Dan Paxton Dunaway - Heart Like a Wing

OTHER BOOKS
BY DAN PAXTON DUNAWAY

The Seahorse Keeper
(2009)

Dan Paxton Dunaway

RONSDALE PRESS

HEART LIKE A WING
Copyright 2016 Dan Paxton Dunaway

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without prior written permission of the publisher, or, in Canada, in the case of photocopying or other reprographic copying, a licence from Access Copyright (the Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency).

RONSDALE PRESS
3350 West 21st Avenue
Vancouver, B.C. Canada V6S 1G7
www.ronsdalepress.com

Typesetting: Julie Cochrane, in Granjon 11.5 pt on 15
Cover Design: Julie Cochrane
Copy Editor: Meagan Dyer & Susmita Dey
Paper: Ancient Forest Friendly Silva (FSC) 100% post-consumer waste, totally chlorine-free and acid-free.

Ronsdale Press wishes to thank the following for their support of its publishing program: the Canada Council for the Arts, the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund, the British Columbia Arts Council, and the Province of British Columbia through the British Columbia Book Publishing Tax Credit program.

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Dunaway, Dan Paxton, 1947, author
Heart like a wing / Dan Paxton Dunaway.

Issued in print and electronic formats.
ISBN 978-1-55380-476-5 (print)
ISBN 978-1-55380-477-2 (ebook) / ISBN 978-1-55380-478-9 (pdf)

I. Title.

PS8607.U498H43 2016jC813'.6C2016-902123-8C2016-902124-6

At Ronsdale Press we are committed to protecting the environment. To this end we are working with Canopy and printers to phase out our use of paper produced from ancient forests. This book is one step towards that goal.

Printed in Canada by Marquis Book Printing, Quebec

To the youth of this vast and
magnificent country who will inherit it,
warts and all: explore as much
of it as you can

I would like to thank Doug Chisholm of Woodland Aerial Photography for flying me to the lakes around La Ronge, Saskatchewan, and giving me a good sense of bush country from the air. Peter Marshall, former commercial airline pilot, became my technical advisor and helped me get all the flying scenes right. I also owe much to the folks at the B.C. Aviation Museum in Sidney who provided me with practical information and let me climb through their beautifully restored Norseman bush plane, a central character in Heart Like a Wing. The novel was read in an earlier version by my first editor, Lisa Fraser, who made some valuable suggestions, as did my good friends Tressa List and Betty Person. Finally, my publishers at Ronsdale Press, Ron and Veronica Hatch, spent much time editing my story, for which I am extremely grateful.

They came for me when I was nine. Without warning, appearing suddenly at the orphanage as if they knew all about me. I had never seen them before. I was scared. There must be some mistake, I told myself. They must be looking for another kid. They told me they were looking for a special little girl. But I was ugly. They asked me a lot of questions. Did I know where Crowsbeak was, and what did I think about going to a new school? The one thing they didnt ask me about was my scar. Peter had told all the kids at the orphanage that it was the mark of a wizard. If they made fun of me, he said, I would turn them into toads. He was my best friend. My only friend at the Orange Order Orphanage in Indian Head.

I was a little darker than the others, except for the Native kids. I even wondered if I might be one of them. But no one seemed to know who my parents were. I had no childhood memories of a mom or a dad. My earliest memories started right here nightmares. I remember lying frozen in fear with my mind full of monsters. Paralyzed, alone, helpless. Unable to cry out. Those were my first memories. They havent stopped.

Peter knew I was hurting, though I didnt know how to describe the violence of my dreams. His solution to everything was running. He used to chase me through the wheat fields playing tag on long summer evenings. He made me run so fast I felt sick. But I did get stronger. That really helped me later in my new school. I needed a lot of help because I was a stunted, withdrawn girl with an ugly purple mark running down my face and neck. He was the only one of the orphan kids who saw beyond it. When I told him about the old couple who had come to see me, he got excited.

Youre going to a real home! he cried. Youre going to have real parents!

Theyre old, I told him. I dont know why they want me.

They want someone special. Not like all the other girls.

But Im not special, I protested.

Yes you are. Only it takes another special person to see it.

They came back the next day to get me as they promised. So I left the Orange Order Orphanage, the only home I had known, and started my life over with Moll and Dagget Enger in northern Saskatchewan. Peter saw me off. He gave me a long, tight hug. He even shook Daggets hand, like a grown-up. His hand looked so small in the old mans grasp. Peter looked both my new parents in the eye.

Shes special, you know, he told them seriously.

I know, Moll replied, smiling kindly at the only friend I had in the world. Well take extra special care of her, too.

Dagget hefted my brown cardboard suitcase into the back of their pickup. And then we drove away. It was another nine years before I saw Peter again. Half a lifetime, in which I became a woman and he became a man.

They lived beside a huge lake called Crowsbeak, about four hundred and thirty-five miles north of Indian Head. I had never been that far away before. I found it quite amazing that they should travel such a distance to adopt a child, especially me. Moll was sixty-five when I came to live with them; her husband was a year older. Her voice and eyes were still soft, like a younger womans. Dagget had a more rugged look to him. He moved with effort, often painfully. Moll said he had arthritis. And hed also had a few airplane accidents. When I got older, I learned that his accidents were actually dogfights with the Germans over Malta. She didnt tell me about their war years until I reached my teens. I came to know them more as grandparents, from the back end of their lives. I never appreciated what they went through until much later. I never suspected that the old pilot had his own nightmares. Maybe worse than mine.

Certainly, Moll and I were much closer in the beginning than Dagget and I. He was a gruff old man who frightened me terribly. I remember crying, wedged in between them, and Moll stroking my hair. She talked to me in that soft English voice as Dagget drove us across the Prairies. She told me about the little town on the lake I would be living in, their home, my own room, my new school. As the geese rose from the canola fields and farms popped up on the horizon and new towns opened their streets to us, I began to feel curious. Maybe there was a life for me out here, away from the orphanage, and Indian Head.

The sun had swung around behind us by the time we got to Prince Albert and stopped for lunch. We had driven almost five hours. I had no idea the prairies were so big. Little towns and grain elevators, always falling behind us and sprouting anew to the north. But the shape of the land was shifting; we had run out of fields, and trees had sprung up all over the horizon. Now we had reached a real city, the biggest place I had ever seen. And so busy so many cars! I dont know how Dagget managed to avoid them all.