For Your Tomorrow (14 page)

When Russ served in the forces during the 1970s, ′80s and ′90s, the odds of a Canadian soldier being killed continued to be negligible. After getting his BA in history in 1972, Russ had a family to support, and the military offered a stable well-paying career as well as the possibility of adventure. So when Jeff swore his Oath of Allegiance in front of the Canadian flag on September 7, 2001, we weren’t worried that he was committing to a high-risk occupation: Canadians were peacekeepers in the world. As an officer, Jeff would earn a significantly higher income than the average university-educated civilian worker ($73,000 versus $40,000 in 2002). But salary was not his prime motivator, nor is it for the average young Canadian interested in a military career, according to a 2005 DND report—
Military Ethos and Canadian Values in the 21
^st
Century:
“Soldiers answer to a higher calling. They do
not believe that money is the key to a good life.… They look for social value in their work, to be of help to others.”

But four days after Jeff’s swearing-in ceremony, everything
changed, changed utterly
.

Tuesday, September 11, 2001, was a golden autumn morning in Halifax. Marion had just arrived home, hot and sweating from her run around the Halifax Commons and up Citadel Hill. “Mom, come here!” Jeff called from the living room. “You have to see what they’ve done!” Mother and son sat together on the brown tweed sofa, the blue-green Murray tartan afghan stretched across its back, and watched two arrows fly into the heart of America: twin towers of concrete, glass and steel implode in an apocalyptic inferno. From the towers’ tops, orange-yellow flames billow, jet-black smoke streams; begrimed bodies leap into space. Deathly screams, wailing sirens, blaring horns; ghostly ash-covered figures flee through the streets, the Manhattan skyline shrouded in a grey haze of dust and smoke.

It was the collapse of an old world order. Out of the ashes, a new Canadian military was born—a phoenix more in the guise of a hawk than a dove.

S
AINT
-J
EAN-SUR
-R
ICHELIEU
, on the west bank of Quebec’s Richelieu River, abounds with apple orchards and cider houses, vineyards and wineries, maple trees and sugar shacks. But Jeff and the six thousand new recruits arriving here to begin their military careers will experience none of
its pastoral charms. For the next three and a half months, they’ll be confined in a grey monolithic structure—half a kilometre long and twelve storeys high—home to the Canadian Forces Leadership and Recruit School and the Canadian Forces Language School: “Apprendre à Servir” emblazoned on the coat of arms in the foyer. Not all of the eager recruits that are crossing the threshold will “learn to serve” and outlast the trials of the fourteen weeks. Only half of them will march in full dress uniform at the graduation parade in December.

With his disciplined fitness regime, Jeff is primed for the notorious ordeals of physical endurance—marching thirteen kilometres at 5 a.m., running six kilometres in combat gear, scaling four-metre walls and crawling through mud-soaked ditches. He glories in the field exercises that test his mettle: cold, wet, tired and hungry, he hones his samurai sword. And he’s learned from his dad about riding out “the BS”—inspections for precisely folded socks and handkerchiefs, flawlessly pressed uniforms, cots so tightly tucked you can literally bounce a quarter off them. He resorts to the same survival strategies as his father did thirty years before. He hunkers down on the floor with a sleeping bag and air mattress to keep his sheets crisp, the corners taut, ready for inspection.

The arena he’s not prepared for is the macho garrison of boot camp—working, eating and sleeping with the pack, 24/7, and the lack of privacy in the barracks. Several years older than most of his fellow recruits, he’s an anomaly, a pensive aura still clinging to him. He dreads the predictable
weekend prattle as the boys preen for a night on the town:

“Let’s see if those French chicks are as hot as their reputation.”

“Gotta pass that language course, eh. Best way to do it—immerse yourself!”

“Better tuck one of those French safes in your pocket.”

His roommate asks him, “Hey, you’re not coming out?”

Stretched out on top of his sleeping bag, his head buried in a book, Jeff glances up, tries to pull the corners of his mouth into a smile. “I’m beat after those drills. Can’t keep up with you young guys.”

“I’m sure you can find a bar that swings the other way, if that’s your preference.” Loud guffaws from the hallway ring in his reddening ears. And he suddenly understands—the smirks, the raised eyebrows, the whispers when he comes into the washroom.
Unreal
.

They troop out, and he settles into the serenity of solitude. He closes his
Canadian Forces Code of Conduct
manual, reaches into his backpack and retrieves Foucault’s
Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison
. He flips through the pages, busy with yellow highlighting and his barely decipherable handwriting—notes revealing the ghost of his former self. And he laughs as he realizes the irony.
Here I am in Foucault’s Panopticon: partitioned space, constant inspection, a disciplined community, permanent visibility, a hierarchy of power
.… But I can always retreat, he thinks, to that other tower—ivory, safe and secluded. When he read Joselyn’s letter today, it all came back—that parallel world, that other hierarchy of power. He attempts to project himself into the role she describes—a
sessional lecturer, trying to finish TDP (that damned paper!). But he feels a visceral chafing against his skin, the mould too rigid and confining. “I’m glad that you’ve finally gotten to where you want to be,” she writes at the end of her letter. But he’s not there yet—and still not sure how to get there. Lonely, he wanders through heavy clouds of confusion.

