Chapter Twenty-Three

The next day, Jack learned that mail had arrived from Canada and, luckily, an envelope for him. He shoved it in his pocket to read at lunch. It might help not having to speak to the other men.

Over his tin plate of stew, he pulled it out. How good it was here, in Bloemfontein to have a decent meal — well, decent by previous standards. Though nothing like the meal his mother would be preparing.

Dear Son,

We were pleased to get your letter from South Africa. The girls have been looking for news of your regiment. They figured out how to get their hands on some Montreal papers. They say you been having a bit of a rest. I imagine pretty soon you’ll see real warfare. Make sure you don’t get yourself hurt. We want you back in one piece.

Not much news here. Your brother-in-law Joe Hayes has big plans. He’s started on a dam in the Hollow because he’s planning on setting up a saw mill. He got a bunch of the boys to cut trees and haul them to the river bank for floating down in the spring. Your sister Maria tells me she’s been feeding eight or ten workers as well as her children. I guess that’s how he gets them cheap.

Harvey Manderson’s old grist mill had a dam, but Joe wants his lower down. He plans on flooding part of the Hollow. I told him fine by me. He hopes to saw boards for fish-boxes for Robins in Paspebiac. A new mill will come in real handy for Shigawake, too. No more hauling logs to Bonaventure.

Joe and Maria’s had a new baby boy, and named him after our family name, Alford Hayes. Going to be a muddle, I guess. The other girls are fine. Winnie teaches up at the corner school, and Lilian wants to take off somewhere else to teach next year. She’s got a wanderlust like you. Jeannie’s too young to go but she’s sure planning on it.

There’s more talk of the railway coming. Pile of excitement for sure. Terrible lot of fellas coming to build it, I guess. But I’ll believe that when I see it. They haven’t even asked me for right-of-way across our Hollow.

Mac and Clare are both taking over the farm-work. Earle is doing more and more, and your little brother Eric runs around like he owns the place. Your mother spoils him terble. Next door, the Byers is fine — good, hard-working children they got there, and John’s farm next over is doing good. I got to close now ’cause it’s milking time.

Oh, you got a letter from some fella called Clayton on the North Shore. Says he’s a full teacher now, and follows in your footsteps up there. Got a degree and all.

We look for news when you can send it.

Everyone here sends you best wishes. Come back soon.

Your father, Jim.

Jack had been so involved in the letter he’d forgotten to eat. And now the stew was cold. Oh well, he spooned it down with some relish, nonetheless. Always hungry, it seemed; the rations were hardly bounteous, even in Bloemfontein.

Now to work, visiting the hospitals. The largest buildings in town had been converted: Grey College, the OFS barracks, the Dames Institute and other suitable structures were all flying the Red Cross flag. A few of the many overseas nurses and surgeons with little red and white arm badges were attending the patients. These two weeks after Paardeberg, Bloemfontein had been swept by a massive and unanticipated epidemic of enteric fever. Far too many had been taken sick for the small medical staff and orderlies to cope with. Conditions in most hospital encampments were the worst Jack had seen so far. He soon found out that the incubation period for the fever came exactly at that interval between the many troops drinking from the Modder river and now.

And so Jack began his new rounds in one of the hospitals. After lunch, he got the surprise of his life. There lay old Father O’Leary. Well, at fifty, Jack didn’t think of him as old. Old Poppa was sixty-five, after all, and could pitch up onto the hay-rack with the best of them, walk two miles back in the woods to cut trees, then walk out and milk three cows and get firewood ready at the end of it, all in a day’s work. Tall, lean, with a big walrus moustache, Old Poppa was fit as a fiddle. But the men persisted in saying “old” Father O’Leary.

He wanted to go and see him, but would the little priest be angry like the others? After all, Jack had left the brunt of the ministering to him. Jack paused. He just didn’t feel like another confrontation. But... this was a brother of the cloth, and obviously sick.

When he came up, O’Leary broke into a weak grin. “I been struck by the enteric, Lord help me.”

“What a piece of work!” Jack sat down. “What are they doing for you, Peter?”

“At least they’re not starving me. Doses of castor oil, and that blessed sulphate of magnesia. They say I’ll make it through, but I’ve seen some of the boys, and I know what I’m in for. Not that pleasant.”

