Shades of War

SHADES OF WAR

A novel by Michele Carter

Published by Boomer Publications Inc. at Smashwords

Copyright 2009 by Michele Carter

All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced in

any form without permission. For permission contact the author at

www.indiescribbler.com

ISBN 978-0-9682728-8-6

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

1. Historical—Fiction. 2. Murder Mystery—Fiction. 3. Relationships—Fiction.

5. Suffrage Movement—Fiction. 6. Women—Fiction.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

BOOK ONE—Maudy Thursday, 1917

BOOK TWO—Good Friday

BOOK THREE—Holy Saturday

BOOK FOUR—Easter Sunday

BOOK FIVE—Easter Monday

EPILOGUE

LIST OF MAIN CHARACTERS

List of Main Characters

Clare Tate: a journalist and suffragist from Toronto

The Boisseneau Family:

Pierre

Louie

Joe

The three brothers run The Timber Hotel. Louie is a widower and Joe is a bachelor

Juliet: Pierre’s wife

Pierre and Juliet’s children: Claude 18 years old and fighting in France,

Emma—17, Chloe—16, Christian—12, Theresa-Marie—10 years old.

Town Residents:

Oscar: a miner and Joe’s best friend

Indian Jacques: Chloe’s best friend

Lois: the madam at the brothel

Daisy: one of Lois’ ‘girls’

Seamus Moore: an opera-loving ex-miner who still works in the mine office

Constable Lynch: the town’s constable

Rene: a miner

Franco: a miner and Rene’s friend

BOOK ONE

Maundy Thursday, 1917

I just wanted to go for a walk. I wasn’t looking for trouble. I see him coming along the path at me. A funny thought jumps into my head: I won’t get to swim in the lake this summer. I put up my arm to keep him away but he forces me to the ground. He’s strong, pushes my shoulders back, yells at me to stop fighting. His eyes are different. Angry. Not like normal. Lois is going to kill me for getting into trouble. She hates it when I’m late. I can’t help it. I have to fight but that makes things worse. He picks up a rock. Am I shot?

Afterwards, she feels her body wilt and fade, escape from its tight folds and lift or float into a solitude of silence and repose. A lovely place. Peaceful until a rush of wind squeezes that last memory from her thoughts. She becomes a new thought without appearance or form. A ghost of a previous existence enjoying the expanse of her new terrain.

Thursday afternoon in early April, Clare Tate arrived at the Rockwater station just minutes before the boy stumbled over the girl’s body. Clare was shaken from the earlier accident that could have resulted in a tragic train wreck if the engineer had failed to act promptly. Her twelve-hour train ride east from Vancouver had, unfortunately, ended in a fatality, but she wanted to forget about that and prepare for her lecture at the town hall. Her hands were still shaking at the memory of the misfortune as she picked up her traveling bag. Her hat slid to the front of her forehead, almost covering her eyes completely, and her fingers failed to cooperate as she tried to make it right. She stared at her reflection in the station window and straightened her hat. She casually assessed the rest of her appearance for loose ends and, finding none, stood against the side of the railway depot, feeling the breeze from the lake cooling her cheeks. The fresh air was beginning to rejuvenate her, but the sight of the mountainsides crested with snow and the low hanging mist sent a chill down her back. The black mirror of water reflected forests of pine that appeared painted in ink on the surface of the lake. She shuddered at the fathomless depth in which creatures could get lost and perish.

She rubbed her right arm, hoping nothing had been jarred out of place in the accident. A shadow passed near her elbow and disappeared. She froze. She recognized the next sensations of cold and nausea, and the speckled light in front of her eyes that descended and transformed into a hazy cluster around her feet. The unruly mass resembled a confusion of brambles. Recognizing these familiar signs, she sat quickly on the wooden bench on the station’s platform and placed her gloved hand against her forehead praying for the dizziness to stop but, instead, her head stuffed itself with images of his face, close and suffocating. She willed him to leave her alone, strained against the sight of him until another image circled in her mind’s eye and, like a drowning victim, she clutched at this recent floating thought as if it were a life preserver.

