A Witness to Life (Ashland, 2) (18 page)

And the hawk, always above us, always circling just beyond sight, dropped among us on a daily basis, a sleek bolt exploding in a small burst of feathers, then silence.

Picture us sitting in a grand maple tree, a hundred, two hundred, the incessant squealing, squawking. Then, as before, as always, we rose up in a cloud of shimmering ink blots, without sound, the world, patchwork, spread out below us.

Again, in the wind: into the soft spots, the loops, the silky linings of time, where everything existed, equal.

Southwest, across the years, across the miles, sifting through the millions that would die amidst rubble, mud, on water, interred and disposed of and bulldozed over in ways beyond imagining, I saw the denouement, the path to the monk's cell down which we all wind.

TWENTY-ONE

1934-1950

1

Joan and I move into 238 Gilmour Avenue with Gert's sister, Evelyn, and Mrs. McNulty. It is, I vow, my last move.

I refuse to pay Gert's doctor bill and am slowly dunned with notices, finally threatened with legal action. But when the doctor himself phones one evening to discuss the matter, the rage rises inside me like a volcano and I spew a lava of vitriol that causes my hands to shake and my vision to blur.

I never hear from him again.

On Christmas Day, 1935, Gert's mother, Mrs. McNulty, dies.

Joan is learning how people disappear, how plans slip away, how things spin off into chaos. But she is learning it much too young—as I did—and I feel helpless to protect her.

The house has been left to Evelyn, with the understanding that Joan and I live here too.

I will not move. I can never move again. Moving, I now believe, must have been part of the bad luck that has stalked me through the years.

We stay at 238 Gilmour. Evelyn helps with Joan, with meals, and in this modest house where three women—two of whom are now gone—made me welcome nine years ago, I try to hold onto the thread of my life.

Evelyn suggests moving Joan's bed to Mrs. McNulty's empty room, but I ignore her, keep it in the corner of my room.

I keep it there because I must. I must know where she is. I cannot lose her. I think that just knowing that she is nearby, in the darkness, is enough. But I wake her with my nightmares on a regular basis, and I know that for this reason, and so many others, Evelyn is right, she must have her own space, soon.

In the evening of April 3, 1936, at the Trenton State Prison death house, which measures eleven feet by twenty-three feet, fifty-seven people witness the execution of Bruno Richard Hauptmann in the electric chair, for the kidnapping and murder of Charles Augustus Lindbergh, Jr., four years earlier. To the end, Hauptmann proclaims his innocence.

After one last nightmare, Evelyn helps me move Joan down the hall, into her own room, finally.

It is 1938 and Roosevelt becomes the first U.S. president to visit Canada while in office, meeting with Mackenzie King in Kingston, Ontario. Jock and I, the Orangeman and the Catholic, discuss this knowledgeably in chairs beneath the chestnut tree in his backyard. His daughter, Gail, twenty-one married, with a daughter of her own, is visiting.

Joan is almost ten. She is by my side. She is always by my side.

On June 7, 1939, married almost ten years, Margaret and Tommy have a third child, a daughter, Judith Rita. My second granddaughter.

Late July, cabbage and potatoes boiling on the stove, Evelyn slumps to the floor of our kitchen and, hands shaking, I call an ambulance. A stroke. I cannot believe it. Maggie, Gert, Mrs. McNulty, now Evelyn. All the women I try to live with.

In August, when she returns from the hospital, Evelyn, suddenly old, now needing the help that she has given me, walks with a chair and is confined to the main floor.

September 3, 1939, Britain and France declare war on Germany. A week later, Canada joins them.

It is a gray, wintry Saturday afternoon in December, a light snow beginning to fall, a damp cold pervading, when the RCMP come to the door looking for Jack Radey. He has not answered a draft notice of some kind. I tell them that I do not know where he is. I tell them that no one knows where he is.

I am sixty, sixty-one, sixty-two, going on sixty-three.

In 1940 I stand at the same graveside twice: January 27, my sister Kate dies. Six months later, her husband, Jim Bedford, follows her.

December 7, 1941. Pearl Harbor. The United States declares war. My sister Teresa's boy, Ed, is missing in action somewhere in the Pacific theater.

Tuesday, September 1, 1942, Joan starts high school at Western Commerce, just south of Annette Street. I have made our dinner tonight: what Joan calls my famous chicken casserole. It will be her turn to cook tomorrow.

"Should I take science or music?"

I am placing the cutlery on the table when she asks, and I look up. "You have a choice?"

"If you join the band you don't have to take science. Music class is at the same time."

"But then you'd have to take it next year."

"I guess."

"Postponing the inevitable."

She is silent.

"Do you want to join the band?"

"Not really."

"Then why the question?"

"You'd want to join the band too if you'd met my science teacher today like I did. He's weird. He made us sit there for twenty minutes without saying a word after lecturing us for the first half of the period. He never smiled. Not once. He's scary."

I pull my chair out, sit down. "What's his name?"

"Mr. Zoltan. Even his name is weird. He's got black greasy hair. Yuk."

"What instrument would you play if you joined the band? I can't picture you with a tuba."

She thinks. "Maybe the clarinet. Or the flute."

I nod. "It seems like a strange choice."

"The clarinet?"

"No. Science or joining the band."

She is staring at me, listening intently.

"Maybe you should give it another week, then see how you feel about it."

