Chapter ­4

The next morning Jack slipped on khaki shorts, ­t-­shirt and runners and tiptoed down the hallway past his parents’ room. He grabbed an apple and a thick slab of bread which he slathered with butter and peanut butter, and snuck out the back door so as not to wake his mom and ­dad.

The Waters family had had a hard day. All the neighbours had gathered. Gallons of tea had been drunk; plates of homemade squares and cookies brought and consumed. His father had been stuck with the clean-­up.

Jack hadn’t slept well and decided to get an early start for work. His weekend job, at the Elementary Flight Training School two miles away, might keep his mind off Sandy and things he couldn’t control or change. Monday he’d be back at school. His parents were still asleep because their general store didn’t open until ten Saturdays, allowing them to stay open late so farmers could get into ­town.

Jack stopped momentarily in the outhouse and then rinsed his hands under the pump in the backyard. The cold water from the cistern chilled his fingers. He wiped his already-tanned hands on the worn pink towel his mother had left hanging over the edge of the white enamel ­bucket.

The town water truck lumbered by, making an early morning run to the public water station on the road to Mortlach, the next village, ten miles away across the prairie to the ­east.

What a week it had been. Yesterday the bad news about Sandy had arrived, and only the day before that, he and his family had gone to the graduation ceremony of the latest batch of young Royal Air Force flyers trained at the base. The station band had played marches. People had sung “God Save the King” and the English co, the Commanding Officer, had ­spoken.

There’d been a potluck supper afterwards at the church, and everyone in town had been there to say goodbye to the boys who had come into the village for treats, church, socials or dinners. He’d said farewell to the three flyers who had eaten at their Sunday dinner table the last few months. He’d been too busy at school and work to get to know them very ­well.

He and his friend Wes had eaten scads of food at the ­potluck.

At six feet, two inches, Wes had to duck when he entered or left the church basement. His reddish hair stuck up in unruly clumps despite hair cream and constant combing. Jack was barely five foot eight and wiry, but he could eat as much as Wes. They’d demolished a plate of fancy egg salad and salmon sandwiches all by ­themselves.

“We’ll be seeing you, Jackie,” one of the flyers had said in his English accent, as he waved his new blue wedge cap. “Too bad you can’t fly. It’s wizard.”

Jack had bitten his tongue to keep from telling the ­smart-­aleck Brit that he could fly. The young pilots would ship out to Halifax by train the next day. A ship would take them back to England where they would train as bomber or fighter pilots, now that they had their wings, wings they had earned right here in ­Cairn.

Jack wondered how many of them would make it through the war alive. They weren’t as well trained or experienced as Sandy. And Sandy was ­missing.

Actually, you didn’t have to go all the way to Europe to die. A few students had already died in training accidents right here. Jack shuddered, ­remembering.

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Jack climbed on his bike and pedalled through Cairn. His life and his small village had changed so much in the last two years. He turned onto the gravel road heading north out of town and put on the speed. Sweat trickled down his forehead. He wiped his ­brow.

He whistled “You Are My Sunshine” to try and cheer himself up as he cycled toward the airfield. His job was to help the mechanics keep the airplanes in working order, and usually he did a lot of work cleaning them inside and out. Sometimes he got to work alongside the mechanics. He could manage oil changes and minor maintenance jobs as ­well.

He’d watched the whole training base being built in the late fall of 1941, including the airfield, hangars, shops and ­h-­huts, and housing for the instructors and staff. Now, two years later, he felt much more ­mature.

At first, raf maintenance people had done all the work on the base. Then Jack had made a place for himself – and lots of tips – delivering coffee, cigarettes and snacks from his dad’s store out to the construction workers. The money was in the bank in Moose Jaw. Jack was saving for university, although he did buy himself the occasional book or model plane, ­too.

Finally the raf had sent all the maintenance and support staff home to work for the war effort in Britain and the station had started hiring local workers. Now Jack’s weekend job meant that at last he could get close to the planes, even if he didn’t get to fly ­them.

Jack sped up. If he hurried, Mabel Turner, one of the instructors who managed the Link Trainer, might give him a turn. The flight simulator helped train the student flyers. The Link was fun, pitting Jack’s manoeuvring skills against a machine. It helped to keep his senses sharp, helped keep fresh what he’d learned flying with ­Sandy.

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.