When I got back to the car, Toby was paying off the attendant. As I climbed into the driver’s seat, he turned to Toby and said, “Letting the little woman drive? That’s brave.”
“Hey, I get to sleep,” he said, nudging him.
He climbed in next to me and shut the door.
“Well, he was a total sexist asshole,” he said.
“Just like you.”
That was the last exchange we had for the next 130 miles. The road north was long, wooded, quiet, and slow. The trees formed a canopy that often blocked out all moonlight and made me crane my neck to peer over the headlights as the route gradually turned into a steep climb toward Canada. We passed through a couple of obscure, blink-once-it’s-gone towns—but these were the only outposts on an otherwise empty stretch of track. And it reminded me (as if a reminder were needed) just how empty and lonely Maine could be. I was preoccupied with the thought that if we did break down out here, there would be no way we could get any help until morning. By which time . . .
I reached for another cigarette—and checked the clock. Ten twenty-three. Had an hour vanished just like that?
“Feel like some coffee?” Toby asked.
“Yeah,” I said. He reached down for the thermos, unscrewed the top, and poured me a cup. I balanced it against the wheel as I drove, managing to sip it slowly. Once I’d finished, I handed the cup back to Toby without saying a word. Then I reached for another cigarette, lit up, and took a deep drag.
The FM station I’d been listening to faded away into static. I flipped the dial, and heard a rapid-fire disc jockey talking in French. Quebec was near. I pressed down further on the accelerator and passed a sign saying: Border: 15 miles.
A quarter of an hour later, we rolled into the town of Jackman. The clock on the dash said twelve-ten. Toby told me to pull over. I stopped in front of the local courthouse.
“I’m going to drive us across,” he said. “It’ll look better that way. And I want you to sit in the backseat and pretend you’re asleep next to our baby. If the Canadian border guy wants to ask you a few questions, he’ll wake you up. But my guess is, he’ll just wave us through—and with you asleep in the back, he won’t be able to get a good look at your face . . . which is kind of what you want, right?”
“Yes, that’s what I want.”
“Oh, and leave the passport and birth certificate with me, just in case he wants to inspect them.”
I dug out the documents. I put them on the dashboard. I opened the door, got out, then slid into the backseat. Jeff stirred slightly, making a few grumbly noises. But then I noticed that he’d spit his pacifier out. I scrambled around the darkened floor until I found it, then popped it quickly into my mouth to crudely sterilize it before plugging it back between his toothless gums. I stretched out on the seat, my head just next to the baby chair.
“You ready?” Toby asked.
“Yes,” I said, and closed my eyes.
It was around a five-minute drive to the border. I could feel the car slowing down. Toby turned the radio off. There was a minute when we weren’t moving, then the car crept forward a little bit more, then it came to a stop. I could hear a window being rolled down, and someone saying, in a Quebec accent, “Welcome to Canada. May I see some identification, please?”
There was a rustle of papers, a pause, then, “And what brings you to Canada, Mr. Walker?”
Mr. Walker?
“We’re visiting friends for the weekend in Quebec City.”
The beam of a flashlight hit my face. I blinked and decided it was best to act as if he had woken me up. So I began to stir, looking up at the border guy with bemusement.
“Désolé . . . sorry,” he muttered.
“You go back to sleep, hon,” Toby said.
I lay down again, covering my face with my hands.
“You’re traveling late,” the official said.
“Just got off work at six—and we can only drive long distances with Junior here at night, when he’s fast asleep.”
“Don’t remind me,” the official said. “My two girls cried if they were more than thirty minutes in the car. Anything to declare?”
“Nothing.”
“No cigarettes, alcohol, foodstuffs?”
“Nope.”
“And you’ll be returning to the U.S. on . . . ?”
“Sunday evening.”
“Have a nice weekend in Quebec,” he said.
“Thanks,” Toby said, putting the car in gear and inching us forward. Around a minute later, as we were gathering speed again, he said, “Don’t sit up yet . . . just in case.”
