THE DAWN PATROL

A Reading...

(Chapter four: 2nd part)

That year, the summer was unusually wet. The clouds were always grey, and somehow foreboding. It seemed as though the sun seldom appeared from behind the clouds, and rain fell for what seemed like days at a time. On the days when the sun did come out, the wind would sweep down from the north—a cold, uninvited bluster that whipped the alder trees along the windbreak mercilessly. The trees swayed with a gentle rhythm—a soft purr of wind sifting through the branches like the whir of a child’s toy. The willows appeared somewhat more sedate, their long tendrils undulating as heavy surges of wind lifted them up and dropped them back down.

Dad took to painting outside when the weather allowed him. He made an easel out of scrap wood he found, and brought a small stool outside where he sat most evenings and weekends painting scenes that were haunting and altogether frightening as far as Mom was concerned.

He’d limp out into the field after dinner—his paints, his easel, and paper tucked under his one arm, the stool somehow sticking out like a deformed appendage. The cold north wind came down from the mountains, sweeping over the long grass as if it were an unsteady hand on a kitten’s back. He’d place everything on the ground and then light up a Cuban as he stood looking at the mountains, the clouds, the trees, and the birds. He’d stare at the horses—Napoleon and Marshall Ney—a man haunted by the memories of a past he couldn’t shake free of, afraid of letting his emotions show for fear that we might think him weak. A man’s impression of himself is so much less than that of his son. The horses came running to where he stood near the fence, whinnying and neighing, each of them vying for his attention as he rubbed their necks, nuzzling against them as if they were his children instead of us.

Winnie once saw him with tears in his eye she said, and though he claimed to have dust in it, she knew different. He had come across an old photograph in a book he pulled off the bookshelf as she sat studying her anatomy text. When she asked him who was in the picture, he smiled and said it was him and his brothers, in 1910.

“They all looked so serious,” she said.

“What did he say?” I asked.

“They weren’t serious at all, he said. They had to stop and wait for the camera—they had to sit and wait for it to expose properly in those days—and that’s why no one ever smiled in those pictures.”

“Did you put it in the photo album?” I asked.

“He wouldn’t let me.”

“Why not?”

She shook her head as she shrugged her shoulders. She pursed her lips for a moment, thinking it over before she finally looked at me.

“I don’t know.”

At first, Dad painted with watercolours. He painted landscapes that came from a part of him I didn’t know existed. He used whatever paper he could find or bring home from the penitentiary—even the newspapers he brought home to read. His paintings were dark portraits of wasted landscape; bombed-out churches with twisted spires, fallen crosses, and torn up graveyards—the tombstones carved with the names of friends he’d known and lost, the headlines of the current war perfectly visible underneath. He painted stark portrayals of No-Man’s-Land, with bodies caught up in the wire as flares burst in the distance, lighting everything with eerie colours.

He moved into Jack’s room when summer ended, tacking pictures on the walls as he completed them—sometimes staring at them for hours with an unvoiced dissatisfaction. He never painted with the door closed. He hated being locked in a room alone.

“Did it take you long to learn to do things right handed?” I asked him one day. He was sitting on the stool in front of his easel and half-turned to look at me.

“What the hell kinda question is that?”

“I didn’t know you were left handed. So it seems pretty reasonable to me,” I said.

He turned back to the painting he was working on. I thought he was turning his back on me, ignoring me, dismissing me, whatever you want to call it, but then he finally spoke.

“The hardest part was writing my name. I used to have a beautiful script—I guess that’s where Jack gets it from. They taught us calligraphy when I went to school. If you didn’t do it just right—our Miss Offenheimer was brutal as far as doing things right went—but if you didn’t do it right, she’d be there with her whicker cane and beat you soundly with it.”

“She beat it into you?”

“‘Spare the rod and spoil the child’,” he grinned. “I’m a firm believer in that,” he added with a knowing nod. I refused to back down.

“You mean capital punishment?”

“Corporal punishment. Capital punishment means executions. I don’t believe in executions.”

“How can you say that, working in a prison?”

“That has little to do with it. I’ve seen men killed for crimes against King and Country—desertion of your post because you had to take a crap and wanted privacy; cowardice because you were afraid to go over the top. Those men weren’t guilty of anything but being human. Do you think the men they hang in prison are guilty of the crimes they’re accused of? The justice system doesn’t deal so much with justice as it does the system it works for.”

“What does that mean?”

“Let’s hope you never have to find out.”

I suppose with a man like my father there’s no good time to tell him you’re leaving. With the war now long into its second year, I was no longer the young, eager seventeen year old I was when I first wanted to enlist. I was a man of nineteen, working at the Royal City cannery across the river, and bringing in my share of the family finances.

With winter came the snow and the cold—and just as the summer was unusually wet, the winter was unusually cold. The river froze solid that year. It was the fist time I’d seen it. Someone drove a car across on a dare. Icicles hung from the side of the house for so long, it was hard to tell if they formed from the top down, or the bottom up.

And then the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbour.

*

Christmas came and went.

The snow lay heavy on the fields, hard and frozen. It glistened in the sun as if a white sculpture, rippling where the wind blew it against the fence before it froze. Several of the chickens died in the cold weather, while the others stopped laying eggs. The horses chipped away at the ice covered fields and munched at the frozen grass until we brought in bales of hay from one of the outlaying farms.

