Shelter

by Frances Greenslade

  “Come on. Let’s walk faster,” he said.

  I laughed. “What’s that going to help?”

  “The faster we walk, the less drops can hit us.”

  “That’s not true. If anything, it’s just the opposite.”

  “Let’s just hurry,” he said.

  “You’re scared!”

  The thunder rumbled again, then exploded right overhead, shaking the ground. Vern screamed and started running down the road. I was laughing so hard I could barely keep up. His scream trailed behind him and as big drops of rain began to fall, he flailed his arms theatrically.

  “Whose idea was this anyway?” I shouted.

  “Who was too good to take our one and only ride?” Vern shouted back.

  “A little rain isn’t going to kill us.”

  “Maybe not. But I’m worried about getting hit by lightning.” Vern was loping along the road sideways now, in big scissor strides. “If we were in that car, we wouldn’t have to worry. Rubber tires.”

  “We wouldn’t have to worry because we’d be in the ditch! Nice and low.”

  I caught up to Vern and we slowed to a walk. The rain bucketing down chilled us through. Beyond the roadside all we could see was thick, murky blackness. We had no idea how far we were from any kind of shelter. If we could find a fir tree, with low drooping branches, it would be dry enough under there. And we could put some boughs on the ground to sit on, in case the rain ran in. But we’d have to worry about the lightning. I couldn’t see getting a fire going in this downpour. Right now a gas station or a restaurant sounded a lot more appealing. Vern and I walked closer and closer together till we were bumping elbows and apologizing repeatedly.

  The thunder was moving away from us when I heard another rumbling.

  “I think this time it’s a car,” I said.

  Sure enough, we could see the points of light, far away and blurred through the rain.

  “They won’t see us,” Vern said, but he flicked his flashlight on anyway and pointed it in that direction. It cut out, he shook it, it came back on, flickering wanly. The car came towards us slowly. Round headlights. High. A truck. It drove along cautiously. The flashlight cut out again and when Vern shook it, it wouldn’t come back on.

  “Great,” he said.

  “It’s a truck,” I said out loud. We waved our arms as it came closer.

  “Ford,” said Vern. “That’s Uncle Leslie’s truck.”

  “Oh.” As it pulled up beside us, I asked him, “Are you in trouble?”

  Vern laughed.

  Uncle Leslie leaned over and rolled down the steaming passenger window. “Well, if it isn’t two drowned rats.”

  I looked at Vern. I was secretly overjoyed to see Uncle Leslie. Vern pulled open the door.

  “Want to sit in the middle?” he asked me.

  “Sure, okay,” I said, trying to keep the enthusiasm out of my voice.

  “I better turn some heat on, eh?” said Uncle Leslie. “You two are about as wet as you can get. I’m going to have to wring my truck out tomorrow.”

  Vern slammed the door and we were inside. The heat was blowing and the radio played “Heartaches by the Number.” A big shiver overtook me.

  Uncle Leslie shook his head, back and forth, as he made a wide U-turn on the road.

  “Anytime you want to go to Nistsun Lake, I’ll take you. But not tonight.” Then he said to me, “Beatrice called. Well, first your sister did, then Bea got on the line. She’s not too happy with you.” He laughed. “That there is what you call an understatement.”

  I nodded, but didn’t say anything. I just wanted to ride along in the truck, the wipers slicing the rain across the windshield, fiddle on the radio moaning in time.

  We drove east, the rain still coming down hard, back to Williams Lake.

  Uncle Leslie pulled up in front of his trailer. A yellow bug light burned outside. He said to me, “I have a little piece of advice for you. Gained over years of experience. Phone home and tell Bea you’re safe and you’re going to camp out on the couch here tonight. I’ll take you home in the morning. She’ll still be mad tomorrow, but not like she is tonight.”

  He held his hand on the key in the ignition and looked at me.

  “Thanks,” I said and smiled. He switched off the truck and killed the lights.

  “Okay, let’s go find some towels.”

  I dripped a puddle on the kitchen linoleum as I made the phone call. Jenny answered.

  “Mag, you’re dead,” she said simply.

  “Don’t exaggerate,” I said.

  “No, Bea, I told you! Put that butcher knife away! What did you say, Maggie?”

