh were in the same room. He hadn’t seen any of the boys he’d served with since the night he’d been carried off on a stretcher. Nor had Hugh seen Kenan and his half-face of scars. All this time, neither had made a move to find out if the other was alive.
Tress’s brother-in-law, Jim, had stopped in at the house to visit several times after he came home from the war in April 1919, and before he left Deseronto. For a time, Kenan had relied on Jim to bring in news of the larger world. Their shared experience allowed a comfort between them, though they’d been to different areas of the Front. Except for Vimy Ridge—they’d been there at the same time. Jim had served as a stretcher bearer, and they had compared notes. How the roads leading to the place had been lined with dead horses. How a pint of hot tea could mean so much to cold and thirsty men. How they’d eaten beans underground—two men to a can—and cheese and jam and biscuits and stew. How, at one stretch, Jim hadn’t taken his boots off for thirteen days, and when he was finally able to do so, he had a swelling on his heel so large it had to be lanced.
And sound, the two men had talked about that. About the whumps that felt like the smothering of dynamite. About coming
up out of crowded, sweat-soaked rooms and tunnels beneath the earth on Easter Monday, 1917, and emerging into what they instantly understood to be the noises of hell.
Jim had applied to the Soldier Settlement Board and was hoping to farm with the help of the board to give him a start-up. He had the background—he’d grown up on his grandparents’ farm in Prince Edward Island—but hadn’t yet purchased land. He and Grania had gone to the island to see what properties might be available, and they’d been there since summer. Before making a decision, Jim wanted to spend part of the year in the province where he’d grown up. And now, here was Hugh, from the same island, reappearing in Kenan’s life.
Until now, Kenan had received no personal letters since coming home. Only documents about his discharge from the army, messages from the veterans’ association, pension applications, letters concerning his injuries. Loss of an eye rated forty percent disability pension; one finger, less than twenty. There had been official suggestions of paying out fifty dollars for each finger lost. But what about an arm, a palm, a wrist, an entire hand? One commission after another was supposed to be working this out.
While he was overseas, Tress had written every week the entire time he’d been away. Uncle Oak had also written and sent news about his bulldog, Jowls; news about who brought what to the welding shop for repairs. He’d even sent Kenan a package containing a rat trap, hoping that would help reduce the misery. But since returning home and until this moment, Kenan had had no word from or about Hugh—who, it was now apparent, had survived after all.
Knowing that Kenan was always at home, Jack Conlin, the postmaster, had dropped the letter off at the house. There were two mail deliveries a day, and occasionally, if something special arrived, Jack would walk along the street and deliver it personally instead of putting it in the box to be collected later. Jack knew how rare was the receipt of personal mail addressed to Kenan. He also owned the house Kenan and Tress were renting, and he knew enough to knock on the front door, leave the envelope and depart.
Kenan sat in his wicker chair in the back veranda to read Hugh’s letter. Three pages of letter. He wanted to take his time. He wanted to weigh every word.
Hello Old Stuff
Is this missive finally in your hands? I’ve thought of you so often, it’s a wonder my words didn’t spill into the air and reach you in flight. They probably did anyway if this envelope travelled in a mailbag in one of the new flying machines—and not one of the wood-and-canvas contraptions that flew over the lines. One way or another, I hope I’ve correctly remembered the name of your town.
You would not guess where I am as I write this. In a TB sanatorium, built on the highest point of land on our island, a whopping five hundred feet above sea level. Well, not quite five hundred. Don’t laugh, it’s a low-lying land.
Yes, that’s right, I came down with the white plague, the wasting disease, after I returned home, though I was probably infected when we were “over there.” Now, after being “over
here” the past eleven months, I’ve been told that another few months should have me healthy again. If I get to leave this place, I won’t be sorry. The staff takes good care of me, but I’m hopeful that I’ll be free to pick up my life again by March or April, if I pass muster.
The place isn’t exactly a hospital because we live here, though some of us wander about in pyjama suits or bath robes. As you’d expect, only consumptive cases are treated here. And as I’ve lived in the confines of one building for a very long time, the only news I have to tell is how I spend my days. So here goes.
Everything happens at the slowest possible pace. The passwords are rest and more rest. Sleep all night, up at six-thirty, temperature taken and tray brought for breakfast. Imagine, Old Stuff, how soft we’d be if breakfast had been carried to us on a tray over there. I had no trouble adjusting to the service.
After breakfast, into bed again. Along with pyjamas, this means wearing (in this cold weather) toque, gloves, scarf to cover my throat, a heap of heavy blankets, and then I’m pushed out—or rather, my metal bed is wheeled out by orderlies—to the open-air pavilion for fresh-air treatment. Real air, sea air, salt air. The verandas in the pavilion are wide enough to hold two rows of beds. That’s where we—every one of us—spend the next couple of hours. The beds are lined up side by side, and back to sleep we go.
After “the cure”—that’s what it’s called—our beds are wheeled indoors. We have dinner at noon and the food is good, better than army, I don’t complain.
The routine is the same in the afternoon: into bed, toque
pulled over the ears, gloves, scarf, a weight of blankets, and we’re wheeled back out. No movement, no talking. We’re told not to stretch or reach or cough, if we can help it.
The best part for me is being outside. Don’t imagine that we freeze in our beds. Truth is, we’re so bundled up, we manage to stay warm. The clear air here beats the fresh-air routine we were subjected to in the trenches, and here there are no lice. I guess the part that bothers me most is that I’ve been idle. Idle is worse than … I don’t want to say what it’s worse than. After what we’ve been through, I won’t try to compare.
