Flight of the Tiger Moth

by Mary Woodbury

  The Link was a small cockpit with stubby wings and it was attached to the floor. It had a radio receiver and all the controls of a plane inside. The instructor sat at a desk nearby and shouted orders over the radio to the pilot crammed into the Link. A guy named Link must have invented it. Jack thought he’d like to meet Mr. Link, ask him how he designed his ­simulator.

  Jack would squeeze into the tiny cockpit. The first time, he’d panicked. The controls of the stick and rudder pedals were very sensitive, and Mabel kept shouting directions through the radio. A slight push moved the stick to the left and sent the left wing down. A pull toward him sent him up into the sky. Mabel had laughed at his inability to move fast enough to correct the right rudder pedal’s sharp turn. Sitting at her desk close by, she’d monitored his progress and applauded his ­successes.

  Jack loved machines – his dad’s old ­pick-­up truck, the tanker that delivered water to the houses, and most of all, Sandy’s black ’36 Ford parked in the garage behind the store. Sandy had let Jack drive the Ford a couple of times before he had shipped out for the ­war.

  A couple of meadowlarks sang from a telephone wire. Two Tiger Moths flew overhead and a formation of Oxfords, ­single-­engine advanced trainers from the Moose Jaw Service Training School twenty miles to the east, streaked across the sky further up. A flock of ducks rose from the slough by the gravel ­road.

  When Jack was young, the sky over Cairn was quiet as a winter morning. Now the drone of airplanes or the stutter of a stalled engine pulled his eyes up every time he went outside. Once he’d watched as a Moth’s engine banged and stopped in the middle of a manoeuvre. The plane dived to the ground and exploded, killing an instructor and a student pilot. There were already four student graves in the Cairn ­cemetery.

  Jack pedalled ­faster.

  An early morning breeze blew over the miles of waving wheat and threw dust from the edge of the road into his face. He blinked and wiped his forehead with the back of his hand. His dark hair was combed flat, with a part on the left side. His ears stuck out, which he hated, but the village barber trimmed his hair too close to his scalp no matter how much Jack asked him not to. At least he had no trouble keeping his thick glasses hooked on his head. The glasses protected his ­grey-­blue eyes from the dust, gravel or midges as he walked or rode across the prairie of southern ­Saskatchewan.

  They were also the reason he’d never be a fighter ­pilot.

  Jack’s bike responded to the power in his muscled legs. He wished for another growing streak but figured at sixteen he was probably as tall as he was going to get. But he had a lean, strong frame and could run faster than any of the boys in Cairn or ­Mortlach.

  Before him stretched miles of clear sky and beneath that sharp line of pale blue on the horizon lay prairie grasses and forage crops as far as the eye could see. Overhead, tree swallows dived and swooped like miniature airplanes, hunting for insects. A lazy hawk circled high above and brilliant sunlight shone on Jack, warming him more than the woodstove in the ­kitchen.

  Funny, he’d never thought about landscape until the British flyers commented on how flat and boring the prairie was compared to the green hills and valleys and gracious gardens of Britain. Sometimes he wanted to yell at those young airmen with their funny accents to go back home if it was so wonderful ­there.

  He’d stick with miles of sky and prairie ­grass.

  Dust hung over the gravel road. Someone in town had been driving out this way awfully early. It wasn’t hunting season, so who could it be? It was too early for Boyle Transport to be out. Old Jerry Boyle usually got drunk on Friday nights, so he’d be sleeping it off in his ramshackle house on the other side of the ­tracks.

  Up ahead Jack spotted three huge ­blue-­black crows feasting on a dead animal in the easterly ditch close to a clump of wolf willow. He was about to pedal over to the far west side of the road to avoid the sight when he heard a whimper. It was coming from the chaos of screaming and strutting ­birds.

  “Get out! Get the tarnation out of it!” he shouted at the crows as he pulled up beside the mess. A smallish black bitch with thick, matted hair was curled loosely as if ready to feed her puppies, her pink belly exposed. Flies clustered. A pungent rotten smell rose from the ­corpse.

  Jack bent to take a closer look. A bloody hole the size of a silver dollar was drilled into the dog’s head. Had to be caused by a shotgun ­blast.

