“It was the flu,” she gasped. “About a month ago. End of October. I’m so sorry, boys.”
Jerry’s chest squeezed, and his arm shot out, reaching for the oak tree at his side; he didn’t think he could stand without it.
“It was terrible, terrible,” she said, over and over. “It swept through and killed so many people. We were all right out here, but…”
He barely noticed when she touched his cheek again. “Your mother and father were in the midst of it all, working with the church to help the sick. They seemed to be doing all right.” She shook her head. “Oh, it came on so fast. There was nothing anyone could do.”
Jerry knew about the Spanish flu. He’d come down with it in September. He’d been stuffed into a hospital tent, one cot among dozens filled with more ailing men. He’d seen men collapse midstep and never get up again, bloody tears in one’s eyes, and dried, flaking trails of blood leading from another’s ears to his neck. He’d heard the rantings and screams when fevers and hallucinations spiralled out of control.
Jerry knew that terror personally. He’d become certain that the doctors and nurses had a secret plan to do away with him. John had stayed by his side, calmly promising him that his paranoia was coming from the fever, assuring him the medical staff was there to heal him, not kill him. And then there was the music—Jerry hadn’t been able to understand why no one else heard the singing. When he’d grabbed John’s arm and insisted that he listen harder, his brother only chuckled and told him that all there was playing in the background were moans and groans. Two weeks later, Jerry sat at John’s bedside as his brother wallowed in his own sweat and hallucinations.
When they finally walked away from that hospital, much thinner than they had been, their skin retaining a pasty grey shade for a while,they understood how lucky they’d been. The flu had killed thousands of soldiers all over Europe, and every village they visited was littered with bodies of the dead. But Jerry had never thought about it reaching Windsor, Ontario. Their hometown had seemed so far away. So safe.
“What did you do with—” John’s voice was choked. “Where are they now?”
“We buried them.”
Buried.
Cold, hungry clay suddenly flooded Jerry’s mind, bled into his veins, sucked him under. He could taste it, gritty and foul and stinking of blood, crusted onto his face, his lips…
John gripped Jerry’s shoulder, bringing him back. He understood what no one else could.
“Where?” he was asking.
“Windsor Memorial,” Aunt Judy said. “It—it was a nice service, John. Your uncle put up a stone.”
The old cemetery with the moss eating into the stones, the skeletons beneath. Jerry clenched his fists, fighting memories of the dirt falling on him, covering his face, filling his nose and mouth. He couldn’t think about his parents’ rotting bodies. He needed to focus on reason, on reality. But the realities he needed were the very things that were gone from his life forever.
His mother, with her chipper voice and warm heart, her apple pies and cornbread muffins. Pretty eyes that should have been overflowing with tears of joy today, accompanying bubbled words of relief and a deep but reassuring sympathy for Jerry’s scars. If she’d been here, he would have held her tight and breathed in her scent. He would have known he was really home.
Their bull of a father would have been standing back and watching their arrival, arms crossed, pride brimming from his smile. He would have lit a pipe that night, then sat by the fire with his boys, drinking beer and laughing; he would have asked them about the war, compared theirstories with his time spent in South Africa. Jerry had never planned to talk about what happened overseas with anyone afterward, but on the journey home he’d thought about telling his father about it. To see what he thought. Maybe to let out some of the pain.
Aunt Judy forced her smile back. “Come in, boys. I imagine you’re hungry. Food will help. You can go to the cemetery later.”
They followed her wordlessly, and Jerry’s empty stomach cramped with urgency as he inhaled the fragrant warmth of the fireplace and the smoky smell of bacon. A little brown terrier with a much greyer muzzle than he remembered snuffled wildly around his boots, her whole body wriggling with recognition.
“Hey, Daisy,” he said, picking her up. She smothered him with kisses, oblivious to his ruined face.
“She missed you,” Aunt Judy said. “We all did.”
Jerry and John were different in a lot of ways, but there was one thing they’d both mastered, and that was holding back tears.Once you let yourself cry, you’ve lost control, his father had said. Jerry had held on so tight to that lesson that the only tears he’d shed during the war had come privately, after John had left him in the hospital.
Here, with Daisy nuzzled into his neck, the air filled with the aromas of family, and an orange glow snapping behind the metal fireplace grate, it was almost too much.
“It must have been hard on you, losing Ma,” Jerry said, his voice hoarse.
Aunt Judy’s smile was weak but determined. “Better now that you’re here. Your mother had said you were all right, but I just couldn’t trust it until I saw you again.”
“Uncle Henry?” John asked.
She sighed. “Same as ever, the old fool. Gave me a scare a few weeks back, but he’s all right now. He’s with the pigs. He’ll be in soon. Sit, sit, and let me get you something to eat.”
They did as they were told, waiting while Aunt Judy disappearedinto the kitchen. She returned with a loaf of bread, a brick of cheese, and a plate of bacon. After another look at the boys, she brought over two bowls, along with the pot of stew she had simmering on the stove.
John and Jerry were quietly helping themselves to seconds when Uncle Henry barged through the door, bringing with him the stink of hogs. He stopped short at the sight of them, his wide face crinkling into a smile.
“Our brave soldiers are back at last!” He sat down with his nephews, but wasn’t quite quick enough to hide his shock at Jerry’s scars. His eyes were soft as he gazed up at his wife. “Judy, I think this homecoming calls for whisky.”
