“Anyhow, one afternoon a man and a woman showed up in a black car. They weren’t wearing uniforms but they were dressed so similarly it seemed like they were. They had on dark pants and sunglasses. They looked out of place for Florida. I was fishing off the dock when Dad saw the car pull up. He came running down to the boat and untied it so fast I didn’t even have time to ask what was going on. He threw me on the deck and told me to get below. Then, in like two seconds, we were gone, motoring straight out into the Intracoastal.”
We turn onto a busier street and pass a lady walking her designer dog, some sort of standard poodle cross. Tuff and the other dog wag their tails like propellers and do the doggy dance until the lady looks uncomfortable and crosses to the other sidewalk. I feel angry that she doesn’t want her dog to play with Tuff, as if he’s going to infect them both with fleas or something. But instead of getting bent out of shape, I shake it off and continue telling Lise my story.
“As we left, I looked out the hatch to see if my fishing rod was still on the dock. It was. And so were the man and the lady. She was leaning down to pick up the rod and my little tackle box and he was waving for us to come back, I think. And yelling. But I doubt Dad even glanced back. I felt Starlight surge into high gear and the waves slap against the hull. In a matter of five minutes everything changed and five minutes after that those people were little specks in the distance. Dad never spoke about it and I never asked. I didn’t even ask after David. But I was sad I didn’t get to say goodbye. We’d made plans that afternoon. We were going to sneak to the park to play on the swings. It wasn’t far and we thought we could get there and back before Dad noticed. But I didn’t get to go after all.”
“So you think those were the guys your dad was afraid of? The Secret Service or Homeland Security, or whatever?”
“Yeah. Obviously.”
“How do you know they weren’t trying to help? Maybe the neighbours thought it was weird a kid was hanging out all day and not in school and called someone to look into it.”
I glance over at Lise to read her expression, but she has her head down and with the shine of the car lights passing by, all I can see is her silhouette.
“If they were just some school officials, Dad would have talked to them. It’s not a crime to home-school your kid.”
“But he didn’t wait to find out who they were. That’s what I’m saying. Maybe he jumped to conclusions.”
“Maybe. But I don’t think so.”
“Did you ever see those people again?”
“Not the same ones. But there were other close calls like that.”
We turn down Amelia Street and I glance in the window of number 9. Even though there are thin curtains, I can see the movement of someone inside and the flickering of a TV. I let myself imagine, just for a moment, what it would be like to be curled up on a couch watching something with Tuff, and maybe Dad, surrounded by warmth and light. Lise pulls my mind back to the cold, dark street.
“And there’s no chance at all that your dad could’ve been wrong?”
Tuff stops to sniff, then pee, on the gatepost before we move on.
“No. I don’t think so. Well, maybe. But probably not.”
“But you admit it’s possible.”
“What are you, a freaking lawyer?”
“I’m just saying. Things aren’t always what they seem.”
“Like maybe Frankie and Josh didn’t just lose their place because of some new development?”
Lise sighs. “I’ll ask around tomorrow to see if I can find them. They can’t have gone far.”
At the top of the ravine I unclip Tuff and he bounds ahead of us in the dark. Lise takes out her cellphone to shine it on the trail.
“You got enough battery for that?”
“For a few minutes.”
“You good to stay in the tent tonight?”
She glances at her cellphone. “Yeah. I won’t make it back to the shelter in time.” Lise pauses, then continues. “Listen, I’ll leave you this phone when I go. To be safe. You can text Liberty if you need me. Her number’s there. But tomorrow night you’re on your own.”
“Sorry.”
“Whatever. You got anything to eat besides tuna?”
“Crackers and dog kibble.”
“Sounds like a feast,” she says.
After so many hours of feeling cold and wet, the sleeping bag is like wrapping myself in a warm hug. I strip off my wet pants and socks and slide down until my feet touch the end. Lise does the same and we lie on our sides with a flashlight between us, eating half-frozen tuna on soda crackers, while Tuff inhales the pile of kibble I left for him by the tent flap. Then I turn off the flashlight and look toward the top of the tent. It’s so dark I can’t see a thing, but I lie still with my eyes open, as if I might see things more clearly if I just try hard enough.
