Footprints

by Robert Rayner

  The commentary continues: “Security guard said terrorist was adjusting his jacket...looking around...generally acting as if he was nervous about something...Police summoned and shot terrorist dead in vestibule of Eastern Oil head office before he could ignite explosives strapped around him...”

  Harper is sitting. He can’t breathe. He has a headache.

  “Police say if he’d succeeded in blowing himself up, he would have killed or maimed the five hundred employees in the offices of Eastern Oil, as well as residents and workers in buildings nearby, including children in a daycare next door...Message received by the media at the exact time of the intended explosion said action was ‘on behalf of the people whose lives are being destroyed by the Eastern Oil LNG project, and on behalf of people everywhere whose welfare is being trampled by multinational corporations.’ Message signed by the Global Front for Human Rights...”

  Harper turns off the news.

  He stands, but has to hold on to the chair, fearing he’s going to faint, wondering, How big is the little incendiary device Lully made for us to set fire to the barn?

  He stumbles from the house. His mind reels: What should he do? What should he do first?

  Find Isora. She’ll have heard – surely? She’ll be distraught, hearing about Lully. She’ll need comforting.

  Find Drumgold. He’ll know what to do.

  Tell the police. But they’ll arrest him, and then they’ll arrest Drumgold and Isora, and his friends will know it was Harper that told them.

  Tell Dad and Mom. But they’ll call the police, and the police will arrest him, and then they’ll arrest Drumgold and Isora, and his friends will know it was Harper that told them.

  Warn Mr. Anderson. But he won’t listen. And anyway he’d never get through to him, not with Harper being just a kid and with all that going on at Eastern Oil.

  Call the cottage and warn Droopy and Diamond Head. But they’ll call the police, and the police will arrest him, and then they’ll arrest Drumgold and Isora, and his friends will know it was Harper that told them.

  Run to the cottage and get the incendiary device out from under the barn and leave it in the woods somewhere. But someone might come along when it goes off, and it could start a forest fire, and anyway only Isora has the code to get into the grounds, and even if he got it, supposing it went off while he was carrying it.

  Find Isora.

  Find Drumgold. He’ll know what to do.

  Drumgold had said they were to go about their summer jobs as usual. That meant he’d be cleaning with his ma somewhere. Harper thinks of all the places where he knows Mrs. Drumgold cleans: the post office, the supermarket, the insurance office, the churches and the church halls. They wouldn’t be cleaning any of the businesses during the day, which left only the churches and the church halls. Harper jogs downtown again. He’s gasping for breath. The Baptist church and the Anglican church are empty. He runs on, past the post office, heading for the Presbyterian church. The security guard at the post office is strutting backwards and forwards on the sidewalk, his nightstick in his hand. He watches Harper as he runs past.

  The door of the Presbyterian church hall is ajar. Harper peers around it. Drumgold’s mother is swabbing the floor, Drumgold dusting chairs. Harper waves him over.

  Drumgold takes one look at Harper’s face and says, “Gotta go, Ma. I’ll call you later.” Outside, he says, “What’s up?”

  “Haven’t you heard?”

  “How would I hear anything when I’m working in a church hall?”

  Harper tells him about Lully.

  Drumgold says, “We better find Is at the daycare. I don’t want her to hear it off the news or from someone else.”

  They set off towards Main Street, Harper prattling as they go. He can’t stop talking. “They said Dex is a terrorist. I can’t believe they shot him. A terrorist. He was nice, Dex, wasn’t he? They must have it wrong.” He discovers he’s crying.

  Drumgold takes hold of his arm, stopping him, and says, “Take it easy, Harp. Okay? Get a hold of yourself.”

  They’re in front of the post office.

  The security guard calls, “Keep moving, you two.”

  Drumgold calls over his shoulder, “Fuck off.”

  Harper is still crying.

  Drumgold puts his arm round his shoulders and shakes him. “Harp. Stay cool.”

  Harper nods and sniffs.

  The security guard says, “I said, move along, fag boys. Or I’ll move you on.” He slams his nightstick twice into the palm of his hand.

  Drumgold’s knife is in his hand, the blade open. He turns towards the security guard.

  Harper grabs him and says, “We gotta find Is,” and drags him away, down Main Street towards the daycare. They find a police car parked outside and parents taking the children home. The woman who runs the daycare is on the sidewalk, wringing her hands as she tells parents there’s no need to worry.

  Drumgold asks her, “Where’s Isora?”

  “Gone home, I think. The police said we all have to leave while they search the building. I can’t believe...”

  Drumgold and Harper run on to the trailer park. Two police cars block the entrance. People are walking out of the park, carrying bags. The boys approach the barrier.

  One of the police says, “Do you live here?”

