Black Snow
I wake screaming, lunging forward, arms and legs kicking out. I’m on my feet running, stumbling along the mud wall, hollering, but can’t escape. A force I can’t see stops me, and I kick and punch at it, black terror chasing me. I punch and scream and punch and scream and something gives. I pull back for another blow when a soft voice reaches me.
“Tommy,” she whispers, a cool wind in an inferno. “Breathe, breathe …”
I pound on the wall, but the voice has caught my mind.
“Breathe, breathe … come back, Tommy …”
Fear subsides, the mud walls fades into our bedroom in our rundown little house on Rector Street. Evie is rubbing my back, whispering to me. My heart slows, my breathing settles. My right hand is a fist aimed at the wall. More holes. More repairs.
I’ve been home from the frontlines for a few months, but my head keeps lurching back to the battlefields. This is Halifax, not Europe. I’ve left the war behind.
Breathe.
“Tommy, you’re home,” Evie whispers, eyes on mine. I blink. Again. When I come back enough to see her, she smiles. I smile. Sniff. Laugh at myself.
“Jesus,” I mutter, shaking my hand. Cut, but not badly. She picks it up and kisses it. “I’m sorry, Evie.” My voice shakes.
“Not your fault,” she says, smile widening. She puts her arms around my neck and pulls me to her body. She had nice curves when I left, but she’s skinny now. I can feel her heart through her threadbare nightdress, beating as fast as mine. It’s freezing cold in here, colder than outside.
“When I get that promotion at work, I’ll buy you a cashmere nightgown,” I promise, rubbing my nose on hers. She grins, kisses me on the lips.
“Does that mean I won’t need to snuggle as close to you?” she pouts.
I pause, making a show of thinking.
“When I get that promotion at work, I’ll buy a shed load of coal, so we can sleep in the nude.”
She gapes at me in mock shock. “Mr. Joyce, not in front of the children,” she says, rubbing her belly.
“Mrs. Joyce, a work of art should not be concealed by canvas,” I counter.
She laughs. Blushes. Punches me in the shoulder and disappears into the bathroom. Our house counts as fancy in Richmond, because we don’t have to share the communal toilet at the foot of the street.
I pull back the corner of the tattered curtain, peering out into the bright, cold winter’s morning.
The dingy streets of Halifax’s north end are busy with workers making their way to the factories. I’ve been staring at this street all my life, apart from the last three years, when I was off fighting in Europe. My brother and I shared a room down the hall that Evie uses for her drawing, when we can afford paper and pencils. This room was my parent’s growing up. So was the bed, and just about everything else in the house. Evie and I haven’t been able to afford to update it, so it’s classic early 1900s poor-people’s style.
I let the faded yellow curtain fall back over the dirty window. Evie tries to keep it clean, but the factories churn out grimy air 24 hours a day to feed the war machine.
I go to the kitchen and start up the stove, pushing a thin wave of warmth into the house. I can still see my breath. I go to the bedroom sink, splashing cold water on my face. My smile crumbles.
My hands shake. As I towel myself dry, Evie comes back in the bedroom and, with a mischievous wink, drops her nightdress.
I widen my eyes and make lustful advances.
“Tut tut! Time for work, not play,” she says coyly, turning saucily toward the wardrobe. Her back is still bruised. I wondered if the neighbours had heard it this time.
“Evie, I’m so sorry,” I start.
She cuts me off: “You’ve been through a lot – we’ve been through a lot – and we’ll get through this. It just takes time. And love.”
I nod, close my eyes. Sigh.
She dresses in her warmest clothes – the same grey wool dress she wears every day except for Sunday, and the same heavy grey sweater.
We sit at the ancient table for tea and an egg. There’s pots and pans everywhere. Evie had to start selling things while I was gone, and she started with my mother’s good hutch. Now there’s nowhere to put all the dishes that were in it, so they sit as tidily as Evie can make it – on the floor, by the old, stained sink, under the table. The hutch went to a rich man in the south end. He said it was a collector’s piece. I’ve walked past his grand house at night and glanced in the window. He’s got some really fancy china in it.
After breakfast, Evie hands me my lunch as I head out the door.
“Ham sandwich?” I ask.
She smiles and shakes her head. “No such luck, Mr. Fancy. We ran out of ham Tuesday. No
more till Monday.”
It’s Thursday.
Clouds storm into my head and I fall into a darkness. Reason is drowned in a thunder of relentless shelling. I hear my voice swearing at Evie, see my hands pushing her away, throwing the paperbag lunch across the kitchen. I swipe at the stack of pots, sending them crashing to the wood floor with a terrible clatter. I’m looking for something else to break, but there’s not much left. Evie holds my eyes with all her strength, speaking calmly. I focus on that lighthouse and swim out of the black waters. I bury my head in my hands, crying.
She hugs me again, rubs my nose with hers.
