Chapter
TEN-THIRTY HOURS. ARCHIE approaches Queen and Bay. The strains of World War Two music piped through speakers waft towards his ears. Mournful and nostalgic. From a time even before Pawpaw, who used to tell him tales of his father raising extra cattle to feed the soldiers overseas. “Farming sinewed arms and strained backs,” Pawpaw had related, rocking in his chair on his porch, his Outdoorsman in his calloused, knobbed hands. “It was hard work and an honour for the country. Now, it’s just hard, and no one gives a damn,” he’d spat. Archie had nodded, not really comprehending but figuring Pawpaw knew these things.
Archie slows down to a walk then a stroll. His arms stop swinging, and his hands hang loose by his sides. The window shopper up ahead pauses, and he joins her at the window. Archie stares at the fancy dresses that he can’t imagine any woman he knows wearing while his senses follow the people moving behind him, around him, their pace, their direction, their energy signals. Many hurry, serious in their busyness; some stroll arm in arm; and a few gossip, their shoes clicking along with their tongues like chickens pecking. Archie turns his head slightly to the left, to survey where he must go. The crowds are gathering at the angled intersection of Queen and Bay; he watches the backs of trench-coated people walking ponderously toward it, while men in suits weave through the crowd on their way to appointments and mediations.
The table is long and oblong. Men sit on one side; Archie sits opposite them.
Archie shakes his head. I’m not going there. Breathe! Archie inhales, holds city air deep in the alveoli of his lungs, and releases it gradually into the damp. Archie turns on his heel and marches south down Bay. He turns left at the first intersection and marches east along Richmond Street. He turns left on Yonge and marches north to Queen. He halts. And watches.
The music reaches him faintly here, as he’s not quite at the level of the Queen Street sidewalk. Archie steps sideways into the alcove that leads to stairs down to the subway and below-level shopping. People are walking one by one, two by two like ragged streamers towards the Cenotaph. Archie pokes his head around the corner. In the distance, the front of a fire truck faces him. Men in their bulky tan fire suits with their thick fluorescent-yellow lines cross-hatched on their backs, stand around near the back of it. Men in dark uniforms—blue or black he cannot tell from this distance in the grey-dim light—mingle with them. A man pushing a stroller with his black backpack sagging down his back follows a woman wearing a long wool black coat, black pants, her blonde hair ruffling in the wind; a cyclist wheels his bike across the street. Archie narrows his eyes. Cyclists don’t walk their bikes in this town. What is he up to? The cyclist’s black helmet sits down low on his forehead, and wrap-around shades hide his eyes. A knapsack hugs his back. Archie follows him with his eyes as he wheels his bike past the firefighters and the first responders in their dress uniforms. The emergency professionals don’t notice the cyclist. Archie shakes his head internally at their casual indifference to the potential dangers around them.
Archie’s eyes widen. They shift back and forth, scanning Queen Street near the fire truck. He’s lost the cyclist. Archie curses his inattention. How did I let civilians distract me? Their lax training is no excuse, Specialist. Stay on task, Specialist!
“Pay attention, Private! We’re not girls here!”
“Yes, sir!” Archie replies, snapping his feet together and saluting.
“Fifty push-ups now!”
Archie drops to the ground, flattens his hands, and grunts as he pushes against the concrete to lift his body weight. “On your fingers, Private!” Archie had learnt the hard way not to stop the continual motion of raising and lowering his plank-like body while shifting from hands flat on the ground to the tips of his fingers. A grunt was the only sign of satisfaction, resentful satisfaction Archie had grinned to himself, that he had made it.
A woman brushes the sleeve of his jacket, and Archie jumps back, his legs tense, his right hand under his jacket grabbing his Sig’s grip. Archie forces himself to let go as he watches her walk swaying across Queen at an angle toward and in front of the Eaton Centre entrance. The woman’s making a zig-zagging beeline to the hefty female vet handing out poppies from her white box slung around her neck and resting on her ample chest. The vet looks old enough to have been in the Viet Nam war. Archie salutes her courage silently. Those were the last fifty extra I had to do in basic training. No one’s caught me out in inattention since then, not during training, not during battle. It shouldn’t have happened now.
“Got you!”
Archie jumps, his hand cocked and flying toward the familiar voice of Nadine’s ex. Archie thrusts up an arm but stops himself short. They’re eye to bloodshot eye. Archie sizes him up. Nadine’s ex is sleep deprived and hungover. His hair is uncombed, and his jacket is half up on one shoulder to his neck, half off the other shoulder, and unzipped. The wind flaps his creased checked shirt underneath. His rumpled pants hang low, their hems dragging on the ground. That’ll trip him up, Archie assesses. Outwardly, he relaxes his body. Inwardly, Archie turns his feet in their hard boots into springs while his hands hang by his side, relaxed and open, ready to grab his combat pistol.
Nadine’s ex sways and points a finger into Archie’s chest: “You. Are. Having. An. Affair. With. My. Girlfriend.”
“She’s not your girlfriend any longer,” Archie replies in that friendly voice the Canadian military had taught him.
The ex stares at him with bleary eyes: “She is. She just doesn’t know it.”
“Nadine knows her own mind.”
“She’s just mad at me. She’ll get over it.”
“Why?”
“Why?” the ex’s eyes widen, revealing their whites ribboned with red. “Why!” he shouts.