  “We’re looking for a friend.”

  “Your friend won’t be here. The place is being evacuated. No-one’s allowed in.”

  They move on.

  Drumgold says, “There’s only one other place she’ll be.”

  31

  Harper’s not sure when he first hears Isora. Looking back, he thinks it’s as soon as he and Drumgold crawl under the fence and start across the bog, perhaps even as soon as they leave the logging road, although he tells himself that’s impossible. Whenever it is, they are certainly still some way from the camp when they hear her. At first it’s a series of howls that make Harper think of the day George tangled with a porcupine. Then the howls turn to a series of expletives – “freakingpissingfriggingbleedingfuckingbastards” – that end in a long shriek that turns back to a howl. Then it’s weeping of such desolation that Harper finds tears starting in his own eyes in a kind of sympathetic vibration. He thinks Isora is in shock. He wonders whether he’s in shock himself. He wonders what Drumgold is feeling, and glances at him. His face betrays nothing. He hasn’t spoken since they left the trailer park.

  When they enter the camp Isora is howling again. She’s on her knees, banging her forehead on the ground and beating at it with her fists. Drumgold kneels behind her, puts his arms around her, and pulls her up and towards him, hugging her. Her face is streaked with tears and mud. Her forehead and knuckles are bleeding.

  She roars, “They shot Dex,” and starts to wail and curse again, lurching forward in Drumgold’s arms. Harper kneels in front of her and the boys hold her between them.

  They rock her.

  After a long while, Isora says, “I’m all right now.”

  The boys let her go. She sits on the chest with Drumgold. Harper sits in one of the old plastic chairs.

  Drumgold says, “We tried to find you to tell you before you heard from somewhere else but we were too late.”

  “The police came to the daycare. They wouldn’t let me go home. They said they were afraid Dex might have explosives stored at his house.”

  Harper glances at his watch. It’s twenty minutes before noon.

  He murmurs, “What Dex made to set fire to the barn, d’you suppose it could be something more than just something to set fire to it? D’you suppose it could be a bomb, like he had in Saint-Leonard?”

  He feels hard and callous referring to Lully in the face of Isora’s grief. Their late friend’s name hangs between them in the silence left by her control of her rage and weeping.

  “Who cares?” says Drumgold.

  Harper sees Isora’s cellphone lying where she was kneeling and beating her fists on the ground.

  He says
, “You were going to call 911, weren’t you?”

  Isora doesn’t answer.

  Harper picks up the cellphone. “Weren’t you?”

  “Maybe.”

  “I’ll do it. Shall I?”

  Drumgold snatches the cellphone from Harper and snarls, “First they shot George. Then they shot Dex. They’re all the same. Fuck ’em all.”

  “Who do you mean by they?” says Harper. “Who’s all the same?”

  “Them. All them in charge. All them with power, so they think they can do what they like. Like Anderson saying he’s going to buy the mill and get our folks back to work so everyone has to be nice to him and do what he wants and it’s okay for him to steal our beach. And Eastern Oil destroying the homes of the people near the terminal, like Dex said. And Anderson’s men shooting George. Fuck ’em all. They deserve everything they get.”

  Harper turns back to Isora. “Is. We’ve got to call. Shall I?” He looks at Drumgold. “Can I?”

  Drumgold looks at Isora.

  She’s staring at the beach, and crying again.

  Harper wants to shake her. Make her see sense. Get her to side with him against Drumgold’s madness. Wasn’t that what she said she needed him for?

  He repeats, “Is. We’ve got to call.”

  Isora looks slowly back at the boys.

  She says, “Sorry, Harp, but...fuck ’em all.”

  Drumgold and Isora are frozen, staring into one another’s eyes.

  Harper grabs the cellphone from Drumgold.

  He watches his friends. He knows Drumgold can wrest the cellphone easily from him. He wouldn’t resist.

  He mutters, “Sorry.”

  He calls 911 while Drumgold and Isora still stare at one another, inscrutable.

  32

  They come for Isora an hour after Harper makes the call. By then she’s home with her father. Sgt. Chase and Camera Woman take her, with Mr. Lee, to the police station, where Sgt. Chase tells her the person who took the 911 call identified it as being from a young person, and the call was traced to her cellphone.

  Camera Woman says, “Do you have anything to say?”

  Isora shakes her head. She looks at the floor.

  “Did the call come from your cellphone?”

  Isora nods.

  “You made the call?”

  Isora nods again.

  Sgt. Chase says, “We got there in time. We found the bomb just before it went off. We wish you’d called us earlier, and told us what you knew, because then we might have picked up Mr. Lully before he got to Saint-Leonard. But still, you saved the cottage, as well as Mrs. Anderson and her people from getting hurt. We know the bomb was made by Dexter Lully. We know his work.”

