Before Mallie even knew she was a girl, she knew she was a dove.
The ghost of that old war had always been with her. Born on November 11th, great grandchild of the last surviving WWI veteran in Canada, it had always seemed like a divine calling. The first proper book she owned was about Vimy Ridge, the one she had checked out of the local library so many times that, when it came time to remove it from circulation, the staff just up and gave it to her. She knew the words of In Flanders Fields from memory by the time she was ten. She spent the majority of grade school birthdays on the stage of a gymnasium, reciting the poem. On thanksgivings she'd bounce around the enormous living room of her uncle's lodge up in Kawartha Lakes, asking her great grandfather—grandy, she'd call him—about what it was like going overseas. How he got there, what the training was like, how the trenches were. If he was at Vimy Ridge, if he ever "went over the top." He hadn't. He hadn't seen any large battles. He probably wouldn't have been sitting there, in the cottage country of the early 2000s, if he had.
But that wide-eyed fascination for the war wouldn't last. Instead, it would transform, around the time of her first puberty, into a brooding, angsty rage at the society that allowed it to happen. What worth is a society that continues to allow war to be an option at all? She speedran becoming the black sheep of the family. In Flanders Fields got replaced with Dann gibt es nur eins! and God! How I hate you, you young cheerful men. She made an ass of herself on a regular basis. Those thanksgivings she used to spend grilling grandy were now spent complaining about the Iraq war. Citing geopolitics, and cursing the military industrial complex. She'd step over lines, maligning active servicemen who she saw as being willful limbs of imperialism. She'd get chastised at the dinner table. But this was her duty as a dove. Sitting kitty-corner to her grandy, his face always stone, she had assumed she was doing right by him. She knew he thought war was a pitiful affair, one not to be repeated. He'd said as much, growing up. "They said it would be our epic days," he'd say, eyes distant, looking into the past. Experiencing an opaque pain she'd never fully know.
Then it was 2011, the year he would pass. Not that anyone knew it. He was as healthy as he'd always been, all the way up until the end. He would have a stroke in mid-December, and that would be it.
Two months before, in October, it was just another thanksgiving weekend in the Kawartha Lakes. Her uncle and his family would be late that year, arriving Saturday evening. That afternoon, her parents and grandparents left to get groceries, leaving her and grandy alone in the cabin for a few hours. She put on CP24 for the two of them to watch. The satellite had a bad connection, so the audio kept cutting out. Mallie picked up the remote and pressed the mute button.
Her grandy coughed. Inhaled deeply. Then said, "I wish I hadn't disappointed you."
She turned to look at him. "Disappointed me how?"
His eyes were watery. "For doing what I had done. In the war."
"Grandy, you haven't disappointed me—"
"—You know all about it," he continued, pressing through, "you have it all out in front of you." He gestured at the TV. "They didn't tell us anything..."
"No, it's ok, grandy..."
He pressed his face into one hand. His old, frail body jerking. "We had to..."
She moved over to join him on the chesterfield, patting his shoulder. "I know you had to."
It took a minute for him to compose himself. He sat back up, controlled his breathing.
Mallie tried to get ahead of this. "You were a victim of it all, you know. There was propaganda. There hadn't been a great power conflict in over a century. Nobody knew it was going to be like how it turned out."
That got him sobbing again. It took longer, that time, for him to stop. It was hard for Mallie to figure out how to handle this. Her emotions were blunted by the cryptodysphoria. All she had been able to feel in those days was anger and humour. The realization that her grandy almost took to his grave the idea that she hated him, that only struck her down years later.
He sat back up. He wouldn't cry again that day. "Your grandma and I, we've been talking about what will happen when I die. The government wants to have a state funeral for me. Because I'm the last."
Mallie didn't know what to make of that.
"I told 'em," he continued, "I'm not your man. I don't deserve it. Don't mourn." His lip quivered. But again, he wouldn't cry again that day.
"You deserve a funeral."
"But a big blowout state funeral? With banners, and confetti? People calling me a hero? You don't call a man who killed two boys having fun on Christmas a hero."
Mallie had heard that story before. She knew it weighed on him.
"Did they take no for an answer?" She asked.
He shook his head. "They said they'd make it for all the veterans."
"That's not so bad."
He nodded. "Not so bad. But I just know they'll put me at the center of it."
"I won't let that happen. I'll keep it focused."
But families don't organize state funerals. States do. The process and itinerary wasn't made available to Mallie and her family until the week before. Her grandmother was given a 30 minute span of time to speak, right before the Dominion Institute's speaker and right after a video message from the last surviving British WWI vet. Mallie and her family had front-row seats, but they wouldn't really be in it. It should've been obvious from the outset that this funeral wasn't for them. She had told her family about the promise she had made, but nobody was particularly interested in helping keep it. In fact, her mother gave her a stern talking to before the ceremony. "Behave yourself," she said.
She sat between her mom and dad on that brisk march afternoon. Rubbing the tops of her thighs with her hands. Maybe she could dissociate through the whole thing, to keep from making an ass of herself for the hundredth time. But she'd always been a dove.
The Conservative MP for their riding walked up to the podium and began a long spiel. "We're gathered here today, in remembrance of those who put down their lives, in service and in sacrifice..." he began. It went on and on, and Mallie thought that maybe, just maybe, she wouldn't need to do her duty as a dove. But then it all went wrong.
"Today we honor the passing of Peter Laebrech, and other heroes like him, who fought on the front lines during the first world—"
Mallie stood, knocking back the folding chair she had been sitting on. "HE WASN'T A HERO! HE WAS A VICTIM OF—" Her dad grabbed her by the back of her coat and dragged her back down, not realizing the chair had fallen over. She fell backward onto it, catching a metal leg and spraining her back. She gasped in pain and let out a quiet wheezy scream. The MP stopped talking, and some other men came to help her dad move her out of the way. "HE WAS A VICTIM OF THIS SICK SOCIETY! THIS SOCIETY IS SICK WITH WAR! SAY NO! SAY NO! OR A MUD-GREY, HEAVY, Ahgh!" She yelled hoarsely through the pain. "Shut. Up." said her dad.
This would always be the outcome of the duty of the dove. The hawks land on your back, shove your face into the concrete, and make you into a fool. But that's just how it is, when you throw yourself in the crossfire of the hawks. To stop the carnage at whatever cost. If there ever would be even just one dove for every hundred hawks, there would be no war. But that had never been, nor would ever be.
