by Mary Lawson
“They’re staying with Dr. and Mrs. Christopherson until the house is ready,” his mother said. “It’s a shame they couldn’t move straight in when they arrived but they had to wait for Gertie and Otto’s permission, and their letter didn’t get here till Thursday.”
She was taking an interest in things again, sounding almost like her old self. If he’d noticed, Arthur would have been relieved.
She was prattling on. “But Gertie’s happy the house won’t be standing empty any longer and of course the rent will be helpful for them. It gives them more time to decide whether or not they’re going to come back. It’s Gertie, you see. She can’t bear to sell it, and she can’t bear to live in it. They’re still with her sister in Oshawa. Anyway, I told her we’d move their furniture into that big bedroom at the back of the house. Reverend March is bringing his own; I don’t know why. I said you and the boys would do it, Arthur. Move the furniture. And it would be nice if you could clear up around the yard so that it looks tidy when they move in. Arthur? Are you listening?”
“What?”
“I said I’d like you and the boys to tidy up around the yard before the Marches move in. Get it looking nice for them. And then help them move their things in. Everything’s sitting in Dr. Christopherson’s garage at the moment; a big truck brought it all up for them last week. Would you have time to do the yard tomorrow? You or one of the boys?”
“What yard?”
“Goodness’ sake, Arthur! The Reverend and Laura—don’t you think that’s a pretty name? They’re moving into Otto and Gertie’s house, for the time being at least. If they like it here they might stay permanently. Maybe if Gertie and Otto decide not to come back, the Marches will buy their house. It would be handy for everybody, don’t you think? Anyway, they want to move in as soon as they can.”
They were moving into the Luntzes’ house? That girl was going to be his neighbor? Arthur was stunned. He went over to the Luntzes’ farm at least twice a day to see how Dieter/Bernhard was making out. He would see her every day. Every day! He didn’t know whether to be overjoyed or appalled. She’d see how stupid he was, how he never knew what to say.
As for helping her and her father move in, that might take hours. He wasn’t sure he’d survive hours in her company.
When it came to it, it was Laura who looked as if she might not survive.
“Over there, I think,” Reverend March said. “At an angle, if you follow my meaning, Arthur. Facing the fire, but not head-on. What do you think, Laura?”
“Yes,” Laura said. “Yes.”
Arthur held the great high-backed armchair in front of him like a shield. He had to peer around the wing of it, like a child afraid of monsters, to see where Reverend March was pointing. He set the chair down carefully.
“Excellent,” Reverend March said. “That’s perfect. Don’t you think, Laura?”
“Yes,” Laura said. “Yes, that’s nice.”
Arthur was bringing their things in on his own. He’d sent Dieter and Bernhard off in the truck to collect more of the Marches’ furniture from the doctor’s garage. He’d had a moment’s unease as he watched the truck rumbling off down the road—two POWs who’d been given the perfect getaway vehicle: if the prison camp guard got to hear about it, he would have a heart attack. But half an hour later they were back. They just plain didn’t want to escape.
They’d made three trips already, picking things up from the garage and unloading them in the farmyard: chairs, beds, lamps, a sofa, a dining table, a bureau, a sideboard, chests of drawers—all of it standing with its feet in the dust.
Arthur carted into the house everything he could carry on his own. Reverend March had tried to help but Arthur’s mother had forbidden it. “Goodness, Reverend, you mustn’t! Or you, Laura! Goodness, no! Let Arthur do it! You just decide where things should go.” She was rushing around polishing things, cleaning things that were already perfectly clean. She kept apologizing for Jake not being there to help. “He so wanted to be here,” she said, “but he…he’d promised to help a friend today.” (Jake had said, “Well I can’t. I’m busy.”) “He’s a little older than you, Laura. But he had an accident and missed a year of school, so I expect you’ll be in the same class in September.”