  Tossed under the bushes a step or two further on lay a lumpy gunny sack. Jack grabbed the top of the rough bag, pulled at the worn knotted rope tied around it, breaking a nail as he tore the sack open. The odour of animal sweat, fear and death assailed ­him.

  A ­fair-­sized black puppy with a white flash on his chest and oversized white paws scrambled over Jack’s hand and fell to the ground, squatted, piddled, picked itself up and tumbled further under the bushes. Jack opened the sack all the way. The three other puppies inside were already stiff and ­cold.

  Jack dropped the sack quickly, lurched to his feet and brought up his breakfast in the ditch. Then he set about rescuing the remaining ­pup.

  “Come on, buddy.” Jack crouched beside the road. “I won’t hurt you.” He reached into his pocket for the crust from his sandwich and held it toward the shivering animal. “You’re safe now.”

  The pup stumbled out of the bushes and ­half-­rolled, ­half-­waddled over to the outstretched hand. Jack cradled him in his arms as the puppy gulped the bread ­down.

  The crows screeched, stretched powerful wings and paced back and forth like angry vultures waiting for their chance. They had retreated only twenty feet or so to the ­broken-­down roof of a rotting wooden grain ­shed.

  Jack placed the puppy in an open cardboard box fitted inside his black metal bike carrier. He took his work gloves from the box and yanked them on, his mother’s constant warnings about germs and dirt echoing in his head. He dragged the dead dog off the road and hauled the sack with the three dead pups back to lie beside her. Then he broke several branches from the brush and laid them gently over the dead animals. Dewdrops on the green mat shone like pearls in the bright ­sun.

  The chorus of crows prompted him to pile more loose vegetation over the corpses. He tried not to think that the crows could shift it away as soon as he ­left.

  He heard whimpering and turned to see the puppy, paws hooked over the side of the box, struggling to climb out. Jack picked up the orphan, who wiggled and licked his hand, and brought him over to where the dead dogs ­lay.

  For a moment the sounds of planes, honking geese and the raucous crows faded. The air stilled. Jack sighed and tried to find the right words for a prayer. “For all the senseless killing in this world, God, we ask forgiveness. Buddy and I leave these your creatures in your hands. That’s all we can do. Amen.”

  So the dog’s name was going to be Buddy. Jack hadn’t known until he said it. Holding that warm, wriggling body close to his chest made tears spring to his eyes. In the midst of all the bad stuff in the world, here was one small ray of sunshine. Jack knew what he wanted to happen. He just wasn’t sure it was ­possible.

  Chapter ­5

  Jack put Buddy back in the carrier box, turned his bicycle around and headed home. He was pretty sure whose old dog he had just covered with branches. Cairn wasn’t that big a place, only about 250 people nestled together on six side streets and four avenues. It was far smaller in area than the flight school. Older too, built in the 1880s. The Waters family had been there since the turn of the ­century.

  Cairn sat beside the main ­east-­west Canadian Pacific Railway line. Most of Cairn’s citizens were pretty decent folk, as far as Jack could tell. There were a few drunks, a few ornery folk, and a couple of people who didn’t have much common sense according to Jack’s dad. This pup had come from one of the problem families, Jack ­figured.

  The Boyles had a pack of black ­lab-­terrier mix dogs and lived the other side of town on Pasqua Street, just down from the train station. Their neighbours, the Nelsons, fav
oured border collies that also ran loose, chasing cows, messing with gardens and scaring cats. Folks knew enough not to bother the Boyles or the Nelsons. The young guys in both families took offence easily, and liked fighting and drinking too ­much.

  Their unpainted houses were a disgrace, Jack’s mother said, and their kids ran wild like their dogs. Instead of flowers and neat gardens, dismembered cars and trucks decorated their yards. Jack’s mother shook her head over them. Maybe cleanliness wasn’t next to godliness but in his mom’s mind it sure was ­close.

  Being cantankerous seemed to hold the Nelson and Boyle families together. Jack had sure had enough ­run-­ins with Jimmy Boyle, the youngest of the boys, and his best friend Pete Nelson – or, as everyone called him, Repete, his father being the original ­Pete.

  Jimmy Boyle was a bully. Repete imitated ­him.

