WHEN MOM’S STATION WAGON pulled into Rita’s yard Saturday morning, it was Vern who was driving it.
“Who’s that?” Rita asked, her voice teasing, as he stepped out of the car and smiled at me.
“Vern!” I almost ran to him.
“Uncle Leslie had to go clear a rockslide somewhere. He asked me to pick you up.”
“You got your driver’s licence,” I said.
“More or less.”
Rita gave us the lunch she had packed and made me promise to call her.
“I will,” I said, but as I waved and smiled, I felt relieved to drive out of her yard.
“You look pretty comfortable behind the wheel,” I said to Vern.
“Thanks.”
“How long have you been driving?”
“About two weeks. I had to get to work.”
“How come you’re not at work now?”
“I’ve got a few days till they need me again.”
He also looked good, in his white T-shirt and worn corduroys. His skin had darkened from working outside and the muscles of his forearms were taut as he held the wheel.
“When do you have to be back?”
“Next week,” he said.
We drove the Nakenitses Road with dust flying up behind us and a cooling breeze from the open windows. Vern put the radio on and the rhythm of the road made me sleepy. When we got to the stop sign at the crossroads, I said, “Let’s go to Bella Coola.”
“What’s in Bella Coola?”
“Maybe someone who knows about Mom.”
“I’m game,” said Vern.
“Really?”
“Sure.”
“Should you ask Uncle Leslie?”
“I know what he’ll say. So not asking will save time.”
“Will he ream you out?”
“Doubt it. Unless we don’t come back. Just jokin’.”
“I’ve heard the road’s kind of hairy.”
“The Freedom Road,” said Vern.
“Have you been on it?”
“Oh yeah. On it, up it, down it.” Vern giggled.
“Are you nervous?”
He started to sing. “I’ve been everywhere, man. Breathed the mountain air, man, travelled I done my share, man. I’ve been everywhere.” He giggled some more and so did I. “No, not nervous at all.”
“Maybe we should stop and eat lunch first.”
“Good idea.”
Vern pulled the car to the side of the road and we got out. The sun was hot so we made our way down the ditch to a rail fence that was shaded by fragrant pines. Perched on the fence, we ate the egg sandwiches Rita had made for us. Something large was walking down the highway, coming our way.
“I hope it’s not a bear,” Vern said.
“Are you afraid of bears?”
“I have an average, normal fear of bears.”
“Lightning, bears … I wonder what else you’re afraid of. Look, they’re horses.”
“Phew,” said Vern.
Two horses walked single file and riderless along the side of the road, heads down, as if they’d been travelling all day and were getting tired. One was a bay and the other was a beautiful brown and white pinto. They were sleek, well cared for horses with combed tails. They stopped parallel to us and observed us, then munched some grass, and moved on.
Across the road in the distance, mountains rose up blue and snow-topped and a small blue lake interrupted the green of the meadow. Vern noticed it at the same moment I did.
“It’s probably full of weeds.”
“But it looks so tempting.”
We straddled the rail fence and ran for it. As we got close, our feet sank in the boggy ground.
“It’s mucky,” Vern said.
“Yeah, but the water looks nice.”
“I dare you.”
“What’ll you give me if I go in?” I said.
He laughed as he took hold of my shoulders. “My admiration?”
“No way,” I said and grabbed him around the waist. We struggled into the shallows and then we both went down.
“It’s cold!” Vern yelped.
“I’m wet,” I said, pushing myself onto my hands and knees.
“That was the idea.”
“Your idea,” I said and tackled him again.
Reeking of muck, and snuffing boggy water, we struggled out of the lake and picked our way through the meadow and back to the car.
“That was refreshing,” said Vern.
“I have a change of clothes.” I smiled at him. “Do you?”
“I have my dirty laundry I was taking to Uncle Leslie’s. You won’t mind if I put on my dirty work jeans?”
Vern and I changed on opposite sides of the car. It felt good to stand for a minute with the sun on my bare damp skin and to know that I was with Vern, driving west as far as we could go. I looked over and he was looking at me.
We left the plateau at the same place a large roadside sign read, Chains must be carried by ALL vehicles.
“Does that mean us?” I said.
“It’s just in winter. Chill out, Maggie. Vern George is at the wheel.”
Another sign, just after the other but bigger: Steep grade ahead. Test your brakes.
Vern looked at me. He made an elaborate show of pumping the brakes. “Brakes—functioning. Gas tank—on half. Oil—present, as far as I know. Everything’s copacetic.”
The blue mountains that lay ahead were wilder, more remote than the ones we were used to. The snow on their tops was such a vibrant white, they looked pretend, like a magical land lay at the end of the road.
“No turning back now,” Vern said.
