The Crash Palace

by Andrew Wedderburn

  Audrey put another bead of glue on the mast and laid the next of the finished yardarms carefully onto the bead. He reached across and put his finger on the plastic, like a Christmas bow, and she fiddled with either side to get the pieces square.

  ‘Anyway, you told me you traded it in for that new heap out there.’

  ‘I guess traded isn’t really the right word.’

  §

  She was somewhere south and west. She climbed hills and had views of the easternmost Rockies, close enough that the individual peaks stood out from each other, the raw granite crags and cirques distinct enough that, if she’d known their names, she could have spoken to them.

  She saw a handmade sign on a fence and slowed down to read:

  ELBOW FALLS RALLY RACE

  She followed a washboard gravel road up and down a ridge of hills. A long line of parked vehicles ran up the edge of the road. She parked at the end and got out. Old pickup trucks, little hatchbacks, old station wagons with ski racks. After a while she started passing orange traffic pylons. She smelled grilling meat.

  In a gravel parking lot, people in orange vests stood around a propane BBQ. A man in a cowboy hat was grilling burgers. Audrey saw a knot of people standing up at the top of a little ridge above them.

  She hiked up through the brush. People were standing behind a line of orange fluorescent tape, in a clearing between pine trees. Just past them was a stretch of gravel road. An S-curve switchback, a short straightaway, and then a final curve before disappearing back into the woods. The gravel was brown and fresh, deep and scored with tire marks.

  She stood in the small crowd and was going to ask someone when she heard the engine.

  She heard the engine and the conversation died down. Everyone stood quietly and then the car came around the corner. Taking the curve hard, back end drifting out in the soft gravel, kicking up a great cloud of dust. The driver shifted down through the S-curve, then revved up to pick up speed through the straightaway. Came close enough that Audrey could see the two of them in the car: two motorcycle helmets, a driver and a passenger, their heads bobbing back and forth through the curves. The car roared past, picking up speed, a Japanese sport sedan with a big spoiler, bright blue, the windshield, doors, hood, fenders all covered in stickers. It roared past and everyone cheered and they heard it shift again for the last curve and then it was gone, around the corner into the trees, the engine noise fading.

  The cars came one after the other, a few minutes apart. All of them tackling the S-curve and then the short straightaway before the tight turn disappearing into the trees. Each of them a little different. They attacked the first curve aggressively or cautiously. They didn’t all drift out on the first curve. She saw them pick different spots to shift and rev.

  The cars, the Subarus and Hondas and Ford Fiestas, got close enough each time for Audrey to catch a quick glimpse of the drivers and co-drivers in their matching helmets.

  She watched twenty cars go by and at a certain point started cheering with the rest of the crowd. Cheered when the cars came into the curve, when they came by close enough to see the helmets, when they sped up through the straightaway and then disappeared around the other curve.

  A big man in a denim jacket turned around and beamed at her.

  ‘That was a good day of racing,’ he said.

  ‘Yeah,’ said Audrey. ‘Absolutely.’

  §

  On cold mornings she revved the engine of the Nissan to get it started and sat waiting for the temperature needle to rise off the bottom before putting it into drive. The steering was stiff and the truck would lurch and choke in first and second gear. On an afternoon spare she drove to the self-serve Fas Gas station and opened the hood. A man with a moustache filling his diesel half-ton wrinkled his nose.

  ‘That radiator is just about to go, kid,’ he said. ‘Can’t you smell that?’

  She checked the oil and it seemed fine, and when the man with the moustache went inside to pay, she closed the hood and patted it.

  ‘You’re fine, Truck. Doing fine. You just like to warm up a bit more first thing in the morning.’

  A few blocks from the school, the temperature needle floated up to the red H line, and a smell like a melting plastic bottle thrown into a campfire filled her nose. She braked for a yield sign and the truck lurched and shuddered. She turned the key to restart it and it coughed and stayed still. Behind her someone honked. Audrey sighed and put on the hazard lights.

  ‘Truck,’ she said, ‘come on, Truck. You can do it.’

  She twisted the key and revved the gas pedal and the truck sat still, stinking like burnt plastic.

  A few days later she found the invoice pinned to the fridge under a magnet: Abandoned vehicle removal, $120. She put it in her purse. Sat down at the kitchen table and sorted through the pile of junk mail: Safeway and Home Hardware fliers, a leaflet from their Member of Parliament, and at the bottom, the new Bargain Finder.

