Jess and the Runaway Grandpa

by Mary Woodbury

  Man and boy shielding their eyes, they focused on the back of the island where the pile of driftwood balanced like a giant game of pick-up sticks. Sure enough, there was some hunk of lime-green neon fabric caught on one of those logs.

  “It’s a funny place to leave your bathing suit,” Dad laughed.

  “Doesn’t look like a swimsuit. Looks like a backpack or something.” Brian scratched the top of his head, squinted, tried to see what the thing was. It puzzled him. A roll of thunder echoed in the distance. The cold front that made a whole line of clouds across the sky blocked out the last vestige of the sun.

  “I think it’s time we went to town, met Ruth and Naomi, and caught up on the progress of the others. There’s nothing more we can do here. I don’t like the look of that sky.” Brian’s dad led the way to the four-by-four.

  “We just got here,” Brian protested.

  He kept dragging his feet, staring over his shoulder, back towards the river and the shrinking view of the island with its splash of colour draped on the bleached and battered logs. He shivered. He tiptoed around the schoolhouse, not wanting to disturb its ghosts, and stared up at the tall spruce by the front door. Then he walked slowly towards the car. Something bright and out of place caught his eye. It was orange and wet from rain, looked like it had fallen off a low willow branch. Brian picked the soggy wool thing up.

  “It’s one of Jess’s flashy cool-down socks, Dad.” Brian shouted. “She’s been here.”

  Sonny Dille hurried back to the spot where Brian was standing, holding the soggy sock.

  Brian stared around, swept the landscape with his eyes. He could see no other signs of human life. “Finally, a clue. But where did they go from here? Where’s the van? Where are Jess and Ernie?” Brian squeezed his eyes shut, trying to block the scary thoughts that leapt into his mind.

  “We’ve got to go back to town!” Brian shouted. “Report what we’ve seen.”

  “We need a full-fledged search out here.”

  Brian’s dad ran to the car and grabbed his cellphone. “Give me the RCMP please. We’ve got some information.”

  Why, oh, why did she go with him?” Naomi sat beside Brian in the café of the Landis Hotel. Sonny and Ruth sat across from them. She was folding and unfolding the damp and grimy orange sock, staring at it as if it might give her some answers. A TV crew was having mid-afternoon coffee across the room. A group of Venturers, Scouts, and Junior Forest Rangers was getting briefed in the lobby.

  The cellphone was lying on the centre of the table. Not one of the family and friends looked like they had slept for days, even though it had only been yesterday morning when Ernie had taken the van.

  “I would have done the same thing,” Brian said. “If I had seen Ernie leaving in the van. We know he’s not supposed to drive.”

  ”But why didn’t she get help?” Naomi’s high-pitched voice had developed a raspy quality. Black circles ringed her eyes. She shoved the sock into a plastic bag. Then Naomi began picking at her french fries, shoving them around the plate, tracing patterns in the ketchup, not eating them. “I would have come home. I could have stopped him.”

  Ruth took Naomi’s hand in hers. The old woman’s hands were shaking, like the trembling aspens by the schoolhouse, Brian thought.

  “It’s not your fault,” Ruth said. “I was the one who left the house, thinking Ernie was asleep. You and I thought we had hidden the keys well enough. Both of us have been trying to protect Jess and Ernie. It didn’t work. The important thing is to find them now. I feel so useless. I want to go looking. I can’t stand doing nothing. I know the RCMP think it’s better to have the family stay in one place – in case Ernie comes to his senses and tries to contact me – but staying at my brother’s house has been really difficult. He and his wife and their kids all look like it’s a funeral. I can’t give up hope. It’s not my style.”

  “They both know the woods. I don’t think Ernie has forgotten that yet.” Naomi pushed away her plate. “I’m with you, Ruth, I don’t want to sit and wait any longer. I want to go looking. Especially now that Brian has found out where they’ve been.”

  The waitress brought a fresh round of coffee. Brian ordered another soft drink. Some part of the puzzle was out of place. He couldn’t analyze what it was. That must be the way Ernie felt all the time, like someone had mixed everything up while he wasn’t looking.

  The phone on the table rang, Sonny picked it up. It was Mark Saunders.

