Mimi comes back down the stairs. “Tiens,” she says, handing him the pills and water.
He puts them between his teeth and attempts a grin for her. “Merci,” he says, and swallows.
The pain is there to smack him across the forehead when he stands, but he doesn’t sit back down. The kitchen light trembles briefly above his head and he says, “I’m gonna go stretch my legs.”
He walks past her, down the three steps, which have begun to narrow and grow dim, is the light still on? He will feel more relaxed in the night air, where he knows it’s dark. He walks out the door, and the missing patch of vision is restored, replaced by a wavering arc, as though his eye were partially under water. It will pass. He wants only to walk out of the PMQs a ways, to where there are no street lights. Street lights burn, hard haloes expunging all other shapes, branding the insides of his closed lids, boring through to the back of his skull. The sun today on the drive, no sunglasses. No hat brim. No supper. It’s just a headache.
He experiences a sense of “coming to” in the black freshness of night as he looks back upon the lights of the houses and the station buildings scattered at a gentle distance now, a spangled square mile. At the far end, a red light flashes unhurriedly from the airport control tower. Jack has walked north perhaps a mile. He smells the new fields. Earth and sky. Now that he is better, he realizes that he was close to keeling over as he left his house ten, twenty minutes ago. A slice of steel is wedged at an angle across the left side of his head, bisecting his eye. Soon it will begin to loosen, throb. He’s fine. Couple more Aspirins and a Scotch.
He turns for home. His eyes are watering. His throat is sore. Perhaps he is coming down with something. He stops, puts his hand out and rests it on a wooden fencepost soft with weather, he is weeping. It will help his headache. He is weeping and his nose is running.
It’s amazing how a headache can undo a man, it’s just as well he came out for a walk rather than inflict this on Mimi. She would ask him what’s wrong, and although things are getting more complicated with the job he is trying to do, there is nothing so wrong that it can’t be fixed.
Except that a little girl is dead.
Jack’s forehead rests on the back of his hand and he gives the weight of his head to the fencepost. A child has died. He sees in his mind’s eye a little girl with brown hair tousled around her head, lying on her back in a field. She has his daughter’s face. He cries. There is no one around. In his mind he hears his daughter’s voice, Daddy. He sobs into his arm. Oh God. A child has died. His face in both his hands—dear God. A child.
“Oh God,” he says, sniffing, wiping his nose with his forearm — the words coming up like crumpled paper. Breathing in through his mouth, both palms smearing his face. Not my little girl, but a dear child. Taken. Just like that. He slams his fist onto the fencepost, Jesus—and again, Jesus—let him alone with the likes of that, whatever it was that killed her — he wrenches the post in the earth like a bad tooth—smash him, tear him apart. With my bare hands.
He lets go of the smooth wood. His eyes still streaming, he starts for home, pulling his shirt out from his trousers to dry his face, blow his nose. His hanky is in his uniform jacket on the back of the kitchen chair at home, he has come out in his blue shirt-sleeves, and now he realizes that it’s cold, April’s sharp end.
He is grateful that no car has come along, for he is half out of uniform, no jacket, tie or hat. LMF. The initials come to mind — perhaps because he knows he is a poor sight at the moment. Lack of moral fibre. When he was in training, he knew a man who was turfed from the air force for that. It could mean anything. Usually it meant cowardice. Failure of nerve. Breakdown after a bombing run or, during training, the inability to go back up.
Madeleine stands still as a statue outside Mike’s bedroom door. It is closed, but she can hear Maman softly singing. Her voice is muffled, but Madeleine recognizes the tune. “Un Acadien errant.” Mike’s favourite song. Maman has not sung to him in a long while, not since they moved here. He has not required songs, he has required privacy for himself and his sacred airplane models.
Madeleine knows Maman is probably rubbing his back, warm beneath his hockey pajamas. Mike is lying on his stomach with his hazel eyes open, calmly gazing into the dark. Madeleine listens, standing so still she is convinced that, were she to move so much as a finger, it would creak and give her away.
It’s like waiting outside an operating room to see if the patient will pull through. Mike is going to be thirteen in a few months. He would kill Madeleine if he knew she was out here spying. But he is too wounded at the moment to kill anyone. Maman is bandaging him up. Inside, her voice softly rises and falls — the tale of a wandering Acadian, far from his home.
Henry Froelich sees Jack rounding the corner of St. Lawrence Avenue. He is out on his front step with the porch light off. “Good evening Jack.”
Jack squints at the Froelichs’ house, shielding his eyes from the street light that spreads like a stain.
“Is that you, Henry?”
“Ja.”
“How’s she going?”
“Not too good.”
Jack has no choice. He walks up the driveway, his eyes still dazzled by the smear of light; he can see part of Henry Froelich at the edge of a yellow orb. “If there’s anything I can do….” His voice sounds high and reedy, does Froelich notice?
“Jack?”
“Yes?” He clears his throat.
“When the police have interviewed everyone today, they interviewed you too, ja?”
“Yeah they did.”
“What do they ask you?”
“Let’s see, they asked me if I was out driving last Wednesday. Out on Highway 4. Asked if I saw anyone.” He coughs.
“You are ill.”
“Some kinda bug floatin’ around.”
“Do they ask if you have acquaintance with a war criminal?”
Jack’s surprise at being asked point-blank is genuine, no need to pretend and no need to lie, for the police did not ask him that. “No, they didn’t.” He half smiles, triggering twin throbs at his temple. “I’d’ve remembered that one. Why?”
“Do you wish a glass of wine, Jack?” Froelich’s hand is on the door.
“Hank?” It’s Karen Froelich from an upper window.
“Ja, mein Liebling?”
“Lizzie’s asking for you, baby. Hi Jack.”
Jack shields his eyes to look up and makes out her silhouette at the lit screen. “Hi Karen.”
“This thing is so screwed up,” she says, and he is struck again by how young she sounds. “The cops kept Ricky for hours before they even charged him, no lawyer, never even called us.”
“That oughta be enough to get this thing thrown out right there.”
“I’ve got a friend at the Star, I’m going to get him to come out here and—” A baby cries and Karen’s outline withdraws.
Froelich says, “Sorry, Jack, I go.”
“Get some sleep, eh?”
“You too, my friend.”
“What does your lawyer say?”
“We meet him tomorrow morning. Before the bail hearing.”
“Let me know if there’s anything I can do.”
“Mimi has been already very kind.”
The yellow orb has shrunk to a splotch and Jack can see most of his neighbour quite clearly now. There are tears in Froelich’s eyes. He extends his hand. Jack takes it.