  Nothing under $2,000. After paying the truck removal bill, she didn’t even have twenty in her envelope. She walked to school the next morning, hands in her pockets. They published the Bargain Finder once a week. But even a week from now she wasn’t going to have enough in the envelope. At school she tapped her pencil and imagined an unloved two-seater that just needed a new fan belt, a little rusty and peeling but five-speed with good tires. A little rust and they’d knock that much off the asking price. Maybe in a few weeks there would be a pickup truck or a Jeep. Just something that she could drive.

  2

  2005

  MOOSE LEG – FORT SASKATCHEWAN – EDMONTON – NANAIMO – VANCOUVER – KELOWNA – KAMLOOPS – REVELSTOKE – NAKUSP – CRANBROOK – GOLDEN – LETHBRIDGE

  The truck driver had finally stopped his rig when she pulled the screwdriver from her purse. She was backed against the passenger-side door of the truck cab, pointing the screwdriver at him, shouting. It takes a long time to stop a truck like this, she thought while she shouted. The driver geared down and stopped on the shoulder in front of a green highway sign that read FORT SASKATCHEWAN 12 KM. She opened the door and dropped out of the truck.

  The wind and snow blew hard against her and she ran up the highway shoulder in just a T-shirt and jeans. Your jacket is still back there in the truck, Audrey thought. Your jacket and your bag.

  She ran out into the highway and a horn blasted, brakes squealed, white headlights blinded her.

  She stood in the snow shielding her eyes with one hand, the screwdriver still tight in the other, and behind the white light a van had stopped on the shoulder ten yards in front of her. She ran to the van and slapped her free palm hard on the window.

  ‘Hold on a second, hold on,’ the van driver said through the glass. He fumbled with his locked-up-from-hard-braking seat belt. She heard the man in the passenger seat say, ‘She’s got a screwdriver, Wrists. She’s got a screwdriver, watch out.’

  She pulled open the driver door. A horn honked and she ducked as a car screeched past just behind her and carried on into the night.

  Audrey shook in the cold. Four men got out of the van. Behind her a door shut and she turned to watch the truck driver climb down out of his cab, a barrel-big man in a work shirt and down-filled vest. He shielded his eyes against the van headlights.

  ‘She tried to stab me,’ he shouted over the noise of his idling engine.

  ‘I’m still going to stab you,’ shouted Audrey. She walked toward him. The man from the passenger side of the van ran around to get between them. Held his arms out, palms toward either of them.

  ‘Well, having parachuted in here devoid of context, it’s clear there’s a grievance that’s not settling of its own accord, and isn’t likely to be settled on the side of a highway in a blizzard either,’ he said. ‘I imagine a little time and space would put everybody back in their proper mood. Time and space off the road and out of the snow.’ He was tall and rail-thin and moved gingerly, each step and motion careful and planned to avoid strain. His voice projected out f
rom the bottom of his narrow chest with little effort and carried clearly over the engines and traffic and wind.

  ‘You’re welcome to her,’ said the truck driver. ‘I’d frisk her before you let her in that van though.’

  Audrey lunged and the van driver was in front of her with his arms spread. She juke-stepped; he made to block her and she kicked him in the shin.

  The truck driver climbed back up into his cab. ‘See you later, sweetie,’ he shouted. The engine revved and lurched into gear. The window rolled down and her canvas duffle bag, purse, and jacket flew out one after the other down onto the slushy asphalt.

  The thin man waited for the truck to slowly lurch back out onto the highway, then walked over and picked up Audrey’s things.

  ‘I got the plates,’ said one of the other men from the van. ‘We can phone it in. Make a proper complaint.’

  ‘He’s lucky this isn’t sticking out of his neck,’ said Audrey. She stepped back from them with the screwdriver at arm’s length, pointing from man to man.

  ‘Just take a few steps back this way,’ said the thin man with her belongings under his arm.

  ‘Out of his neck,’ said Audrey.

  ‘Just a few steps this way off the highway.’

  ‘Get the cellphone, we’ll call the RCMP. Before I forget the plate number.’

  ‘How about she starts by putting that thing away,’ said the van driver.