She saw the interior of the train where she had been sitting, calmly reviewing her speech. She was concentrating on the page in front of her, so when she fell she thought someone had shoved her shoulder, forcing her to lunge forward in her seat and slip to the floor. She recalled a high-pitched squeal, like a siren, had filled the car, and she saw other passengers flatten against the front of their seats and then crumple with arms and legs settling into awkward poses. The train had braked hard, screeching to a stop.

Clare rose carefully from the floor and gathered the scattered pages of her speech, placing them on her seat before stepping over feet, hearing the moans and cries from people who sounded hurt but did not appear wounded. One woman was sitting with her legs stretched out in front of her staring into space, while a man leaned against his seat with his face turned away and pressed to the window. An elderly man had fallen sideways and was trying to stand. The blood had drained from his face. Clare leaned over and helped him back to his place. As more people found their footing, they returned to their seats and pulled down the windows to see what had happened. Shouts from outside trailed back to their car. She followed a tall, older man to the edge of the doorway and peered around him.

What is it? she asked.

Can’t see.

The man stepped down to the track and began walking toward the shouts at the front of the train. A young boy with a blue coat pushed around Clare to look, but in an instant he was gone, his mother having pulled him back into the car.

Clare lifted her skirt slightly as she stepped off the train. She quickly caught up to the older man, but he put out his arm to block her way.

You better stay here.

Clare was not about to be ordered around by a stranger who had no business telling her what to do. She had learned from her short time as a journalist that she must pursue the story and that, in too many cases, the men giving orders were either stupid or just plain bossy.

I’m going to see what happened, she stated forcefully and pushed past him. The man shrugged his shoulders and continued walking beside the tracks.

As they approached the front of the train, Clare noticed the conductor first and then the engineer before she saw the animal.

Never knew what hit her, said the engineer. Better get the shovels.

The train had hit a cow. The huge black and white body lay sprawled partially across the tracks, its head hanging loose from its body, pouring blood onto the gravel. Its eyes peered at Clare, and for a moment she thought the animal had simply been knocked out and was reviving, except the open gash in its neck suggested otherwise. As the men strained to push the carcass completely from the track, Clare heard a pounding inside her head that circled round and round her skull, warning her that her own blood was about to leave her face. She inhaled deeply and smelled cow manure, which momentarily cleared away the pounding. She reached for the side of the engine and found her balance. The cow’s head was still dangling, threatening to detach entirely, and she recognized a slab of ear that had been recklessly sliced in half. The eyes kept staring at her until the men slid the massive animal into a ditch where it rolled onto its side to stare at a patch of buttercups.

Clare could feel her heart racing and hear her breath, as well as the heavy breathing from the men as they gave the cow’s hindquarters one final shove. The next sound was the older man suggesting they return to their car. She was relieved to receive orders that made sense.

We’re lagging behind schedule, said the engineer. Better hurry up.

Clare took a final look at the cow and thought she might cry. The poor, dumb beast had no idea of the danger. She glanced at the railroad tracks stretching forward toward the town. She would register at the hotel and then take a nap to calm her nerves, but, as she planned her next moves, the older man kept interrupting her thoughts.

The freight came through at midnight and flattened the poor bugger like a burst balloon.

What?

The drunken miner. Last month. He’d fallen asleep on the tracks.

What kind of place was this that the trains killed cows and miners at all hours of the day and night? As a survivor of this latest attack, she would be on the alert for further deadly assaults as soon as she had her nap. She settled into her seat and was pleased to hear the rumble and hiss of the engine as it returned to active duty and dropped her off at the station.

Now that her breathing had restored to normal, Clare rose from the bench and stepped off the platform, carefully manoeuvring around a mud puddle. Before searching out The Timber Hotel where she would stay for the night, she ventured closer to the edge of the lake. It narrowed to the north, where the mountains on either side leaned toward each other. Their massive shadows echoed in the vast stretch of water, casting a gloom along the corridor. The dips and crags between the drifts of snow chiselled replicas of noses and eyes, mouths down turned and frowning, faces etched in the wall of rock, staring back at her, reminding her of his face.