He’s back in Halifax by mid-December, returned in time to help his dad pick out the Christmas tree. They always go to the same family-run lot on the corner of Windsor and North streets; he loves the sense of tradition, now that their family home has actually been in one city long enough to establish it. On a snowstormy evening, he’s curled up by the fireplace, crystals hissing hard against the bay window, the lit-up tree glowing in the corner, the scent of balsam. The decorations twinkle with the geniality of old friends; and now his granny’s ornaments have joined them—the angel shining at the top and the tarnished silver bells that were her mother’s. He smiles to himself:
Granny in her Santa hat, rousing everyone on Christmas morning—ho, ho, ho! outside his bedroom door
.

Roasting chicken wafts in from the kitchen. The back door creaks open. “It sure is cold out there,” Russ says, stomping his boots on the mat, brushing the snow off his uniform.

“You’re just in time,” Marion says, carrying in a bottle of wine, a platter of cheese and crackers. She uncorks a ruby Merlot and half fills their glasses. They swirl and sniff its raspberry and cherry aromas, then clink their goblets.

“Here’s to you, Jeff,” Russ says, with a broad grin. “Congratulations on your graduation. Well done.”

“I can’t hold a candle to you.” Jeff smiles, alluding to his father finishing as the top candidate in his basic training. “You were amazing to do that well.”

“But there were only twenty-two in my group,” Russ says, “and a hundred and twenty in yours.”

“We’re proud of you, Jeff,” Marion says, her eyes beaming into his. “And it was nice to see you graduate for once. Three times lucky?”

They laugh and sip, savouring the warmth. Jeff sets his glass down. “I don’t think I can go back,” he says, wringing his hands together. The fire spits and crackles, filling the heavy silence.

“What do you mean?” Russ says. “What happened?”

“I get totally depressed when I think about returning. It’s like being in prison.
Partitioned space … continual surveillance
 … 
permanent visibility.”
He describes the homophobic remarks and the subsequent discomfiture he’s endured. “And this time it will be for eight months. In a classroom mostly, trying to learn French—one more time.” He’d hoped he was done with it after passing his language requirement for his M.A. Like a nemesis, it continues to plague him. And he realizes the irony, having been in a relationship with francophone Sylvie for the past eight years.

“Once you make it through this next phase,” Russ says, “you’ll be into your officers’ training. It’s a lot different. You begin to be treated like a normal human being.”

“If you don’t return,” Marion asks, “would you resume your work on your Ph.D.?”

He looks down at his hands and shakes his head. “Can’t go back, and can’t go forward. I’m in limbo.”

“That’s a dark place to be,” Marion says, “but you’ve been there before.” She refills their glasses. “Maybe you should talk with Bhanti.”

“He’s somewhere in India,” Jeff sighs. “We haven’t been in touch for a while.” Bhanti dropped by Williams Street one afternoon while Jeff was in Saint-Jean. When Marion told him about Jeff’s enlistment, he was surprised, said he had no idea Jeff was contemplating the military. He left a Toronto phone number where Jeff could contact him. But it was too late—he’d already left the country.

“Think about how you’ll feel if you drop out now,” Russ says. “Becoming a soldier is not a cakewalk. There are times you’ll want to give up. But you let that feeling pass. Then dig in again.”

“I’ve got a couple of weeks yet,” Jeff says, settling a pillow behind his head, “time to reread the books Bhanti lent me, time to think about his words.”

He descends into his basement study, enfolds himself in the woollen blanket his grandmother’s fingers fashioned, stitch by stitch. Her needles click hypnotically in his head. He stares down the many-headed hydra of despair, fights the whirlpools threatening to pull him under. He sees Bhanti pouring the tea, slowly, as in a ritual, the sheen of his head in the candlelight; the steaming scent of cinnamon and honey. He hears his voice, as warm and rich as his coffee-toned skin:

Unless we understand the nature of the void within us, we will always feel emptiness, disappointment, despair
.

Freedom really means freedom from mental suffering. If the mind is clear and compassionate, whether you are in prison or have six months to live, you still feel peaceful because your mind is free
.

It is easier not to take the journey … but then life can dry up
.

He faces down his fears, and returns to Saint-Jean in January 2002 for French-language training. During the eight months, he develops a sustaining friendship with another “mature guy”—Scot Lang, married with two children. They swore into the military on the same day, and completed their basic training together, in different platoons, but sharing the milestones and the misery. Scott also studied sociology in university, so they have a common background of books. As they stand at attention during their graduation ceremony in August, the gravelly voice of a grey-moustached general resounds in the cavernous drill hall: “You never know when or where, but at 3 a.m. in some rain-soaked tent, someone will come through the door that you knew from your basic, and you will instantly remember the trials, and you’ll feel that reminiscent and instant camaraderie.… There will be people whose career circle will constantly intersect with yours.”

I
N LATE
A
UGUST
, just after Jeff has completed his language training, we’re savouring the last summer weekend at Fanjoy’s Point. We buy a cornucopia of vegetables from Slocum’s Farm, just down the road, and cook a harvest dinner—cobs of sweet Peaches-and-Cream corn, a hodgepodge of steamed green beans, peas, carrots and potatoes, slathered in butter and cream. The long dining table in the porch shines with Alma’s gilt-edged china and wedding silverware. After dinner, we linger in the candlelight, sipping oaky Chardonnay as the sun burns orange into the lake, and the crickets call—
summer’s gone, summer’s gone
.

From the kitchen, the clatter of pots, swooshing of water, trills of laughter as Jeff and Sylvie clean up the dishes. Van Morrison croons in the background. I turn in my chair, about to go to the fridge for some wine, but sit back down, not wanting to disrupt the tableau in the kitchen. Her honey-brown curls waterfalling against his shoulder, Jeff and Sylvie dance in a close embrace: