For Your Tomorrow Read online

  She puts the sandwich on the counter, her stomach knotted with fear.

  She telephones CFB Shilo, her son’s home base, and probes military officials for details. “We are unable to release any information at this time.” A different response than the three previous calls that she’s made after the deaths of Canadian soldiers have been reported—three times since February when her son began his tour of duty. This could mean the soldiers are from Shilo.

  She waits for the two-o’clock news, paces back and forth, back and forth, in front of the picture window overlooking the main road and the ocean beyond. A car, dark blue, approaches. A flag flutters from its aerial—a red maple leaf on white, a Canadian flag. It passes her driveway … slows … turns around. She screams. Her high-pitched wail penetrates through the walls into the rooms of the neighbouring house, pierces the windows of the blue sedan pulling into her driveway.

  Panting and sobbing, she runs to the phone.

  In his fourth floor office at Canadian Blood Services in Halifax, the manager of field logistics, Russ Francis, has just slung his backpack over his shoulder. He’s rushing off to a dentist’s appointment, anticipating a brisk walk through the Public Gardens, a city block of flowers, fragrant with roses and magnolia on this hot afternoon. He doesn’t drive his car to work; he prefers crossing the harbour on the passenger ferry, inhaling the bracing salt air. A walk is just what he needs right now to ease the anxiety curdling in his stomach. A colleague told him, half an hour ago, about the news report. Good god—six more gone. He’s about to close his office door behind him when the phone rings. Should he answer it? He’s running late. He glances at his watch, then back at the phone, ringing, pulling him back to grab it from its cradle.

  “Come home!” Marion cries. “People in uniforms are getting out of a car. They’re coming up the stairs.” Her voice clotted with panic and horror.

  “Oh my god,” he says. “I’ll have to get a drive. I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

  Disaster has struck. He has to think, think logically. He can’t feel, yet. He has to find their driver, Joanne. He has to get home and be with Marion. As he hangs up, a co-worker appears at his door with a sheaf of papers, a wide smile on her face.

  “Lisa,” he says, calmly. “I need to find Joanne. I need to get home. They just killed Jeff.”

  The driver manoeuvres the van through the tourist-crowded streets, speeds across the span of the Murray Mackay Bridge and down the busy four-lane highway. “Joanne, slow down,” Russ says. “Getting there any quicker isn’t going to change anything. Just get me home safely.” He needs the time, the twenty-five minutes, to prepare for what he’s about to face—to deal with the people who are there, to be strong for Marion. Stay in control, be level-headed, work with the situation. Maybe he’s wounded—not likely.

  Marion stands at the threshold, resolute: I won’t answer the door. If I don’t answer the door it won’t be possible. A faint hope arises—maybe he’s only wounded. She clutches the doorknob, buoyed by possibility. She bolts out the front door to meet three soldiers trudging up the stairs—the grim-faced messengers of Death.

  “GET THOSE GUYS OUT of there! Get them off the ground!” I shouted at the radio when the news announced the deaths of six Canadian soldiers in Afghanistan. By 10 a.m., the identities of four of them were confirmed.

  Now, waiting for the next report, I dwell in a limbo of fear, a refrain replaying in my mind: this couldn’t happen to Jeff … to my sister … we’ve already sacrificed one of our men, our father, to the maw of the military. Faced with the randomness of roadside bombs, Jeff has survived so far. In only four weeks, he’ll be home—home to begin a whole new phase of his life, as a father to his beautiful son, born just ten weeks before he left for Afghanistan. When he comes back in August, he’ll be posted to Toronto, where Sylvie works for Air Canada. They’ll begin their life together as a family. The map of his future is laid out, just waiting for him to return and step into it.

  I try to stave off my trepidation, glad I have my packing to keep me occupied. On this sweltering July morning, I’m in a flurry of washing clothes and organizing suitcases for our trip to Halifax tomorrow. My younger son, Gabriel, and I will spend six weeks in the Maritimes, escape the motorized whirr of the Kelowna suburbs—the lawn mowers, weed whackers, leaf blowers, power washers, hedge trimmers; trade it all for the rushing waves of the Northumberland Strait and the undulating call of the loons on Grand Lake.