“I won’t.”
“Well, that was easy. Not that I expected it to be particularly hard. Family men always get waved right through.”
So that’s another reason why he wanted me to drive him across. Because when the Canadian officials saw him with his alleged wife and child, they’d ask no questions and simply presume that he was simply dropping into the country for a social visit.
“All right,” he said when we were a few miles further down the road. “You can sit up now.”
“Aren’t you getting out here?” I asked as we passed a sign thanking us for visiting the town of Armstrong.
“No,” he said.
“Then where?”
“Around forty miles north of here. A large town called Saint-Georges.”
“Forty miles? That’s going to put another ninety minutes on my journey.”
“Can’t be helped. That’s where my rendezvous has been arranged.”
“Your rendezvous?” I said, sounding outraged.
“You didn’t think I’d just drift into Canada like some draft-dodging goof, did you? When the heat is on, we have people up here to look after us.”
“So you knew we were heading to Saint-Georges from the moment you got that phone call?”
“Does that matter right now? Forty more miles and I’m out of your life. And yeah, this might mean you won’t get back to Pelham until nine—but big deal. If hubby has to wait a little while at the airport . . .”
Jeff stirred awake and started to cry. Immediately I unstrapped him from his seat and lifted him onto my lap.
“It’s okay, it’s okay,” I said, pulling him close and reaching into the bag for a bottle. But he pushed the bottle to one side and raised his cries by a few decibels.
“You’re going to have to pull over,” I said. “He needs to be changed.”
“And my rendezvous is scheduled for twelve-thirty—and I’m running late, so sorry.”
“Pull the car over,” I said.
“No,” he said, and sped up.
Somehow I managed to change Jeff on the backseat—though twice we hit potholes on the road and he nearly went flying. I left the dirty diaper on the floor and had to fight the temptation to dump it on Toby Judson’s head. But this was no time for grandstand gestures. The faster we were in Saint-Georges, the better.
At ten after one, we saw the lights of a large-ish town in the distance. A few minutes later, we were on its outskirts. There was a small mill just off the side of the road. As we approached it, Toby flashed the Volvo’s lights. Out of nowhere, some lights flashed back. Toby turned off toward the mill, killing the headlights. Suddenly, we were encased in another blast of light—as the brights of an approaching car blinded us. Toby stopped the car and turned off the engine.
“What the hell is going on?” I hissed.
“They just want to make sure it’s us—and not someone pretending to be us . . . like the cops.”
I heard a door open and footsteps approach. A shadowy figure approached the car. I now understood why they’d blinded us with bright lights. It ensured that I didn’t see the identity of the person drawing near us. Instead, all I could discern was a form peering through the driver’s-side window, tapping twice on the glass and receiving a clenched-fist salute from Toby. Then the figure retreated, and a few seconds later, the brights were cut and we were plunged into darkness, my eyes aching
from this abrupt blackout. Jeff started howling, but I plugged a bottle into his mouth and it immediately soothed him.
“All right,” Toby said. “Here’s where I get off. A couple of very basic, very simple things. I am going to get out of the car, get my bag out of the trunk, then walk toward the other car. You are to stay put in the backseat until the other car has pulled away—and wait here until a good five minutes have passed. If you don’t, there will be trouble.”
“Anything else?”
He reached into his pocket, fished out a wad of money, and put a bill on the passenger seat next to him.
“Here’s twenty Canadian dollars, which will buy you gas before the Coburn Gore border crossing.”
“I don’t want your money,” I said, simultaneously thinking, The bastard arrived in Pelham with a wad of Canadian dollars on his person, just in case . . .