“I wonder if Dad really knew those people whose dock we used that time? I think about that sometimes. I know you don’t believe me, but I do try to figure out what is real and what isn’t. I get that he might have had a different take on things. Sometimes I wonder if I even knew the real him.”
“Sometimes I wonder if we ever really know anybody,” Lise says sleepily.
Instead of answering, I roll onto my side, pull my sleeping bag over my head, and sob as quietly as I can until I fall into a restless, tormented sleep. If Lise hears me crying, she doesn’t let on. All night I dream of reaching for my gun and not finding it, of needing it and being unable to reach for it, of trying to shoot it and being out of bullets. I wake up to another cold grey morning, feeling even more exhausted and defeated than when I finally fell asleep.
Winter is less than a couple of weeks old and already I resent its tenacity. I could handle the cold better, I think, if I had a chance to warm up completely. But the best I can do is warm up one hand or foot at a time. Even thinking about the blistering hot August days on Starlight doesn’t make me feel better. If anything, I feel worse for all the times I complained about the heat. This is what scrolls through my mind while Lise and I search for Frankie and Josh, a task that seems doomed from the start. Even the regulars aren’t easy to find on a snowing, blowing sort of day like the one we’re slogging through.
We finally track down Travis and Charlene at a church mission. It’s down a narrow set of stairs and in a crowded basement that smells of too many unwashed bodies. The ceiling is low and the walls are painted the colour of Peter Pan’s shirt. They’re sitting at a small, round table with one empty seat between them.
“Hey Travis! Charlene!” Lise says as she pulls off her toque, freeing her black dreads.
“Lise!” Travis shouts and jumps up at the same time. He leans down and wraps her in his long arms, squeezing until she makes a strangled sound. His face is covered in stubble and he’s wearing a black toque. His winter coat is draped over the back of his chair. It looks like something from an army supply store and like it’s seen a few winters too many.
Lise pats his back, then squirms to get free. Travis sits, then Charlene stands up and gives Lise a motherly hug, pulling back and holding her face for a moment as if they haven’t seen each other in years. The whole greeting makes me wonder who these people are to Lise. How well do they know each other?
Finally Lise turns to me. “This is my friend, Harbour, and her dog, Tuff.”
Travis looks up from his bowl of soup and says, “Hey.” Then he watches me so closely I start to feel uncomfortable. But Charlene smiles at me warmly and pats an empty chair beside her.
“Take a load off, hon. Today’s the kind of day you want to eat real slow. Stay in the warm as long as you can.”
Charlene has her hair tied at the nape of her neck with a shoelace. It’s dull and brown, without a trace of grey, but she’s missing two bottom teeth, which makes it hard to guess her age. Her skin is dark and worn like leather and I wonder if she’ll ever be able to scrub herself completely clean.
“What’s on the menu?” Lise asks, peering into their bow
ls. Whatever it is, the colour isn’t too far off the hue of the walls.
“Split pea with ham. Pretty tasty. Sticks with you.”
When I sit down in the chair beside Charlene, Travis gets up to drag a chair over for Lise. He causes a bit of commotion and people at nearby tables stop eating to watch.
“Can you watch Tuff while we grab something to eat?” Lise asks.
When they nod, I tell Tuff to curl up under the table and stay quiet. Then we push back our chairs and go to the front for a bowl of soup, a mug of bitter coffee, and some thick slices of buttered bread.
“Haven’t seen you in ages,” Lise says when we sit back down.
Although I feel awkward being in a room crammed with so many people and never in a million years expected to be eating at a free food program, I’m pretty quick to start spooning the soup into my mouth. It’s far from the gourmet French onion soup I’ve been craving for weeks, but it’s hot and hearty, and it warms me.