She turned and began her walk to the hotel through more mud ruts and puddles. She wondered what kind of people lived in this small town. What brought them to the Kootenays, such a remote part of the country? Since she would be gone the next day, she would have no time to linger and learn about the men who had built the hotels and shops with their bare hands and hard-earned capital. Her interest did lie, however, with the women whose dispositions were categorized as frail and sweet, but who broke their backs and their spirits lifting, scrubbing, and cooking like willing slaves to their master husbands. She wished she had more time to get to know the women.

Then she saw the white, church steeple. She always felt the Church spent too many days of the year preaching to congregations how to die instead of teaching people how to cope with life. And now with the war well under way in France and no hope of an end in sight, she wondered how the Church reconciled a loving God with the killing of men? What could the Church do for her and all the other war widows? She kept walking, knowing no answers would come.

Before entering the hotel, Clare glanced back at the lake, and noticed it had changed its shape. In the fading light, it no longer resembled a black, bottomless pit but a fertile field gone to waste. Once again she rubbed her arm and shuddered. Time to concentrate on her work. She was about to open the hotel door when she remembered she had to see if any telegrams had arrived for her from Vancouver. The news, if it came on time, would provide a great boost to her speech that evening. She saw the Post Office sign across the street and several doors away, but decided to register first, still unsettled from the accident and preferring the safety of the hotel where no train could suddenly derail and smash into her when her back was turned.

A colleague at the paper had recommended The Timber Hotel but warned her that the Boisseneau family who ran the establishment were ‘odd ducks.’ She would worry about that later.

On the bench outside their summerhouse, Pierre Boisseneau relaxed beside his youngest daughter and his brother Joe, taking in the view of the lake. He had a few more minutes to spare before heading over to the hotel. Time to open up the place, air it out, clean up the garden, he said. Plant nasturtiums, sweet peas. Make the place cheery for Claude. I am sure he will be home by summer.

He’ll be back before we know it, said Joe. The war’ll be over and Claude’ll be home, safe and sound.

The image of her big brother seeing the colourful display of flowers and smelling the splendid scents filled Theresa-Marie with excitement. Even though she was only ten years old, she understood the value of patience—that some things take longer than first imagined, but if you have faith and hope for the best, then soon, very soon, Claude will be safe at home remarking on the beauty of their garden.

Mama put tulip bulbs in the window boxes around the hotel, Theresa-Marie said. And I saw a green shoot there this morning.

Nothing like tulips to herald in the spring, added her Uncle Joe dreamily.

Theresa-Marie sat squished between her father and uncle, waiting for the two-fifty from Vancouver. The train had been late, but she had easily imagined it, colouring her drawing of the train with the friendly engineer waving from the engine window, while listening to the blue jays squabbling in the trees and her father’s leisurely sucking on his pipe. Her nerves had settled since Christian’s earlier outburst.

The empty summerhouse let out a creak, and the pale, blue mist from the pipe quickly faded beyond reach. Each sound and sight was incorporated into her picture of the train, with its stream of smoke trimmed in black and the engineer’s scarf a bright red to match his smiling mouth. These colours and designs gave form to her feelings of happiness and contentment and, as her father watched her carefully trace her green crayon along the edge of the tracks where grass suddenly sprouted beside the rails, he measured her intensity and concentration to attack a project with his own strong sense of purpose.

Pierre recalled the day he took the train from Idaho to have a gander at this raw frontier. The mining business is booming in the Kootenays. The towns need hotels. Within a year of that first visit, Pierre and his older brothers, Louie and Joe, had left their business in Idaho and moved to Rockwater, British Columbia to set up The Timber Hotel. The rise in silver prices drew mining experts from all over the world, and by 1897 The Timber boarded geologists, machine operators, mining engineers, and miners. Six years after leaving his home in Lyonville, Quebec and after all those years of concentration and determination, Pierre Boisseneau was making a good living in the hotel business.

Back in ’97, established and twenty-two years of age, he knew he had found his home in this small mining community. With his usual intense devotion to his projects, he set out to arrange a marriage for himself through contacts with family in New Hampshire. In 1898 he married Juliet Girard and by 1907, after two sons and two daughters, Theresa-Marie was born. As soon as she arrived, his younger son’s sunny disposition changed. Whenever anyone paid attention to his new little sister, Christian began acting as if a mosquito had lodged itself in his ear and was sucking out his common sense. The crying became intolerable.

