‘Maybe you could give me some pointers.’
‘You seem to do just fine all on your own, Mr Pierce.’ She bent over to transfer apples from a crate on the ground and restocked a basket on the counter.
‘I’m surprised you noticed. I thought you were too busy to socialize, with all your customers and whatever it is you’re always scribbling in that journal of yours.’
She winked and tied raffia to make bunches of beets. ‘I am quite capable of doing more than one thing at a time.’
‘Good to know. Let’s dance one quick swing before I have to go meet my pop and your uncle Massey at the dock.’
She rolled her eyes in a subtle surrender and placed the beets on the counter. ‘Fine. One dance.’
I nearly jumped out of my shoes in joy, but as she stepped out from the stand, the band announced they were going on a break.
‘Wait!’ I shouted and ran across the grass lot to the edge of the stage to speak to the piano player, who also happened to be the butcher. ‘One more, please, Mr Cooke.’
‘Sorry, kid. We played all the songs we know. Besides, we’ve been at it all morning and I for one need something to eat. There’s a fresh-out-of-the-oven chicken pot pie over there calling my name.’ He hopped off the stage and headed over to the pot-pie table with zero concern for the disappointing predicament he left me in.
As I walked back towards Chidori, I shrugged with my palms facing skyward. ‘Sorry. I tried.’
She returned the gesture. ‘It’s okay. There will be other opportunities.’
I nodded to agree, but truthfully I was disheartened. ‘The Issei Sun is due in a few minutes. Are we still on for a walk later this afternoon?’
‘Yes.’ Her excitement flickered through her eyes first before it reached her lips. ‘Meet me at my house once you’re finished selling the fish.’
‘Dandy. I can’t wait.’
Chapter 5
The oddly coupled rural Italian soldiers didn’t shoot me. Instead, they arranged for a farmer to hoist me onto a primitive wood cart pulled by a scrawny, malnourished horse. They hopped a ride on the cart, too, only half-heartedly pointing their guns in my general direction since I wasn’t in any condition to fight or run off.
It was a strangely emotionless purgatory to be neither safe nor in immediate danger. Possibly I was in shock from the pain of the burns, or maybe it was just such a peculiar circumstance that my body wasn’t sure how to react, but I felt detached from the reality of what was happening.
An hour into the bumpy journey, the Italian farmer’s cart hit a pot-sized hole on the bombed-out dirt road. The rough jolt threw me against the grasshopper soldier, who smelled like tobacco and dried sweat. He pushed me off as if I disgusted him and yelled at the farmer to instruct him to watch where he was going. I didn’t understand the words but the sentiment was evident.
Dusk fell as we finally passed several stone, thatched-roof farmhouses on the approach to a German-occupied Italian village. The buildings were mostly rubble from the bombings, but laundry lines hung beside some of the structures that still had partial roofs, and I could imagine the peaceful quaintness that must have existed before the war. The farmer’s cart jarringly bounced over cobblestone towards a central plaza, designed around what at one time would have been an impressive tiered marble water fountain. It was half destroyed and empty. The cart stopped in front of a town hall that had been converted by the German military into a Kriegslazarett, a makeshift battlefield hospital for Allied prisoners of war. Several Nazi military jeeps and an ambulance were parked outside the one-storey, wood-framed building. The Italian soldiers stood on either side of me so I could rest my weight on their shoulders as they assisted me inside to surrender me to the Nazis. A clerk took one look at my burns and directed the soldiers to haul me promptly into an office that served as a treatment and operating room. They hoisted me roughly onto a cold metal gurney and then made their leave.
A German doctor who couldn’t have been much older than Tosh examined my feet and shook his head with a gravity that translated loud and clear through the language barrier. I worried it meant amputation. He pushed his spectacles up his nose and, without applying any numbing agent, began the tedious and tormenting task of cleaning the wounds with a solvent and a sharp metal utensil. I couldn’t watch. And my body convulsed in an instinctual gag as the layers of charred skin fell off. My fingers gripped the cold metal table, and although I was on the verge of shouting out in agony the entire time, I cursed only twice – once when he peeled off the last fragile layer of skin, and again when he doused the raw surface with a pungent disinfectant. Holding in the pain made my heart race, the surface of my tongue dry into a paste, and sweat gush from every pore on my body.