  Just before eleven, the phone rings. The voice on the line sounds at once familiar and strange. “Melanie, it’s Russ,” a timorous tone I’ve never heard from my gregarious brother-in-law. Is something wrong? He must be calling about picking us up at the airport tomorrow.

  “Jeff was one of the soldiers killed this morning.”

  It’s as if I’ve been jolted with thousands of volts of electrical current. Stunned and numbed, I can’t move, or speak. Not Jeff … please … not Jeff.

  “No!” I want him to take back the words. This can’t be possible. In the background, I hear my sister moaning, keening for her son. I need to be there, to hold her.

  A former military man himself, Russ can summon the focus of his logistician’s mind, to override the turmoil of the distraught father. “Melanie,” he says in a controlled, level voice, “do you know how we can get in touch with Mica?”

  My god, dear Mica.

  Today they begin their trek of the West Coast Trail. Once they’re en route, they’ll be in total isolation. But Mica said they would first have an orientation session at the trailhead. “Maybe we can reach them at the Parks office before they set out,” I say, trying to reassure Russ. I know how much they need their daughter right now, their only living child. “I’ll try to track her down.”

  I’m amazed at the clarity of mind that can surface in the turmoil of crisis, surely a survival mechanism. In my shaking and distress, I can find the phone book, locate the right section at the back—Government of Canada—and the Parks Department number; punch the digits into the phone, explain the urgency of contacting my niece, and finally reach the West Coast Trail Hiker Registration office at the Gordon River Trailhead. “Let’s see … yeah, Mica Francis is registered to begin hiking today,” says a pleasant voice. “In fact, she just had her orientation. She left about ten minutes ago to take the ferry to the trail.”

  “There’s a family emergency. Mica has to call home as soon as possible.” My tone is sufficiently panicked that a park warden is immediately dispatched to catch the boat before it leaves. “Please call me back to let me know if Mica gets this message,” I say before hanging up. I imagine Mica, her dark hair tied back in a ponytail, her hazel eyes shining with excitement, sitting with her backpack in a boat on the edge of the Pacific, about to embark on an adventure.

  THE MOTOR OF THE RED Zodiac idles loudly and waves plash against the gunwales. Mica can hardly hear Aaron talking to her from his seat on the other side of the boat. He glances up at someone approaching from behind her on the dock side, someone who says, “Is there a Mica Francis here?”

  She turns around to see a woman in a brown Parks uniform. “That’s me,” Mica says, knowing even before the woman tells her, “There’s been a phone call for you.” She grips her heavy pack. “Oh no,” she says to Aaron, “it’s Jeff.” They climb out of the boat onto the dock, get into the warden’s car, and travel the kilometre back to the Parks office. Mica sits in the back so she won’t have to talk. She wills herself to hold it together, attempts to hang on to a thread of hope—maybe he’s only injured.

  MY SIAMESE CROSS BATHES in a pool of sunlight on the birch floor. He licks his white paws, swabs his ears, licks and swabs, over and over—as if nothing has changed. I glare at the black phone, and visualize Mica making the call home. The dam of emotion bursts, releases a flood of tears and pent-up anger: “Jesus fucking Christ!” I scream into the indifferent air. “Why are they driving around in the desert when any second they could be blown up? It’s a fucking game of Russian roulet
te!”

  I respect my nephew’s dedication to helping a suffering people, but I’m not a supporter of our military’s mission in Afghanistan. Considering the country’s thirty-year history of war, the corruption inherent in Afghan tribal politics, its police force and the government itself, I doubt that long-term progress is achievable. And with each Canadian soldier who’s killed, I become more vehemently opposed to our military presence there. Most of the deaths are from roadside bombs. Why aren’t helicopters being used to transport our troops? Is our military adequately equipped for combat? And now Jeff—my intelligent, brave and gentle nephew—has been struck down in the prime of his life, one more sacrifice to the god of war.

  The ringing phone disrupts my crying rage. I seize the receiver, praying it’s the hikers’ registration office to tell me they’ve located my niece. But the lilting voice on the line is Mica’s, higher pitched than usual, a voice that’s trying to stay composed. She’s not been told to call home, but to call me. The shock waves reverberate over the phone lines to an island on the edge of the Pacific. “Mica,” I say, attempting equanimity, “you need to phone home right away.”

  “Is something wrong? Is it Jeff?”

