North Vancouver
Barely nine o’clock and already my armpits were soaked. Two days ago, the people on these side streets, the ones sitting around their front lawns, would have been on their way to work or the gym or to daycare. Instead they hovered in hushed conversations over card and camping tables.
I walked past a collapsed house where two men in overalls, with the word “Volunteer” emblazoned across the back, dug at the rubble with a crowbar. A woman in a thin sundress, clutching a teddy bear, stood beside them. The volunteers dragged part of a crib out of the wreckage. The woman wailed and fell to her knees. “No! No! No!” she screamed and pounded the toy with her fist.
As I passed, the volunteers glanced at me with lifeless eyes. I saw a stroller crushed under the flattened front stairs and shivered. For the first time in my life, I understood what the word surreal meant.
Only twenty-four hours ago, the people who lived here were having everyday arguments and worries. They laughed at silly jokes, planned holidays and argued over back-to-school supplies. Where were they when the quake hit? At work in an office tower? Buying eggs at the supermarket? Swimming in the sea? What did they think about in that minute that changed the world so drastically?
That made me think about Mom again. Be safe, Mom, wherever you are. She might be dead. That pierced my heart. No, I prayed. Not that. Busy. Stay busy. Think about something else.
Okay: yesterday morning. A bowl of blackberries and three slices of toast for breakfast. Two for me. One for Oliver. I was thinking about school starting and Lexy coming home. This year her parents promised her a credit card to do all her own shopping. She’d been emailing me about what she wanted to buy and I was going with her. I’d take some of my babysitting and cat feeding money and buy new runners. That was yesterday. How long before our lives would be back to normal?
The woman stopped howling and hugged the teddy bear. Her gaze followed me and she seemed sad and angry all at once, as if I had no right to be alive and breathing while her baby was buried or worse. I bent my head and walked faster.
I needed somewhere quiet and alone to think. I had to get away from Michael, who seemed to have forgotten Tony’s basic rules. I needed to get away from Jake and his demands for reassurance. I needed private space to think my own thoughts before they were drowned by someone else’s.
Numbly, I wound my way down the back lanes and hidden pathways, over the cracks in the pavement, all the way back to the forest. Aftershocks had opened more gullies and brought down more big branches. The forest looked fiercely unfriendly. I called, “Oliver,” loudly. A couple of fallen trees made a large X, like a hostile Keep Out sign. I thought of the first explorers who came to this canyon when the trees were centuries old. The thick evergreens would have been as dark as a cave. But still the explorers pressed on. Now it was quiet and empty and I pushed myself into its silent embrace.
The canopy had opened and sun shone brighter on the forest floor than it had since logging had stopped, a hundred years ago. It illuminated the thick layer of dust that covered everything. I hiked in with only the crunch of my own footsteps for company. Losing all track of time and place, I climbed higher and higher as if I could escape all the misery below the mountain, as if the mangled forest was no more than a movie set. When my hands started to shake around noon, I sat down and tried to eat.
As I bit into an apple, the shrill scream of a red-tailed hawk sent goosebumps down my arms. I jumped to my feet and tramped toward the trail where I’d last seen Oliver. Not a sign of him. I clambered through the vacant park, and for the next hour checked under fallen timber and around gullies and landslips. I called his name and strained my ears to hear a yap or a whine in reply. An occasional crow or jay squawked. I didn’t see another person. A helicopter sawed through the distant sky. I scrambled over the smashed trees and picked my way around twisted ground. I tried to forget the raccoon crushed by a boulder, a bald eagle feasting on a rat, and a coyote running away with a long, fleshy bone in its mouth.
As the sun crested in the sky, I trudged on. Blackberry bushes scraped my legs. With my throat raw from calling, I sat again and listened for a single hint that Oliver was there. The heavy silence made my ears ache. It was as if the end of the world had come and no one had bothered to tell me. I stood, desperate for someone to talk to. Someone who wasn’t Michael and wasn’t Jake.