To the south, the mountains repeated themselves to the limit of our sight. There seemed to be no habitation in there, no roads, no towns. The forest thickened, spruce and firs with shreds of black moss caught in their branches, interspersed with ponds and bogs. A small black bear was eating by the roadside. Vern looked at me pointedly, but didn’t comment. A light rain began to dot the dusty windshield. We had begun our descent.
Along the roadside, wild roses bloomed luxuriantly and we cracked the windows to catch their scent and the hint of rain. We crawled along. The edge of the road, which dropped off into trees and canyon, was less than a car width away. The road was built for escape, a way to get out when the rain and the mountains were getting to you. It must not have seemed necessary to have two lanes. Maybe the road builders had ploughed through in a frenzy, not thinking about the traffic that would eventually have to travel back in.
A pickup truck was approaching.
“Oh boy,” said Vern.
“Just stay on the inside,” I said.
“Don’t worry. I’m not going anywhere near that edge.”
Vern tucked in close to the mountainside to let him pass. The truck was thick with mud, and the driver waved and went on, leaving us alone again. Moments later, we drove into the rain.
“Shit,” said Vern under his breath. Then, “Fear not, Maggie! Vern George is in control.”
“I’m not afraid,” I said.
“Good, because you shouldn’t be afraid. What’s there to be afraid of?” He kept his eyes straight ahead as he talked, and his knuckles were pale with tension on the steering wheel. “Besides the fact that we’re sliding down an eighteen percent grade, five feet from plunging into the abyss? I’m not afraid either. It’s all downhill. Nothing to it.”
I smiled at him, though he didn’t see it. I had the strangest feeling, not fear, but surrender, like the road was swallowing us, our tires barely clinging to earth. I was grateful to Vern, in this car, in the rain, him cracking jokes.
Our windshield wipers moaned as the downpour came full force. The road became a slime of mud. The tires slid more than rolled. Vern pumped the brakes and steered to the inside. There was no need to touch the gas pedal. He did everything he could to slow us down for the curves.
“Smells funny,” I said.
“It’s the brakes.”
“Should we stop?”
Vern laughed weakly. “I don’t think we can.”
There was nowhere to stop anyway, and if we did stop in that mud, we might not get going again.
It was hard to tell how many feet deep the canyon was, maybe a thousand, and how many rusted-out car bodies might be at the bottom.
“How deep is this mud?” Vern asked.
We were creeping along so slowly, I opened the door to check. We were about six inches deep in thick sticky ooze, being sucked downhill by gravity. “Deep enough,” I said.
We could see the height we were at, hills and mountaintops at eye level. We went down and down, and then the road spit us out into a broad green valley with trees towering over us and the mountains so close. Vern pulled over and dropped his head to the steering wheel.
“Holy shit, I wish I had a smoke right now,” he said.
He began to giggle. Then we both giggled ridiculously till tears streamed down our faces and the adrenalin had been evenly shaken throughout our bodies.
“I don’t ever want to drive that road again,” said Vern. He looked out the window. “This looks like a pretty good place to live, right? We can just stay here forever.”
We had driven back into sun. Vapour rose from the road. Everything looked incredibly green and vibrant and I didn’t want the day to end.
We drove along Highway 20, looking for a good road. When we found one that looked promising we took it. Deeper into the woods, the land rose up and closed in around us.
“Bear shit,” said Vern, pointing ahead of us. “We’re not alone.”
We stopped beside a scree that left a little room for us to pull off the road. A stream ran beside the road, and there looked to be a path leading into the forest.
“Want to see where that goes?” I asked Vern.
“Looks like up this mountain.”
“We might find berries.”
“And the source of the stream. Maybe hot springs.”
We set out, the path quickly disappearing among the thick trees. We kept going, climbing gradually and steadily. Moss and rock and huckleberry bushes, their delicate leaves catching the sunlight. I tried a berry but it wasn’t ripe enough yet. The trees thinned and the wind picked up. Coming out onto rock, there were just a few scrubby trees to break the wind. We had been breathing heavily with the effort of climbing and when we stopped, I had the feeling someone was watching us. We sat looking down on the tops of trees, as the wind swept over the rock. Animal paths wound through the bushes.
“There’s something eerie about this place,” Vern said.
“Maybe it’s the wind.”
“Yeah, maybe. Let’s get out of it.”
Back down in the trees, the wind seemed to grow even stronger, but it was high in the treetops, which were beginning to sway wildly. We weren’t paying a lot of attention to retracing our steps and we found ourselves walking in swampy ground with tall ferns growing from rotting, moss-covered stumps. Through the wind, I thought I heard a voice call out a single word.
