Picnic on the Bus

CONSTANCE AND I BOARDED the Acadian Line at 10:05 on the morning of October 7. We took seats together, third row back, driver's side. She wore dark brown slacks, a white blouse, a sweater, a jacket. Comfortable shoes rounded out her travel attire. She had a scarf folded neatly in her handbag. Between Great Village and Truro we were the only passengers. Then, in Truro, two women boarded and sat together midway back of the bus, and immediately each took out a book to read. We had a thirty-five-minute layover in Truro. My aunt and I remained seated. She took out the thermos of tea she'd packed. Soon a vendor, a rough-hewn boy of fifteen or sixteen, walked down the aisle. He offered fried halibut sandwiches or ham-and-cheese. We both got the halibut.

The vendor went back into the depot. "Picnic on the bus," Constance said. "Life could be worse."

"You didn't have to pay for my sandwich," I said. "I have my own travel funds. Except for this past week, Uncle Donald's never been late with my wages."

"'Except' means an exception, and there shouldn't have been one."

"I won't press him on it."

"Pack your suitcase carefully?"

"You'll never know."

"When we get to Halifax, may I carry out a quick inspection?"

"No, you may not, Aunt Constance."

As the bus idled, the driver, Mr. Harrison (he and Mr. Standhope worked this route), went out to lean against the bus and smoke a cigarette. My aunt saved half of her sandwich, wrapping it back up and placing it in her handbag. In about twenty minutes the driver returned, followed by two young men, Canadian soldiers in uniform, who sat in the back row, smoked cigarettes, talked and laughed. The driver steered us out of Truro, southbound on the two-lane. Passenger stops included, this leg was scheduled at three hours fifteen minutes, which would deliver us to Halifax at five-fifteen.

"You might want to take your nap now," I said.

"Not yet."

"Then I'd like to ask you something. Do you mind?"

"I didn't say yes to you as a travel companion if I wasn't going to be companionable," my aunt said.

"Here's what, then. Rack my brains as I might, I can't figure out why Uncle Donald—I mean, considering his feelings about the U-boats—why—"

"Why in God's name would he allow me to travel on the ferry in the first place. Take the Caribou up to Sydney, then across to St. John's. Treacherous waters, what with the U-boats and all. Is that your question?"

"Yes."

Constance opened her handbag, reconsidered the remaining half of the sandwich. Finally, she ate it as if she were famished. In fact, for the first time in my experience, a completely unheard-of phenomenon, she spoke with food in her mouth: "—slept in the shed."

"I didn't quite get that," I said.

I waited while she finished the sandwich. "I slept in the shed last night," she said. "I wouldn't be seeing Donald till after the christening, so I went out to be with him. In marriage you have to adapt, eh? I adapted out to the shed. And we talked, husband and wife. Though I admit it's not comfortable out there. Those newspaper headlines on the wall are unpleasant. Anyway, to his credit Donald did desperately try to talk me out of leaving home. But I said it's a christening. It's Zoe's grandchild—my oldest friend's grandchild. Friendship is provisional, Wyatt—you have to keep earning it. Back and forth, give the gift that's only each other's to give, as the hymn says. How long have I been friends with Zoe Fielding? Since we were five years old! I reminded Donald of all that. We had tea in the shed. I turned the radio off. I said, 'I simply won't miss the christening.' And that's when Donald used strong language. God's name—in vain. Language I don't approve of, but it was heartfelt."

"Then what happened?"

"My husband and I called a truce and neither slept."

"You didn't sleep at all last night?"

"Though Donald had offered me the cot. But, yes, soon I'll need that nap."

"Everyone I love most can't sleep well lately."

"Somewhere in Tilda's book, it says, 'Plead, cajole and foist your opinion as you must, yet it does not necessarily change another's mind.' Donald tried and failed with me. The christening won out, and that's all there is to it. I've said to Tilda more than once: those platitudes aren't much good for predicting life, but they often manage to sum up what's just happened pretty well."

