The End of Music Page 12

  “He died years ago. In his bed.” The added detail feels like a faux pas, so Carter smiles. Which is a worse mistake, because it makes him appear amused by his father’s death.

  “Let me show you,” says Terry, pulling out a phone.

  “You see!” cries Dr. Tang, coming around to grip Terry’s arm. “We’re all Newfoundland lovers here!”

  “Though not all of us in the Biblical sense, Alice.”

  “Oh, Terry!” Dr. Tang’s laughter bares long straight teeth and crushes her face into multiple folds.

  “Alice met her lady friend there, you know. Young woman was already spoken for, but that didn’t stop Alice.”

  “You’re embarrassing me,” shrieks Alice, gripping his arm harder. The act is well-rehearsed.

  “Here we are.” Terry hands the phone to Carter. The screen shows dark terrain dotted with tiny red crosses. “Every one of those is where a plane went down. The more accessible ones are long since picked over by scavengers. But lots of good work done by my teams over the years.”

  Carter recognizes the layout of the airport. Its intersecting runways look like a letter from a foreign alphabet. The lake is a ragged stretch of blue cutting through the image. The red crosses number a dozen or more. “I had no idea there were so many,” he says.

  “There’s more. Those are just the ones we’ve surveyed.”

  There are two crosses in the middle of the lake. One of them must correspond to a favourite story of his father’s, about an American bomber that lost an engine after takeoff and barrel-rolled straight into the water. Gone without a trace, undisturbed to this day. And given the oxygen-deprived depths of the lake, it surely remains as stainless and shiny as the hour it went down.

  “Drop by some time and I’ll tell you more. Crash sites all around that town. From the war mostly, but some after. Fascinating stuff. We’re putting together a team to go back this summer. Just a bug in your ear.” Terry stands and rocks on his heels. “Right, then. Cheers.” He sweeps from Dr. Tang’s office, as if urgently needed somewhere. A man well versed in the slivers of social intercourse. Knows when to make his exit.

  //////

  Will chimes in with a text. What’s situation with Leah? Need her to sign off so we can push ahead. He adds a postscript in a second text: Is she playing straight? Could be messing with us re cancer story etc.

  Carter emails Jordan, with the text from Will copied. I have to insist on total respect for Leah’s situation or this will blow up in our faces. I’ll be seeing her soon.

  It’s time to shut Will out of the process, before his demons take over. The Alberta accident obviously made a mess of the man.

  Leah’s issue is different. She’s embarrassed by the music, as was Carter for a long time. You only get one crack at being young, one chance to believe that voices and instruments can be used to dream your ideas into being. After that, you only hear a memory of that time, a second-hand experience.

  For Infinite Yes, the golden stretch came about two years into it, when they had enough bookings to keep all four of them afloat without day jobs or side gigs. It was a nonstop churn, powered by Carter and Leah’s burgeoning well of ideas and the belief that real money might yet come their way. Then Colin fell down the stairs of a townhouse in St. Catharine’s. (This chick was blowing me, he explained, and everything started spinning.) He had to be replaced for three months, which cost them a bunch of gigs while they were breaking in a replacement who didn’t really get it, and the record fell behind because they had to get back on the road, and then the van died and they scrambled to find another one. Leah went back on the substitute teaching list to get them through the cash squeeze. Colin checked out for a few weeks and went back on the booze. They finished recording the album, but some part of it was missing, something they couldn’t name. It was over at that point. The rest was just wasted time.

  That’s their story, and Carter’s job is to convince Leah that it’s irrelevant. He should know as well as anyone how suffocating old stories can be. The Newfoundland he recalls is paralyzed by its stories, an interminable repertoire of legends, jokes, potted histories and well-worn lies, populated by the usual fools and heroes.

  Jordan emails a reply, copying Will. Understood. Sorry, man. Respect.