“This terrain isn’t familiar,” said Vern.
“Did you hear that?”
“What?”
“It sounded like someone calling.”
We both stopped to listen. Nothing. As we began walking again, I heard it again, a two-syllable word that sounded a lot like my name.
“I heard it that time,” Vern said.
“What did it sound like to you?”
“A woman’s voice, calling someone.”
“Yeah.” I tried to shake the feeling of anxiety that had overtaken me. Who would be looking for me? Who would know I was here?
Suddenly a shape burst out of the trees from behind us and streaked off leaving a wake of shaking underbrush.
“Jesus Christ,” said Vern, his hand to his heart.
“I think it was a dog.”
“How could you tell?”
“I just got a glimpse of the tail.”
Then in front of us appeared a woman in a raggedy leather jacket, jeans and rubber boots. A rifle hung from a strap over her shoulder.
“You better get in out of this wind,” she said. “Storm’s coming. You never know what trees might come down.”
Vern and I were so surprised we both just stared at her.
“Just looking for Laddie, my dog.”
“He ran by us,” I said.
“Chasing something,” she said. “There was a small plane went down in here a few days ago. Wreckage still hasn’t been found, but I saw it come down. Did you come across anything?”
Vern and I shook our heads.
“If you do, come and let me know. I’m camped down the road about a mile. You’ll see it. Blue tent.”
“Sure,” Vern said.
“Some government people on the plane, the RCMP said.”
A gust of wind piled into the woods and the treetops bent to their limits.
“Better get inside,” she warned us again and disappeared into the trees.
“The road’s got to be close,” Vern said. We hurried ahead, and he was right.
The car was nowhere in sight at the spot where we came out, but we were pretty sure we were too far south.
“That way?” I said, and Vern nodded.
After about five minutes, we could see the scree piled at the bottom of the mountain.
“Thank god,” said Vern.
Once we were safe in the car, Vern said, “That was kind of weird.”
“She didn’t look like the official search party.”
He turned on the car and cranked the heat. “For a minute there, I thought someone was calling your name.”
“Really?” I crawled over the seat to get my sleeping bag.
“Cold?” said Vern. He helped me spread the sleeping bag. There was something in his manner, some restraint that I recognized in myself.
“You?” I said.
He nodded and I spread the sleeping bag to cover both of us. The wind hammered the car and whistled at the windows. There was too much to say, so we said nothing.
Vern put his cool hand at the back of my neck. I turned to him. He pulled me close and I felt his warm lips on my neck. Then he cupped my face in his hands very tenderly and kissed me. Like sliding down that mountain road, the surrender.
The windows fogged over. The car had stalled. Vern shut it off. His hands travelled from my neck to my shoulders, down my arms to my hands, which he held for a moment. Then he slid his fingers up under my shirt and cupped each breast gently. He fell against me with a moan. Ignoring the buttons, he pulled the flannel shirt over my head and halfway off my arms. His mouth moved down my neck and his tongue touched one nipple. I breathed in sharply. Vern made a noise like a small animal, pressed his hips against me and bucked and shuddered in my arms.
We lay there like that, damp and hot under the sleeping bag, as dusk dimmed outside the fogged windows.
“Maggie,” Vern said.
“Yeah?”
“I’ve been wanting to touch you so bad. I’m sorry if I …”
“No. Me too. I’m glad. I mean I liked it.”
He cleared a patch on the windshield and through it we saw a sliver of moon showing over the ridge.
We put the back seat down and made pillows from our clothes and pulled the sleeping bag over us. Vern fell asleep right away. But I lay there listening to two coyotes barking close by and I worried. I couldn’t see how I would tell Jenny that Dad was not her dad, that we were only half-sisters and that Mom had a life we never knew about. I couldn’t think of a way to soften it. I decided I wouldn’t even try to tell her over the phone. I’d wait to see her in person, and even then, I’d wait. But when I thought of telling her in person that meant I had to think about where we would be, where we would live and whether I’d have to quit school or not.
Whispering. “Maggie.” Louder. “Maggie!”
I struggled to open my eyes.
Vern was bending over me, his voice thick with sleep.
“What?”
“You were dreaming. Are you okay?”
“Mom was calling me. I heard her. Just like today—Ma-ggie. She was standing there, holding Cinnamon and calling me. But when I got closer, it was that old lady from the woods and she was pointing her rifle at me.”
“You’re crying. Don’t cry.” Vern put his arm under me and pulled me to him. “Don’t cry. Maybe we’ll find her. Maybe she’s in Bella Coola.”
What would he think of me if I told him that the absence I felt right then like a hole scooped out of my stomach was not for my mother, but for my white and orange cat with her soft little chin and her purr like a tractor.