  “They’re calling the searchers, telling them to take shelter. There’s another storm on its way. Holly and I are taking a TV crew out to the old schoolhouse to show them where Ernie taught, show them the river where he used to fish.”

  Brian’s dad relayed the whole message word for word.

  “Wait a minute!” Brian shouted. “What colour was Jess’s sports bag? Neon green and black, right?” He banged his forehead with the flat of his hand. Stupid!

  The whole of his insides knotted into one mass of fear. Jess’s sports bag caught on a piece of driftwood in the middle of a roaring river. Her sock dropped by the schoolhouse. Where was Jess? She never went anywhere without that heavy bag. In the wilderness it really would be a survival kit, and she’d be lost without it. Lost or drowned. He didn’t dare say what he thought out loud. As it was, Grandma Ruth and Naomi were staring at him.

  “Brian, you look like you’ve seen a ghost. Are you all right?” Ruth put her hand on his arm. “What about Jess’s sports bag?”

  “Nothing, it’s nothing,” Brian pulled away, afraid for all of them. “We should go back to the schoolhouse though. They’ve got to be out there, somewhere close by. I feel it in my bones.” Brian willed Jess and Ernie to be all right.

  Ruth sighed. “Ernie and I danced the polka at the community dance in that school over fifty years ago. We danced up a storm.”

  “Too bad we couldn’t dance away this storm. Jess and Ernie are out in it somewhere,” Naomi groaned. “We’ll go with you, if that’s all right, Sonny. Sitting around gives me a headache.”

  Ruth and Naomi went to the washroom before paying the bill. Brian ran for the car. His dad caught up to him.

  “What’s up, Brian?”

  “No way would Jess Baines be separated from her sports bag, and that was her sports bag caught on the driftwood in the middle of the Athabasca River, I’m sure of it.”

  “How would it get out there in the middle of the river?” Sonny asked.

  “Am I awfulizing, Dad? I’m afraid they might have drowned.” Brian’s head throbbed.

  “Always think of three options, Brian.” Sonny polished the mirror on the passenger side of the car three times as he talked. Brian knew he was trying to calm down. Maybe he was trying to calm both of them down too. “Don’t move to the negative so fast. She could have lost the sports bag. It could have fallen in the river.”

  “I don’t want to tell Naomi or Ruth,” Brian whispered as the two women came out of the café. “I usually blurt everything out first thing. I don’t want to do that. Not this time.” Suddenly he remembered himself and Ernie and Jess out in the middle of Baptiste Lake. Brian had dropped his fishing pole overboard. Seeing as it was a bright August day, Ernie had dived in to rescue it. “We’ll not tell the wimmen folk, eh?” he’d said. “They wouldn’t approve of me swimming out here with no other grownups around. No need to worry them with silly stuff.” Brian’s eyes smarted with hot tears. Please, let Jess and Ernie be all right.

  Chapter 23 – Jess Makes a Tough Decision

  Jess and Ernie huddled on the beach in the shelter of the small cliff. It was the middle of Saturday afternoon. She and Ernie had eaten the tin of beans for lunch, but there hadn’t been any buns left. Now she was hungry again.

  The rain had started as a fine drizzle. Wind blew the tops of the trees back and forth like palm fronds in a breeze. The air had turned cold, the sky dark. Thunder echoed across the river. Jess watched the river, the rain pouncing, bouncing on its surface. The ancient, dark, and mysterious
river. It loomed before her, filling the landscape. She felt as if it surged through her, tumbled her like a rock. Now it was the rain’s turn to do that.

  “The rain will put out the fire.” Ernie said. “Reminds me of the time we camped out in the rain all one weekend, never caught a fish, only caught a cold.”

  “That wasn’t me.”

  “Pete and I camped out. Pete’s a good camper. You’d like my brother Pete. He’ll come, Pete will.”

  “I’d welcome anyone right now,” Jess sighed. “I’ve lost my bag to the bear, twisted my ankle under a log, and now it’s swollen and hurts like blazes. I’m cold and hungry and it’s raining.” Jess turned her face away so Ernie couldn’t see the tears streaking her grubby face. The view downriver through her wet lashes was depressing. Brown waves swirled, a deep mist filled the valley, driving rain pelted the raving torrent. The rain bounced on the river like pennies on cement, a million splashes per second. Whitecaps formed on the glacier-fed river.