Can’t you do something? he had asked his wife, but Juliet was too busy with Theresa-Marie to comfort the two-year-old. After several months the crying stopped. Christian became subdued for a time as if planning a new strategy. By the time she was five, the boy began a campaign of teasing that had made Pierre wonder where he had gone wrong. And now, only moments ago, his son had broken their spell of relaxation by appearing out of nowhere, like an arrow shot from a bow, had grabbed his sister’s drawing of the lake, and run off before he could ring the boy’s neck.

What a stupid picture. You can’t draw anything right, Christian had scowled. His dark eyes seemed to jump off his round, pale face. He stood briefly in front of Theresa-Marie before scampering toward the tracks.

Anything you do is stupid, he yelled over his shoulder as he hopped merrily through the front gate, slamming it behind him.

Every time he teased her like that Theresa-Marie wished she had teeth as big and as sharp as a grizzly bear’s so that she could lunge for his throat and rip out his voice and then tear his tongue to shreds. Her brother always spoiled her mood with his anger, but he was especially cruel whenever she had her father’s attention. She watched him hop across the railway tracks, as he shouted his taunts. You’re stupid. You’re stupid.

Sometimes Christian could upset her simply by walking into the room. He would stare, like just then, with eyes as cold as the lake, still as the calmest day, and nod slightly, not with greeting but with the unspoken understanding that at some moment, when she least expected it, he was going to terrorize her and make her pay for being born. That stare never lied. It was her warning to watch out.

Nothing could protect her from his vengeance; no refuge was safe from his attack. She was to learn early on that being a sister instead of a younger brother had created this horrible fate of constant torment and that no one could save her from it, not even her father because Christian could do whatever he pleased: he was a boy. She understood that her peaceful passage through life would continually be blocked by a brother who enjoyed only two years of being the youngest before being cursed with a female sibling.

The boy needs more to do thought Pierre. Maybe he can look after the waterworks. He’s old enough to collect money from people. He just appears younger. He was still not much taller than Theresa-Marie, as if his very muscles and bones were resisting growing up with the same ferocity of purpose that a soldier resists his enemy.

Pierre would have a good, long talk with Christian about how not to be such a bully, but to be considerate of his sister who was weaker. How would he like to have a mad, older sibling charging around like an angered bull, running through the yard, screaming vile threats and scaring the jays off the fence with his loud, booming voice? He wouldn’t like it one bit, especially if he was unable to fight back because he was smaller and less skilled in defending himself against the older brute, or if he were younger and scared, not knowing when he would be attacked, if he were left alone on a trail, bleeding and bruised from being thrown down the side of a hill or pushed out of a tree head first. To feel the same dull fear wash through his stomach like a mud slide crashing over the rocks and the force overpowering you, and the wet soil sucking your legs out from under you as your feet slip on the rocks, and not being able to cry out for help to your brother for fear he’ll push you down again and drag you through town tied to the back end of a goat. How would Christian like that to happen to him? He wouldn’t and for that reason he would talk to his son when the opportunity presented itself.

Looks like it’s going to rain on Good Friday, said Joe pointing toward the gray clouds coming from the southwest. He stepped onto the front lawn and stretched his arms above his head before clasping his bad hand behind his back. His gloved hand, a reminder of the shooting accident.

Looks like Chloe’s finished airing the sheets. Probably off to hear more tales of murder and mayhem from Indian Jacques.

There is nothing wrong with a girl having a spirited imagination, said Pierre defensively with a note of anger as he studied the inside of his pipe bowl.

Uncle Joe placed his hands in his pockets. Theresa-Marie thought he looked hurt.

I never said there was. He turned away from Pierre and faced the tracks. Theresa-Marie heard her father quietly snort. She thought he was going to speak again about her sister Chloe but nothing came out of his mouth. He was the only one who still had a slight French accent. Uncle Louie said he spoke that way to impress the women guests.

