North Vancouver
We jogged after that, as if we could outrun any more aftershocks. On our street, only one house was seriously damaged. It was the old two-storey place that used to belong to my grandparents. The front wall looked as if it had been smashed by a wrecker’s ball. Bricks lay scattered across the lawn like busted teeth. The Kurtz family who owned it now were away for a week. I was getting paid to feed their cat. Where was Misty now?
The image of animals caught in the muddy water of the devil’s gully flickered in my mind. I shook my head to erase the memory.
And where was Oliver?
Oliver’s okay, I told myself. I decided to believe that until I knew otherwise.
One neighbour’s house had a collapsed porch and side deck. The roof of another sagged. Perhaps that’s how they always were, I couldn’t remember. All the front windows were shattered. People clustered outside. They didn’t lift their eyes as we walked past. It was as if the earthquake had turned everyone into zombies. Their zoned-out faces filled me with dread. I knew Tony had a doomsday cache of food and water but how many people could we help?
The only neighbour by himself was Mr. Kagome who was about a thousand years old. He sat on the lawn in lotus position and gazed at his drooping porch. He was an odd bod at the best of times. He did stuff like Tai Chi and old man yoga. I figured he was a Buddhist or something, which had to be why he was so peaceful now. He watched his house in complete silence, as if waiting to see what it might do next. All he wore was blue boxer shorts and a large gold crucifix. I guess he was too old to be shocked.
Tony’s house at the end of the cul-de-sac stood straight and tall, just like he said it would after an earthquake. The thought of my basement bedroom, cool and safe and miles away from all this insanity, drew me like a magnet. Inside the tall chain-link fence that surrounded the place, stood Tony’s truck. As we got closer, I saw him hunched over at the far end of the yard. I whooped and ran faster. Toward him, toward safety and sanctuary. Tony stood and saluted. He wore thick gardening gloves. I smiled but he didn’t smile back.
When I was a kid, we used to be really close and every time I came to see him, he’d greet me with a huge smile. We used to do fun stuff together: camping, hikes, Playland in summer. But the older I got, the more he seemed to disapprove of everything I did. He didn’t like the way I walked, the way I talked, the way I breathed. Then the motorcycle argument blew away the last traces of his approval.
In three months and two weeks I’d get my driver’s licence. I had my eye on a lime green Kawasaki Ninja and had saved almost enough to buy one. After all, I rode trail bikes almost as soon as I could walk. Even tearing down rough hills and pushing through the thick mud I stayed upright. Nothing was finer than the feeling of flying over the earth, inhaling a lungful of fresh air. A road bike was the next, natural progression. Then I’d go on long, long rides out to the country and leave behind everything that made me sad or angry. I’d be free.
Mom understood that I had to be two things: who and what I wanted. I thought Tony would be happy too. Before he and Mom split up, the whole family used to go on long bike rides together. Mom and I still biked together on spring break. I thought he understood this part of me but when I told him I’d found a Ninja for sale near his house, he went ballistic.
“Motorbikes are dangerous.”
“You’ll get wet when it rains.”
“Girls on bikes look butch.”
“You’re too young.”
“You have no idea how expensive it’s going to be.”
I argued that he was the one who taught me how to ride a dirt bike and he should trust me on one that was street legal. He said he trusted me but he didn’t trust all the other drivers out there. I said I would be careful. He said no one could be that careful. Every time it ended with me storming down to my bedroom and slamming the door. The more he talked, the more I wanted one. And I was going to get one too. Then I’d never tell him where I was going.
I’d never know what I could do if I didn’t try different things. Tony wanted me to be like him, to do the things he’d done growing up. He wanted to stand over me and make all my choices and decisions. I could think for myself but he refused to let me.
As if my future bike was his business anyway. I lived with Mom for most of the year and she said as long as I did the road safety course and proved I could handle a bike responsibly, I could have one. So Tony would have to accept it. If he didn’t, that was his problem.
Ever since that fight he’d been frowning at me. First he didn’t like my lipstick. Then he said I was reading garbage and ruining my brain. Last week he said I wasn’t getting enough exercise and wouldn’t make the hockey team in the fall. What he couldn’t see was that I didn’t need him to organize my life. But that didn’t stop him from trying. I don’t know what happened to my father—the man who taught me how to skate, change a bicycle tire, and make the best mushroom risotto in the world—but I wished someone would send him back and take away this grouch.