I went back to the suburbs, to the chaos there. I wandered neighbourhood streets calling Oliver’s name half-heartedly, telling myself not to think about Mom or Tony. Everywhere I turned it looked like places had been bombed. How many times had I heard people say this place or that place looked like a war zone? But this did look like a war zone. Only a nuclear war could have made things look worse. I wanted to take pictures of the burnt houses to show Michael how bad it was. But I didn’t. It seemed sick to record other people’s misery. I stowed my phone and kept walking and calling.
By the time I reached Wakeford Drive I hadn’t seen a single person walking around, only me. I guess most people had heard about the curfew. Guilty nervousness made my hands sweat and I wiped them on my jeans. If I got busted for breaking curfew, I’d be grounded for life. I hurried down the hill toward the Skodas. Seeing the twins that I babysat every Monday would cheer me up. I had a chocolate bar they could have and I’d love to hear Mrs. Skoda’s happy laugh.
I’d never noticed before how so many of the houses on this street were old, very old. Most were badly damaged and no one stirred around any of the collapsed buildings. The Skoda house, at the bottom of the hill, was the best of a bad lot. It leaned sideways, as if someone had given it a big shove, but at least it still looked like a house.
A pipe had ruptured somewhere close and the stench of raw sewage poisoned the air. Again the end-of-the-earth feeling skittered through my chest. From behind the Skodas’ place, a murmur of voices reached me. As I walked closer, something told me to stay back. I cupped my hands around my mouth. “Hello? Is anyone home?”
Laughter rumbled from the back yard and a guy came through the side gate. At the sight of him a scorching ball of panic flared up my throat. His toque confirmed the worst; the fluorescent green skull on a black background was the official logo of the Green Death gang.
“Whaddaya want?” he sneered.
I wanted to turn and run but instead I forced out, “Are the Skodas here?”
“Who’re they?” He folded his arms and his spider tattoos flexed and doubled in size.
“They live here.” Every lick of moisture in my mouth evaporated.
“Why don’t you come around back and check,” Green Toque said. His lech look made me feel naked in five different ways. I glanced toward the side gate. What other gang members were back there? What was the last thing Red said to me? You’re going to wish you was dead.
“Never mind. If you see them please say that Lexy called?” Sorry, BF.
“And what did your last fucken slave die of?” He laughed and made a production of horking a big gob on the lawn. He pushed his toque up slightly as if he was inspecting a piece of meat.
My heart tried to pound its way out of my ribcage and I inched away. Green Toque moved forward and grabbed my arm. His hands were rough and callused and his chewed nails were black. “Where’re ya going? What’re ya afraid of?”
Stop. Think. Don’t let him smell your fear. Small green dots of terror rose at the corners of my eyes. I forced a smile. “My brother’s waiting around the corner. He said he’d give me five minutes to check on the Skodas.” I made a show of turning my wrist to see my watch. My hand shook and I tightened it into a fist. “Time’s up. I’d better go.”
“You’re right. Your time is up.” Red rounded the corner with two more thugs in tow. “She’s that bitch from the crazy guy’s house. She’s the one that burned me on the fence.” He held up his slightly pink palms. What a wimp. My hands were ten times worse after a good hockey game. He took three fast steps and got so close that I smelled his cigarette stink. He bared his teeth. “She’s mine.”
I jerked my arm away and stumbled as I stepped off the curb. Like wolves stalking prey, the four of them fanned out and moved forward. Red leered and reached a hand toward my crotch and I opened my mouth and screamed long and loud. They stopped, stunned, just long enough for me to slip the canister out of the pouch on my belt. In a single fluid motion I swept the pepper can in front of me.
“Fuck off!” I said. I’d never used the f-word before, and it felt strong and satisfying, as if I’d crossed a line into toughness and invincibility. My index finger found the trigger. The guys slithered closer.
“Stay back,” My voice warbled.
