CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
When I woke up, Buddy was gone. My disappointment was like a punch in the stomach. I felt my lip tremble and a giant sadness ballooned up in my chest, caught hold of my throat and stuck there.
“He’s just a dog,” I said out loud. Then I yelled “Buddy!” as loud as I could.
He came bounding out of the woods, his bushy tail swinging.
“There you are! Do you want some water? Good boy. We’re in this together, aren’t we?”
When we set out walking, I felt stronger. The sleep had helped. Having Buddy to walk with helped even more. I checked my watch—already quarter to ten. Later than I wanted to be, but I could still get eight or nine hours of walking, with what I hoped would be a short detour to find more water.
The trouble with my mind is, it doesn’t always do what I want it to do. I was on that road, my feet were moving, my eyes were scanning for signs of water, but my mind kept running off, like Buddy, always ahead or behind, scaring up old scents or chasing down something yet to come. It ran ahead to our house in Penticton, where the big maple shades the lawn and the honeysuckle climbs the trellis at the front window, and when the red trumpet flowers bloom, hummingbirds hover in mid-air, darting from flower to flower.
I ran up the front steps, tugged open the door; Mom and Dad jump up from where they’ve been sitting in the living room, anxious and waiting for me. Mom’s been praying, even though she swore she’d never pray again, and Dad has bitten his fingernails to nothing. We all cry and hug standing there in the sunny living room.
But that was all wrong.
None of that made any sense. They knew where I was. It wasn’t like I was the one who was lost. They wouldn’t just be sitting around waiting for me.
My mind didn’t want to think about what made sense. Where they could be. Why they hadn’t come for me. I didn’t want to think about it.
High above me, a jet left a trail of white across the blue sky. The road dipped and smoothed a little and I noticed the corrugated steel of a culvert jutting out into a ditch, surrounded by rocks.
“Buddy!” I gave my best whistle.
He came snuffing through the underbrush.
“Look at this. A culvert. What’s a culvert for? To carry away water so it doesn’t wash out the road.” I checked the ditch on both sides; there wasn’t water exactly, but it was damp, a little swampy on the west side. Once the snow melted in the higher mountains, this could be flowing with water.
“Let’s walk down a bit and see what we can find.”
I took out my orange T-shirt and tied it to a tree near the road. Then I took out my paper and pencil and marked the time and directions. We were walking west. It was easy walking; there were some stumps here that looked like they had been cut fairly recently. Buddy ran ahead and came back, ran ahead and came back. I decided to follow the stumps, which seemed to be in a pattern. If I had a bird’s-eye view, I could probably tell what it was.
Quite a few small saplings had sprung up among the stumps, but I began to think I was following a path. Buddy hadn’t come back for two or three minutes. I whistled, then listened, and in the quiet of the sun-speckled forest, I heard the clear sound of slurping. He’d found water.
“Buddy!” Running toward the sound, I broke into a clearing. A big stack of fresh-cut firewood was piled beside the creek. Sawdust powdered the ground. My heartbeat quickened. Someone was near, or had been, very recently. No footprints or tire tracks that I could see; but the mud was hard-packed and bare, as if there’d been vehicles and foot traffic. Maybe someone had camped here. But there was no sign of a firepit.
I dunked my water bottle in the shallow creek, listening intently. Water burbled softly over rocks. A few birds trilled in the trees. Buddy slurped and snuffled, shook his head, clinking his tags. Then he crossed the creek and waded through the underbrush on the other side.
The sun felt good, beating down on me there by the water. I dug out a purification tablet and dropped it in the bottle. Then I peeled off my socks, rolled up my pants and stretched my legs out in the stream. The cold, cold water soothed my tired feet and the smarting wound on my shin. I held my legs in the water until the cold made my head ache, and then I lay on the ground to let the sun warm me up again.
I woke at ten after three. Slow, stiff, stupid, I pushed myself up. Where was Buddy? Ten after three! I’d wasted most of the day. I doubt I’d covered more than a few miles. I had to get going. But this clearing. Would whoever’d been here be coming back? And where was Buddy? I couldn’t believe he’d leave me behind.
“Buddy!” I called. And in an instant he burst through the brush in the same place where I’d seen him disappear. He ran to me and licked my hand, his wet tail swish-swashing the ground. Then he crossed the creek again and ducked in at the same place. That’s when I realized he’d picked up a faint trail in the undergrowth that I never would have noticed on my own.
I shouldered my pack and hopped across the creek. The trail had grown in with willow and horsetail, but a trail had definitely been hacked through here at some point, maybe last spring. I had to push the young branches aside, but otherwise it was easy to follow.
Suddenly, I was through, and in front of me a white metal wall rose like a mirage. I was at the back of a big, boxy trailer. Two windows with grating faced the woods. Around the other side, a large cleared area spread in front of the trailer. There were metal steps up to a door.
