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The first time Jims Anderson met Kenneth Ford was during what Jims later called the Anderson House Days. At the time Jims was so nearly seven that he called himself that, and Ken that wondrous, indeterminate age of Properly Grown-Up. If you wanted to get highly technical, which adult Jims did as part of his aeronautical work, the first time Jims met Kenneth Ford he was a smiling, cherubic babe-in-arms on the lap of an exasperated Rilla. Since Jims couldn't remember this inauspicious moment, he didn't count it.
Being seven - or near enough - he regarded Kenneth Ford as akin to Captain Kid or Long John Silver. Like these venerable, if fictive personages, young Jims reduced him to a title. He was The Captain to Jims. The severe and amorphous stranger that pinked his Willa's cheeks over an occasional letter or who made the Junior Reds giggle and nudge each other's elbows when they were in session. The Captain was headline stuff, like Archie and Mehitable. He was full of daring-do. He might, conceivably have a peg leg, or at least a gammy one, like Jem Blythe had come home with. He was definitely someone to be revered from a distance.
That changed on the balmy summer afternoon that Jims came haring up the Ingleside lane unannounced and collided with the venerable and heroic personage of Ken Ford.
Improbably, he didn't look all that heroic up close. He had no peg leg, for starters, though he did have a considerable scar down his left cheek. In the glare of the sun, though, it was hard to see. Also, Ken's sleeves were rolled up to his elbow and he was laughing at something Rilla - and she was still Rilla to Jims back in the Anderson House era - was saying.
Caught off-guard, Jims stumbled over his feet and Ken's polished shoes and sent them toppling. Little eddies of dust scattered around them, and Ken sneezed, which seriously jeopardized his Hero status. Great Canadian Heros didn't sneeze. Even at the lofty age of seven, Jims knew that. Just ask Captain Kid.
'Jims!' said Rilla in exclamatory fashion.
Beside her, Kenneth Ford, who was definitely tall, dark and emphatically not elusive, straightened up, touched his fingers to his forehead and said, 'You must be Ingleside's resident soldier.'
'Hardly resident now,' said Rilla. To Jims, as she assiduously dusted off his linen trousers, she said, 'We weren't expecting you, darling.'
Jims, at a loss for what to do, grinned sunnily at Rilla and explained it was a surprise. Of course she wasn't expecting him. Then he straightened his spine and returned the salute. He thought he spoiled it somewhat by scrunching up his eyes in thought as he said, reflectively, 'You'll be The Captain?'
He hadn't meant it to be a question. It came out as one anyway. Rilla was smiling as if she had swallowed the sun. Kenneth Ford, on the verge of metamorphosis, slumped back against the railing and said easily, 'He makes me sound awfully grand for every day, Rilla-my-Rilla, don't you think? We'll have to find someone for you to wear for working days. What have you been telling him?'
Jims had blinked confusion and Rilla laughed that wonderful laugh of hers. This time it was Kenneth Ford's name she italicised. Except, of course, she called him Ken. Someone, though, had to answer the question of the hour. Jims, taking it literally, dived nobly into this quagmire of conversation.
'He said gamely, 'Willa says you went away to win the war for us, but Susan Baker says you once quarrelled with Walter over a kitten and had to be spanked for it, 'cause the kitten nearly drowned. Is it true?'
'Jims!' from Rilla again. Jims promptly ducked his head and scuffed his shoes, defeated by the demoralising combination her exasperation and the resurrection of his lisp. Why, he was seven. It was supposed to be gone by now! Mother Elizabeth had spent hours playing games with him to make it stop. Things like a variation on Snakes and Ladders where you only got to roll the dice after first reciting Revellers Revel by levelling levels, or competing to see who could say Round and round the ragged rocks the rugged rascal ran. That one was Jim's favourite for the twin reasons of the adventures it conjured and the possibility of even remotely tempting Susan Baker's disapproval. Buoyed by this thought, he plunged on, 'Susan also said that you used to tease Nan, only that can't be true, 'cause she's much too nice to tease. And that – '
'Jims!' said Rilla again, and he abated. It couldn't be all bad, though, because Kenneth Ford's eyes were twinkling like big, glossy grey marbles.
He knew it was all right when Rilla waved her hand in relaxed fashion andwent off to rustle up a platter of Monkey Faces for her unexpected guest. This had the minor disadvantage of leaving Jims alone with the formidble Captain Ford. s
At least, Jims thought he was very formidable until he left the veranda rail to sit down on the top step, long legs stretched out before him. 'Just between you, me and Susan's calceolarias,' he said in conspiratorial tone, 'It's all true. About the kitten, teasing Nan, the spankings and all that.'