She looks doubtful, picks up her fork, pokes at her food.

"Then, if you still want to switch, I'll go in with you and help you get it done."

She looks at me hopefully.

"I'll take the morning off."

"You will? Promise?"

"Promise."

She smiles.

"I forgot to get us something to drink," I say, realizing that our glasses are empty.

"I'll get it," she says, rising suddenly, animated, going to the refrigerator.

She pours the milk into her glass and opens the bottle of cold beer with a snap. After she pours it for me, she gives me a quick peck on the forehead. "Maybe the flute," she says. Her smile, given freely, is what I want, what I need. I know now, I think, where the thermometer is, where the spare blankets are. I know her birthday.

We listen to Jack Benny on the radio in the evening as a respite from news of the war in Europe and the Pacific.

By November, Mr. Zoltan is one of Joan's favorite teachers. She has an A in science.

In 1945, what happened to Kate and Jim happens to my sister Margaret and her husband. January 19, age eighty, Margaret, always in my corner, dies. On May 13, John Dickinson joins her.

Then Hiroshima. Nagasaki. August 1945. I do not understand what has happened, what kind of weapon they have devised, but it is over, at last.

Joan, sixteen, going on seventeen, is with her friends downtown. They are dancing in the streets, riding up Yonge Street on hoods of cars, horns honking.

Ed, Teresa's son, comes home. It is a miracle. A big man who once weighed close to two hundred pounds, he now weighs eighty. The war for him was years in a Japanese camp on an island whose name he says he cannot remember. He tells us stories—how they once were so hungry that they coaxed a stray dog close to the wire fence that was the edge of their world, how they killed it, cooked it, made soup, how it kept them alive.

It has been almost fifteen years since I have seen Jack, since I have seen my son, since that night in November of 1930 when the door closed and he disappeared down the stairs, out of my life. Margaret has shown me the last letter he wrote to her. It was from the Scott Hotel, Ashland, Kentucky, postmarked July 1, 1934.

Then, silence. It haunts me. The world has waged a war to end all wars, and now must rebuild entire cities, entire countries. Maybe I can dredge through the rubble. Maybe it is not too late. I did not know that he could sing. I never heard him.

2

Margaret has lent me the correspondence that she received from Jack—faded envelopes with green, red, and purple Washington stamps, and addresses that failed even Edwards Investigation Services. They are all from 1934.

The contents are spread out on the table in front of me. Four letters: the first from the Vermont Hotel, 138 W. Columbia, Detroit; another from 117 Seventeenth Street, Toledo, Ohio; a third from a place called the Highway, Bucyrus, Ohio; and the final one from the Scott Hotel, Ashland, Kentucky.

I arrange the sheets of yellowed hotel stationery into neat piles, runes, an archaeological dig, reading and rereading them, searching for something overlooked, a starting place. They are lengthy: four sheets, double sided, from Detroit ("Phone Cherry 4421, Rates $1.00 and up"); two sheets, double sided, from Toledo; three sheets, single sided this time ("Modem, Fireproof, In the Heart of Bucyrus on the Lincoln Highway"); then a final torn sheet from Ashland, Kentucky ("Fire Proof, Moderate Price, Tub and Shower Baths"). But what I see, what jumps out at me, what leaves me dry mouthed and trembling is a threefold repetition.

Toledo:
Say hello to Father and all the gang for me, and write me sooner than I did you. Try and forgive me for not writing sooner—cause you know how a fellow slips once in a while.

Bucyrus:
Let me know how Father is getting along. I've lost his address.

Ashland:
Say Hello to Father for me.

* * *

Edwards Investigation Services

212 Spadina Avenue, suite 100

Toronto, Ontario

May 22, 1946

Martin Radey

238 Gilmour Avenue

Toronto, Ontario

Dear Mr. Radey:

Pursuant to the discussion in our office yesterday and your acceptance of our fee structure, we are agreeing to undertake a search for your son, John Francis (Jack) Radey. We would, however, like to state a few facts as a matter of record before beginning.

As I told you, an estimated 1 million people are reported missing—in both the United States and Canada combined—every year. More than 150,000 of these never return home or contact family again. It has been our experience that most of them want to be missing, that this is their choice. As you can imagine, the recent war in the Pacific and Europe has only complicated matters further.

If this is the case with your son, we can offer no guarantees other than our assurance as professionals that we will pursue each logical avenue of recourse at your specific direction.

As mentioned during our discussion, we believe the United States military is the logical place to begin a search.

Sincerely;

Simon Paul Edwards

(President)

* * *

Edwards Investigation Services

212 Spadina Avenue, suite 100

Toronto, Ontario

May 25, 1946

Martin Radey

238 Gilmour Avenue

Toronto, Ontario

Dear Mr. Radey:

I am sending you a copy of the letter that was mailed, as per your instructions, to the Regional Offices of the Veterans Administration for the states of Michigan, Indiana, Ohio, Illinois, Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey, Delaware, West Virginia, Kentucky, Missouri, Maryland, Connecticut, Virginia, Massachusetts and California (sixteen states in all).

In the event that John F. Radey may still be in the armed forces, I have also sent slightly modified copies of the inquiry to the following agencies:

* US Army Personnel Service Support Center

Fort Benjamin Harrison, Indiana

* Air Force Military Personnel Center