“Not pleasant at all, no, but with the help of the Lord, you’ll survive.” Well, Jack thought, at least he has his share of charity. “And I’ll certainly attend your bedside every day, and stand in for any of these useless orderlies.”

O’Leary smiled weakly, then clutched his stomach as another convulsion shook him.

To take his mind off the present circumstances, Jack continued, “I hear you were a big hero at Paardeberg. The boys are full of your exploits. We’re all proud of you.”

“Thank you, Jack. Too bad, you weren’t up there with us. You should have been, but you had to obey your orders. I heard about that.”

He dropped his eyes. “You heard? The men seem to think I’m a coward.” He paused. “I was afraid you would, too.”

“Don’t say that Jack. You did your duty. I know that.”

Jack sighed. “Nothing like seeing your chaplain out there on the battlefield beside you, dodging bullets. I guess I’ve let them down.” Jack could not suppress the pain that flooded through him at the thought.

“Jack, you haven’t. You did your duty, never you mind. The Lord is with us both.”

Jack felt good at the unexpected warmth — a companion in arms who had some understanding of what he had been going through. So far the two of them had not had many substantial conversations: usually matters of administration — when to hold services, when to share hospital duties, whom to visit separately and that sort of thing. But now Jack felt another kind of closeness. His friend was in pain and he would do all he could to help. “Would you like me to write a letter for you, Father? To your family, perhaps?”

O’Leary shook his head. “My parents are long gone, Jack. I’ve got two brothers out there in Ireland, but you know, once you’re in the Lord’s service, you can’t take a wife. I’ve had to learn to accept just serving the Lord alone, with no one beside me.”

Must be hard, thought Jack, to do that all your life. “Well I’ve got a pretty big family back on the Gaspe. Yesterday I got a letter. So good to hear from them all.” Jack sat silently, remembering his family safe and sound back there, and here he was, subject to the slings and arrows of an outrageous attitude from the lads, as some famous writer once said.

“You never told me much about them, Padre,” O’Leary said. “Who’ve you got back there?”

Jack told Peter about his relatives, about his homestead, and about the Hollow, and his growing up. Odd they’d never exchanged this kind of information before.

“And what about a pretty little fiancée, Jack? Surely you’ve got someone waiting for you back home?”

Jack shook his head. He paused. Should he mention the sublime Lorna? He was about to put the thought out of his mind and then the words just started to take shape. He told the good Father all about her. And how he’d missed his one chance. Finally, how he had managed to get over it.

“Well, there’ll be another one, I’m sure,” said O’Leary. “But thank you, Jacko, for telling me. Takes my mind off my own troubles.”

“Now look here, Peter,” Jack said, “you know very well that they’ll cure your enteric. Not a lot of fellows are dying of it, although they come pretty close.” He cracked a smile.

“Well, Jacko, if it’s His will I’m supposed to go meet Him, so be it. But like you, I think he has more work for me here.”

“I pray so,” said Jack. “Now I’m feeling guilty — so enjoyable sitting here with you, but a lot of other lads need my services. Maybe the first thing I’ll do is see some of your flock. How would that sit?”

Jack saw the old man’s eyes glisten. “Mighty fine, just mighty fine, Jacko.” He proceeded to tell Jack who he’d been seeing before coming down with this wretched disease, and told him where they were. Jack went off to do this new duty for Peter and his God.

* * *

It wasn’t all that easy. Some Roman Catholic soldiers greeted him with suspicion, being fond of Peter and all he had accomplished under that blizzard of bullets, which of course Jack, to them, had avoided, and others perhaps warned by their leaders back home to have no truck with devils from the breakaway Church of England. In any case, the rest of the afternoon turned out to be less pleasant than he’d hoped. Most of the Catholics did their best to be polite, but with such a visible effort Jack felt it better to leave them alone. One or two did welcome him, and another even asked for confession and absolution. Jack did not know the correct words to use, but he sat and cupped his ear by the dying soldier’s mouth and heard of some minor sin troubling the lad, a sin Jack felt better left unsaid, for it did no damage to his soul. And he told him so.

When the afternoon was over, he was about to go into the mess tent when he saw a group of soldiers turn away from him. Would it never end? He decided against eating and went back to his tent, got onto his cot, and pulled out his Bible. Perhaps between its covers he would find solace. But even turning the onionskin pages, his mind still churned up a storm. Torture indeed, and all the nastier for it being unjustified.