“When you leave here,” he said, ignoring me, “take Route 204 heading to Lac-Mégantic. After that, you hook up with the 161 going to Woburn. La frontière americaine is only a few miles from there. All going well you should be crossing back into the Land of the Free around three a.m. The American border guy is going to be deeply curious about why you’re traveling with a baby in the middle of the night. Tell him you’ve been visiting friends in Montreal—and you got a call late last night from your husband, saying that his dad was dying and you’re rushing back blah, blah, blah. If he’s suspicious, he might search the car—but since it’s clean, he can’t hold you for feeding him a story he finds fishy, so he’ll have to wave you through. Then, because you’ve already traveled a ways south, it’s a straight back-road shot to Lewiston and Pelham.”
“And when the feds raid my apartment in the next day or two, what should I say then?”
He laughed.
“They’re not going to raid you,” he said.
“If they found out that you flew from Chicago to Maine . . .”
“I didn’t fly from Chicago to Portland. I hitched—because it seemed safer to hitch, just in case they were watching the bus stations, the airports . . .”
“Hang on, you told me they found an Eastern Airlines number on a pad in your apartment and then worked out . . .”
“I lied . . . to make sure you were scared enough to drive me here. And yeah, that was yet another shitty thing I pulled on you—but on behalf of the Revolution, I thank you for making your small but vital contribution to—”
“Get out,” I said.
“Your wish is my command. One final thing: as much as you may now hate me, I am a man of my word. Now that you have gotten me here in one piece and without hassle, I will keep my promise that, if and when I am ever asked if anyone helped me across the border, I will never mention your name. And my advice to you now is: forget any of this ever happened.”
“Believe me, that’s exactly what I’m planning to do. Now beat it.”
“Do yourself a favor, Hannah—stop trying to be good all the time.”
“I said: beat it.”
A final smarmy little smile. Why did guys like this always think they were so superior? Stop trying to be good all the time. But if the last two days had shown anything, they’d shown that I wasn’t good. On the contrary, I had compromised everything important in my life for the sake of . . .
Behind the wheel, Toby flipped the brights twice. This was answered with a Morse code reply with headlights.
“Okay,” he said. “Remember to stay still for five minutes after the car goes. Have a good life . . . if that’s possible.”
The headlights suddenly burst into life, enveloping us in a dazzling white glow. Toby got out of the car and slammed the door. A moment later, I heard the trunk open and close, then his footsteps on the gravelly ground. A moment or two later I heard a car start up and the headlights suddenly pulled away from us, beamed themselves in another direction, and disappeared.
I did exactly as instructed. I sat in the backseat, hugging Jeff close to me, trying to remain calm, trying not to let everything I had been holding in check suddenly burst out. I knew that if I started crying now, I wouldn’t be able to stop—and the one thing I had to do now was get myself and my son back home.
So when the five minutes were up, I strapped Jeff back in his seat (he hated this and wailed loudly to let me know), climbed back into the front, lit up the cigarette I had been craving for the past twenty minutes, tossed back a fast, semisteadying cup of coffee, put the car in gear, and hit the road.
It was now just after two. I followed Toby’s directions—driving slowly through the sleeping center of Saint-Georges, then picking up the 204 for Lac-Mégantic. I resisted the temptation to crank up my speed—this two-lane blacktop was narrow and full of unexpected twists—and I was relieved to get to Lac-Mégantic and the turnoff marked Route 161: Woburn et la frontière americaine. This road turned out to be even narrower than the previous one—and very dark. As I pushed closer to the frontier, I kept telling myself: Just be cool with the guy at the border . . . act like a normal person . . . and he’ll buy your story and wave you through. Show any fear and you’ll end up in a small room, answering a lot of questions you really don’t want to be asked.
Every five kilometers there was a road sign, informing me I was that much closer to the border. With every passing sign, my fear cranked up a notch or two, and even though I tried to convince myself that the fear was overblown, I was so edgy and tired that I had lost all perspective. Anyway, the fact of the fucking matter was I had helped a wanted criminal escape across an international boundary . . . and though my help may have been coerced, I nonetheless aided and abetted . . . because I was terrified that he might expose the affair we’d had. And I could just hear some flinty old judge, looking down sternly at me and informing me that, on account of letting my own venal fear of exposure for the sin of adultery cloud my notion of right and wrong, he had no choice but to sentence me to . . .