"I've never cracked the cover of that book. It's by Tilda's bed."

"Formerly her bed, eh?"

We were silent a few moments, then Constance said, "My husband asked why didn't I think ahead to go the first stretch by automobile. That'd limit it to only one, much shorter ferry ride, just across to St. John's. But drive all the way up to Sydney Mines in Cape Breton to catch that ferry? Those roads? At my age, with these old creaky bones?"

"By going out to the shed, you're saying what? That it's not just friendship that's provisional."

"Marriage is, too. Correct."

"Thirty-seven years, it's still—"

"More painfully than ever, provisional. Haven't you noticed?"

My aunt shut her eyes then. But she didn't sleep. Apparently she just wanted to talk with her eyes closed. "Reach into my handbag, there, Wyatt. I'm giving you permission. There's a folded-up sheet."

I found the piece of paper and read what was on it, a poem neatly printed in ink:

CASABIANCA
Love's the boy stood on the burning deck
trying to recite "The boy stood on
the burning deck." Love's the son
stood stammering elocution
while the poor ship in flames went down.

Love's the obstinate boy, the ship,
even the swimming sailors, who
would like a schoolroom platform, too,
or an excuse to stay
on deck. And love's the burning boy.

In a few minutes, my aunt opened her eyes and said, "Mrs. Oleander, the librarian, brought this poem to Tilda's attention. Tilda then copied it out for me. What Mrs. Oleander found thrilling, and so do I, is that it was composed by a woman who had some of her upbringing in Great Village. Practically a neighbor! This very poem was actually published. The magazine's called New Democracy. Granted, it was published in 1936, but the poet, Miss Elizabeth Bishop, has published many others. According to Mrs. Oleander, Miss Elizabeth Bishop's something of a world traveler. But she visits our province now and again. And do you know what? Where you and I got on the bus this morning, the house across from the Esso station, is the very house in which the poet spent several years. She went to the Great Village school. Her mother—and this is actual fact, not merely gossip—the mother's in Nova Scotia Hospital. Across Halifax Harbor to Dartmouth. Some sort of nervous collapse or other. Nobody's business, really, but the family's. Poor thing, eh? Elizabeth was only a little girl when they sent her mother there."

I returned the poem to my aunt's handbag. "It'd take ten philologists to help me understand it as well as it's meant to be understood," I said.

"Don't sell yourself short," she said. "The way I see it? A poem reaches out exactly halfway, then you reach out halfway, then see what happens."

"Provisional, eh?"

"I only mean if you're thinking's willful and generous toward a poem, the poem'll be equally those things back. As for meaning, it'll mean something different to each person. That's all you have to know."

"'Poor ship in flames went down'—that's got a ring to it," I said. "And 'stammering elocution'—I know what that's like."

"See, already you've got a good start on coming to terms with it."

"Nope, that's enough homework for me, Aunt Constance. But I'm glad you like the poem so much."

"When I get back home, I'm pressing it into my daybook. Mrs. Oleander says there's every reason to have confidence that Miss Elizabeth Bishop will establish a permanent reputation."

"Already did, in Great Village, don't you think?"

"Of course," my aunt said. "But just imagine, letting dozens, maybe hundreds of total strangers in on your private-most thoughts. Poets suffer from this. Yet their suffering's to our benefit. Writing poetry, not just for the church bulletin, I mean, risks being too openly sophisticated. Sophisticated in ways the average person can scarcely comprehend. And right there I speak of myself as average."

My aunt looked out the window for a while, then did finally doze off. She woke up only when the bus wheezed to a stop at Halifax terminal. My uncle had rigged a kind of gurney to haul my aunt's trunk, basically a dolly made of planks sawed and hinged, about two feet wide and three feet long, with wheels taken from four children's scooters fitted to the underside. Mr. Harrison and I loaded the trunk onto it. Wobbled a bit but did the job nicely, and even drew some notice from pedestrians, all the four city blocks to the wharf, where a deckhand pulled it up the gangway onto the ferry St. Michael's. The St. Michael's would connect with the Caribou in Sydney Mines, Cape Breton, then cross the Cabot Strait to Newfoundland.