  Suddenly the rain turned to white pellets pinging and banging on the ground, bouncing on the surface of everything, smashing tender leaves and shoots. Fresh spring growth fell and early rose petals were beaten to shreds by the hail. Piles of hailstones as big as peas mounded at the base of trees. The crash of a giant elm made the ground beneath Jess shake. The tops of the skinny poplars bent and twirled like maniacal dancers. The air filled with the violent sounds of cracking branches, falling trees, smashing waves. This was no ordinary storm. It was chaos. Ernie and Jess shivered under their soaking blankets, hid their faces on their bent knees to keep the hail away. A tree on the other side of the river twisted like a licorice swirl and plopped into the river. Rocks fell from the cliff and then disappeared in the raging current.

  “Stop this infernal racket!” Ernie shouted into the wind. He coughed and spluttered. He flung his head up. His face was covered with rain and dirt. His eyes flashed in anger. “It’s enough I can’t remember where I am. I don’t need the devil turning my universe into a disaster area.”

  Jess’s teeth chattered. It was a cinch the search parties wouldn’t be out in this. Sitting here at the bottom of a steep river valley, beside a crazy river that used to be a highway to everywhere and now was a wilderness wracked by storm, Jess felt trapped. Ernie had folded his hands. His red-rimmed eyes had a faraway look. His nose was running. He coughed.

  Time was running out. They had no food. Ernie was sick. He could die of pneumonia. She had come with Ernie, she was responsible for him. Her job was to keep him safe. She didn’t have the security blanket of her bag, she didn’t have the use of her feet, what with the swollen ankle. She did have the use of her brain. She would have to think her way out of this.

  She leaned across and stroked Ernie’s arm. The tears that ran down her cheeks now, mingling with the cold rain as the storm passed, were tears of sorrow, tears for Ernie and for herself. It was one thing not having the security of familiar things like her bag, it was something else not having the physical strength to use all your limbs. She shook her head to forget the pain in her ankle. It must be worse for Ernie, losing the ability to think, to recognize the familiar. What would it be like to lose your memories in a fog? Would it be like having everything you knew or remembered bob to the surface like so many broken branches on a wide river and then disappear around the next curve? It would be better to die, or to cross the bridge to the world of the really sick who didn’t remember that they didn’t remember, to the land of the truly unconscious, like Mabel Teasdale.

  While she sat there shivering, hugging her knees, staring at the river rolling by, the storm passed as fast as it had come. The sky to the north cleared. The old man mopped his face with a wet sleeve. She and Ernie had weathered a second big blow and come through. Knowing Alberta, there would be another one tomorrow. She had had enough. She had to make a move.

  Jess looked around her, up the hill towards their campsite. The fire was dead out, a big puddle formed around some black charred logs. The lean-to had collapsed. The camper was a forlorn hulk.

  “I want to go home,” Ernie said emphatically. “I’m hungry.”

  “Me too,” Jess pulled herself up by her good side. She grabbed the walking stick she had peeled with her Swiss Army knife and forced herself to walk, picking a path through the rocks, mud and thick grasses to where she had stored the boat. She leaned on the black poplar tree, held on to its rough wet bark as a support, untied and lowered the boat. It took her ages. Everything she did took twice as long as she thought it should. Her foot ached.

  “I’ve decided we can’t wait to be rescued, Ernie,” she said out loud, even though she was pretty sure he couldn’t hear her, didn’t know who she was right now. She talked to him anyway. “As soon as the river calms down a bit and we’re sure the storm has really gone for good, we’ll float down to Landis.” Saying it out loud would mean she had to do this. She glared at the river as if it was a bully she had to put in its place. Her nightmare rose in her imagination like a ghost in a haunted house. A chill ran along her backbone.

  She rubbed her forehead with her hand. Her brow was damp. Ernie’s face was flushed. Another day out here could be dangerous for him… she didn’t dare say the real word, “fatal.” She was struggling in her mind with several problems. Old Ernie would have said, “If you get lost, stay put. Don’t move. Let searchers find you. Light a fire.” Old Ernie would have worried about the river after a storm, the strength of the boat, the speed of the current, the length of the journey.