La frontière americaine: 3 kilometres.
A quick stop for gas and I’d be there in less than ten minutes. Keep calm, keep calm.
As I edged closer and closer, I suddenly wished that I wasn’t such a complete nonbeliever in God, the Almighty, Jahweh, the Alpha and the Omega, whatever. Because if there ever was a time in my life for prayer, it was now. But I had been guilty of enough hypocrisy over the past few days. I wasn’t going to augment it by pleading for help to some Supreme Being whom I knew didn’t exist.
So instead, I decided to bargain with myself—to take a vow that, if I got through this whole experience unscathed, if I made it across the border without incident, if the feds didn’t show up, if that creep Toby Judson didn’t reveal anything about who got him to Canada, if Dan didn’t become suspicious of me for some reason—I would atone for all my transgressions by being as good as I could be. I’d accept my destiny as Dan’s wife. I’d go where his career took us. I’d support him completely, and would damp down all dreams of escape. I’d do everything I could for Jeff and any other children we might have. Their needs—and those of my husband—would always come before mine. And I’d accept all the compromises and limitations of my life with grace, knowing that, if my selfish, venal behavior had been uncovered, I would have lost everything. You can’t escape your actions, any more than you can escape yourself. There’s a price to be paid for everything. And if in the future I mourned the freedom I’d given up, the small scope I’d imposed on my life, I’d always remind myself that this was the price extracted for my transgressions—and that, maybe, I’d gotten off lightly.
La frontière americaine: 1 kilometre.
There was a gas station up ahead. I filled the car. I dumped the dirty diaper. I cleaned out the ashtray that was brimming with butts. I freed Jeff for a few moments from his car seat and rocked him in the night air. I went into the shop and paid the $11 for the full tank of gas (God, it was expensive up here). I blew the change on five packs of cigarettes, a couple of candy bars, and a large cup of coffee. I loaded Jeff back into his car seat and handed him a rubber rat
tle that he seemed to favor, in the hope that it would keep him occupied while we crossed over to the States. I positioned myself behind the wheel, took a steadying breath, turned on the ignition, and drove.
There were no formalities leaving Canada—just a sign thanking you for visiting the country and wishing you a Bon Retour. There were around five hundred yards of no-man’s-land before I arrived at a shed with the Stars and Stripes on a flagpole and a large sign saying: Welcome to the United States.
I was the only traveler at this hour of the night. The border official walked slowly out of the shed. He was a chunky man in his thirties, wearing a green customs uniform and a large wide-brim Forest Ranger–style hat. He ambled over to the car, nodded at me, then studied the license plate and walked once around the vehicle before stopping in front of the now rolled-down passenger window.
“Evening, ma’am,” he said.
“Hi there,” I said, forcing a smile.
“You’re traveling awful late . . . or maybe awful early.”
“It’s not by choice, sir.” And I explained how I’d been up visiting friends in Quebec and got a call from my husband only a few hours ago, saying that his father was dying.
“I could have stayed till morning, but I knew I wouldn’t forgive myself if I didn’t get back . . .”
“Yes, I can certainly understand that. So how long have you been out of the States?”
“Just two days.”
“And do you have any identification for yourself and your baby?”
I handed over the passport and the birth certificate.
“That certainly works as ID,” he said with a smile. He scrutinized the documents, then handed them back to me, and asked if I was bringing anything back from Canada.
“Just a couple of packs of cigarettes.”
“Well, you’re free to go. Drive friendly.”
And he waved me through.
I waved back as I drove on. First hurdle crossed. I glanced at the dashboard clock. Three-ten. If I kept up a steady speed, I should make Pelham by eight-thirty—enough time to wash the dishes, give the apartment a fast going-over, have a quick shower, and make a beeline for Portland Airport.
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