A nurse entered the room and smiled at me with a kindness that made me momentarily forget the physical suffering. But then I ached for the comfort of home. Her dark brown hair was twisted into a bun with her white nurse’s cap pinned just above it. Rose wore her nurse’s cap the same way. The nurse was pretty – almost as pretty as Chidori. Almost. No woman I’d ever seen was prettier than Chidori. When we were growing up, strangers always commented on how she was as beautiful as a porcelain doll. And it was true, she did resemble the doll on my sister’s shelf, with her long eyelashes, peachy-coloured cheeks, and lips that seemed always ready to kiss something. I didn’t realize until I was much older how rare it was to be that striking in real life.
The doctor left and the nurse gently wrapped my feet with bandages. When she was done, she reached over to turn my hand. Her frown deepened because my palms were burned badly as well. With the antiseptic the doctor had used, she cleaned my hands, arms, and a burn that ran up my neck and jaw. I winced and bit my lip to prevent myself from cursing in front of her.
‘Entschuldigung,’ she said.
I didn’t know what it meant, but it sounded apologetic. She began a full conversation with me, of which I didn’t understand a word. She smiled a lot and even laughed a few times, not minding that I didn’t say anything in response. And when I smiled, she gently pressed her finger to the dimple on my left cheek.
‘Gutaussehender.’
I tried to repeat the word and it made her laugh. Her friendliness was appreciated, and the only thing that made being injured, all alone in a foreign country, and in the custody of Nazis bearable. She helped me slide off the examining table into a wheelchair, then wheeled me over uneven wood-plank floors into a rectory that served as the dormitory. About thirty men reclined on iron-frame cots, playing cards or reading. Some were asleep. She placed me in front of an empty cot next to another Canadian pilot. I didn’t know him, but the familiar uniform folded up on a chair next to his bed gave me a sense of comradery with the stranger. He was asleep, so I tried to be quiet and not disturb him.
The nurse tenderly helped me move from the wheelchair to the lumpy and compressed cotton mattress and then assisted me to change out of my tattered uniform. She turned her head politely so I could slip into a thin hospital gown and then under the sheet. She must have noticed me wince from the weight of the top wool blanket, because she folded up the bottom of the bed linens to leave my feet exposed.
‘Danke,’ I said. I’d heard Rory say it to his cousin before, so I knew it meant thank you in German.
She nodded to accept the gratitude before she left the dormitory.
At lights out, the guard left his post by the door to do a bed check. The heels of his boots clicked against the wood floorboards and echoed through the dormitory – the sound nightmares are made of. He snaked his way through the rows of cots. When he reached my row, the beam of his torch landed on my face, forcing me to squint.
‘Schlafen,’ he grumbled.
I had no idea what that meant so I ignored him. I was still rattled from the dogfight and in too much discomfort to sleep, so I just stared at the ceiling and thought about home.
‘Sleep,’ he growled in English.
Truth was, I wanted to be asleep. Desperately, to
make the night pass faster. But I couldn’t get the dreadful images of Gordie’s airplane going down out of my mind. The disturbing stench of burned bodies also hadn’t left me. The guard kept the light beamed in my eyes so I glared at him. His eyebrows angled together in contempt as he lifted his arm. The torch slammed against my bandaged right ankle, and my entire body contorted from a dynamite-like explosion that travelled up my leg and halted my heart for a beat. I would have screamed if the air had not been completely sucked out by the blow. Instead, I writhed silently as my muscles braced rigidly against the mattress to fight the torment.
‘Schlafen!’ he shouted.
I winced and turned my back to him.
If my mother had known I was in pain she would have sat on the edge of my mattress and rested a nurturing hand on my shoulder – that is, if she weren’t hysterically inconsolable over witnessing the damaged state I was in and the rudimentary medical treatment I had been provided. But, of course, she wasn’t with me and I wasn’t home. I was all alone in hostile territory. And yearning for a comfort that wasn’t possible only made me feel worse.