Archie grabs his left arm with his right hand, pulls him toward him, whips him around, making the man stagger and fall against his chest, his left arm painfully wrenched up high on his back but out of sight of passersby. Archie marches him across Yonge Street, down south, then left onto Richmond, which is empty of pedestrians, and shoves him up against the red stone wall of the grand building that borders the sidewalk.
Archie states: “She won’t get over it. I visited her in hospital. Why would she go to you for more beatings?”
The ex opens his mouth like a fish, gulps twice, and squeaks: “You’re hurting me.”
Archie’s mouth grimaces in contempt. He wants to belt this man; hit his soft jaw with his hard fist, feel the solid jawbone give under his justice punch, see the blood squirt from his tongue as his teeth bite it in fear; feel the tremor of his legs as he kicks them out from underneath the man; watch him fall like a ragged, contemptible doll; and hear the satisfactory smoosh of hair-cushioned skull on concrete.
Archie narrows his eyes until they’re slits of black, he pulls his lips back into a snarl, and observes the blood leaving Nadine’s ex’s face as Archie envisions pushing the efficient muzzle of his Sig into the middle of the man’s forehead and squeezing the trigger towards himself, watching the sure knowledge of what would happen next come into the eyes of this disgusting specimen of a human. The sudden paleness of this non-human pinned by Archie’s raging strength bulges his eyes into protuberant rounds of whites trashed by fatigue and drink.
Archie pushes hard against him, forcing the man up and up against the wall until only his toes touch the ground. Sickly sweat punctures the chill. Archie releases him and strides away, his back to him, confident that the ex will not bother him again.
Nadine’s ex doesn’t follow.
Archie reaches Queen Street, his rage propelling him on to the Cenotaph and past it to the western edge of the Eaton Centre at Alexander. Archie halts. He scans his surroundings. A yellow fire hydrant stands guard to his right, monitoring the eastern end of the half-circle driveway that swoops in front of the entrance to Old City Hall. Television satellite trucks sit on either side of the street, one black, one white, both facing Queen Street with long steel poles sticking straight up out of their tops, fat steel wires swirling up them. Police in their light-sucking black uniforms stand around, some with hands in their pockets, the word “POLICE” in white on their backs. A man in a leather jacket carries a closed umbrella, head down. Women in silver puffy jackets and black puffy jackets with belts encircling their waists and long tan trench coats carry black purses and sport red poppies on their lapels as they walk towards the woman handing out white brochures. From his distant post, Archie narrows his eyes to read the glossy paper booklets the woman is whipping out faster than eyes can see as people come up to her, hands outstretched. Programs, he surmises.
Archie doesn’t need one.
This is his second Remembrance Day—it’s as seared into him as every Veterans Day his father had forced him to attend along with his twin, in honour of the men who’d served.
Run, his feet itch.
Stay, his brain commands.
Cry, his heart melts.
Rage, his stomach clenches.
The World War Two music stops.
It’s 1045 hours.
The silence is eerie, like waiting for an explosion, knowing it’s coming yet not knowing when.
Run!
In front of him, a knot of soldiers stand waiting in their green dress uniforms, not a crease to be seen across their broad shoulders and through their nipped-in waists or in the flaps that cover their butts. Their berets are cocked at the correct angle. The soldiers’ controlled stillness shores up Archie’s self-control.
Archie sidles down Alexander, past a man tucked in behind one of the enormous black pots that hold vertical palms and dangling flowers and fat cabbages, until he’s far enough not to be in that man’s space and to be alone in his own. The man is all in green and tan camouflage from his sagging, wet hat pulled low to his well-worn sneakers half hidden underneath his cotton-polyester pants. His blue backpack and red poppy are the only anomalies of colour on him.
Andrew’s voice seeps into Archie’s mind, urging him to cross the street and join the crowd on the northern side of the drive. Archie hadn’t gone back to his room to retrieve the device, and the people surging in now from the Eaton Centre and the subway, the groups of adult students being instructed by their teachers on what this day is about and how it will go, the military men and women, the bicycle police in their fluorescent-yellow jackets, the young girls handing out poppies, the well-dressed business couple, the natty lawyer with his row of medals pinned on his striped blue suit, the children being pushed in their strollers, and the men wheeling themselves in their chrome and black wheelchairs—all coming towards him send up panic signals to his brain. Archie pants; his heart beats against his ribs; his fingers flex closed and open, closed and open as they try to fist and he tries to relax them.
The faint strains of horns and tubas and drums and flutes march towards him. A grey stealth police car drives slowly into his view, and the band appears behind it as it angles towards Queen from Bay while they march confidently in their black and red uniforms, tassels swinging, towards the semi-circular driveway and the dignitaries standing at the top of Old City Hall’s steps. Behind them come the colours, the Canadian flag leading the Ontario, British, and military flags carried by men and women in their green dress uniforms with their wide white belts, yellow shoulder braids, and red berets.
Archie scoots.
Archie marches down Alexander to the back of Old City Hall. Once behind its protective hulk, Archie stops and turns, his lungs heaving for air as he listens to the service from far off, as far as he dares to go while still keeping his promise to Andrew. The music falls silent. A voice stirs the air. The movement of people stills. The silence stretches. Emptiness fills him. A bugle mourns.
Chills race up and down his body.
Archie resists trembling.
A drone above him vibrates the hushed air. Archie lifts his head and regards detached the Missing Man formation fly overhead. Archie’s eyes stray to the Harvard trailing the three flying in front of it in a V-formation. The Missing Man, the Lost Man. The man who doesn’t come back. The man at peace, eternally. Archie follows the Lost Man with his eyes until that plane disappears over the height of the buildings to his east.