  Did she have any other options? She couldn’t walk out, not with this ankle. She was afraid staying put would be too hard on Ernie. They had no food or dry clothes. Even the option of lighting a large signal fire was a foolish hope with the wet wood and her sore foot and damaged knee. The steady pain made her feel sick to her stomach. No, her only real chance was the river.

  The river, the eternal rushing river. She didn’t know whether to trust the two of them to it or not. If only Ernie could help her make up her mind. But he was too sick.

  She was scared – scared to go, scared to stay. It could go badly either way. Her mom called it being caught between a rock and a hard place.

  She spoke out loud to Ernie again. “The searchers are probably looking at the lakes where you used to fish. They wouldn’t think of the river. If what you said is right, this should take us floating back to town before nightfall, to the town dock, or the camping spot by the river where we sometimes parked. We could sleep in a real bed tonight.”

  Her foot throbbed. She chewed the corner of her lip as she hauled the boat to the edge of the river. She shivered from cold and her stomach rumbled. She licked drops of water off her chin. She really should give Ernie a drink. He could get dehydrated. She scooped up river water with a tin cup from the old camping set and took it to him. “I don’t think one cup of river water will hurt you.”

  He held the cup in both hands and slurped like a baby. “Thank you very much, young lady.” Jess pulled her comb out of her pocket and combed the silky white hair away from his eyes, zipped the soggy golf jacket up as if it would protect him.

  She pulled the last two granola bars out of her back pocket. They were damp and flattened. She unwrapped them with a little flourish, sat down beside Ernie and passed him one. “Here, this may be the last bit of food for quite a while,” she said softly. Thank goodness for those beans she’d found and heated in the frying pan for lunch a couple of hours ago. She needed the strength food energy would give her for paddling.

  They sat in silence munching, while Jess waited for the last of the wind to die down, waited for the courage to do what had to be done.

  She closed her eyes and hoped she’d made the right decision. She had to trust the boat and the river to carry them to safety, to carry them home.

  “Ernie, you’ll have to help put the boat in the water. I can’t do it alone.” Jess handed him the cane. She limped to the edge of the river, wading into the water, tugging the boat beside her, turned to see Ernie ey
eing the boat suspiciously. He was such a small man, looked like a strong wind would blow him over. What if they didn’t make it?

  She strained to keep the boat parallel with the shore long enough to coax Ernie into the front.

  “My brother Pete and I entered the annual canoe race from Mirror Lake to Landis one year. We had a good sturdy canoe, not like this. This isn’t a canoe,” Ernie said, as he tried to climb into the front of the boat without either falling or capsizing the craft. He dropped the cane. Jess leaned on her good leg and supported him as he dropped into the boat. She pulled him up by his thin shoulders so he was sitting upright. Ernie kept talking about the canoe race, as if the words he spoke were easing his worry, as if this scrap of memory was a protection against the fear that hovered over the two of them. “That was before Pete went away. We didn’t win, but we had a great time. Is this a race?”

  Jess nodded her head as she fell into the back of the boat with a groan. She pushed off from the rocky shore, the rocky beach, the sandy cliff, and the wild and lonely woods above. The boat had begun to move into the current, away from their tiny beach.

  What a strange journey. They’d always used this boat on calm lakes. Never on a rushing river. It was like sitting on a sponge. The vinyl sides folded around them, the water raced beneath them. What if they capsized? She should have put on a life jacket. What a dumb kid. She hauled the two life jackets she’d collapsed onto out from under her bottom, passed one to Ernie. He tried to drop it over his head with his good right hand. Every move either of them made rocked the boat, but somehow Jess got the jackets on. She remembered a roller coaster ride when her stomach lurched and her heart raced like this.

  A blue heron took off smoothly as they moved with the current down the east bank of the river. Oh, how she envied him his wings.

  Jess paddled just enough to get them into the fastest part of the current and keep them away from the rocks. Floating logs worried her. The storm was over, but debris had fallen in the river. Trees lined the banks; a steep, sheer cliff appeared on the east side. Jess’s heart skipped a beat thinking about what would have happened if the van had gone over the edge there instead of where it did. Up ahead small islands dotted the middle of the river. Jess handed Ernie the tin cup, “Bail, will you, Ernie. Water’s getting into the boat.”