Almost Eden

by Anita Horrocks

  Singing–a German hymn–leaked out of the MB church as I pedaled by It made me feel small and alone, to be out here when everyone else was in there. Jillian might have come with if I’d asked her. I’d almost called her last night. Only she hadn’t called me once since going away with Sadie.

  I pedaled a bit farther past the church and left the singing behind.

  Ten minutes later, I was at the highway north of town. The traffic was pretty steady here because it was the main highway to Winnipeg and Steinbach and the Pembina Hills and the States even–pretty much anywhere a person wanted to go. I had to wait a long time to cross.

  Then I had to decide whether to follow the highway west for a bit, or head straight north. West would take me to the Three-mile Corner, and from there another highway went north to the Bible camp. Uncle Abe had said Nickel Enns lived north and west of town past the Bible camp. If I was right, Tommy could be wandering anywhere between here and there. I couldn’t very well ride my bike cross-country, except for some places where there were farmer roads between the fields. But I could follow the gravel section roads, up one mile, one mile over, up a mile, over a mile, until either I found Tommy or else it was time to head home.

  Who knows? Maybe I’d get lucky, I kept telling myself. Only even while I was telling myself, my heart was sliding into my running shoes. I knew this whole idea was pretty lame, but I didn’t give a care. Besides which, I didn’t have any other ideas, good or bad.

  I decided to head north on the gravel road, because there wasn’t much traffic, and anyways, Tommy wasn’t going to follow the highways.

  Almost right away trouble caught up to me. I’d hardly got started, when I heard someone shouting my name. I looked behind me and nearly wiped out.

  There was Lena, pedaling like crazy toward the highway, waving and yelling at me. “Elsie! Wait up once!”

  Holy Moses. I turned around and raced back, shouting, “Stay there!”

  Of course the dummkopp never listened.

  “I want to go with!” She started across the highway, not stopping even to check if there was any traffic. Like the semi headed toward town at fall speed was invisible.

  “LOOK OUT!” I screamed. My heart practically leaped across the road to tackle her. The semi’s horn blasted. Lena plowed on the brakes and the semi roared by, belting me with hot wind and bits of gravel that stung my bare arms and legs. I turned my head, closing my eyes.

  Then the truck was gone, and when I looked again there was Lena standing on the other side, still in one piece even if she had gone white as a sheet. Holy Moses.

  If I didn’t do something quick my little sister was going to get smucked like a gopher. “Don’t move until I tell you!” I yelled across the road. Soon there was a break in traffic and then Lena was safe and sound beside me.

  Now what was I supposed to do? Either I dragged her along or I had to give up before I even got started. So it goes always.

  You bet she knew it, too. “I’ll go by myself if you don’t let me come with. I want to look for Tommy too.”

  “How did you know I was going to look for Tommy?”

  “I’m not stupid. You were wearing running shoes this morning.” Lena’s eyes flashed with triumph. “You never wear shoes in summer if you don’t have to.”

  We both looked at the clunky high-tops on Lena’s feet. She was wearing my beat-up old runners instead of the white buckle sandals she usually wore to church with her little blue sundress. Uy uy uy.

  “My runners are too small,” she said.

  That little bay del had only pretended to go to Sunday School. Instead she’d snuck through the church basement and out the back door that we use for choir practice. Then she ran home and followed me. She had more guts than I did, that was for sure. Only thing was, now Dad and Beth would know something was up right away when Sunday School was over already.

  I tried not to think about how much trouble we were going to be in when we got home.

  “It’s your funeral if you get sunburned.” I took off my hat and plopped it on her head. “You wear that, and you do what I tell you. Got it?”

  “Got it,” she grinned.

  The going was slower than I’d thought it would be. Partly because of Lena, but also partly because it was hard to pedal through the loose gravel. Even when we tried to stick to the hard-packed places we still had to ride close enough to the ditch to check if there was any sign of Tommy.