"Enjoy yourself here in the city," my aunt said. "Take in a movie. Eat in a restaurant. A seat by the window makes you feel less alone, I'm told. But try to postpone moping aboutthings at home, at least till you get back home. I'll send a postcard, eh?"

"Have a wonderful time," I said.

"Wyatt, it's good for the soul, isn't it, to visit Joe and Katherine."

"I could go out to the cemetery straight from the wharf."

"You take care, darling," my aunt said. "And especially good luck at the recruiting office. Those young men in uniform on the bus—your age, about. I pray God lets them measure up, wherever they're sent. I love you very much. I think you'll decide things well for yourself."

We hugged, and I watched my aunt until she reached the top of the gangway. On deck she waved, then disappeared. I bet they serve tea and biscuits, and that's where she's gone, I thought. I opened my suitcase to take out a sweater and found a small tin of lemon cookies. Purchased from the bakery, I knew; my aunt never made lemon cookies. I opened the tin. Then I realized that while I was helping to get my aunt's wardrobe trunk on the dolly she must've inspected my suitcase, because she'd placed a note inside the tin: Adequate job.

Walking through the city, I stopped in at the Baptist Spa on Morris Street. The proprietor, a Mrs. Campion, was cordial. I paid for a room, number 4, left my suitcase on the bed and set right out for the cemetery. My parents' graves were near the entrance, to the right of the iron gate. Very easy to locate.

Which reminds me, Marlais. In Nova Scotia, your mother's favorite of all the cemeteries she'd come to know was the one in Great Village. And believe me, Tilda was tough in her judgments. Again I jump ahead here, but one time—after the war— Tilda came home from being a mourner in McCallum Settlement. "The cemetery there's a disgrace," she said. "No one's weeded there for ages. Hoodlums have scrawled up a number of stones and the road in is badly rutted. Still, I did a good job and was paid on the spot. Yet it was everything I could do not to criticize the caretaker. The deceased was named Darwin Timbertea, age ninety-one, succumbed to pneumonia. Other than clergy, the only one there was a nephew. After the service, the nephew drove me to the bus. In the car, I couldn't hold back and harshly criticized the caretaker, and the nephew said, 'My uncle Darwin was the caretaker.'"

At four P.M. I went to the recruiting station, corner of Duke Street and Argyle. The desk attendant, in Navy uniform, was direct. "You're here to kill Germans, I hope, and to do Canada proud, I hope. What's your name?"

"Wyatt Hillyer, from Middle Economy."

He said, "Did they teach you to write in Middle Economy?"

"I already knew how by the time I got there."

"Fill out these forms, then."

"I'm not decided yet," I said.

He leaned forward over the table filled with recruiting pamphlets, his face an inch from mine. "See that poster?" he said. He grabbed my shoulders and spun me toward the wall and I saw a recruiting poster. It showed a Navy warship dropping depth charges down at a German U-boat with Hitler's face on its hull.

"I'm not here to help you not piss your pants, Hillyer. You want to be on that ship, doing what that ship's doing, sign up. Me, I'm from Nells Harbor—men from there get their sea legs in the womb, eh? How about boys from Middle Economy?" I signed the papers. He said, "Spend Christmas at home and come back January fifteen. Right here. My desk." He saluted and I saluted back.

It remained for me to pass a physical examination, but for all intents and purposes, I was in the Royal Canadian Navy.

I ate supper in a restaurant on Lower Water Street, lingering long past dark, looking at the harbor, thinking I'd write Tilda a letter that would begin, "Well, I'm going off to war." But to what purpose? The letter, I mean.

