Madeleine is so embarrassed she wants to squeal and pull the covers over her head, but she remembers she is Rob. “Gee, Mike. I don’t know. Why?”
“Do you think she’s…. You know. Special?”
“Yeah.” Madeleine nods in the dark. “She’s a real lady.”
“Yeah, that’s what I think.”
She hesitates, then says, “And Rick is a real gentleman.”
“Yup.”
In the silence that follows, she waits for him to continue, but hears his breathing change and knows that he really is asleep this time. She falls asleep and has no nightmares. Rob never has nightmares.
Captain and Mrs. McCarroll are relieved when Mr. Lemmon calls their daughter’s teacher into his office, and Mr. March is able to assure the worried parents, “Claire is a bright and pleasant student but she is a little given to daydreaming.”
Captain McCarroll blushes and Mrs. McCarroll smiles, saying, “She gets that from her daddy.”
Mr. Lemmon shows Mr. March the note. “Do you have any idea who might have written this?”
Mr. March takes a moment to consider, then shakes his head. “I can ask my pupils,” he volunteers.
“Oh please don’t bother.” Sharon blushes.
Captain McCarroll says, “We don’t want to embarrass her.”
Mr. Lemmon asks if Mr. March has had occasion to keep Claire after three, and he replies that he did keep her and one or two other children for a few minutes to go over some spelling exercises, “but certainly not as a punishment for bad behaviour.”
Mr. Lemmon thanks the parents for coming in, and Mr. March for clearing the matter up.
Claire is never again required to remain after three.
It is Marjorie Nolan who first feels his hands around her neck. Then Grace Novotny brings home bruises that no one asks her to explain. And that is all you need to know about Grace’s mum and dad.
Part Two. FLYING UP
INDIAN SUMMER
Which sentence is correct? (a) Smoking Days are the same as Indian Summer. (b) Indian Fall is the same as Smoking Days. (c) Indian Summer is Smoking Week. (d) Smoking Days bring Indian Autumn.
THE WREATHS HAVE WILTED at the base of the cenotaph in Exeter, felt poppies have fallen from lapel pins and washed up against curbs softened by autumn leaves, damp and exhaling the last earthy smell before winter puts all scent and soil to sleep. Overhead, the remaining leaves have lost their lustre, clinging sparse and ragged to trees revealed magnificently complex against a hard orange sky at five in the afternoon. November. Two minutes of silence at the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month, to mark the end of the war to end all wars in 1918—and all the others since then. It seems also to have marked the setting in of the deep hibernation that muffles the land like a blanket. Shhh, winter is coming. In the air is the unmistakeable smell of snow.
Madeleine can smell it and she supposes Colleen can too. In the park it’s cold and growing dark. Cold enough for mittens, but until the first snow comes who thinks of wearing them? Colleen’s feet are still bare inside her tattered runners. Madeleine has turned nine. A wily number, able to look after itself. She had a pajama party and felt guilty for not inviting Colleen, but she couldn’t picture her with her other friends, in baby dolls and curlers, levitating and talking about boys. And Madeleine would not have known which self to be. There is also a sense that the time she and Colleen spend together is something separate. Private.
They are crouched now at the far end of the park behind Colleen’s house. It borders a number of backyards, including Philip Pinder’s, where, this evening, there is a deer hanging upside down from a tree. Cold blood drips out of its mouth into a metal pail. Its eyes are staring open and a drop of liquid hangs from its nose. It’s draining. As it turns slowly from its rope and pulley you can see where it has been slit open as though it had just unzipped its deer suit, like in a cartoon. All of its insides are piled green and brown and pink in a plastic bucket. It’s an evil thing. Not the deer. But what has been done.
From the teeter-totters in the park, it seemed as though the deer might not be real. Or at least you could say, “That’s a deer that Philip’s father shot,” and feel almost normal about it, because hunting is normal. But when Madeleine came closer and saw the deer slowly rotating by its hind ankles, legs stretched so that it seemed they must snap and recoil any second, it was different. It did not feel normal. But Philip, his older brother, Arnold, their father, their mother and their Uncle Wilf are all out in the yard, working on the deer and behaving normally; although with an added air of seriousness, the way a person might if they were, for example, practising backing their new Airstream trailer into the driveway: “It’s not that I’m trying to show off. This is work.”
A neighbour comments, “That’s quite a deer, Harve.” But Madeleine can see that the neighbour is a bit embarrassed, trying to be polite, saying something about a dead deer that you would normally say about a garden. “That’s quite a rhododendron, Harve.”
As Colleen and Madeleine linger, however, a couple of other dads arrive and smile openly, wanting to know the whole story. They have a look in their eyes that Madeleine has seen on television shows — the look just before the wolf whistle at the pretty girl walking down the street. Philip’s father keeps working and more or less ignores the other men. He tells the story briefly, quietly, accepting a beer almost as an afterthought. “Son of a gun!” they say and gaze at the deer. “She’s a beauty, Harve.” Philip is grinning in a strange way, fetching things for his dad. He picks up the pail of guts, pretend-vomits into it and offers it to Madeleine and Colleen.
“Philip,” his dad warns softly. Philip puts the bucket down and looks up at his father, who has begun to chop meat off the deer. “Are you giving me a hand or are you playing with the girls?”
Philip turns red and proceeds to ignore Madeleine and Colleen. So do all the other men and boys — there are no women out here now that it’s getting dark. The sky is sad and beautiful, stained orange where the sun splashed down. Someone’s hi-fi is playing, music drifts from a window two or three doors away, “Bali Hai” is calling….
Arnold Pinder is up in the tree now, with an extension cord, positioning a light bulb over the deer. The men have forgotten that Madeleine and Colleen are present. Spying.
Madeleine knows that no girls are allowed here. No women either. They will cook the meat and serve it, but it is not decent for females to be out here. Not because of the hacked-up deer — they’re taking off its head now—“Hang on. Got it, okay…. Weighs a ton”—but in the way it’s not decent for an older girl or a woman to go into a barbershop. Never mind a tavern. Those are men’s places. Madeleine knows that her days of accompanying her father to the barber are numbered. This backyard has become a men’s place.
They let out a short whoop as they cut down what’s left of the deer, take the weight and lay it on a tarp. Philip’s dad leans over the carcass with a hacksaw. The girls can’t see past the men and boys, gathered and relaxed now around the tarp with beers and Cokes, but they see Arnold Pinder come around the side of the house. He’s got his dog, Buddy, by the collar, and Buddy is practically walking on his hind legs, pulling Arnold toward the tarp. Mr. Pinder straightens up and tosses a stick to Buddy, who lunges and carries it off. It is not a stick, it’s a leg.