The click of his boots didn’t start up again until I purposely slowed my breathing to feign sleep. Once he was gone, my body shook from the intensity of the anguish, or maybe the rage. My desperation to go home had never been worse. But that wish wasn’t going to come true. At least not any time soon. I knew that. And the grim reality pained me worse than the weeping burn wounds that left me skinless and raw.
23 August 1941
Dear Diary,
I greatly admire a person who is able to remain upbeat through heartbreaking hardship. Mrs Wagner tragically lost her husband of fifty-eight years. She has no other family and she is in frail health herself, yet she finds the strength to be genuinely pleasant to everyone she meets. If the wretched hardships of war reach us here on Mayne Island, I aspire to be the type of person who can grow bolder and build strength through dreadful adversity. I pray tragedy never happens. But, if ever faced with the choice to wallow in despair or embrace love, gratitude, and appreciation, why not clutch to the contentment and awe of our fleeting life as Mrs Wagner does?
Who am I fooling? I failed to even clutch the joyous contentment spinning around right in front of my face earlier today. Hayden asked me to dance and I put it off so long that we missed our chance. That is my problem in a nutshell. I think too much. I worry too much. I hesitate too much. Hayden never hesitates. Once he knows what he wants, he bravely takes action to bring it to fruition. Admittedly, some of Hayden’s actions are too impetuous and end in calamity, but I admire that he is fearless. I admire so much about him. Obaasan says if you wish to discover the most important purpose in your life, you need not look any farther than that which puts a smile on your face when you wake up in the morning. For me, that would be Hayden – without a doubt. This afternoon when Hayden and I meet, I vow to be more spontaneous and daring.
Chi
Chapter 6
Happy with Chidori’s promise to accompany me on a walk after the fair, I wandered down the road towards Miner’s Bay to meet my father and Chidori’s uncle Massey at the wharf. The dock was located a short walk down the hill from the fairgrounds, past the general store. A lot of folks were already mingling around the benches that encircled the big old maple tree. Most of the people had come over from either the other nearby islands or Victoria to attend the fair and to eat lunch at the Springwater Lodge. The rest of the crowd were Mayne Islanders eager to get caught up on gossip from the other islands and the mainland.
When my father wasn’t planting or harvesting our crops, he worked for the Setoguchis. He’d worked for both Chidori’s father in his tomato and cucumber greenhouses, and for her uncle Massey on his seiner fishing boat since before I was born. I’d been helping on the boat every summer since I was ten. They were due any minute to arrive with a load of salmon to sell from the dock, so I hopped up and sat on the wood railing to wait.
Massey hadn’t always been a fisherman. He had graduated university with an architecture degree, but only people on the voting list could register to practice as an architect, and the government denied Japanese Canadians the franchise. So instead, Massey became a successful general contractor in Vancouver. He eventually invested in commercial real estate. During the Roaring Twenties he had taken a chance on the wheat stock market, which multiplied in value when Canadian wheat exports went international. Massey had a gut feeling the bubble would eventually burst, so he monitored the volatility and sold all his stocks six months before the entire stock market crashed in ’29. He was one of the few investors who hadn’t lost everything, and having cash on hand meant that – during the terrible economic depression that followed – he was able to buy several buildings and one entire city block at below-value bargain depression prices. But then tragedy struck him in a different way. Sadly, his wife died giving birth to their son. The baby unfortunately died too. He moved back to Mayne Island to escape the heartbreaking memories and live the simple life of a fisherman, but he still owned the real estate in the city and profited from it generously. Most local islanders didn’t know how wealthy he was because he lived modestly in a small cabin near the greenhouses on Chidori’s father’s property, and he wasn’t pretentious in any way.
A queue of folks who were keen to buy fresh sockeye formed near the Springwater Lodge. Another queue wound up the dock to be tendered out for the tour of the navy ship anchored in Miner’s Bay. The Issei Sun appeared in the distance and chugged in from Active Pass, riding low in the water from their bountiful catch. Once they were close enough to saddle up against the floats, my father tossed the bowline to me. As I was bent over tying the knot to the cleat, a plump, dark-haired woman asked me, ‘Is this your family’s boat?’