“We’ll get through this,” she says with a smile, not quite hiding the sadness. “You will get better.”
I pick my lunch up off the floor, pull on my coat and hat. We kiss at the doorway and part in silence. I head to the sugar refinery, walking past the runty homes on Rector Street, down steeply to the waterfront. The bright sun glitters on the water. It’s busy already, as the city prepares to send another convoy across the Atlantic. Ships sail in and out of the harbour. Horses and wagons clatter along the roads. It’s a gorgeous day.
***
A sailor staggers naked down the street through the smoking ruins, his charred
skin feathered with peels of white blisters. A roof shingle is nailed to his hand.
“Where am I?” he slurs through a broken face, eyes staring wildly at nothing. I shake my head, gaping at the suddenly birthed hell all around me. Buildings burn and hot black snow falls from the smoldering sky. I’m crumpled on my side, arm crushed under me, screaming in agony. I silence myself, but the screaming goes on.
An inhuman wailing, like a knife slicing through glass, pierces my ear as a flaming chunk of metal tumbles from the sky and cracks the sailor on the side of his head, knocking his white hat sideways. He stumbles, falls to the ground.
A young woman stripped to her corset pulls herself off the sidewalk and starts to run, but a gash in her leg sends her back down. She crumples to the ground and rolls, clutching her wound.
I can't see Evie anywhere.
The house next to me collapses on itself. Someone shouts from the basement, trapped under the rubble. As I lurch to my feet to help, the coals from the tipped-over fireplace set the wreckage alight. The screaming intensifies with the roaring of the inferno. I run to the home, joined by the black ghosts of those still breathing, but the fire is devouring the building like kindling. The front of the house is buckled in, punched back by the force of the blast. A decapitated corpse hangs out the second-storey window, and I don’t know where to start. The screaming is coming from under the rubble, so I pull back the heavy timber. It’s red-hot, but my hands are cold with the winter chill. I hear a woman screaming: “My baby! My baby!”
The screaming loses language, becomes something primal. There’s five of us in there now, but it’s like shoveling the ocean – debris piles up where we’ve cleared space. The howling is deep, raw, shaking my soul.
It stops.
Other voices take up the cry.
One of the would-be rescuers stands still, clutching his bleeding throat. He collapses into the burning wreckage. I drag him into the street but he’s already dead. I roll him over to check his pulse, but his neck’s chopped open, the front of his blackened shirt darkly stained.
In the bowels of the next house over, two men frantically dig through the fiery rubble. One shouts excitedly and I go over the help. A big man crouches like Samson in the basement, his arms spread out to hold apart two beams that cross his shoulders like scissors. Soot-streaked sweat pours down his face like Niagara Falls. Between his trembling legs lies an unconscious woman. If the beams fall, she’s gone. We pull debris off her and the younger guy hauls her out by her armpits. She’s still breathing, and there’s no obvious wound on her.
We pull her to safety and return to the big man. He’s stuck there under the weight of the fallen house, but the ground’s on fire. We shove at the beams but can’t budge them. His pant legs catches light. The young guy gives the beams a big push and they fall down to the side. The big man gives a yelp and goes down.
“God,” shouts the older man. “There was a spike in one of those beams! It’s got his lung.”
The young guy takes control – he’s got that soldier’s calm about him. He casually rips the dress off the unconscious woman and uses it to wrap the wound of the big man.
He sits back once that’s done.
“If we move him, we’ll probably kill him,” the young guys muses. “If we leave him here, he’ll burn. Oh Christ – is there anything on wheels around here?”
A search of what was the backyard turns up a wheelbarrow. The two men set the wounded pair in as gently as they can. With a quick nod of thanks to me, they struggle down the hill, trying not to lose the heavy load. They soon vanish in the smoke.
I look around, trying to see where I am, but the sooty fog obscures the city. There’s bodies everywhere, smashed together in the wreckage, hanging off lampposts and draped over the telegraph wires. A young couple clutching a baby stand screaming on the second floor of a burning house. Flames have incinerated most of the first floor and are minutes away from the family. I pull myself in that direction but a young man gets there first.
“Throw him down!” he hollers through cupped hands. The woman shakes her head and the man tries to grab the baby. Hysterical, she fights him off. The flames are poking through the floor now. The husband puts an arm around her, talks. She nods.
Locking eyes with the young man on the street, she says a prayer and tosses her baby down.
The man catches it cleanly, then holds it like he’s never touched a baby before.
The man comes next, leaping out over the flames and crumpling on the street.
“Come on!” he shouts up to his wife, but she’s terrified, holding her belly.
The back of the house collapses under the heat and the front leans backward. She screams, leaps to the street. She hits and rolls. Her husband is there and she jumps to her feet to grab her baby. Everyone’s crying.
The woman says she pregnant.
I try to stop myself hyperventilating and scan the devastation, searching for my wife.