With all that’d happened I hoped maybe now he’d be happy to see me. What did I get instead? A thunder face glowering at me from the inside of the security fence. Situation normal.
“Where’ve you kids been? I’ve biked around the neighbourhood in a methodical grid about a dozen times searching for you.” The smell of Tony’s garlic and onion breath travelled the six feet between us. “Well, it looks like you haven’t suffered any major injuries. Good. That would be a complication we don’t need.”
“Yeah, we’re here and ready to serve,” Michael said casually in the way Tony, with his RCMP background and love of formal protocol, called sarcastic and disrespectful. Michael knew he was safe from Tony’s wrath because he’d aced all his final exams again, and in two weeks would be packing to go back to university on a full scholarship. Tony had been boasting to everyone about how smart Michael was. That gave Michael a get-out-of-jail free card for all minor offences, and I became the focus of all Tony’s frustration.
Tony switched off the radio in his shirt pocket and unlocked the front gate. The new padlock that shone in the sun hadn’t been there when we went out earlier. He motioned Michael and me into the yard, but put his arm out to stop Jake.
“Sorry. Family only,” he said with the warmth of an iceberg.
“God, Tony,” I said and edged a little closer to Jake to show him I was in his corner. “He has to stay with us until his mom gets home.”
Jake let his long black hair swing across his face like he was trying to hide. His house was right behind ours, on another cul-de-sac, connected by a pedestrian path.
Although our homes were physically close, the people who lived in them inhabited different universes. But wasn’t an earthquake the time for intergalactic cooperation?
Tony held his flinty eyes on mine. “This is an emergency situation. It isn’t a time to be sentimental. When essential services are operating, even at emergency levels, then we might shelter others. We might even share some of our supplies. Until that happens we close ranks and take care of our own. Family is the only thing that matters at this point.”
He said all that really fast like he’d practised it several times. He believed his opinions were facts, laws even. I searched for a comeback that wouldn’t trigger his temper but I couldn’t find one. His jaw flexed, a warning sign that he was about to blow his top.
Angry words leapt to my mouth but I swallowed them. I needed time to make a different plan to rescue Jake. So I walked away. “Fine. Whatever.” My insides curdled; Jake wasn’t exactly disaster savvy, and who knew where his mom was.
When she asked Michael and me yesterday if we’d like to go for dinner and a movie with Jake, and then could he stay overnight, both of us said yes. We didn’t tell Tony that we had been bribed into inviting Jake over. If we told him now…well it just wasn’t worth the grief. When Tony made a rule, he never, ever changed his mind.
Still, couldn’t he see that Jake and his mom were alone? He had lots of space in his house and Jake’s dad was overseas working. Okay, so maybe he didn’t want to invite both of them to stay. Still he could put Jake up for a couple of hours, at least until his mom came home. Tony had a heart of stone.
I was halfway to the front steps when his voice hit me like a fist. “Rowan!”
“What?” I spun around. To my surprise, Jake was marching away, head high, like a soldier on dress parade.
“Where’s the canine?” Tony said.
“Oliver?” That’s all he was to Tony, the dog, the canine, the fleabag. My anger folded into despair. “Isn’t he here? He ran away in the forest. I’d hoped…” I looked around the yard as if he might magically materialize.
I choked on the thought of loyal, brave Oliver alone in that messed-up forest. When I got him from the shelter I’d promised him no one would ever hurt him again. I promised him he’d never be hungry again. I tried to tell myself that he was well trained, that he had been coming to Tony’s house for every summer since I got him. It didn’t help.
Panic jolted me and I knew I had to find him. Now. We’d reported in. Tony knew we were safe. There was no reason for me to stick around. I strode toward the gate but Tony snapped the lock shut.
“No one goes anywhere without my permission. And I’m not giving my permission for the next twenty-four hours at least. I’ve been listening to the radio reports. This wasn’t just a big one it was the real big one. Magnitude 9.5.”
9.5. I gasped. Tony loved big earthquake stories but I couldn’t remember one that big before. The hair on my neck bristled. I felt disconnected from everything around me. It was as if I was watching the scene from a different dimension. Michael said something low and ferocious under his breath.
“To make matters worse, it was a shallow one. It hit from here to Oregon and beyond. The epicentre was close, just off Vancouver Island; a tsunami alert has been issued. It’s insane out there and it’s going to be chaos for a while.”