Directly from the restaurant, I went to a pub on Bedford Row. Among the customers were some students from Dalhousie University, men and women, talking about philosophy and music. I heard "Beethoven." I thought Hans Mohring might know them. I felt envious. I had philosophies of my own. But I didn't invite myself to join them. After an hour or so, in walked the Navy recruiter, accompanied by three other men in uniform. Ashamed to say, at the bar I spent far too much money, throwing back shot after shot. In the wide mirror back of the bar I noticed that the fellow who'd recruited me kept looking over, shaking his head, all mockery and disgust, I thought. Who knows, really, but you get my frame of mind.

There was an excellently built sled hanging on a wall, with a dart board at its center, darts stuck along the slats. At one point, a pretty woman, with dark red hair and wearing an overcoat and leather boots up to her knees, sat next to me and said, "I haven't seen you at Dalhousie. Are you a student?" I said no, I wasn't, and she said, "I'm Mary Conklin, from Dublin. I'm studying art history. Do you play darts? I have five brothers, I was raised on darts, so your pride be warned."

I introduced myself, then we pulled the darts from the sled, stepped back, and she said, "You go first." So I threw a dart toward the board. I didn't have my sea legs, to say the least, not after all that whiskey, so I didn't see my Navy recruiter step into range on his way to the jukebox. My dart struck him high on the arm, almost his shoulder. From his grimace, I expected the worst. "Oh, Lord, that's not the bull's-eye ya had in mind, I bet," Mary Conklin said. However, my recruiter just grinned, yanked the dart out, blood specking up, and said, "See you January fifteen, Hillyer." His mates roared with laughter. He continued on to the jukebox and stood there studying the choices. Mary Conklin said, "That was the shortest game of darts I've ever had," then left with her friends.

Around eleven o'clock—maybe it was later—I paid up and made my way out into the city. Stumbling along, I stopped at the first hotel I came across, the Essex House, on Bishop and Lower Water, where I paid the night clerk and somehow managed the stairs up to my room, 403.

Early the next morning, the kittiwakes and gulls were keening so loud and close, I thought they should've pitched in on the room rate. It was cold and rainy, and I'd left the window open. The bureau doily was soaked through, and on the doily, rain had gathered in a glass ashtray. I could hear the loading cranes at Smith Wharves.

Standing at the sink, splashing water on my face, I suddenly remembered I'd signed up for the RCN, and felt neither good nor bad about it. Not righteous or patriotic or thrilled to the task—what sort of Canadian did that make me? And yet I could hear my aunt's admonition ring in my ears: "Indifference is a sin." If at that moment I'd sat down and written a questionnaire on hotel stationery, it would've included: Did I join up because I wanted to kill Germans, do my bit? Did I join up because only a coward wouldn't? Question after question after question. Despite all the accounts of battle I'd heard on the radio, I had no goddamn idea what combat was like. Why wouldn't a U-boat find my ship? Why wouldn't I be listed among the missing in a newspaper article whose blaring headline was tacked to my uncle's shed wall? I'd like to think that I was of as sane and similar a frame of mind as the next fellow—hundreds of us in Nova Scotia alone—awaiting orders. Both wanting to get on with it—should be getting on with it, no doubt—and scared out of our wits.

To top off the morning, vicious hangover included, it wasn't until I'd walked all the way to a café on Granville Street to get some coffee that I remembered I'd taken a room at the Baptist Spa, paid for in full. Where my suitcase would still be on the bed.

That afternoon, on the bus to Great Village, I was so agitated I changed seats twice. I kept thinking: I should've said to Constance most of the French I knew, Bon voyage. I should've waited longer at the dock. I should've watched her ferry gain the harbor. What had been my hurry? The cemetery could have waited. You can't be late to visit parents in a cemetery, can you? All of this filled me with regret. Aunt Constance always said, when it was too late to help something, "Oh well, water under the bridge," but that was a phrase I no longer much liked.

All that. And Tilda's wedding in two days. (The love of my life's wedding.) And my church suit to get pressed and cleaned. That couldn't be done in Middle Economy. That would have to be in Truro.