Arthur brought in a small side table. Most of the furniture was big heavy stuff, made of a rich, dark wood he didn’t recognize but feared might be expensive. He was scared he would damage something. He’d given the boys a pile of old blankets to wrap around things when they were loading them, and he brought each piece into the house carefully, easing it through doorways.
Reverend March wanted the downstairs sorted first, which seemed the wrong way around—shouldn’t you sort out where you were going to sleep first of all?—but Arthur didn’t say so. He was trying to get the job done as quickly as possible, for Laura’s sake as well as his own. By then he’d realized the state she was in.
It had been quite a while before he’d noticed. For a start he was fuzzy-headed with lack of sleep. He’d spent the night thinking about her, worrying about making a fool of himself in front of her, worrying that she would not know he’d tried to enlist and would think he was a coward, a zombie, they called them, who had refused to fight for his country. Then in the morning, when he and his mother went over to the Luntzes’ farm to open up the house and get it aired, he’d started thinking about Carl again. He kept seeing him coming down the stairs or disappearing around a corner, and it made his insides feel hollow. And then the Marches arrived and his confusion about Laura came piling back in on top of everything else, and his mind was just a mess, not a clear thought in it.
He had been out in the farmyard when she and her father drove up in the Reverend’s old car. Laura was wearing a big floppy hat that shaded her face, so maybe he wouldn’t have seen how she looked anyway, but he was afraid to look at her for fear she would see his confusion. He mumbled his hellos to her and her father and carried on carting things into the house. His mother said, “Oh, the poor child,” a couple of times under her breath, but she’d been saying that all week, so he didn’t think anything of it.
He was so aware of her, that was the problem. It was as if she sent out some sort of beam, as if she were surrounded by a light that was denied to everyone else in the world. And worse than that, being aware of her somehow made him aware of himself as well. He became so self-conscious he could hardly walk straight. He was terrified he’d trip over his own feet. Drop something valuable. Fall down the stairs.
But then, about halfway through the morning, he’d suddenly noticed that she was saying yes to everything. Absolutely everything, without exception.
“Ah,” Reverend March said. “The bureau. Lovely. Where do you think, Laura? Over by that wall?”
“Yes,” Laura said. “Yes, that’s nice.”
“Maybe you could move that chair, Arthur. To the right a bit. There! That’s excellent, don’t you think?”
“Yes. Yes, it is.”
“Laura dear”—Arthur’s mother, appearing suddenly in the doorway—“Laura, would you like me to unpack the china for you?”
“Oh, yes. Yes, thank you, Mrs. Dunn.”
“Should I put it into whatever cupboard I think, dear, just to give you a bit more space? Then you could rearrange it yourself later?”
“Thank you, yes. Thank you, Mrs. Dunn.”
Once he’d noticed it, he kept on noticing it, and finally he’d stolen a sideways look at her. They were in the parlor by then. The Luntzes had never used their parlor. Arthur had passed the door countless times but he couldn’t remember ever being in it before. Laura was standing beside her father in the middle of the room. She’d taken her hat off when she entered the house so now he could see her face clearly, and he was shocked by the look of her. She was extremely pale, her skin a bruised, bluish white, and her eyes were terribly swollen, the eyelids shiny and red. She looked like she’d been skinned, like you could see the inside of her, all raw and bloody. He saw that she didn’t care
where anything went or whether it looked better here or there. He saw that he needn’t have worried what she’d think of him. She wasn’t thinking of him. She hardly knew he was there.
After that, he stopped worrying about himself. He just brought things in and set them down as quickly as he could. It seemed to him that she was holding herself together by a thread and he wanted to get out before the thread snapped.
The boys came back with the final load of furniture and the three of them finished bringing in the pieces for downstairs. Then they all trooped upstairs to sort out the bedrooms. There wasn’t much in the way of bedroom furniture—just the two beds and two chests of drawers and a couple of trunks containing bed linen and clothes.
“You’ve chosen which room you want, haven’t you, Laura?” her father said. They were on the landing, Arthur and one of the boys supporting an iron bed frame between them. Arthur was trying to block out thoughts of Carl. Anxiety about Laura had pushed Carl out of his mind while they were downstairs but now he was back.
“Yes,” Laura said.
“Perhaps you’d just show Arthur where you want the bed,” her father said. “Oh, excellent. Here comes my chest of drawers.” He disappeared into another bedroom.
Laura said, “This room.” And in the fraction of a second before she spoke, Arthur knew whose room it would be.
Laura had gone in and was looking around; her footsteps echoed on the bare wooden floor. Arthur stood on the landing, holding up his end of the bed frame, wondering if he could ask her to choose another room. Knowing he couldn’t.
“I guess against this wall,” Laura said, disappearing behind the door.
Arthur licked his lips. There was nothing he could do. He nodded at Dieter/Bernhard and they turned the bed frame on its side and eased it through the doorway. The antlers were gone, of course. There was nothing to show that they had been there but a pockmarking of nail holes in the slatted wooden walls.
“Over there, I guess,” Laura said. “Against that wall.”
They put the bed against the wall. Arthur straightened up slowly. There had been no bodies; that was part of the problem. No funerals. Just memorial services. Which meant that it had been possible, some of the time at least, to pretend that Carl and the others were still just “over there.” Not really dead, just absent. Now, by the act of putting down someone else’s bed in the exact spot where Carl’s had been, he had made it real. He, Arthur Dunn, the one who had stayed at home, safe and comfortable, saved by his bloody feet, which had never given him a moment’s trouble in his life. And Carl and the other guys he’d grown up with, guys he’d sat beside in that damned school year after year—all but a couple who were in hospitals somewhere overseas with bits of them shot off—all of them dead. Setting down the bed, shoving it up against that terrible, bare wall, it felt as though he were betraying them. Stupid, maybe, but that was how it felt.
Laura was saying something. He pulled himself together.
“Pardon?” he said. He forgot not to look at her and her appearance shocked him all over again.
“Did you know them well?” she said. “The people who lived here?”
It took him a moment to answer, to be sure that his throat was clear. Then he said, “Yeah. Pretty well.”
“They had three boys, someone told me,” Laura said. “And they’ve all been killed.”
“Yeah.”
“Were they…were they friends of yours?”
He nodded. “’Specially the youngest one, Carl. We were friends.”
Maybe it was that final detail, on top of everything else, or maybe it was just that she was too tired to hold on any longer, but all at once she was crying, silently, still looking at him, not even turning her head away. There was a movement behind him—Dieter/Bernhard abandoning ship, hightailing it out of the room. Arthur stood where he was.
“I’m sorry,” Laura said, wiping the tears away with the flat of her hand. “I heard your dad died too. I’m so sorry. Everybody seems to be dying. Everybody.”
“Yeah,” Arthur said. “I know.” That was how it felt all right.
“I’m sorry,” she said again.
“It’s okay.”
“My dad says it’s part of God’s plan,” she said. “He says we just don’t understand. He says everything will turn out for the best because God cares for us. But I don’t believe it. I don’t believe He cares for us. I don’t believe anyone who cared for you would have a plan like that. Do you believe it?”
Arthur shifted his feet uncomfortably. He said, “I don’t know much about that sort of stuff.”
She wiped her face with her hand again and asked miserably, “Do you think I’m wicked, for thinking that?”
“No.” He shook his head. “No.”
He heard her father’s voice on the landing and held his breath, afraid he might come in, but then there was the sound of footsteps going downstairs.
“Do you wish we weren’t here?” Laura said. “In your friend’s house?”
“No!” Arthur said. He was dismayed. Had he made her think that? Had his feelings been that obvious?
“Are you sure?”
“Yes! Yes, I’m sure! It’s good it isn’t empty. It’s better than it being empty.” And maybe that would be so, in the long run.
“Thank you,” she said, as if he’d given her a gift. She dug a sodden handkerchief out of her sleeve and blew her nose. She said, “I didn’t want to come here, to this sad house, but there wasn’t anywhere else. I didn’t want to come here at all, to Struan, I mean. I don’t know anybody. At least at home I had my friends.” She looked at him out of her sore, red eyes, and said, “But you’ve been really nice. You and your mum. Thank you.”
Sitting on his bed that night, looking down at his feet, he went over it again and again in his mind. It seemed to him that something huge had happened, that his life had changed forever. In all his days he could not have imagined having such a conversation with a girl. He mustn’t kid himself that it meant anything, though. He knew it was just luck, though luck seemed the wrong word in the circumstances. She wouldn’t have chosen him to confide in if she’d had any choice. It was just that she was in despair and he happened to be there; if she hadn’t been in such a state, the conversation wouldn’t have taken place. In fact, if he hadn’t been feeling pretty sick about things himself, it wouldn’t have taken place, because he’d have fled—he’d have beaten Dieter/Bernhard down the stairs.
But she had thanked him for being nice. That meant something, didn’t it? Not much, maybe, but something.
The following week a German POW was murdered in the woods down by Crow River. Or at least, that was where his body was found. Arthur was there when they found him; he and the men he was with weren’t looking for bodies; they were looking for bears. Five sheep and two calves had been killed in the area in the previous weeks and one farmer, Frank Sadler, had had a visit from a bear while he’d been going about his business in his outhouse.
“Did me a favor, really,” Frank said, telling the story afterward. “I’d been havin’ a bit of a problem in that department, bit of a logjam, you might say, I was startin’ to think it’d take dynamite to shift it, but he scared the whole lot outta me in two seconds flat. But Lona and the kids, they’re all scared to go out there now. Nobody’s regular anymore, an’ it’s makin’ them bad-tempered. Somethin’s gotta be done.”
So half a dozen farmers, Arthur among them, set up a posse and went bear hunting. The truth was Arthur would rather have gone on his own—that way he would only have the bear to worry about and not half a dozen nervous guys waving Lee-Enfields around as well. But they had asked him along, which was good of them, granted that they were his father’s generation; and he hadn’t known how to say no.
Having bears on the brain, when they came across the body they assumed at first that a bear had done the killing. Then they saw that there were no teeth or claw marks. And then they saw the man’s hands were tied behind his back. From the look of him, he’d
been beaten to death.
“Anybody know him?” Charlie Rugger asked. They were standing in a circle around the body, six burly farmers with their rifles pointing at the ground. It was early morning and the sun was filtering slant-wise through the maples, dappling the body with light. The man was wearing the prison camp uniform—dark blue jacket with a big red circle on the back—and the sun made gently flickering maple-leaf patterns on the circle as if the man were a Canadian and proud of it.
“Yeah,” Lennie Hogenveld said, squatting down so he could see the side of the man’s face. It was a mess but you could just about make out his features. “He was workin’ for Stan McLean.”
“Any guesses who might want to do it?”
“Sure,” Lennie said. “I could name you two dozen right off the bat. He’s a Kraut, isn’t he?”
“Yeah, but him in particular,” Charlie said.
Lennie shrugged. Every Thursday the Temiskaming Speaker carried a list of Northern boys killed, wounded, or missing in action on its front page and every week the list seemed to get longer. In the follow-up to D-day several families had lost all their sons. If the murder was the work of a madman—and from the state of the body it looked as though it were—well, there were plenty of madmen about nowadays, fathers or sons or brothers driven out of their minds with grief and rage.
It turned out that whoever had done it had gone for the man in the night. There were signs of a commotion in Stan McLean’s barn, where he’d been sleeping, straw all over the place. Arthur decided to bring the boys into the house to sleep. It was still warm enough in the barn and they protested, but he wasn’t taking any chances. He also didn’t like the idea of Dieter/Bernhard being all alone out in Otto’s fields during the day but there was nothing he could do about that. Thanks to the driest August for years the barley was ready to harvest, and they had to get it in. At least Otto’s place was occupied now and most of the fields were visible from the house.
