Death Spiral (15 page)

“No,” a voice answered.

“They feel like they’re bandaged,” Wilf had said.

The phone rang once more. Wilf stood motionless in the downstairs hall and listened. He’d just come out of the study after looking through his father’s files again, after finally finding something on Buchenwald. The date the first US troops had walked through the gates, the day after Mick had pulled him out of his wrecked plane. Wilf stared down at it for a long time.

April 11, 1945.

He’d climbed into his Spitfire for what was to be his last sortie on April 7th, not April 10th. He was missing three days.

The phone rang once more.

Madness feels like this, Wilf thought to himself. Afraid to move. Afraid to take on anything more. Even a wrong number.

He walked into the kitchen and picked up the phone. “Hello?”

“I think we have a safe line,” Andy said. “I just saw Nancy Dearborn crossing the street to go to lunch.”

“That’s amusing. And what are you up to, tormenting the weak of mind?”

“I don’t think you have a weak mind, Wilf.” Andy dropped his voice, “As a matter of fact, I don’t think your mind is weak at all. It might be right on the money.”

“Oh?”

“This gangly farm kid just came in. He’d been looking at that photograph I taped up in the window and he thinks he might have seen our man.”

Wilf looked toward the kitchen window. A smoky shaft of light had transfixed it in gold. The sun was shining all over the town. “Where?”

“Working at a sawmill. He said he works there himself every once in a while, and the other day when he was heading for school he saw a stranger sorting lumber out in the snow. He took a second look because he was surprised, he didn’t think Duncan had any help.”

“Duncan?”

“Duncan Getty. Drunken Duncan. Remember him?”

“No.”

“No? Always wandering around drunk at hockey games or anywhere else for that matter? He’s a devil to work when he’s cutting timber, though. That’s what people say. First one up to his ass in the snow in the morning, the last one to quit at night. He’s a bit of a simpleton, though.”

“But he runs a sawmill?”

“More or less. And Wilf, he has horses out there. I’ve seen them. He uses them for drawing logs out of the bush. And he drives a cutter around.”

“Does he?” Wilf stared through the golden haze in the window toward the garage. “What do you want to do?”

“I don’t know. I told that kid to keep what he’d just told me under his hat. He probably will, for a day or two. We don’t have much time.”

“No.” Wilf could hear Andy breathing.

“If we screw this up, I’m dead.”

“And if we don’t you’ll be a hero again. Just think about Linda, she’ll be over the moon.”

“No she won’t. She’ll kill me anyway. I should just report this. We don’t have much time.”

Wilf could see Andy sitting at his desk just as clearly as if he were sitting at the kitchen table right in front of him, clutching the telephone receiver, his knuckles turning white.

“You’re a sergeant now, you can take some initiative, can’t you?” Wilf said. “It’ll be all right.”

* * *

When Duncan looked out he couldn’t believe his eyes. Wilf McLauchlin, fighter pilot and the greatest of all the local heroes, was climbing out of a car and standing right there in his side yard. He scraped away the frost on the shop window to get a better look. Wilf was facing the house. Then he turned to look toward the shop.

Duncan began to brush at the sawdust stuck to the tattered front of his old work jacket. Wilf was staring straight at him now or so it seemed. Duncan took a last swipe at the sawdust clinging to his sleeves, opened the shop door and came out.

Wilf limped toward him. “Mr. Getty,” he said.

Duncan grinned. Just to hear Wilf McLauchlin say his name was special. To be called Mr. Getty was special, too. He hadn’t been called that in a long while, maybe never.

“I’m Wilf McLauchlin,” Wilf said, resting his cane against his coat and extending his hand.

“I know,” Duncan said.

Wilf watched Duncan’s huge hand engulf his own and expected to feel some pain, but instead he hardly felt the big man’s hand at all. “Then you probably know the law firm of McLauchlin and McLauchlin?”

Duncan could see Carole behind the gold lettering sitting in her typing chair. “Twelve kills,” he said. “You flew the Mark 14 the last year of the war. That’s the Spitfire you crashed.”

“Right.” Wilf smiled, “Fortunately the Air Force didn’t make me pay for it.”

“You paid for it,” Duncan said.

“I guess you could say that.” Duncan had tawny eyes like a cat’s, soft and watchful, Wilf thought. They seemed to go with his wild head of hair. A huge matted cat. He looked somewhat familiar too, but Wilf couldn’t remember from where.

“I’ll show you,” Duncan said, apropos of nothing and started off across the yard toward the house.

Wilf watched him go, the roll and length of his stride, his big shabby work boots leaving large tracks in the snow.

“Come on,” Duncan called back.

The kitchen was full of planes. They spun around and nodded and seemed to give Duncan a warm welcome as he moved in amongst them and identified each one for Wilf’s benefit. He reached out with his big hand and touched a plane painted in ragged rings of red and orange. It was hanging from the light in the centre of the room. “A Mark 14 Spitfire.”

Wilf walked up to it. The long elegant tilt of its nose, the wide elliptical wings sweeping forward, it was unmistakable and it was beautiful. Duncan turned on the light and the plane’s gaudy colours shone.

“That’s it all right,” Wilf said.

A broad grin spread across Duncan’s huge cherub face. In his excitement he’d forgotten to take off his work coat and his boots, contrary to what his mother had taught him.

“Never saw one painted like that, though. A real circus plane.”

Duncan’s tawny eyes retreated somewhere. “It’s your plane. The one you crashed in. That’s why.”

“Oh, it’s on fire. I get it.”

Duncan’s grin reappeared. He walked over to the cupboard, pulled open a door and took down a bottle of rye and two glasses that looked like they hadn’t been washed for some time. “I glued every one of them together. Lots of different parts. Painted every one. Hung them all up.” He filled the glasses half full.