After dinner, we gathered around the radio and listened to the horrible news coming in from London. The Blitz had begun.

“Mother? Father?” Winnie stated as she came into the front room. We all looked up expectantly.

“What is it dear?” Mom asked, looking up from her knitting briefly.

“I’ve joined the Nursing Corps.”

“You’ve what?” Dad asked. “When?”

“In May.”

“May! And you’re just telling us now!” Dad said, his voice echoing the anger that seemed to bubble up from deep inside him.

“I didn’t know how you’d feel about it.”

“Does that mean you’re going to be a nurse soon, dear?” Mom asked.

“Jesus woman!” Dad said, turning to Mom. “Do you even have the faintest clue as to what she’s talking about?”

“She’s going to be a nurse,” Mom said with a degree of calmness in her voice.

“Is that what you think? She’s going to be a nurse and that’s all that matters.” He mimicked Mom’s soft, high-pitched voice. “Freddy. Jenny. Off to bed with you two.”

“But Dad,” Freddy protested.

“Get your ass upstairs, now! I’ll not have you two being influenced by the likes of her,” he said, looking at Winnie.

“Daniel,” Mom said. “What is the matter with you?”

“Do you not know what she’s telling us?” Dad asked, trying to control his anger. “She’s gone and joined up for the war.”

“The war?” Mom said, her voice faltering as she looked up at Winnie. “Is that true, Pooh-bear?” Mom asked, calling Winnie by her childhood name.

“It’s not like I’ll be at the Front,” Winnie said in her own defence. “There is no Front. It’s not like it was when you were there,” she said, turning to look at Dad again. “I’ll be in England.”

“You mean in London?” he said, turning to the radio. “With that! Are you listening? They’re bombing it every night.”

“All the more reason for me to go then, isn’t it? They’re going to need nurses to help with the wounded.”

“The wounded? Do you think I give a good goddamn about the wounded? It’s you I’m thinking of.”

“I’m almost twenty-three, Dad. You can’t keep me away from something like this any more than your own parents could keep you from joining when you went.”

“It’s not the same!” he said angrily.

“Why? Because I’m not you? Is that your argument? Because I’m a girl? A woman? I’m old enough to make my own choices. I’ve always wanted to be a nurse, and this is the best way to become one. They’re screaming for nurses. You can’t keep us out of it.”

“Us?” He turned to look at me. “Have you gone and signed up as well?”

“Me?” I looked at Winnie. “Why bring me into this?”

“Because you want to sign up and go just like everyone else,” she said.

“Have you signed up?” Dad asked me again.

“No,” I said.

“Why don’t I believe you?” he said, a note of resignation in his voice. He shook his head before he looked up at me again. “What have you done then? Tell me.”

“I’ve registered.”

“Registered? For what?”

“They’re talking about conscription,” I tried explaining.

“That doesn’t mean you’ll get called up.”

“But if I get called up without registering, I’ll end up in the army. I don’t want to be in the army. I want to learn how to fly.”

“Fly?” Mom asked.

“I want to fly airplanes,” I told her, thinking if I made my case with her, she might talk Dad into letting me go.

“Is that safer?” she asked Dad.

“There’s no such thing as being safe in a war,” Dad said. He turned to look at me again. “When did you register? And why? I mean, why now?” He tried to control himself, but I could see he was struggling with it. His face appeared flushed; the stripe around his head where the patch cut into his pink flesh looked darker where it folded over the elastic strap.

“Somebody came into the cannery two weeks ago saying Hitler declared war on the U.S.—and Mussolini too—he said it was only a matter of time before full conscription passes through Parliament.”

“Who was it?”

“Just someone who works there. He was worried about being called up.”

“And?”

“And what?”

“And so you thought it’d be a good idea to register at City Hall—since it’s just a short walk up the hill? But you never came home and told us, did you? Why? Is it because you know I don’t want you to go? You know I don’t want you getting involved.”

“I’m nineteen, Dad. I’m old enough—”

“NO! No, you’re not old enough! The age of majority in this province is twenty-one! Not nineteen! And there’s a reason for it. That means I make the decisions around here. I decide if you can go off to war. Not you.”

“I’m old enough to be drafted, but I’m not old enough to register as far as your concerned. You can’t keep me out of this.”

“No,” he said, barking out a quick laugh. “Not now. Not with you registering behind my back. Both of you. It’s bad enough Jack signed up. But the three of you?”

“What did you want us to do, Dad? Ask?”

“When are you leaving?” he asked Winnie.

“The end of February.”

“Two months.” He looked at me as if expecting an answer.

“I don’t know. I know I promised you I wouldn’t go—”

“Let’s not get into that. Apparently your word means nothing to you.”

“I can’t not go if they conscript me. I thought it’d be better if I pre-registered, that way they’d send me to the Air-Force instead of sending me anywhere else. I might not even get called up.”

“Off course you’ll get called up. They call those ones first,” he said.

And he was right.

I hope you’ve enjoyed reading (or listening) to this story as much as I have enjoyed reading it to you. SUBSTACK is now pushing VIDEO