His face glowed, as if the quake was everything he had hoped it would be and more. He was ready, readier than most people might guess. From where we stood I could hear the generator humming in the back yard. I thought about the house and its spare bedroom, the storage cellar, and the water tanks. He could look after a hundred Jakes if he wanted to. Instead he was turning his back on the world.
“Don’t worry, we’re well provisioned to ride it out, but we’re just not going to share. Not yet.” He handed Michael a key on a lanyard. “You and I will be the gatekeepers. This key opens the padlocks on this gate and the one on the driveway”
“Where’s my key?” I asked.
“Sorry,” Tony said. “You have to be sixteen or older to have a key to this gate.”
I should chain myself to the fence. A dozen more fast replies sprang to my mind. Pick your battles. “I’ll go phone Mom.”
“How’re you going to do that?” Tony’s face softened and he spoke kindly. Kindly wasn’t good. He reserved kindness for only the most extreme situations and a shiver of panic ran over me. He didn’t notice, just kept listing the horrors we couldn’t see. “Power’s out and phone lines are down over the entire city. Cell towers are down too. The cable network’s cut. You’ve got to trust that your mom’ll phone or email her parents in Calgary when she can, just like we will. That’s the protocol for emergency situations.”
Then he hugged me, the same way Michael did at the park. It felt just as odd, only Tony’s heart wasn’t racing the way Michael’s had. For a minute I was eight years old again, trying not to cry after being benched for a month because I refused to wear my hockey helmet. Back then Tony’s strong arms and gentle words made me feel better. But that magic was gone. I thought about how he’d turned Jake away and wrestled free of him.
He made a big show of pulling out his truck keys. “A few houses like ours will have their own generators but most people won’t have phone or power. It’ll be a while before things are normalized again.”
Normalized again. He always talked like a dictionary or a newsreader. Couldn’t he just say back to normal like a regular person? I resumed my fight stance.
Tony didn’t notice. “Now that you’re back, I’m going out to check what’s left in the stores before they’re sold out. Or looted. But first I’ll stop by Javi’s place and make sure they’re okay.”
“So you get to see everything but we don’t?” I followed him to the truck. I wanted to know the real reason he was going out. We had enough food for everyone on the entire North Shore.
Tony’s instant anger would have turned some kids to stone but I didn’t blink. His voice was low and cold. “I’m not going out for a sick look at other people’s problems. I’m going to do recon, see how bad the roads are, how widespread the damage is. I’m going to evaluate the situation overall. People are being told to stay put. That means you. You’re safe as you can be behind these gates. Neither of you are to go in or out of this yard. Do not share supplies with anyone. Family first, family only. No one else. Do you understand?” He frowned.
Michael nodded, his face stony. I copied him.
“So lock the gate behind me, Michael. And both of you—remember the rules.”
Michael picked up the lock and, with a big flourish and a smirk at me, used his key to open it. That didn’t take long. Two seconds after the biggest earthquake ever and Michael was already sucking up to Tony again. I didn’t need some ancient philosopher to tell me that power corrupts. I tried to ignore him, but I wanted a key of my own and I couldn’t help glaring at him. Great. My hostility sunk me down to his level. Michael and I were like leopards, we couldn’t change our spots.
Meanwhile, Tony’s jaw flexed again. He climbed into the truck, pinning me with his eyes. I made a few fast decisions of my own and answered quietly, “Okay.”
“Right.” Tony gave me one last, sharp look. It was as if he was reading my mind so I tilted my head and tried to appear innocent. He started the truck and said, “While I’m gone both of you grab a shower. Rowan, do some laundry and get the mud out of those clothes. Michael, you get that roll of wire laid out. When I get back we’ll string it along the top of the fence.”
I stole a glance to where I’d last seen Jake. He had only faked going home and hovered on the greenway path next to our fence. He seemed to be eavesdropping. Tony hadn’t noticed him so I looked away quickly.
Tony rolled down his window. “Rowan, I’ll be back soon. You’d better get busy.”
I’ll get busy don’t you worry about that. I threw him the eye bite. He slapped the outside of the truck’s door, wheeled around and drove off. When he was out of sight, Jake started to walk away. He headed toward his house as if he might find his mother there. For his sake I hoped he did.