  Isora doesn’t speak. Her eyes are still on the floor.

  Sgt. Chase, sitting in front of her, says, “It was the right thing to do. You don’t have to feel guilty about letting Mr. Lully down. Is that how you feel?”

  Isora remains silent.

  “Where did he tell you he was going all those times he got you to look after his dog?”

  “His mother...”

  Sgt. Chase sighs. “Dexter Lully doesn’t know who his mother is, any more than we do. He was an abandoned baby, found on the steps of a church in Montreal, and he was brought up in foster homes, a whole series of them that couldn’t handle him. So, see? He lied to you. Lied to you and used you.”

  Isora shakes her head.

  Sgt. Chase leans forward, speaking earnestly. “We’ve known about Dexter Lully for a long time, since before he came to Back River. We’ve been watching him. He’s done some bad things. You don’t have to protect him. We know he was waging a campaign against Eastern Oil, and we know he wanted revenge on Mr. Anderson because of his dog. All we need from you now is enough for us to get the story straight, for the record. He had some kind of power over you, didn’t he? You thought a lot of him. You thought he was your friend, right?”

  Camera Woman interjects, “Did he try anything with you?”

  Mr. Lee, who is sitting beside Isora, gasps.

  Isora looks up. “Like what?”

  “Like making suggestions...”

  “No.”

  “Did he touch you?”

  “No.”

  Mr. Lee puts his arm around Isora’s shoulders and says, “That’s enough, please.”

  “But you knew about the bomb because he told you, right?” says Sgt. Chase. “We think he told you about it to impress you. Perhaps even to...to impress you, so you’d...” His face reddens. “Give in to him.”

  Isora shakes her head. She looks back at the floor. She’s crying.

  Sgt. Chase takes her hand. “Okay. Sorry, dear. Let’s say he told you to impress you, okay? Is it okay for us to say that?”

  Isora sniffs and nods without looking up.

  “So he told you about the bomb and about how he was going to blow up Mr. Anderson’s cottage, and you didn’t know what to do, because you didn’t want to upset him or let him down, but you were afraid of what the bomb might do, so in the end you called us, right? Can we say that?”

  Gazing at Isora’s tear-stained face, Sgt. Chase thinks she looks like an elementary school kid. He feels sorry for her and angry at Lully for abusing her vulnerability.

  33

  They are walking on the beach, trying to decide whether to swim in the sea or in Mr. Anderson’s pool in the cottage grounds. They don’t have to ask permission, and have swum there several times already. If Mrs. Anderson is home she brings them lemonade and cookies. They simply have to climb the steps through the rocks and let themselves in the iron gate with the code Mr. Anderson has given them. It’s his way of saying thank you to Isora for saving Mrs. Anderson and the staff and the cottage from the terrorist’s bomb, the same terrorist who had tried to destroy the offices of Eastern Oil.

  Mr. Anderson offered Isora anything she wanted as a reward – money, scholarships, a holiday for her and her father, a house away from the trailer park – but she refused everything. At last he begged her at least to accept his invitation to visit the cottage grounds and the pool whenever she liked, to which she said, “Can I bring two friends?” The first time he encountered the boys at the pool with her he looked hard at them but said nothing. Now he treats them as he treats Isora, with a gentle and formal courtesy.

  It’s the end of August, a few days before they return to school. Anderson is still talking of buying the mill, but the deal is stalled while he waits for a decision from the government about relaxing environmental regulations regarding emissions until the mill starts to turn a profit. Mr. Meating’s hours have been further cut and Mrs. Meating has been laid off at the supermarket. Al’s-To-Go has closed and Al has moved away. Mayor Green says a call centre has expressed interest in setting up in Back River, offering up to a dozen jobs.

  Harper watches his friends from the corner of his eye. They are holding hands. Drumgold is saying something about worldwide injustice and oppression. He talks like that all the time.

  Isora gazes at the sea. Harper wishes she’d pirouette in the sand, the way she used to. She’s not listening to Drumgold. She’s wearing the outfit she wore the day she set the bomb. She doesn’t talk much, and when she does, it’s of revenge for Dexter and George.

  Droopy and Diamond Head are at the iron gate. They wave and smile. Drumgold and Isora ignore them.

  Harper, glancing at his friends again, wonders which of them he fears the most.

  robert rayner

  A former principal, school district consultant, teacher and journalist, in England, Newfoundland and New Brunswick, Robert Rayner now concentrates on writing. He has six young adult novels and one adult novel in print. His stories have been shortlisted for the Ann Connor Brimer Children’s Literature Prize and the Hackmatack Children’s Choice Book Award. He lives on the Magaguadavic River in St. George, New Brunswick.