“Three, two, one…” Red lunged at me at the same time as his buddies. I sprayed a cloud in a semicircle over them. They shrieked and covered their faces.
“You’re dead,” Red yelled. “You and your brother’re both dead.”
“Get some water,” one of them shouted and they staggered toward the back yard, clutching their faces and holding onto each other for support. I raced away, faster than I’d ever run in my life. At the end of the street I checked over my shoulder to make sure I was safe and almost ran into the path of a blue hybrid. It screeched to a halt and relief poured over me.
“Greg!” I jumped into the passenger seat and gulped for air. “I’m sure glad to see you.”
“I heard a scream and came to see who was in trouble. Was that you? Man you’ve got some lung power. What’re you doing out here? Haven’t you heard about the curfew?” The central locking of the car clicked shut and he made a jerky three-point turn. He wore the same green T-shirt as the day before but now it was wrinkled and dirty. The dreadlocks poking out from under the orange cap were unravelling and he had a thick five o’clock shadow.
Me? What the hell was he doing here? “I wanted to see if the kids I babysat were okay.” My excuse flopped out, a little bit of true and a lot of false.
“I thought you were going to take care of Jake. He seems a quiet type and he sure was upset yesterday. Where’s he now?”
Was he kidding? What about me? Didn’t he say that he heard my scream? Couldn’t he tell I’d just been through something terrible? Shouldn’t he be taking my pulse or giving me a hoodie or something? I could have PTSD. Where did he come from anyway and how spooky was it that he was haunting our neighbourhood?
I thought about Michael’s suspicions and wondered if I’d jumped out of the proverbial frying pan. Not wanting Greg to sense my worry, I sat back and tried to appear bored. I hoped he didn’t notice the way my legs trembled and my feet bounced a little jig of their own.
Besides how did he know what type of a kid Jake was? Did paramedic training give him special powers? I gulped some water from my bottle so my tongue would work. “He’s at our house, my dad’s place. It’s like a fortress with a chain-link fence around it and totally earthquake proof. We’ve got tons of food and water. He couldn’t be in a safer place.”
“If you do have a lot of food and water, I wouldn’t be telling many people about it. Those are scarce resources.”
“God, I wouldn’t have said anything to just anyone.” I invented an answer I hoped he would believe. “And you’re part of emergency services. It might be important for you to know where there’s safe shelter.”
He nodded with a slight smile.
“Thanks for picking me up,” I said. “I can walk home from here.”
“I don’t think so. These streets aren’t safe.”
I couldn’t argue with that. “Okay. Well thanks. My house is that way.” I pointed, and wondered how well he knew this neighbourhood. Did he remember that Michael said we lived on Parni? I felt guilty for Michael’s lie.
“You’re lucky I picked you up. I saw a police car drive down this road just a few minutes ago. As long as you’re with me, I can get you home with my ID.”
Now who was lying? I’d been walking around for hours and I’d only seen two police cars. One on Lynn Valley Road and another at the hospital. “Our place is over there.” I pointed to the end of the cul-de-sac.
“That’s not Parni Place is it?”
“Michael was just being careful when he said we lived there.”
“Figured he was trying to misdirect me. Especially when I saw you at Jake’s place. I have to say I didn’t expect a smart girl like you to need rescuing.”
Yesterday he told Jake I was a woman who could take care of things. Today he called me a girl again. What a hypocrite.
“I didn’t need rescuing. I was fine by myself.” I said as he signalled to turn. “Please stop. I’d better walk from here.”
“Your father wouldn’t like seeing you brought home by a strange man, would he?” Greg pulled to the curb and unlocked the car doors. I fumbled with my seat belt.
“Tony’s not home right now, but Michael is, and he’s almost as paranoid as the old man. He might get the wrong idea if he saw me getting out of your car.”
“Or he might get the right idea,” Greg said. “He might get the idea that I’m looking out for you kids.”