  ‘People are supposed to conduct themselves a certain way,’ she said.

  ‘Just put the – ’

  ‘Off the highway. Off the lane.’

  A car drove past, and the wind it made shook her at a violent angle. She felt paper thin, like she might blow and spin away. She stared at her hands ahead of her in the white van headlights: they shook and shook. Audrey, it is freezing cold, she told herself. The four men stared silently with their arms half outstretched, maybe to catch her if the wind blew her suddenly in their direction. All of their eyes wide and frightened.

  She pointed the screwdriver at the passenger-side thin man.

  ‘“Devoid of context”? Really? You need it spelled out?’

  ‘Just put that away,’ said the driver. ‘We’re all going to freeze out here, but you aren’t getting in the van pointing that thing at anyone.’

  ‘Anybody touches me, I don’t need a screwdriver to make him regret it. Got it? I will … I will …’

  ‘Absolutely.’

  ‘Loud and clear.’

  ‘I will make a bloody mess of you.’

  ‘Absolutely.’

  She looked back and forth at them. ‘Everybody else just picked me up and drove me as far as they could. I said I’m just looking for a ride and they said sure and drove me as far as they could. No trouble.’

  ‘We know,’ said the thin man. ‘Hey, sure, we know that.’

  ‘I got his plates, we’ll call him in. Bastard.’

  ‘Nobody wants to freeze in a blizzard. We’ve got a spare seat. We’ll take you as far as we can. What’s your name?’

  He held her bag and jacket out. She took them and dropped the screwdriver into the bag. She hugged her shaking arms around the fabric.

  ‘Audrey Cole.’

  ‘Audrey Cole, I’m Rodney Levermann,’ he said, and held out a hand to shake. ‘These are the Lever Men: Wrists McClung, Dick Move, and Hector Highwater. We’re on our way to Edmonton, and you can sit up front there.’

  ‘Those aren’t names,’ said Audrey.

  ‘Where we’re from they’re names. Come on, get in. Where are you headed?’

  ‘Edmonton.’

  ‘Well then, we’re all in it together. In the van, everybody, before a snowplow runs us down. Make room, everybody in.’

  §

  She was twenty years old and had been working up north as a crew driver, taking rig workers back and forth from the Moose Leg work lodge, before she ran away and met the Lever Men. At Moose Leg, the rig workers she drove around called her Easy Money.

  ‘Hey, Easy Money,’ they said to her in the morning, ‘why the long face?’

  ‘Why the red eyes, Easy Money? Late night?’

  ‘You want a late night you should come with us, Easy Money. We’ll show you a good time.’

  ‘Get in the truck,’ said Audrey Cole.

  The truck was an enormous white Chevy Suburban that sat warming up in the parking lot outside Moose Leg, exhaust rising behind it in the 5:00 a.m. murk of a winter morning. Audrey would start the truck and walk around it scraping frost off the windows while her crew stumbled out of the grey dormitories one after the other, a metal lunch box in one hand and a hard hat in the other, the untied laces of their workboots snapping on the gravel. They wore fluorescent green vests lined with reflective tape over the chests of their grey overalls. They coughed and spat on the ground and smoked their first cigarettes of the day. There might be six or seven of them on her route any given day squeezing into the three benches of the huge truck, and if any of them was more than five minutes late she would honk the horn exactly once.

  ‘Hey, Easy Money, Larry is still coming. Hold up a minute.’

  ‘Larry’s got a minute,’ Audrey would say, and watch the clock.

  ‘Don’t be such a hard-ass, Easy Money, give him a minute.’

  ‘That’s what I said,’ said Audrey, ‘one minute.’

  Every morning Audrey drove the full Suburban out of the parking lot and through the long warren of washboarded gravel roads toward one of the half-dozen drilling leases crewed out of Moose Leg. The roads were thick with the previous night’s untouched snow and layers of older ice, but the truck was new and huge and she carved through the weather easily enough. Each drilling lease was just a few acres of raw mud cut into the scrubby pine forest, spiked in the centre by a red-and-white-latticed derrick, maybe sitting straight up or maybe cocked at an angle, depending on how the geologists in Calgary had decided to best pierce the bedrock. She parked and the crew tumbled out, lit new cigarettes, and walked across the still-dark snow-packed ground to a company shed sitting up on cinder block feet for their morning safety meeting.