Theresa-Marie considered adding Uncle Joe to her picture. His face always made her think of being hungry, never full to the brim, because his face was mostly high cheekbones and his body tall and slender, without a pot belly like Papa’s. He had broad shoulders and a strong back. That’s why, like today, Uncle Joe carried most of the firewood in the wheelbarrow, from the hotel to the summerhouse. Her father and two uncles all shared the thick black hair of her grandfather, but Uncle Joe’s was more curls than waves, and he let it cluster along the back of his neck, not cut short like Papa’s and Uncle Louie’s. He had shaved his moustache because a beautiful woman had once told him he had the mouth of a screen star and should show it off. Theresa-Marie searched her cigar box of crayons to colour in his brown pants and jacket. His white undershirt would be easy; it was just peeking out at the neck of his grey vest. She blackened his left hand to match his iron glove, a bone of contention between Uncle Joe and Papa, Claude had told her. Papa doesn’t like to be reminded he was such a bad shot.

Yes, Pierre said to himself, he would talk to his son about teasing his little sister. Once dead, you’ve lost the opportunity to make peace with your siblings. He watched Joe open the gate and head up the street. He gave his pipe one more bang against the arm of the wooden bench and then stood. He believed he and his brothers had resolved their differences, their petty conflicts. They had stopped badgering each other about who should handle the money, manage the hotel, run the bar, and carry on the Boisseneau line.

The real chore was making the family. He remembered Joe’s decision to look after the accounts and raise profits instead of children, and Louie, secure behind the bar, had married twice but both times left a childless widower, so the burden was on him to build the dynasty through his sons and daughters but, once made, the children were in their mother’s care. It wasn’t his fault if one of his daughters liked to hear war stories. Chloe was a rambunctious sixteen-year-old that’s all. Besides, he couldn’t keep his eye on everyone.

Pierre had done his best to meet the burden, bearing the weight of generations expecting, no, demanding that the lineage be sustained in the hope that somewhere in amongst all the bodies a man might emerge who would carry the family banner higher than the ones gone before him. The likelihood of a woman attaining such heights was slim, which brought relief to him because he only wanted his daughters to be trained to serve and admire men, not to emulate them or reject them, and certainly not to cast shadows on their accomplishments. He had done his job as man of the house, built a family, and he’d still be adding to it if his wife hadn’t kicked him out of the bedroom ten years ago.

Theresa-Marie flicked her long, brown braid over her shoulder and picked up her picture and box of crayons. She walked close beside her father on their way back to the hotel, where she imagined her Mama and big sister Emma busy in the kitchen. When she thought of Emma, seven years her senior, mixing batter, spreading out dough, frying potatoes, stirring soup, she secretly hoped that she would manage her life better. She would never spend the whole of her life inside a house, baking, darning, washing, bending and kneeling, or scrubbing out mud stains from wood floors warped with age. She hated that kind of work, and she hated cleaning out the boarders’ stinky slop pots every morning and emptying them down the chute beside the hotel. She didn’t mind helping Chloe milk Beauty and Bosco, or taking food scraps to the pigpen, but she was never going to end up cleaning and cooking like Emma.

In the hotel kitchen, away from the difficulties of a man’s world, Theresa-Marie had no idea that, while Emma stirred and sifted, she was imagining a home replete with yellow satin pillows and thick, blue velvet curtains, white linen doilies under pastries handed to guests in elegant dresses, and tea served on a silver tray. The maid would be passing out biscuits to the children; the sound of tasteful discourse wafting down the corridors out to the back lawn where the men sat drinking port and discussing finances, transportation, the dreadful effects of the war. And the sun’s warmth making everything safe until the sound of muddy feet tramping through her parlour would grow louder as it filled the room and a cloud passed in front of the sun, and the image of hungry miners crowding the dining room forced her guests to vanish abruptly from her dreams.

As Theresa-Marie walked up the road with her father she admired the fresh yellow paint on the wooden frame of The Timber Hotel. No chips or blisters since last summer when the whole family and Oscar helped brighten up the place. She scanned the three-storied building and found her window on the second floor facing onto Queen Street. She noticed that in the room next to hers the lace curtains were open. A new guest must have arrived on the two-fifty.

Joe stood across the street beside the town hall watching his brother and Theresa-Marie step across the wooden sidewalk and saunter into the hotel. He had a letter to post. It would take him a few minutes, and on the way back he would stop by to visit Oscar at the firehall. He was writing to his sister Eloise in New Hampshire, who married a banker named Arthur and then gave birth