“Hello!” I called. “Is anyone here?” There were no vehicles and no tire tracks in the mud. I climbed the steps and knocked anyway. “Hello? Anybody here?” Buddy skittered up the steps beside me.
“What do you think?” The door had a grate over its window, too. I peered inside. “I can’t see anybody.”
I knew that when our next-door neighbors stored their trailer for the winter, they took the battery and gas canisters off and put them in their shed. I walked around the trailer, but I couldn’t see any batteries or gas. This was a big trailer. It was possible they were inside somewhere. I couldn’t see any way to reach the higher windows.
Then I remembered the crowbar.
I might have spent thirty seconds considering whether it was right to use my crowbar to break into somebody’s trailer. I went back up the stairs and jimmied the claw under the latch that had been fastened with a padlock. Three tries and it snapped. I turned the door handle, but that was locked, too.
It took me a bit more finagling to pry the door open, but it finally gave. Inside felt cool, new and dusty-dry. The place was neat as a pin, clean and disappointingly empty. It was obviously meant as an office or headquarters, maybe for forest workers. A U-shaped desk took up one end of the space. Opposite the door, a small table with two chairs was pushed against the wall. Beside that was a small fridge, empty, the door ajar, and a microwave on a counter. I opened the cupboards above the counter—also empty. Behind me, on the opposite wall, was a sink and another counter. I tried the tap, but there was no water. The top cupboards held a set of plain white dishes, cups and glasses. When I opened the bottom cupboard—bingo! Two cans of pork and beans and an unopened bottle of soy sauce.
“Woo-hoo! Buddy! We hit the jackpot. Beans! We have beans!”
I did a quick search of the rest of the trailer. At the back end of it was a bathroom with a shower, a bedroom with a bare mattress on the bed, and an empty closet. I couldn’t quite accept that there would be soy sauce, and no rice. No rice, no electricity, no water. It seemed like this place had barely been used, and then it had been shut up for the winter. Maybe they would be back in summer.
In a drawer, I found cutlery and a can opener, a box of matches, four tealights and a cheese grater. My fuel was gone, and I didn’t want to bother trying to get a fire going, so I opened one can, then I opened the soy sauce and poured a few good dollops on the beans. I scooped some out on a plate for Buddy. He gobbled them, nosed the door open and ran back outside.
Salty, sweet, saucy and delicious—pork and beans had never tasted this good. As I sat at the table eating, I noticed the room had darkened. A few minutes later, I heard the pattering of rain on the roof. Except when I looked out, I saw that it wasn’t rain; it was hail. Buddy came running and settled himself inside on the mat by the door. Within minutes, the mud clearing was covered in white pellets.
I heard the wind coming before it hit. Then a gust swept over us, tore the door open and slammed it against the outside wall. Buddy scrambled up and scurried over to me. I had broken the latch when I jimmied the door, so there was nothing to keep it closed. I tried to slam it closed, but the wind ripped it back open.
I had to tie it closed somehow, but there was nothing in the trailer I could use, nothing in my pack that would be long enough. I jammed a chair under the handle, but it wouldn’t stay there. Ducking against the wind, I ran outside and searched the area behind the trailer for a rock. I found one about the size of a pineapple and I carried it back and put it outside the door, then pulled it in as close as possible so at least if the door flew open, it would knock against the rock and be stopped. It worked, sort of. But the door still banged open about four inches, then closed, then banged open again.
There had to be something I could use. I walked through the trailer again. In the bedroom, the window had blinds. The cords might be long enough to tie to something to hold the door closed.
The night came on fast and very dark. Lucky, I thought, to be inside and not out there with the wind howling down the road. I looked out but I saw nothing, no stars, no moon, not even the faint glow that would tell me where earth ended and sky began. What a night. I missed my fire. Inside was as black as outside.
I sat in a kitchen chair in the dark with my hand on Buddy’s soft head. There was nothing to see, but I wanted to see that there was nothing to see. Wind tugged at the door I’d rigged with window cord. It was just the wind, I knew that, but I imagined long fingers reaching in to pry it open. Even Buddy was restless. Every few minutes, he trotted over and sniffed at the crack where the outside whistled in.
“What’re you doing, Buddy? Can you stop that?” He came back to me each time, and each time I put my hand back on the soft velvety fur of his head.
The trailer was a better place to be; of course it was better on a night like this to be here rather than under a tree in the woods, and I tried to feel how lucky I was.
It was so dark and empty, though.
I got up and fumbled in the drawer for one of the tealight candles. I lit it and put it on a plate that I set on the table. Now I could see my own shadow dancing on the wall. Now I could see that, except for Buddy, I was alone.