  “Mica … I don’t want to tell you this.”

  “Is he dead?”

  My lips move, but the words won’t come out. Long seconds of silence before I can say, “Mica … I’m so sorry to have to tell you this. Yes.”

  “Oh god,” she cries. “What happened?”

  “A roadside bomb.”

  “Jeff,” her voice trembles. “Just like the others.”

  “You’d better call home now, Mica. I’ll be there soon.”

  “Okay, Melanie,” she says, stifling her sobs, “thank you.”

  ATOP THE PEACE TOWER on Parliament Hill, a red-and-white flag flaps crisply against a clear cerulean sky. But in the offices of the Gothic Revival sandstone buildings, chaos reigns. It’s one of the darkest days in the four-year Canadian military mission in Afghanistan, the worst since Easter Sunday. Just down the street on Colonel By Drive, in the concrete block towers of National Defence Headquarters, military officials issue press releases, determine next of kin, confirm phone numbers and addresses. They assign notification teams to knock on the doors of each of the six soldiers’ families.

  From coast to coast, in pods of three—a senior officer from the base, an assisting officer and a padre—they travel: to homes in Iqaluit, Nunavut; Burnaby, British Columbia; Whitecourt, Alberta; Clearwater, Manitoba; Ottawa and Kingston, Ontario; and Eastern Passage, Nova Scotia. They walk up to the doors of the parents who made him, nested and nurtured him until he could fly on his own; up to the doors of wives-in-waiting, each one crossing off the days on the calendar—just four more weeks!—until her beloved lies beside her in the long night; up to the doors of children who’ll never again see their father’s eyes beam love into theirs, never again snuggle into the shelter of his strong arms.

  Sylvie and her mother drive through the maple-lined streets of suburban Ottawa, en route to see Sylvie’s grandmother in her nursing home. Baby Ry snoozes in his car seat in the back. Sylvie is humming along to a song on the radio when the announcer interrupts: This just in—six Canadian soldiers killed this morning in Afghanistan.… Her heart starts thumping; blood rushes to her ears. “I’d know by now,” she says, meeting her mom’s eyes. “Jeff said, If you hear it on the news, I’m fine.”

  But as they’re parking the car, it hits her. She forgot to inform the Downsview Base in Toronto that she’d be away for a few days visiting her parents. A cloud of foreboding envelops her, casts its dark shadow on the sunny veranda where she sits with her grandmother, mother and baby son—four generations safely breathing together.

  “I’m so anxious I feel like vomiting,” Sylvie says as they’re driving home two hours later. “I can’t do this any more.” Two days ago, she talked with Jeff for forty-five minutes, their longest phone conversation since he’s been in Afghanistan. “I don’t have a good feeling,” she told him. “Something doesn’t feel right. I’m nervous … maybe it’s just getting too close to the end.” He tried to reassure her with his mantric words: I’m coming back. I’ll be home soon.

  At four o’clock, they pull into the cedar-hedged driveway. Flowering shrubs surround a two-storey red-brick house; a sentinel pine in the middle of the yard. The front door opens. Her father doesn’t rush out to get Ry from his car seat as he normally does, happily lifting his grandson into his arms. He stays at the threshold, stares at Sylvie, and beckons with his hand for her to come into the house. She freezes. “What’s Dad doing?” she asks her mother. Someone stands in the shadow behind her father. She unbuckles her seat belt and gets out of the car. She heads down the driveway, away from the house, and steps into the street.

  “Sylvie, come back,” her mother shouts. But she walks on, hearing the panic in her mother’s voice: “Sylvie, come back.”

  She stops, kneels on the hard pavement. Its heat and grit burn into her bare knees. “Mom, just give me a second,” she calls back. “Just give me one … one … second.” Every day that he’s been gone she’s wondered. What would I do if a soldier came to my door? Now, she knows. Okay, they don’t want to be here either.… Get up.… Get your ass in there … maybe he’s only injured.

  She gazes back at the brick house. The house her parents brought her to when she was born, her childhood home. It could collapse any minute, she realizes. It’s no different, after all, than the ones made of sticks, of straw.

  JULY 6. In the murk of early morning, I lie in Jeff’s bed, sleepless. Stars glow on the ceiling above me—the constellation of Scorpio—that Jeff put up there a couple of years ago.