  8

  Joyce and Rachel slept all morning. Woke to the sound of rain on the window and shared a cigarette. They could do this without either of them disturbing the covers. If they each extended an arm, their fingers met in the middle. Joyce lay on her back, sending long streams of smoke to the ceiling. The westbound arrivals ought to be underway, crossing overhead as they found their bearings on the radio range. But perhaps it was too early. A uniform grey sky had closed over the airport in recent weeks, making it difficult to guess the time of day.

  A stinging spring rain came hard against the window, driven by the whistling wind.

  “They’ll perish in this,” said Rachel. The cigarette butt hissed in her water glass.

  “Maybe they’ve turned up,” said Joyce. The hotel was dead quiet.

  The town was consumed by the lost men. Two of them missing since yesterday. They had set out after breakfast to do some trouting, and were due back for dinner. By the time Joyce began her midnight shift the call had gone out: a couple of fools from out of town gone astray out around Boot Pond. All available men convening at the Airport Club. But the search couldn’t begin in earnest until daylight.

  “Ever been lost?” Joyce asked,

  “No,” said Rachel, her voice thick. “Hates the woods. You?”

  “Once.”

  “For very long?”

  “Better part of a day.” Thirteen years old, prickling with distraction, Joyce had wandered off the path to the Chute on a fine morning in May. She knew her place until a shift in the sky threw her. It was a ripple of shadow that cast the world in a strange, yellow glow. The light started playing tricks on her, dropping the ground under her feet and pulling an alder away when she reached for it. She stared at the sky and listened for the Chute or the wider ocean, which she could follow home. An osprey tracked her, the shadow of its wingspan flitting in and out of view. At dusk, a red fox ran alongside her for a few paces, though her father later said she must have been seeing things.

  “Weren’t you afraid of the little people?” asked Rachel.

  “No.” She probably was, but couldn’t recall. She lost all track of time and bloodied both shins without knowing it. Imagining her future as she stumbled blind. The whole shore brought to a standstill. Her father overcome, her mother keening, and Marty shocked into silence. Girls from school weeping hysterically, and a boy overwhelmed with grief, his secret crush exposed. Though she couldn’t decide which boy.

  “We should get over there and lend a hand,” she said to Rachel. But her legs felt heavy, throbbing after five shifts in four days.

  The second time she woke, Joyce inhaled the damp, oily smell that indicated plenty of traffic on the tarmac. She sat up and pulled on her socks. Extended a leg and rested her toe on Rachel’s shoulder. A gentle shove.

  “No.”

  “I’m starving.”

  They had the dining room to themselves. There was white pudding, split down the middle and charred on the grill. Fried potatoes and onions. Bread with real butter. Too much tea.

  “We’ve got to go over and lend a hand,” Joyce said.

  Rachel tipped the sugar dispenser to make a little mound on the table. Ran a finger through it, drawing circles and swirls. “I’d rather go back to bed,” she said.

  Joyce envied the way Rachel could give herself over to a big, lazy lunch and a wasteful day off. Gaps in the schedule unnerved Joyce. To be idle was to be out of step with the place. The adjustment to days off staggered her.

  She went for more bread and butter, spreading it so thick it showed teeth marks where she took a bite. In a couple of days the butter
would be gone and they’d be back to watery margarine.

  Voices approached in the corridor, and four, six, eight women entered the dining room, groaning and sighing and falling into chairs. Cup of tea, they cried. Cup of tea, for God’s sake.

  Alice Henley broke from the group and approached their table.

  “I’m going to pee,” said Rachel.

  “Don’t you dare.” Joyce looked up at Alice. “No word?”

  Alice shook her head. The first search parties had been out at the crack of dawn, she said. All day, teams of three and six trudging through deep woods. A truck dropping men down the logging road. Two punts out on Deadman’s Pond and a Cessna in the air. Even spotters on the train from Alexander Bay. No signs.

  “They should bring in the military.” Alice pulled a tissue from her sleeve and squeezed it with her red hands. She was pregnant but not yet showing. “Jews,” she said. “You don’t know about them, see?”

  “What Jews?” Rachel worked a polished fingernail between her front teeth. It was a substantial gap and she always picked at it after she ate.

  “They’re Jews, for God’s sake.”

  “The lost fellows?”

  “They could be out there to destroy the radar. Or up on Transmitter Hill cutting wires. Henley says you never saw a craftier fellow than the Jew.” Alice always called her husband by his last name.

  “They were trouting,” said Joyce.

  “Jews?” asked Rachel. “You mean like Scheffman?” Mr. Scheffman had a small shop at the Eastbound Inn. “The Jews were on our side in the war,” said Rachel. “Weren’t they?”

  “The Russians wave a dollar at them and they’ll do anything.” Alice was standing straight now, her voice steady. “Henley says they don’t know truth from lies. They don’t even have the words for it, in their Jew language that they speak among themselves.”

  People said Alice’s husband wasn’t right in the head. Alice ought to have given up her job at the central laundry because she shouldn’t be hauling those big loads with a baby on the way. But she was still at it because Henley couldn’t hold a job at all. Everywhere he worked ended in some kind of blow-up. Lately he was pushing a mop around the hospital, and if he couldn’t stick with that there’d be nothing left for him.

  “Those soldiers you said came through the other night,” said Rachel. “Were they Jews?”

  “They were from Poland, I think,” said Joyce. They hadn’t looked like much. Weedy and hollow-chested.

  “Poland and Russia, it’s all the same,” said Alice. “And Germans coming through here all the time as well.”

  “But the Germans,” Rachel paused. “They switched to our side, yes?”

  “A leopard don’t change his spots. The Germans were sneaking around here during the war, you know. Sabotaging the bombers, Henley said. They had a girl here, too. A little steno girl with the ferry command. Spoke perfect English, like in the movies. And she was in silk stockings every day, and she disappeared after.”

  “Well, there’s spies in the news all the time, isn’t there,” said Rachel. “Spies in the movies. Just last week at the Globe.”

  “Ruth Pinsent was the last one seen them,” said Alice. “They bought a few supplies from her yesterday. Tea and sugar. Says they were right greasy looking. Dirty fellows with pointy noses. I’m telling you, they should call in the army.”

  Joyce had been to Scheffman’s on her last payday, buying four pairs of nylons at thirty-nine cents each and putting a deposit on a shirtwaist dress from London. It felt deliciously careless to waltz into a store and cast off her money this way.

  //////

  The door to the Airport Club jammed, as it always did since Fox Connolly kicked through the plate glass on one of his sprees. The glass was replaced, but Connolly’s boot had put the frame off kilter, and Old Dunphy said a new one was more trouble than it was worth. Every time Joyce saw him behind his bar he was telling someone that it was time to get out of these bloody old air force shacks. Get on with the new town site. Get it built so people can live properly and have a night out at a proper club.

  Den Shea was in the foyer as if he had been waiting for them, chewing a sandwich. The sight of him—tie cinched to his neck under waxy, clean-shaven cheeks—made her alert to the seriousness of the situation. In times of trouble Den always looked his best. Hair combed and slicked into place, shirt starched, and somewhere in the panic of a chaotic day he always found a moment to take a razor to his craggy face.

  “Wonderful, girls,” he said, and clapped them both on the shoulder. “You’ll want to lend a hand in the kitchen. Many mouths to feed. Joyce, love, take a moment to drop this off with Dawson and Tucker?”

  “Frank Tucker?”

  “That’s right.” He handed her a file folder. “They’ll be updating the map.”

  Joyce said hello to Fred Yetman before she realized he was asleep on his barstool, arms folded and head tilted to the wall. Men stood leaning on the bar, drinking from chipped white mugs. Others sank deep in leather-upholstered chairs, dark-eyed and damp. Even a crisis couldn’t dispel the louche, lazy rhythms of a tavern on a rainy afternoon.

  Frank sat at a table against the far wall, between the two washroom doors, playing cards with a man she took to be Dawson. They leaned back in their chairs, white shirt cuffs rolled over hairy forearms. The cards flew quickly between them, each one briefly aloft and skidding to a halt on the table. Dawson pushed the trick aside and started the next without delay. The map hung from the wall above them, sagging between its thumbtacks.

  “You’re to update your map,” she said, handing the file folder to Frank. He laid it on the floor next to him and pushed his chair back, opening room at the little round table. “Hand of forty-fives, Joyce?”

  She was in no hurry to get to the kitchen. She knew Maeve Vardy would be in charge. Maeve volunteered for everything, and insisted on running everything. Mary said she had a special way of spoiling a good cause. Joyce took the chair indicated and released the top button of her coat. Laid her gloves in her lap.

  “How’s Gloria?” she asked. “And baby Anthony?”

  “The house is in an uproar, day and night.”

  Dawson snorted a laugh. Joyce recognized him now. Used to be the TWA station manager, always strolling the airport with a wet-lipped smile and ambling, open-toed gait. He had recently left the airline under murky circumstances and was driving a car for Star Taxi. The town seemed to attract men like him. Lean and hawkish, with tiny waists and jutting elbows. She would see them at Goodyear’s or the Co-op with their equally severe wives. The women bustling and scolding dirty children. The men trailing behind and looking away, as if not wanting to be seen with their families.

  “Now, Joyce.” Dawson gathered the cards and tapped them on the table to make a deck. “Would you not say that this parchment before us is a fair and accurate picture of our beloved community?”

  “Parchment?”

  “He wants to know if you trust the map,” said Frank.

  “It’s a surface chart,” said Joyce. Why in the world wouldn’t she “trust” it? She saw it every day. The weather office sent surface charts around the clock, along with upper-air, isotropic and adiabatic charts. Their arrival was always treated with great ceremony. The crackle of virgin paper unfurling across a desk. The damp, pulpy smell rising as men gathered round to frown at the curling lines and scribbled numbers, their neckties dangling over air currents and disturbances. Smoke rising from their cigarettes as if from the chart itself.

  “See that bit of territory off the side of Runway 32?” said Dawson, dealing the cards. “Our friend Bern Henley doesn’t believe this piece of territory exists. What does he imagine might be there in its place, I wonder?”

  “Check.”

  “Twenty-five.”

  “Go on.”

  “Diamonds,” said Frank, and gathered the
kitty. “He never said anything didn’t exist. It’s a matter of proportion. From runway to pond, it can’t be that big.”

  Dawson said something about proper scale. Joyce had the ace of diamonds and drew the five. So what was Frank going twenty-five on?

  “Now Joyce,” said Frank. “If you wanted to hide out, wouldn’t you make for uncharted territory?”

  “It makes no sense, the whole business,” said Dawson.

  Joyce took a trick with a ten and another with the nine, and Frank shagged up the next one by failing to follow suit.

  “Henley don’t know which way his arse shits,” said Dawson. “Beg pardon, Joyce. Got his brains half blown out in Italy.”

  “Those are the fellows who win you the war. The ones who are so deep into it they’ll never get out.”

  Joyce reneged on the five until Frank played the jack, and put him in the hole. Perhaps they were letting her win, as if she were a child and they were charged with keeping her amused.

  “Aren’t they just fellows who went fishing?” Joyce was trying not to take any of it seriously. It was hard to know when men were serious, the way they were always braying at each other.

  Frank put down his cards and looked at her. “Tell you what,” he said. “Head over to the old navy site. If you can get one of those boys to take off his headset, ask him what Joe Stalin had for dinner last night. I guarantee you he’ll know, right down to the brandy and the pudding.”

  “Surely you’ve seen the B-47s landing here,” added Dawson. “And the B-17s with their photo reconnaissance.”

  “You may have seen a distinguished-looking gentleman at the terminal a couple of Sundays ago,” said Frank. “A Slavic sort.”

  Slavic? Joyce shook her head. Her knees jiggled under the table.

  “None other than the Russian foreign minister, taking a little stroll on his stopover.”

  “And not his first visit, either.”

  “You wouldn’t know the Russian foreign minister to see him, would you, Joyce?”

  “No. Are we done with cards?”