THE DAWN PATROL

CONCLUSION

If this is what it means to die then I guess I’m ready to go. I can see everything around me as if I’m not even a part of myself. I’m just sitting beside the bed watching myself breathe, listening to the machines hooked up to me and wondering how long this is going to take.

That’s when Ray comes in. He shuffles in like the old man he is, and I feel sorry for him. I think it’s because I understand things now. I doesn’t matter what happened that day all those years ago; it’s not for me to judge him. He’ll have to do that himself. He has to come to terms with what happened, just as I’ve had to come to terms with all that I’ve done in my life.

I could have been a better father. I tried to. I made a conscious effort not to hit my children the way I was hit by my father, but I may have been too lenient with them. I was a good husband when I could be, and remained faithful to my vows. I took them seriously. I’ve been an honourable man, faithful to the memory of my mother and my father, steadfast when it came to my siblings, but perhaps too resolute with my sister. I was unforgiving as far as her marrying Ray went, but I may have been blinded by Jack’s hatred for him. I’ve always let myself be led by Jack’s desires.

I listen to Ray as he speaks. He asks me to squeeze his hand if I can understand him, and I do. I squeeze as hard as I can, but he feels nothing. He pats my hand gently, as if he realizes that anything he says to me now is a waste of time. That’s when he pulls the feather out of his wallet and presses it into my hand.

I can feel myself cry at the sight of it. I gave him that feather after we took him to the hospital and he told us what happened. He said Cecelia tried to take the gun from him and shot him in the foot. She tried to escape with the car, and he was forced to shoot her. We chose not to believe him. Jack wanted to give him more than just a feather. He wanted to hold the pillow over his face and smother the breath out of him. I wouldn’t let him. And he’s kept those feathers all these years. I can feel myself crying, wishing he could see my tears; wishing he could hear me wail, but, as the bard so aptly said, ‘The rest is silence.’

Uncle Ray leaves the room and pulls off the gown and cap, pulling the mask off and looking at me. He’s shaking his head. It looks as if there are tears in his eyes, and maybe there are. I don’t know.

“You’d better get your mother. And call your uncle. He won’t last the day.”

“How can you say that?” I say with a trace of anger in my voice.

“Because I know these things better than you ever will. Now go,” he says. I look at him a moment longer and then leave to get Mom and Auntie Win.

*

An hour later Uncle Jack comes in with Russel, who helps him put on a gown so he can go say good-bye to his brother; an hour after that Mom steps out of the room with Uncle Jack. It’s 7:30. I’m standing at the window, watching the sun come up. The sky is the colour of diluted red paint in a beaker of water, and I think of THE TEN COMMANDMENTS when John Derek smeared blood on the doorframe of Edward.G. Robinson’s house.

Why does everything I see in my life have to remind me of a movie?

I watch as the mountains come into view and the sky grows lighter; the few stars still visible, are now starting to fade. The mountaintops become pink for the briefest of moments, and then the clouds slip in front of the sun and the moment’s gone.

Just like a whisper.

Mom and Uncle Jack come over to see me.

“He’s gone, Danny,” Mom says, and I’m surprised to see she hasn’t shed any tears. I see Russell sitting on a chair outside the waiting room with Auntie Win holding him in her arms as he weeps. Uncle Ray’s looking in Dad’s room, but not willing to go in.

Uncle Jack tries to be the strong one. He’s the oldest male, I tell myself, but I see tears in his eyes, and Mom turns to hug and comfort him. I turn to look at the mountains again. No sunrise today, I tell myself, and it strikes me funny that I don’t have a movie scene for this moment.

“I guess I’d better call Caroline,” I say, pulling my cell out of my pocket. I watch Uncle Ray walking over, his wallet open as he pulls a second feather out of the folds. Caroline picks up the phone as Uncle Jack looks at Ray.

“Yeah, hi,” I say softly. “I’m just phoning to let you know —”

“No! Please don’t tell me it’s Dad.”

“Yeah,” I say, and feel my heart break as she bursts into tears on the other end. I want to hang up on her; I want to end the call, but I know that I can’t. I hold onto the phone and wait.

“Here Jack,” Uncle Ray says, and gives him the feather. “It’s time for you to take this back. I won’t be needing it anymore.”

“What makes you think I want to take it, you stupid bastard,” Uncle Jack says harshly.

“Jack, please, not now,” Mom says.

“And if not now, when?” he says to her. “Is that why you’re here, Ray? Did you give Bobby his feather? Did you have one of your dreams again?”

“I did. Too bad it was about you,” he says, and I watch the feather float to the ground as Uncle Ray turns and walks away.

“Danny? Are you there? Danny?” Caroline calls out. There’s panic in her voice.

“Yeah, I’m here,” I say. “I wish you were here with me, Babe. But maybe I’m asking for too much. Am I asking for too much?”

There’s a moment of silence.

“I’ll be right there. You know I’ll always be there for you. I should have never...”

“We’ll talk about that after,” I say.

“I never stopped loving you.”

“I know,” I say, and she hangs up the phone.

I look at Mom and Auntie Win sitting with Russell. I watch as Uncle Ray puts a consoling hand on Russell’s shoulder, an arm around Mom; Auntie Win turns to him and holds him.

The feather’s still on the floor; I bend over to pick it up.

“Leave it,” Uncle Jack says.

I look up at him as I pick it up.

“This means he’s a coward, doesn’t it? Because you say he shot himself in the foot? But that’s not what really happened, is it? Everything you told us is what you say happened.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Mom told me; I guess Dad told her everything. You just never accepted it. He didn’t shoot himself in the foot; there was no duck hunt. It was you he dreamed about, not himself. If you would’ve taken her in like you were supposed to, she would’ve killed you, and he knew that. It had nothing to do with being up in that bomber with Dad, because he knew he was never going to be there. He knew he would’ve been killed, instead of the poor bastard who went up in his place…All those dreams you say he had? They were always about other people. It was never about him.”

“Your father has just died, show some respect,” he says with a note of anger.

“For him? Or for you?” I hold the feather up to him. “All these years, and you still refuse to look at the truth for what it is. I think this might be yours after all,” I say, and put it in his shirt pocket.

I turn and walk toward Mom, who sees me and holds her arms open—just as she did for Ronnie that first day—and I let her hold me; I let her comfort me as I weep in her arms.