  Jack was strong and fast and Wes had been the tallest kid in class, so they hadn’t been bothered as often as some kids. Then Jimmy and Repete had quit school after grade ten and life had calmed down. Jack figured this pup was one of the ­Boyle-­Nelson ­breed.

  He pedalled on. He had to talk his mother and father into letting him keep this pup. His grandpa Waters had been a dog person, but ever since he’d died of a heart attack in 1937 there hadn’t been a dog around the ­place.

  Grandpa’s dog Spike had given up after his master had died of a massive heart attack. He’d stopped eating and Jack figured he’d died of a broken heart. He was buried in the yard under the caragana hedge. Jack had been ten at the time and had thought the dog should have been buried in the family plot in the Cairn cemetery. His dad laughed and made it one of his stories to pass out to customers like liquorice ­twists.

  Now Jack was older and knew you couldn’t bury dogs in a people ­cemetery.

  He steered with one hand and kept the pup calm by petting him and talking to him. “We’ll see if we can’t give you a home, Buddy. Dad won’t be a problem. It’s Mom we’ve got to win over.” He’d have to promise to walk the dog, probably build Buddy a doghouse, and train ­him.

  Maybe a dog would help his family keep their minds off Sandy being missing. Help them keep up hope. Help keep up the picture of Sandy in France, being helped by the Resistance ­fighters.

  “If I could, Buddy, I’d go find him myself.”

  Jack knew the Royal Canadian Air Force would take ­seventeen-­year-­olds on as “boys.” He wished he could go right now. He wanted to help end the war so Flo and Sandy could come home. If he were old enough, he’d go. Mom would be furious. But all the recruitment posters pleaded for the young and able to join the armed forces. He was young and able. He was just a year too young. That’s what came of skipping Grade Four. Some of his classmates had already signed up and left. The more he thought about it, the faster he ­pedalled.

  Jack couldn’t be a pilot because of bad eyes, but there were lots of things a skinny, compact guy with thick glasses could do. Even if he wasn’t the biggest guy in grade eleven, he was the smartest in Math and ­Science.

  Jack kept his love of planes and flying to ­himself.

  His mother hated flying and planes with a passion. After all, her first husband had been a flyer, and he had died. But not in a plane, Jack knew that much. His uncle Jack Waters, dad’s older brother, had died shortly after coming back from the First World War, leaving Ivy on her own. Ivy had Florence a few months later in 1919. Then Bill and Ivy had married in 1924 when Flo was five. That was all Jack ­knew.

  Jack had watched his mother one morning as she hung out the sheets. They heard a plane engine, then silence, and then the sound of a crash invaded the peace of the early spring morning. Ivy had grabbed the laundry basket and hurried into the house without a backward ­glance.

  Jack stopped in the lane behind his house. He shook his head. Maybe it was a good thing he was too young to go and fight. With Sandy and Flo gone, someone had to stay home and mind the chickens, as his dad ­said.

  “Come on, Buddy, Mom will have had her second cup of tea. I hope the news on the radio is good. Dad says the tide has turned and we’re winning more often.” He wheeled the bike toward the ­house.

  His mother appeared at the open back window. “Jack? Did something happen at the airfield? You’re not sick, are you?”

  “I’m fine, Mom.”

  Ivy Waters burst out of the house, the screen door banging behind her. Flies, fleas and all unsavoury or ­germ-­ridden creatures were banished from Ivy’s ­house.

  “You didn’t lose your job, did you?” She watched as he propped his bike against the white clapboard ­house.

  “I’m fine, Mom.” Jack rescued the wriggling pup from the carrier, clasped it in his two hands and turned to face his mom – small, worried, wearing her crisp, clean, flowered ­housedress.

  She had a smudge of flour on her nose. “I was making cookies to send to Flo in my next parcel,” she ­said.

  “Look what I found.”

  Chapter ­6

  “You can’t bring that dog in the house. It’s dirty, probably has fleas.”

  “He’s just a puppy, Mom. He’s harmless.”

  “I’ve never liked dogs,” his mother said. Her face looked tight and her eyes dark. “I don’t trust them.”

  “But…”

  “Besides, we don’t need any more chaos in our lives, Jackie.”

  Jack stared at his mother. He didn’t know what she was referring to. Was it the war, Sandy missing, the idea of a dog? “What’s the matter with dogs?”