  One morning during the Christmas holidays, he came into the kitchen to show his mother the glow-in-the-dark stars he’d just bought. He stood on a bar stool and placed one large star over the wooden island where she was chopping vegetables. “This one’s for you, Mom,” he said. Then he went upstairs and positioned the stars on his bedroom ceiling: five stars in the outstretched claws; a string of six stars in the body; and five to form the smooth bend of the stinging tail—a horizontal outline of the letter J. He called down to his mother to come up and see his star chart. A map, the place to find him. “In one of the stars I shall be living,” says the Little Prince in one of Jeff’s favourite books—there on his bookshelf, an arm’s length from the bed.

  I arrived in Eastern Passage late last night. Marion and Russ were already in bed, exhausted from facing the impossible new reality of their lives, the details of their son’s death springing up through the day like noxious weeds. When I stepped into Jeff’s room, I was engulfed by his presence—but at the same time, confronted with his irrevocable absence. His khaki cargo pants hung limply on a hook behind the door. His framed photos looked at me from the top of the cherry-wood dresser: Jeff, a teenager, embraces his granny; Sylvie encircled by his arms, he in an orange polo shirt, she in an orange sweater—their first date, carving pumpkins; and the young man, a few months ago—a proud father holding his infant son. In the centre of the images, a brass statue of a seated Buddha; on the wall above, the framed World War II service certificate bearing his grandfather’s picture.

  Then my eyes moved to the titles in his overflowing bookcase. I shook my head, awed by the breadth, depth and eclecticism of his learning and intellect: several titles by his philosophical guru, Michel Foucault—Society Must Be Defended; Ethics: Subjectivity and Truth; Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison; many on military history and strategy—Gwynne Dyer’s War and Ignorant Armies: Sliding into War in Iraq; Michael Ignatieff’s Virtual War; John Keegan’s A History of Warfare and Intelligence in War; myriad martial arts titles—Unleash the Warrior Within; Bushido: The Way of the Warrior; Budo Secrets: Teachings of the Martial Arts Masters; numerous books on Buddhism—Cittaviveka: Teachings from the Silent Mind; The Shambhala Guide to Aikido: the Way of Peace; Shambhala: the Sacred Path of the Warrior; and two books by mythologist
Joseph Campbell—The Hero with a Thousand Faces and The Power of Myth.

  I pulled out Campbell’s texts and flipped through their pages, replete with Jeff’s annotations and yellow highlighting of passages:

  The hero is someone who has given his life to something bigger than himself.

  Freud, Jung, and their followers have demonstrated irrefutably, that the logic, the heroes, and the deeds of myth survive into modern times.

  Herohood is predestined rather than simply achieved.

  Was this another map, I wondered, another place to find him? During my flight from Kelowna to Halifax, suspended thirty-seven thousand feet in space, I had contemplated the arc of Jeff’s life, its similarity to the archetypal stages of the hero’s journey. A glimmer of light appeared, an inkling of a pattern in the events leading up to, and culminating on, July 4—events that otherwise seemed cruelly random and senseless: Why Jeff? He had so much to live for.

  Now as I lie beneath his floral comforter, a salty breeze blows through the window looking east onto the ocean and the blinking lighthouse on Devil’s Island. Waves hush on the shore—the sounds and scents of Nova Scotia, my heart’s home. Every summer I leave behind the tropical dry heat of the Okanagan to dwell in the misty east coast and the warmth of my family. My sister Marion is as close to me as anyone can be. One year older, she was always there to play with, and watch over me, during our early childhood in Malagash. She’s part of my earliest memory—when we were three and four years old.

  Marion tells me where to get the matches: “They’re in that wooden box on the coffee table. Make sure Mom’s doing something in the kitchen. Just take a few.” When I get to the woodshed, she has newspaper crumpled on the floor. With the door closed, it’s dark—a bit scary. But when she scratches the match on the rock and puts it on the paper, everything is illuminated—Marion’s face aglow, her eyes fixed on tongues of fire that soon ignite the dry wood chips littering the floor. Flames leap to the wood stacked high around the walls. “Oh, oh,” she says, grabs my hand, and yanks me out the door. We run a few feet, then stop and turn around, transfixed by the smoking crackling blaze.