‘No ma’am.’
‘Who owns the vessel?’ Her nose wrinkled with disdain at Massey as he climbed down from the wheelhouse and tipped his straw hat.
It peeved me that she looked down her nose at him when she didn’t even know him, and I had to hold my tongue. Massey wasn’t bothered by rude people like that, and he usually found a way to have a little fun with them. He winked at me and replied to her, ‘The vessel is privately owned by a successful businessman from Vancouver, ma’am.’
Both my father and I chuckled at his quick wit.
‘What does Issei mean?’ she addressed my father. ‘It sounds foreign.’
‘It means “first generation”,’ he answered matter-of-factly, before he tied on a rubber apron and turned away from her to open the hatch to the cold storage.
‘In what language?’ she pressed.
She was obviously bigoted, so I hopped on deck and pretended not to hear her. Massey and my father also busied themselves to ignore her. She asked once more to no avail, huffed, but then got in line with everyone else, because – regardless of whether it was a Japanese-owned seiner or not – they all wanted the fresh salmon.
A group of four girls who had been a year younger than Chidori and me at school huddled around each other. They stole giddy glances in my direction and giggled. One of them waved at me, which made the other ones gossip.
Massey elbowed my shoulder. ‘Come on, buddy boy. Give them what they came to see.’
I shook my head to refuse.
‘They’ve been circling around here like turkey vultures all summer, hoping you’ll at least work in your undershirt.’
‘Unless I slip and fall overboard, they’re going to be waiting an awfully long time.’
‘Showing off some muscle could be good for business.’ With a chuckle he shoved me over the railing into the water.
When I surfaced and pushed my hair back from my face, both my father and Massey doubled over in laughter. The group of girls were also thoroughly amused. I pulled myself back onto the boat, but I wasn’t interested in showing off for anyone other than Chidori, so I left my soaking wet shirt on out of principle. And defiance. Massey’s big palm slapped my shoulder again to josh me. I ignored the goading and got
to work.
The hull was filled and overflowing onto the deck with crushed ice and hundreds of salmon. I rolled my sleeves and hooked the thick and slick fish with a pike pole, then threw them to Massey one at a time. In a perfectly timed rhythm, he turned and chucked them at my father, who laid them out on a long, ice-covered wood sales plank on the dockside of the boat. Eventually the load in the hull lowered enough that I had to drop down the hatch into the marine cold storage to toss up the rest.
Even without seeing me working shirtless, customers enthusiastically scooped up the fish and passed over their fists-full of money until the hull was completely empty two hours later. About a dozen folks at the end of the line had to go home empty-handed and disappointed.
I reached up over my head and pulled myself out of the hull, smelling like salt and seaweed. And shivering from working on the ice in wet clothes. Massey removed his gloves and tossed my father a cola bottle as I stepped into the warm sunshine. He was about to toss me one too, but I waved him off. ‘I can’t stay.’
‘You got a date?’ Massey teased.
‘I’m working on it,’ I said.
The humour faded from his expression as he nodded and took a sip of the cola. Then he glanced at me with some sort of knowingness or cautionary tale.
‘What?’ I asked as my gaze shifted back and forth between him and my father.
Massey shrugged but didn’t say anything. He was like that – wise with both life experience and book smarts, but he never lectured or imposed his opinions. In fact, he was unintrusive to an annoying degree. One time, when I was about fourteen years old, I had loaded up a skiff with engine parts for his boat and the whole damn thing sank. Massey knew it was too much weight but didn’t stop me. He just sat there and watched the ordeal happen without saying a word. I was so hot under the collar. Partly because I’d have to buy him another engine pump. Partly because I didn’t know how I was going to get the skiff and the other parts off the bottom of the ocean. But mostly I was mad because – if he had just said something – he could have saved me all the trouble. He claimed that telling me the answers didn’t help me learn, making mistakes did. Then he chuckled at how fuming angry I was, which sent me into a rage. I had to walk away and didn’t go back to salvage the skiff for a week. They were both thoroughly entertained that day too, but at least they helped me winch everything out of the water.
All We Left Behind Page 4