  “Jenny, tell her I’m going to stay at Vern’s. His uncle will bring me home in the morning.”

  “You don’t want to talk to her?” Jenny asked sweetly.

  “No.”

  “Well, she doesn’t want to talk to you either. She’s too busy sharpening her axe.” I heard Bea say something in the background. I couldn’t help smiling. I knew this was Jenny’s way of telling me it was okay.

  “You’re crazy,” I told her. That was my way of thanking her.

  It was dim in the trailer, just a warm orange glow cast from the coloured globes of a pole lamp by the couch. I found a rag under the sink and wiped up the puddle I had made. Uncle Leslie handed me a fluffy yellow towel, a pair of Vern’s jeans, a soft flannel shirt and wool socks.

  “You can use the bathroom,” he said.

  In the bathroom, I stripped off my clothes and rubbed my chilled body with the towel. I could feel the welcome heat returning, more intense the way it is after you’ve been wet and cold. I rubbed my hair and put on the warm, dry clothes. In the living room, Vern sat wringing out his skinny, wet braid. Uncle Leslie brought us hot chocolate studded with mini marshmallows. We all gazed through the window of the woodstove at the crackling fire inside. I suppose that our night had been ruined, our adventure scuttled, and maybe Vern was angry, but he didn’t look it. He blew on his hot chocolate and took a sip. I thought that I would have to keep it secret that this had been the perfect end to a perfect day and I hadn’t felt so happy in a long, long time.

  Uncle Leslie spoke calmly. “It’s hard not to have your mother with you. That’s the way it is with some families. Lots of different reasons. It’s not easy for you. A father gone, that’s different. We learn to live with that. But your mother, that’s a kind of ache that won’t go away. I know how that is.”

  He sipped his hot chocolate. “You have to be strong for yourself. Talk to her in your mind. Tell her how you feel. Don’t think it’s because of something you did. It never is.”

  Vern and I both watched the fire and sipped our hot chocolate. The silence was not awkward. After a while, Uncle Leslie said, “Get many rides?”

  “The only one who stopped, Maggie turned down.”

  “Why was that?”

  “The guy was drunk,” I said. “I wasn’t getting in that car.”

  “Good for you! Good for you!”

  “She said, ‘I’d rather walk.’ So polite, right to his face.” Vern tossed his head back and laughed.

  “You’ll go far, Maggie,” Uncle Leslie said, draining the last of his hot chocolate and getting up. I wasn’t sure what he meant, but his words stayed with me and I would summon them sometimes, later, when I felt the need of them.

  We did go to visit Vern’s mother, Jolene. It was in May, about a month after our hitchhiking fiasco. Vern invited me to go along, one night when I was at his place for supper and we were doing dishes afterward.

  “We’re going to Nistsun Lake next weekend,” he said. “Do you want to come?”

  “To see your mom?”

  “You’d like her. She’s nice.”

  “I’ll have to trade shifts with someone.”

  “And make sure Beatrice says it’s okay,” Uncle Leslie said, coming into the kitchen.

  We headed out on a sunny Saturday morning. At Duchess Creek Uncle Leslie said, “Your old stom
ping grounds, eh Maggie? We’ll stop and get some cold drinks here.”

  “Maggie Dillon,” Uncle Leslie said to the man behind the counter as he handed me my Orange Crush. “She used to live in Duchess Creek.”

  “That right?” said the man. “Me and my wife just bought the place. We lived in Quesnel before this.”

  We got back in the truck and we drove right by the driveway of our old house. The yard looked overgrown and deserted.

  “Do you know where Kleena Kleene is?” I asked.

  “It’s about two hours up the road. But there isn’t much to it. I’ll point it out to you.”

  Later, when Uncle Leslie slowed and said, “That’s Kleena Kleene,” all I saw was an old log house close to the road with a post office sign on the wall. There were no more houses, just rail fence stretching all along the gravel road, beyond that the forest, then mountains. I wanted to say something to Uncle Leslie, but I was embarrassed. How could I not know where my own mother was? It seemed to me that the adults we knew kept quiet because they understood something that Jenny and I didn’t want to admit—that Mom didn’t want to be found.

  When we got to Vern’s mother’s house on the reserve, she opened the door and pulled Vern to her.