“You’ve done a great job.” Wilf looked over the walls of newspaper clippings, some yellowing with age and curling up at the corners, some new. He pulled out a photograph of the dead man from inside his winter coat. “Duncan?”

Duncan turned around with the two glasses in his hands.

Wilf held up the photograph. “Have you ever seen this man?”

Duncan didn’t make an indication either way. He put the glasses down on the kitchen table and then he sat down himself. “You can have one,” he said, shoving one of the dirty glasses across the table. He picked up the other one and took a drink.

Wilf placed the photograph in front of Duncan and sat down.

“I seen him in the window,” Duncan said.

“That picture downtown in the newspaper window, you mean?”

“People say he was killed by a lot of men.”

“Who says that?”

“People everywhere. People at the Comet. I ate my breakfast there.”

“This morning?”

Duncan grinned. “Aren’t you goin’ to drink?”

“Sure.” Wilf took a drink. “Hits the spot. Thanks, Duncan.”

Duncan kept grinning. “Are you a flyer or a lawyer now?”

“I haven’t been a flyer for a long time.”

Duncan nodded. “How come a dead man needs one?”

“Dead people still have certain rights under the law. And so do the heirs of their estates.”

Duncan leaned forward, his boy’s eyes lighting up. “What’s it feel like?”

“What?”

“Flying?”

“Well, let’s see. The first time I took off I guess it felt like something had just sucked all the breath out of me. They sit you up on top of this massive engine, they wrap you around in a little piece of tin, cover your head with a sheet of glass and all you’ve got is a stick between your legs to keep her nose up and pedals under your feet to bank her left or right. It’s scary as hell. And then you get used to it. And then you think you can’t live without it. But you’re always scared.”

“Why?”

“Your friends keep dying. And every day you feel like it’s your turn, this is the day when you won’t come back.”

“I wish I could fly but I’m too big.”

“You wouldn’t fit, Duncan.”

“You killed twelve men.”

“Yes I did. I’m not proud of it.”

“They would of killed you.”

“Yes. As quick as look at me. By the way,” Wilf tapped the photograph, “someone downtown was saying that he thought this fellow worked here.”

Duncan looked surprised. He stared down at the photograph again. “Who said that?”

“Someone who saw him sorting lumber out in the snow one day.”

“Oh?” Duncan sat back and scratched the sandy bristles on his round face. “I wonder who that was?”

“It doesn’t matter, does it?”

“Well, yes it does, Wilf, ’cause he wasn’t telling the truth.” Duncan shoved the photograph back. “He never worked here. Not even one time.” Duncan drained his glass. “I work here all by myself since my mom died. And anyway, she just kept the books and stuff. My dad, he had lots of men to help out but that was a long time ago.”

“I thought some young fellow who lives around here helps you out from time to time.”

“Eric, you mean? Sure. But that’s different.”

“Why?”

“Well shit, Eric wasn’t killed in no bush. Do you want to see the shop? You can see it if you want.” Duncan stood up.

“That would be great, Duncan.” Wilf picked up the photograph and put it back inside his coat.

When Wilf had first driven up in Andy’s old Ford, a thick plume of smoke was rising from the metal chimney on the shop roof. That’s why he’d guessed that Duncan was in there. But now, as they crossed the side yard, Wilf could see that the smoke had thinned out to almost nothing.

“I burn more wood in that goddamn stove than I sell.” Duncan turned back to Wilf as they trudged along, his face breaking into a grin.

It sounded like a well-used joke to Wilf, maybe one his father used to tell. The men lounging around the shop would laugh at it one more time. And Duncan, standing at the back on a pile of lumber and looking like a stranger’s boy, would laugh, too.

Everything was covered with three inches of sawdust except for the cutting blades on the various machines. Heavy chains hung down from pulleys on rails set in the rafters, a tumble of hand tools were piled up high on a long workbench, axes of all shapes and sizes were tossed carelessly into a corner.

Duncan opened the stove with a poker and threw a few pieces of wood inside. “This is the finishing room,” he said.

Odd bits of wood hidden under the sawdust made walking difficult. Wilf made his way to the middle of the large room and looked around. Some planks were piled up beside a sliding freight door. “It’s impressive, Duncan. I didn’t realize you had such a big operation out here.”

“It keeps me goin’,” Duncan said.

“You’ve got a good-sized woodlot at the back. I noticed it driving along.”

“It’s mostly worn out.” Duncan slammed the stove door shut. “Scrub bush mainly now. That’s the trouble.”

“So you’d have to work in some of the other woodlots around, would you?”

Duncan straightened up and stared across the room.

“If you were running short on your own timber, I mean.”

“Sometimes,” Duncan said.

“Well, it’s quite a life you’ve got out here. A lot of men would like this life.”

Duncan’s face began to glow again. “Would they?”

“Sure. Working with all this machinery. And working outside, too, it’s a good healthy life. And working with horses.”

“Babe and Dandy.”

“I saw one of them standing out by the barn.”

“That would be Dandy. Babe had a run into town this morning. I’m keeping her warm.”

“Anyway, it’s well beyond me, this kind of life. With one arm and a bum leg what good would I be?”

“I seen you come home that day on the train.”

“Oh yeah?”

“You don’t need to do nothin’, Wilf. You’ve done all you need to do.”

Duncan was looking across the room at Wilf with such earnestness and with such a high regard Wilf had to turn away. “Thanks, Duncan. Of course, I have to do something with the rest of my life.”

“I’m getting married,” Duncan said.

“You are? Well, isn’t that great?”

“To Carole Birley. You know her. She works in your dad’s office.”

Wilf walked over to the pile of newly trimmed boards and began to examine them more closely. “To Carole Birley?”