  “A dog is the last thing I need after what’s happened.” She pulled the creased and crumpled airmail letter out of her pocket. “What if Sandy dies? What then?”

  His mother had been carrying the letter with the bad news about Sandy around with her ever since it had arrived. Did she think that holding on to it would save ­him?

  Ivy Waters didn’t even look at Buddy. She turned and walked into the house, her shoulders hunched like an old woman’s.

  Jack stood ­stock-­still. He chewed his lip. He felt as if someone had kicked him in the stomach. He was a thoughtless kid. He didn’t understand anything. The dog wiggled and licked his elbow. Jack left the pup in the carrier and followed his mother into the ­house.

  She sat in the spotless kitchen on one of the brightly painted wooden chairs. A plate of fresh oatmeal cookies sat on the table beside her. Her pale hands clutched the fruit bowl in the middle of the table as if it were a life preserver. The letter lay on the table like a burning coal on an open ­hearth.

  “I’m sorry,” Jack ­gulped.

  Jack knew what the letter contained. Flo said that her dear friend (Sandy) had flown somewhere (probably France) to drop supplies (for the Resistance). Jack read between the lines of his sister’s ­self-­censored letter. His plane hadn’t come back. She was hopeful – she’d nursed one flyer who’d been rescued, and he hadn’t even been able to speak another language (French), unlike her dear friend who’d grown up in a bilingual ­home.

  Jack picked up the letter and gently ironed it with his hands, smoothing the wrinkles. He read it again and munched on a ­cookie.

  Ivy began to polish the kitchen table with a damp crocheted cloth, even though there wasn’t a speck on ­it.

  “Sandy will show up, Mom. He’s a pretty smart guy.”

  “You should phone Harold if you aren’t going in to work, Jack.”

  “I will.” He placed the letter on the small cherry wood table under the oak wall ­phone.

  “Take that dog down to the store. Maybe your dad can find him a good home.”

  “Why can’t we keep him? His mother’s been shot. I don’t know why they shot the mother. Buddy’s an orphan.”

  She shook her head. “An untrained pup is a load of work.”

  “I’d train him,” Jack said. He ached to tell her about Buddy, but she turned away from him and lifted her bib apron down off a hook, pulled it over her head and knotted the ties tightly behind her. She moved through her kitchen in a circular path as if
it were a prison cell. The doors to the parlour and bedrooms were closed. Ivy’s universe was small and ­controlled.

  Jack tried once more. “I’d take care of him, Mom.”

  “You’re too busy to take care of a dog and I’ve got enough on my hands.”

  “I’d build him a doghouse. He’d live outside.”

  “No, Jack. We are not going to let things get out of control around here, not if I can help it.” Her face was flushed, her eyes blazing. She grabbed the watering can and pushed past him out to her ­garden.

  Jack followed her out and patted the pup in the carrier. “Sorry, Buddy. I guess our timing was bad.”

  He rode down the block to the store. Ivy had him worried. His solid, predictable mother, the one he’d known before the war, had disappeared. He wanted her ­back.

  >>>

  The Waters General Store was on Railway Avenue, the main drag of the village, next to the small brick post office and down from the drugstore. The larger and more impressive Cairn General Store and Dry Goods was further down the block beside the Chinese restaurant and the garage with its one gas pump. The ­two-­storey, ­four-­room school and the United Church were up the ­hill.

  Cairn’s best feature was its hill. It wasn’t every prairie town boasted a ­hill.

  But Jack’s dad said that Cairn’s hill wouldn’t be considered a hill in Alberta. Bill had been to the Rocky Mountains twice. He’d taken Ivy on their honeymoon. “Cairn’s hill is a glorified mound, an oversized anthill,” he’d ­said.

  Jack didn’t care. He liked their hill. The village had a few birch and poplar trees and enough of a slope that you could sled down the hill in the winter, or catch a lift behind ­horse-­drawn carts by gliding on your ­rubber-­soled boots on the ice. Parallel to Railway Avenue ran the Canadian Pacific Railway tracks and on the other side of the tracks stood the tall green grain elevator inscribed with the Ogilvie sign and the ­brick-­red clapboard cpr station with its new ­roof.