Back to the routine. At the end of the afternoon cure, we’re wheeled inside. The nursing sisters wear gowns and keep everything disinfected as much as they can, cards, games, the dishes we use. There’s no hand shaking, no smoking. Anything that leaves the place has to be fumigated, including this letter. I’m not allowed to lick the stamp or the envelope, so you don’t have to worry. Don’t drop the letter where you’re standing.
The sun helps clean the bedding, and in good weather, mattresses and pillows are laid out on the grass on the hill to soak up the rays. Much of the year, cows are in the nearby fields. It’s all dairy around here, milk and butter and cream. The cream is sent to the cheese and butter factory nearby. The cows are so placid on the slopes, they look as if they’ll slide right down to the bottom if the wind blows the wrong way. And wind blows pretty much all the time.
There are two young boys on a farm over on the next hillside. I can’t see the farm buildings but I can see fencelines and the top of the hill. Some days, the boys take a kite outside, and sure enough, herring gulls soar in and dive at the kite
and screech and flap until the boys tire of the interference and haul their toy out of the sky. Sometimes, I imagine that I can catch a glimpse of sea. A grey sea with the same rumpled look as the quilts on my bed.
We have early supper at five, and another “cure” from six to seven. At bedtime, we’re given warm milk to drink. If I have trouble getting to sleep, I listen for far-off waves, especially if there are heavy seas. In the morning, our routine starts again, identical in every way.
The doctor tells me the sounds from my lungs are improving. Some of the men have been coughing blood. I’m free of that now, though others haven’t been so lucky. I was plenty scared when I brought up blood last year, and I thought I was done for. It’s an awful feeling, as if the inside of the body is about to drown, or smother. But as I said, I am luckier than most. Some who are in worse shape than I am don’t get out of their beds at all. Quite a few have had the collapse therapy—a lung collapsed as part of their treatment. And sandbags—think of it! sandbags!—are leaned against their chests while they lie in bed. If the hospital runs short, there’d be a surplus of sandbags, you’d think, from overseas. Shiploads.
Many of the boys here complain of boredom, but I try not to fill my hours with gloom. I manage to keep some of the others in good spirits, but to tell the truth none of us has any energy to spare.
How about you, Old Stuff? I don’t know what your injuries amounted to, but I was told that you’d taken shrapnel to the face and one side of your body. One of the boys said your leg, another said your arm. You’re the one who’ll have
to give it to me straight. However you were hit, I hope you have the least amount of damage, and that you’re up and around and faring well. I look forward to a letter from you, and when I get out of here and I’m free of the plague, I have every intention of travelling to Ontario to find you. You’ll be forced to introduce me to your wife—you went on and on about her so much, I feel as if I know her. Here, except for nursing sisters, I see only other men.
Yours, having survived hell and expecting you to have done the same. Keep your head down, mate.
Hugh
P.S. Do you remember when this photo was taken? Not long after, that’s when Bill caught it. There was a terrible barrage. We were all in it together. I wasn’t more than thirty feet away from the two of you, but there was so much confusion in the dark, I lost contact. I never understood how Bill just disappeared. His body was never found, and of course we had to leave the area immediately. More unfinished business. He might as well have been shot from one of our big guns over to Fritz on the other side. Remember what a fast talker he was? He always said he was going to track down the Great Farini after the war because he wanted to be shot out of a cannon.
Kenan examined the photo again. Stared into it with his one eye. Stared at himself, or rather, the person disguised as his former self. There he was in sepia tones inside a younger, whole body. Two hands to move, two arms to stretch, two ears that listened,
two eyes that could see. He looked at Hugh in the photo and wondered if his friend would be recognizable now. By the time Kenan had been taken out of the war, not one of the boys in his unit looked like his earlier self, wounded or not.
In the photo, he and Bill and Hugh were standing side by side. They were holding half-filled mess tins—meat in one, mounded-up potatoes plopped into the other. The tins were dented and battered, as if they’d been flung about when empty. Thrown up into their packs, thrown down onto the ground. Bread, a third of a loaf being his ration, was visible and spilling out of one of his tunic pockets.
Kenan remembered exactly where and when the photo was taken. He could have drawn the scene in detail with pencil and paper. They were behind the lines at the edge of a French village of low hills, with a black stream running through. A few spindly trees remained near the stream, though most had been chopped for firewood. A mess tent had been erected on a flat stretch of ground. He and Bill and Hugh had been ordered to dig pits for burying tin cans. The photo was taken when they stopped to eat.
Kenan had shoved his cap back crookedly, and here was the proof. One ear appeared to be larger than the other because it was pressed forward by the crooked cap. His head had been itchy. Like everyone else, he was full of bites. He was wearing a change of underwear and new socks, neither of which showed in the picture. Like his two friends, he was grinning at the camera as if war did not exist. Except for the uniforms, war might not have been part of the photo at all. He and Hugh and Bill had been marched out of the front lines one day earlier, Bill
swearing all the way. All of them knew that the way to benefit from their time behind the lines was to push war away until they had to face it again when they were marched back up. Why not grin at the camera? They were alive in that moment, weren’t they?
“Don’t let the war smother you, Old Stuff,” Hugh used to tell him. “I plan to survive this madness and come out laughing, and you will too. Even if it’s the laughter of madmen.”