“We didn’t come over much this summer. Pretty well stuck to the High Park area. But it’s too cold for camping out now. Gonna stick to these parts for winter, that way we can get a regular bite and a bed on the cold nights,” Charlene says. “What about you two? What brings you here?”
“Actually,” Lise says, swallowing, “we’re looking for Frankie. You seen him around the past couple of days?”
Both Travis and Charlene look at each other and shake their heads. We’re all quiet for a few minutes and I’m left wondering what happens next.
Finally Lise clears her throat and says: “It’s just that he had somethin’ of ours and we need it back. Like somethin’ I couldn’t keep in the shelter.”
I notice Lise’s speech has changed since talking to Charlene and Travis, but I don’t comment.
Travis snorts and rolls his eyes and I can tell there’s a whole backstory that I’m missing, but that will never be explained.
“Saw Mike a couple days ago,” Charlene says after a moment of thoughtful silence. “He tole me their place got tore down and they were in bad shape. Lost all their shit and were left with only the clothes on their backs. Lucky they had their winter coats.”
I feel my stomach clench and although I’d been enjoying the hot soup, I have to stop eating. I can barely swallow and it feels as though the contents of my stomach are going to come gushing up my throat. Lise reaches under the table and finds my hand, squeezing some reassurance into me.
“He said they were talking about heading out west. Like, to Vancouver. Where they wouldn’t have to freeze their asses off for the next five months,” Charlene continues.
Travis laughs so hard he spews his mouthful of soup back into the bowl. “They didn’t go to Vancouver. They’re too broke to get to Hamilton, let alone across the whole flipping country.” He shakes his head at the thought of them managing to get their act together long enough to make a plan to get anywhere and then takes another spoonful of soup before adding: “Hell, they probably couldn’t get themselves to Mimico.”
“Maybe they went up north to, like, where Josh was from. Temagami, I think he said. Josh was always talking about a cabin he knew about that nobody ever used,” Charlene says to Travis. Then, as if to prompt him, she adds: “Remember how he was always going on about spending a winter trapping beaver or muskrat or something? Figured he could make some pretty good money doing that.”
Travis laughs into his bowl and Charlene scowls.
“You think I’m making shit up?”
“No, just laughing at the thought of the two of them living in the middle of the woods trapping beaver.”
Travis laughs so hard he chokes and Charlene has to pound him on the back before he catches his breath.
“Asshole,” she says under her breath. “I should just let you choke to death next time.”
The tone around the table turns as icy as the temperature outside and Lise pushes her chair back as a signal to leave. She finished her lunch, but my stomach is still too knotted to eat another bite.
“You ever go see their place down at the Port Lands?” Travis asks me, even though I’ve stood up to follow Lise.
“Yeah, a few times. Once Josh trapped a rabbit and roasted it,” I say, almost in defence of Josh’s dream.
“I found that place, you know. It was supposed to be for me and Char, but then Josh crashed one night and we couldn’t get rid of him. We had to leave ourselves. Such a dickhead.”
I stand awkwardly, wondering how to respond when Lise hands me my coat.
“Thanks for your help, anyway,” Lise says. “If you do see them, tell them I’m looking for them.”
I shoot Lise a desperate look and she adds: “And tell them it’s important. Really important. Like life-or-death important.”
“Got it,” Travis says with a suddenly serious tone. “If I find either of them I’ll personally drag their asses over to the shelter to find you. You still there?”
“Most nights. Frankie knows where to find me if I’m not.”
Travis looks at my half-full bowl of soup and then up at me.
“I guess my eyes are bigger than my stomach,” I offer half-heartedly.
Travis pulls my bowl over and stacks it into his empty bowl before spooning my soup into his mouth.
“It was nice to see you guys,” Lise says and digs her mitts out of her pocket in preparation for walking back out into the cold.
“Awww. You really got to go? Nothing but cold and misery out there,” Charlene says.
“We’re gonna keep looking for Frankie,” Lise says. “He’s got to be somewhere. You guys stay warm.”
“You, too, hon. Take care of yourselves.”