  “Hey,” she said, rocking him back and forth in her arms. She looked at Uncle Leslie and me over Vern’s shoulder and smiled, but I could see her eyes tearing up. “You’ve got a braid,” she said, touching it gently. “You’re getting so big. You’re as big as me already.”

  Actually, he was bigger. Jolene was a small, delicate woman and young, younger than my mother. Everything about her was slim and compact, like a doll. As she hugged Vern, I noticed her slender fingers and her perfect fingernails, painted a rosy pink. When she released him, I saw her face—small, heart-shaped with skin as smooth as cream. Her black hair was cut in a pixie style and her eyebrows were perfectly arched and thin. She wore frosted pink lipstick to match her nails and a pink and white gingham blouse, tied at the waist above slim white jeans.

  Jenny would have loved the look of Jolene. Even her feet. Dainty little bare feet in open-toe pink slippers. I was in my navy blue and black flannel jacket, patched Lee jeans and dirty runners.

  Jolene ushered us in. I started to take off my runners.

  “Oh, no! Don’t worry about that,” she said. “Your feet’ll be black. This place gets like Grand Central Station.”

  Vern and I sat on the couch as Jolene poured coffee for Uncle Leslie. A man came out from one of the bedrooms. He was a big white man, over six feet and muscular, wearing a tight black muscle shirt with faded print on the front that read Jim’s Towing above a picture of a cartoon woman wearing a bikini.

  “Lester!” he boomed.

  “Jim,” Uncle Leslie acknowledged. I could tell right away he didn’t like the man.

  “Coffee?” Jim scoffed. “It’s four o’clock in the goddamn afternoon. Way past Miller time.”

  “Watch your language,” Jolene said pertly and gestured towards Vern and me.

  “What’d I say? Christ! I gotta watch my language in my own house now?”

  Jolene carried a tray over and set it in front of Vern and me—on it were pickles and buns with salted meat in them. Vern’s leg bounced in impatience. Then his cousins came in and crowded around the couch.

  “Come and see my car,” one of them said.

  We all tramped across the reserve to the edge of the bush where a car sat on several stout logs. Three girls joined us, one about my age and the other two younger. Sharman, the owner, pulled off a canvas tarp. The Beaumont was sleek and gold. It had no tires and no roof, so it gave the illusion of a boat, waiting for the water to rise. Sharman climbed in behind the wheel. “You two get in the front,” he said to Vern and me. Everyone else climbed in the back or perched on the hood.

  “It’s going to be cool when it’s done. Look at the upholstery. It’s like factory,” Sharman said.

  “Cool,” said Vern. “Where’d you get it?”

  “Guy over at Redstone.”

  We relaxed into the car, the afternoon sun heating us. I leaned my head back against the seat and closed my eyes. A dog barked and some kids shouted and voices murmured in the car. I wondered why Vern didn’t live here. He’d never told me the reason. His mother seemed nice and she lived in a house with two or three bedrooms.

  A boy named Lawrence, Sharman’s younger brother, said, “We have to come back tonight when it’s dark and see if we can see the ghost.”

  “What ghost?” said Vern.

  “Don’t you know about the ghost?” said Lawrence. “Man, you’ve been away too long.”

  “Tell him about the ghost,” said Sharman, and some of the other kids said, “Yeah, tell the story.”

  “I don’t like that story,” said the littlest one and one of the girls said, “Don’t worry, Normie. I won’t let it get you.”

  “My uncle told me about this story,” Lawrence began. “It happened before I was born. Not too long before, though. Lots of people on the reserve still remember. There was these two brothers. One was real handsome—tall, slim, muscular. He wore a white silk scarf tied at his neck and a cowboy hat. Had cheekbones like a woman. He was a charmer, could tell jokes that’d make anybody forget the bad stuff they were worried about. All the women loved him. His name was Louis.