  Sometimes a supervisor in a heavy parka would ask for a ride to another lease, or maybe a company consultant in a white shirt and tie under his not-heavy-enough jacket would need a drive down to Cold Lake or back to Fort McMurray. Otherwise she’d wait in the idling truck, watch the riggers climb up into the shed, and if no one needed driving anywhere else she’d drive back to camp for breakfast.

  Later in the day she’d make other runs: take a surveyor out to a site circled on a map, or taxi an Edmonton safety inspector from one lease to another. Then, after the sun was down, she’d head back to gather her crew up, all of them groggy and surly after a twelve-hour shift, and bring them back. All of this at twenty dollars an hour. Easy money.

  §

  ‘Audrey, why?’ her father had asked, reading over the paperwork they’d given her to sign. ‘Why do you even want to do this?’

  She shrugged, sitting across the kitchen table in her parents’ house in Canmore. ‘You’ve been on me to go to school. “Go to school, Audrey,” you keep telling me. I can make some money and apply to one of those schools out east. I could go to Halifax or, what’s it called, the school in Montreal.’

  ‘McGill,’ he said.

  ‘Sure. It’s twenty bucks an hour, Dad. For driving around. I can spend some time up there and go to any school I want.’

  You should go to school, Audrey, they’d been telling her ever since she graduated from high school. Audrey was bussing tables in a hotel restaurant out by the highway. She walked around the big timber-framed restaurant with her grey bus bin picking up plates and glasses and empty beer bottles. The staff were all other twenty-year-olds, kids she’d grown up with, or Australians who worked summers so that they could ski all winter.

  She’d work Sunday brunches and a few weekday nights, and she and the other twenty-year-olds would hang around afterward, sitting at the bar, sipping highballs. Audrey wasn’t crazy about dri
nking – it made her stomach hurt and she didn’t like the flushed, buzzed feeling. She’d buy a highball or usually just a ginger ale and sit nursing it while the other staff got drunk and loud. They’d put on their jackets and head up the road to one of the other hotels, where other twenty-year-olds she’d grown up with worked, and they’d sit at that bar for a while doing more or less the same things.

  She did this for nearly a year, feeling more and more agitated.

  ‘It’s hard up there, Audrey,’ said her father. ‘The people are… It’s hard.’

  ‘They’ve got Human Resources and mandatory drug testing and they keep you so busy you can hardly get into trouble.’

  ‘It’s not that, kiddo, it’s…’

  ‘I’ll be two weeks up, one week back. They fly us in and out, Calgary to Fort McMurray. So I’ll be around. I’ll be out of your hair two weeks at a time. You’re always on me to get going with life. I’ll put some money away and I can get going anyway I like.’

  Her mother looked over the pamphlets and didn’t say anything. Brightly lit photographs of young men and women in hard hats against white backgrounds. ‘Building Canada’s Energy Future,’ said the pamphlet. She flipped through them, not really reading, and then set them down and looked at Audrey’s father.

  ‘It’s a dry camp,’ Audrey said. ‘No trouble to get into.’

  ‘Dry camp, with a curfew, all these rules – it’s like you’re signing up to go to prison.’

  ‘Two weeks on, one week off. You’ll hardly know I’m gone,’ said Audrey.

  She didn’t sign up for the two weeks on, one week off though. She checked the box for twenty-four days on, four days off, which was the longest rotation available. As long as you’re going up there, Audrey, she told herself, you might as well go up there. You know, stick it out for the long haul.

  §

  The first time she saw Moose Leg she just stood and stared. The van from the Fort McMurray airport dropped her off along with a half-dozen other workers, everyone stiff and groggy from the bumpy small-plane flight from Calgary, and then the long van ride. She stood with her big hiking backpack beside her on the icy gravel, full of everything she’d thought she’d need for a month-long stay. The camp was a warren of aluminium-sided trailers pushed together into a single complex, grey with yellow trim, snaking lines of low flat-roofed work sheds, white vapour puffing from sheet-metal chimneys. Everything sour-smelling from the propane heaters struggling to keep the complex warm. The pamphlet had said there were two hundred rooms. Audrey tried to imagine two hundred people living in those corrugated sheds. Eating and showering and sleeping in there all together. It seemed impossibly huge and not nearly big enough.