Way the Crow Flies Read Online Free

churches, the post office, bank and fire hall, the parade square, the library, the airfield, the building where your father works. And the PX for groceries and everything else—“PX” is another American term they picked up in Europe.
    If you live in what are called PMQs—Permanent Married Quarters—your house will be familiar too. There’s a handful of designs, early suburban blueprints, mostly semi-detached, except for the tiny bungalows and the big house where the CO lives. Commanding officer. There is a flagpole on his lawn. By the time you’re eight years old, you have probably seen the inside of each type of house in the PMQs. Sometimes in mirror image. And yet, somehow, each house becomes unique once a family moves in. Unique smells, instant accumulation of treasures, pictures and lived-in mess, all of it emerges from cardboard boxes that kids make into forts and play in for days before they collapse, and by the time they do collapse, the house looks as though the family has always lived there, because an air force wife can put together a home inside a week.
    Each regulation lawn bristles with individuality—bikes, strewn toys, a different car in every driveway, each refrigerator opening onto a world of its own. Some people’s fridges contain tins of Hershey’s chocolate sauce. Others contain Hershey’s tins that harbour lard and other horrible surprises; that is the McCarthys’ fridge. Madeleine’s mother wastes nothing, having grown up in the Depression. Although, considering that everyone else’s mother grewup in the Depression too, perhaps it’s an Acadian thing. Or merely Maritime—Canada’s “have-not” provinces. So, despite the uniformity of design, no two houses in the PMQs are exactly alike until that in-between time when one family moves out and the next one moves in. In that space of time the house is no one’s. It belongs to the taxpayers of Canada. During that no one’s time, the house is scrubbed, disinfected, painted white, stripped of blinds, invaded by echoes. It stands suspended, like a deconsecrated church. Not evil, just blank. Neither dead nor living. It comes alive again when a new family pulls into the driveway and says hello to it.
    Madeleine reaches into her new Mickey Mouse Club knapsack for her autograph book. Everyone in her grade three class back in Germany signed it. She opens it….
    Yours until Niagara Falls
, wrote Sarah Dowd, the last letters tumbling down the page.
    Yours till the mountains peak to see the salad dressing, love your friend forever, Judy Kinch
.
    Roses are red, lilies are white, I love you dear Madeleine, morning, noon and night, your best friend, Laurie Ferry
.
    The book is full. All have sworn to write. Madeleine and Laurie Ferry have sworn to meet on New Year’s Day of the year 2000, in the playground of their PMQs in Germany.
    The printed letters look lonely all of a sudden—gay pencil-crayon colours like party decorations after the party. She closes the book, puts it away and takes a deep breath of clover air. There’s no reason to feel sad on such a beautiful day when you have your whole life ahead of you. That’s what grown-ups say. She pictures her life rolled out ahead of her like a highway. How do you know when you’re actually travelling along your life that was ahead of you but is now beneath your feet? How many more miles?
    It’s hard to move into a new house without thinking of the day when you will be leaving.
Say goodbye to the house, kids
. And you will all be that much older. Madeleine is eight going on nine now so she will be going on twelve next time. Almost a teenager. And her parents will be older too. She tries to remember that they are younger now, but she can’t help looking at it in the opposite way: they are older than they were in the last house. And that means theywill die sooner. Every house is a step closer to that terrible day. Which house will be the last? Maybe this one. The one we are on our way to say hello