  “His brother, Henry, was pretty much the opposite, kind of a porky fella, but good hearted and real quiet, real shy. He played guitar like some kind of Spanish angel. People say when Henry played, the animals all stopped what they were doing, moose held their heads up listening, owls stopped hooting and eagles lost the field mice they were hunting and everything just stood still. Which is all well and good but he couldn’t do much else. He wasn’t no hunter and he wasn’t no cowboy either. And of course Louis was both. And a logger. Louis excelled at any kind of physical work you could throw his way. He was the best rider, never broke a bone, and he was a crack shot. He could bag a deer with a .22, just perfect aim and pow, down. Louis was the kind of guy that women wanted for a husband.”

  “I don’t like the next part,” little Normie said.

  “Shhh.”

  “Sit still. Quit rocking the car!”

  “Now, Louis had a girlfriend,” Lawrence resumed. “The prettiest girl this side of Williams Lake, and probably all the other sides, too. I never saw her, but I heard she had lo-ng hair as black as a raven’s wing, right to her ass.” Everyone laughed. “And her eyes sparkled like summer stars and she had a step as light as a fawn. Her name was Etoile, which, in case you don’t know, means star in French. They say her mother was a Métis from the Prairies and she gave her that pretty name the moment she saw her sparkling eyes. Etoile and Louis weren’t exactly married but they lived together like husband and wife in Louis’s little cabin in the bush. It was just over there. If you walk in about half a mile, you can find the stone foundation in the grass. The stones have been blackened by fire, but that comes later.”

  “No! Don’t tell that part!” wailed Normie.

  “That comes later, Normie. You can plug your ears.”

  “Tell me when it’s coming, okay?”

  “Shh!”

  “Louis left Etoile alone for long stretches when he went off to work. He loved her, there’s no doubt about that. But he couldn’t stay put for long. He liked to be off, being praised for climbing the tallest spar-tree, or rounding up the most wild horses, or guiding tourists on the best bear hunt. That was Louis. So Etoile stayed alone and sometimes when Henry had nowhere else to go, he visited with her and he played that angelic Spanish guitar. That didn’t bother Louis any. He was glad Etoile had the company.

  “One winter when the snow was deeper than this car, deeper than the roof of that house over there, and Louis was out looking for horses to bring back to someone’s ranch, Henry put on some snowshoes and strapped on his guitar and hiked out to see how Etoile was getting on. That was hard going, seeing’s how he was kind of porky, as I said. But he worried about her,
maybe the way Louis should have. They say Henry had to dig down in the snow to get to Etoile’s door. She was okay in there. She’d bagged herself a deer and she had a good stew going on the stove, though her woodpile was getting low.

  “Some people say that Etoile fell in love with Henry, plain and simple, even though he was kinda porky and couldn’t hunt worth a damn. Some say that that night while he played his guitar, the northern lights came down and touched that little cabin and enchanted the two of them. That cabin wasn’t very big. They ate the deer stew and Henry played by the fire and the wind raged outside and jack pines in the woods split like thunder in that cold winter night. You can imagine what else happened,” said Lawrence, and everyone laughed again.

  “The next day, Louis came through that deep snow on a half-wild cayuse and dug down through the snow to get to the door, a little worried since he hadn’t been home in over three weeks. Henry and Etoile didn’t hear a thing. They were still sleeping off their night and when Louis pushed in the door he found them in bed, in each other’s arms.

  “Nobody knows exactly what was said and who said it. But Etoile gathered up her things and got on the half-wild cayuse and rode away and nobody ever saw either her or the horse again. As for the brothers, Louis opened up the first bottle in the case of whisky he’d brought home and they drank that. By the time they reached the bottom of that bottle, Louis was laughing a little. And halfway through the second bottle, he said, ‘What the hell!’ But by the third both Louis and Henry were in tears and they cried and cried that they’d lost the best girl this side of Williams Lake.

  “They slept a couple of days, didn’t eat at all. And they began to drink again. Everything outside was as still as death, the storm over, the snow settling heavy in the woods. Something evil crept into that cabin. When Henry passed out, Louis eyed him and fingered his hunting knife and thought about how he’d do it, how he’d pierce that fat flesh and find a vein to open. Then he shook himself and took another drink and when he passed out, Henry woke up and watched his brother and hated every slick thing about him, every curve of his muscles, every long black eyelash, each strong-boned finger. He eyed Louis’s rifle and thought about where he’d bury him. That night, blind drunk, hate as thick as greenwood smoke filling up the cabin, the brothers made a pact.”