'Really?' said Jims, and crept closer, in spite of himself. Kenneth Ford nodded most solemnly. 'When we weren't quarrelling over kittens, you know, we had some grand larks, Walter and I. Only, he wasn't really the lark sort, so I was always having to persuade him in to scrapes…'
It seemed to Jims that the great Captain Ford deflated, somewhat. Of course, that was very unlikely, under the circumstances, because people who won medals for Canada and got made Captain during the war didn't deflate, an incontrovertible fact known by every seven year old boy with brains. Still, just to be sure, he crept a bit closer. The funny thing was that in the late afternoon sun, Kenneth Ford didn't really look like a Captain.
In fact, he looked entirely ordinary, all things considered. His sleeves were rolled up, exposing his forearms, which were peppered with what Susan Baker called 'sun spots' and Rilla called 'freckles' in dismayed tone whenever she found them on her person. His shoes were dusty, as if he too had been scuffing them recently, and he was squinting against the sun. Also, he was grinning, and no one who grinned like that could be all that formal. Jims knew this, because Dr. Blythe, who was a Very Serious Person Indeed, had yet to pull off being serious while grinning. No, Kenneth Ford, Captain, looked not at all like the army captain Jims had pictured.
'Don't feel much like one, either,' said Kenneth Ford, and Jims, to his horror, realised he had spoken aloud. There was nothing for it but to sink down onto the grass in mortification. But Kenneth Ford didn't appear to notice. He said, as if thinking aloud, 'We'll definitely have to find something else for you to call me.'
'Ken' was rejected on the basis that, as Jims said with all the wisdom of seven, 'You're more than that. Bigger.'
Ken, though, rejected his full name, because, as he said, 'That doesn't sound like me. Can't remember the last time anyone used it.'
Retrospectively Jims suspected him of meaning that no one outside the army had used it, but he'd been too young to appreciate such nuance. Besides, it quickly became moot. Ken snapped his fingers and said, 'I've got it!' with a triumphal glee not even seven-year-old Jims could match. 'What about Cap? That's nice and relaxed, isn't it, Soldier?'
By the time Rilla had reappeared with the Monkey Faces the mischief was done and the moniker had stuck. It took various permutations over the years depending on who was around. At Crescent School, for instance, they'd indulge in what Aunt Persis called 'performance parenting' as Ken became Dad of necessity, and Jims Jims, the words sitting clumsily and awkward in their mouths. It wasn't that it was insincere, exactly, Jims thought now, only that there was always, impossibly the very-much-alive ghost of James Anderson still between them, who had tried so hard in those Anderson House days to be father to Jims and not quite landed the performance. And, of course, Jims could never remember when he had last – if ever – been Jims to Cap. He thought he probably hadn't. Of course, he hadn't stayed Soldier either, as Ken promoted him over the years using a complicated system of ranking that would have defeated the best of military minds.
He's doing the usual round-up for Mandy's girls – Patsy Walker and all that – when he saw it. Saw it, and then wondered how he'd missed the connection before now. After all, he was only doing the kind of mental editing he always did when making up the monthly parcel. This notwithstanding Tom's almost-certainly-valid point about having spoiled the girls long ago on such oddities as Human Torches and the illogical physics of Namor, who really had come an awfully long way since his days as a Funny Pages cartoon. At the counter, the ever-smiling, always-weathered looking Lee mistook the mental editing for reading, and said, conversationally, 'Sort of blows the others out of the water, doesn't it, that one?'
It did, and Jims graciously conceded the point. Decided that the revelation that even superheroes, even ones practically dressed up in the flag, baulked, as it turned out, at being dubbed Captain in full had shot right over his head because, well, it wasn't their shared language, was it, his and Cap's? Comics where what he spoke with Mandy's girls, had been ever since the days of the unremarkable Daring Mystery and Mystic Comics. Compound that with the fact that Jims had never yet done this particular run while Cap was languishing in hospital – 'Bored but recovering', as per the trunk call Mum had placed – and really, there was no reason Jims should have seen it. Or so he reasoned. He picked up the usual duplicate copies of everything, in the interest of sparing Mandy the chronically vexed question of First Reading Rights, which he knew to be a war of its own, and then picked up a third for good measure.
'Corrupting another niece, are you?' asked Lee, ever cordial.
In the Bridge St dimestore, Mandy's girls were always Jims's nieces, because years of aunts with expertise in Matrilineal Kinship Tables notwithstanding, he never had worked out what the technical name was for one's relationship to the children of one's cousin-by-adoption.
'Something like that,' Jims said.
He'd take the lot across en route to the Toronto Hospital. Drop in on Mandy and the girls at Crow Lake, make sure no one drew blood over his bounty, take enough mental notes to write Mick a decent letter about how they're getting on. He still slipped a note in with the parcel for Cap. After all, it hardly took up space in his case, and it was not as if, for all their private shorthand, they're what the average person would call demonstrative. And besides, Jims thought the note said it best. We came up with it first – Lt. Jims