Travis pats up Tuff before we leave and sneaks him a bite of buttered bread. Then we shrug on our winter clothes and head into the cold, miserable day.
I’m screwed, I think to myself. I’ve got no way to protect me or Tuff. For the first time I feel completely lost, like I’m living on borrowed time and it’s about to run out fast.
CHAPTER 13
I’M WEARING EVERY bit of clothing I own, yet I still shiver inside the sleeping bag and wish for the hundredth time that I’d bought the bags rated for forty below. I change positions, hoping to find a warm pocket of air and imagine going back to the man in the store to tell him he gave me the wrong advice, that I need the ones warm enough for sleeping on the side of a mountain. I feel like I might never get warm, like my bones are filled with icicles instead of marrow. I call Tuff to come close and when he noses my face in the darkness, I tuck him into my sleeping bag, drag the second bag over the both of us and eventually stop shivering long enough to fall back to sleep.
Daylight takes too long to sneak into the ravine, but I refuse to get up in the dark. So I lie for an hour, listening to the drone of the traffic above. When the tent finally brightens I crawl outside to make a small fire. If I can get one part of me warm, even a hand or foot, I can claim a small victory in the constant battle against the cold. I rip pages from The Bhagavad Gita and crumple them into tight balls. I only tear out the pages I’ve read and try to forget the look of joy on Erica’s face when she let me have a temporary library card. It was as though she thought she was saving me, and I feel like I’m betraying both her and Yogananda.
I lean branches around the balls of crumpled paper, pencil-thin ones first, then thicker ones. I don’t even care that someone might see the smoke; that’s how badly I need to feel some warmth. I fumble with the lighter and drop it twice before I get a flame to light the pages in a whoosh of heat.
It’s not a big fire and I won’t let it burn long — just long enough to boil a bit of water in the pot Lise brought to me, along with a packet of hot chocolate powder she pocketed at the shelter.
“C’mere, Tuff.”
He comes running when I whistle.
I pour half the water into his dish and cover it with my hand so that it cools before he has a drink. The heat cracks the layer of ice on the bottom and steam rises into the air.
“
You want a drink?”
He laps at it gratefully, then rolls in the snow on his back, twisting from side to side and moaning with pleasure. I admire his love affair with winter, even though I hate it with an equal intensity.
The hot chocolate burns its way down my throat and I welcome the warmth that spreads through my stomach and into my hands as I grip the pot. I let the fire burn down, but don’t put it out. Watching the glowing embers brings me a measure of comfort, something that’s in short supply lately.
When Tuff finishes drinking, I pour kibble into the dish and too quickly it’s gone. I know I have to get more soon, or else find a reliable source of scraps. My stomach growls, but there’s no point opening a can of tuna until it’s had time to thaw by the fire. Instead, I munch crackers, sip hot chocolate, and try not to think about the endless day ahead.
Lise has a few tricks for staying warm on cold winter days, which is why I’ve stopped objecting when she tells me to meet her somewhere. Today, for instance, she texts from Liberty’s phone and tells me to meet her at a medical clinic not far from the shelter.
Are you sick? I text back.
Don’t ask questions. Just get moving.
So I do, get moving, and when I see her hunched in her jacket, waiting on the sidewalk, I’m grateful she didn’t make me go inside alone. She walks a few steps to meet me and Tuff.
“It’s about time. What took so long?”
“Nothing. I came right when you texted.”
She turns and retraces her steps beside us. “Must be the cold. Makes five minutes seem like fifty.”
“Are you sick?” I ask again.
“Sick of the cold,” she says and reaches to open the door.
I hesitate. “Are you sure it’s okay to go in?”
“It’s all about acting like we belong,” she whispers.
Lise marches inside, finds an empty seat, and picks up a two-year-old copy of People. She settles into her chair and flips through the magazine as if she owns the place. I follow with less confidence and try to take up as little space as possible. She lifts a page close to her face, then shoves it toward me.
Safe Harbour Page 14