  Every once in a while someone would drive by, and then I’d herd Lena over to the side of the road until the clouds of dust kicked up by the car or truck settled down again. At least the day wasn’t scorching, not yet anyways. It was sunny, but there were a few clouds to cool things off once in a while. As long as we kept pedaling the breeze felt cool.

  Except for when a car passed, it was kind of nice being out there on the country roads. The fields of grain and rapeseed smelled good–earthy and sun ripe and just a bit sweet mixed all up with the perfume of fresh cut alfalfa and wildflowers growing in the ditches.

  Meadowlarks sitting on fence posts sang out all happy and bright. Every so often Lena would call out Tommy’s name. But except for Lena and the birds, pretty much the only sounds were the crunch of our bike tires on the road and the click-whir of grasshoppers jumping out of our way.

  One time we rode up the crest of a hill and we both stopped. Flowing out from the sides of the road ahead was a blue, blue ocean of flax. The breeze made the flax move like waves, lapping at the road. Riding between the fields felt almost like we were with Moses, walking through the Red Sea, on our way to the promised land.

  We turned west at the first section road, and then north again at the next.

  “Lookit,” Lena pointed. A little ways ahead a hawk was hovering over the summer fallow. All of a sudden it dropped to the ground, feet first. It lifted off again with a mouse in its claws.

  Then we pedaled past a porcupine waddling along the side of the road. When we got too close it disappeared, slipping into the tall grass in the ditch. I knew it was there but I couldn’t see it. Spotting Tommy in that grass was pretty much hopeless. The only reason I kept going was pure stubbornness. I wasn’t going to give up, at least not without trying. We had to find Tommy, that’s all there was to it. I couldn’t stand to think of the look on Mom’s face if she came home and he wasn’t there.

  And then I heard a truck coming up behind, so I told Lena to move over to the side again. The truck was going pretty slow when it passed, and crowding so close that we both hit the ditch. Even after it went by and we pushed our bikes back on the road again the truck was driving still slower yet, staying a little ways ahead of us.

  That truck gave me the creeps. It looked familiar but I couldn’t think why. “Let’s stop for a minute,” I said.

  “I’m thirsty.” Lena licked her dry lips. Even with Mom’s hat on, her face was getting red.

  I dug out my water, all the time watching the truck. But then it sped up again when another car passed, so that was all right, and it was just my imagination running away on me.

  Lena was guzzling so much water I had to snatch it away from her. I swallowed a few mouthfuls. The jug was half empty already. But I wasn’t too worried. We could stop at a farmhouse and fill it up again.

  “Did you bring something to eat, too?” Lena said hopefully.

  “What do you think? We’ll find a shady spot and have lunch.” I could see Lena was starting to get sunburned on her arms already. My nose was probably red as a beet. That gurknaze was always the first thing to get burned. We needed to get out of the sun for a while. Probably we’d have to head back home after that.

  We turned west again at the next crossroads. It was almost noon I guessed, and plenty hot enough now. The sun was burning my arms and the back of my neck. We’d seen a couple of cats already, but no sign of Tommy. Up ahead I could see some bush, which meant there was maybe a creek, too. I was thinking that might be a good spot to rest a bit.

  To get to the bush we first had to
ride by a row of big trees in front of a farmyard. Just when we were almost by already, a huge dog came darting out of the trees, barking its fool head off.

  “ELSIEEE?!” Lena shrieked. Like I was supposed to know what to do.

  “Get going! Quick! It’ll stop at the end of the yard.” At least that’s what I was hoping for. We were pedaling like crazy, trying to outrace that dog. Ahead of me Lena was still shrieking, and behind me the dog was running alongside, barking at my heels. Past the farmyard we rode over a small rise and then we were going still faster yet, pedaling downhill. The dog slowed down a bit so we were gaining ground at least.

  Then Lena’s front wheel hit a patch of loose gravel, and just like that, down she went. Total wipe out, right into the ditch.

  She lay there, screaming like all get out. I skidded to a stop in the gravel and ran over, thinking it was a good thing that she was crying. At least she wasn’t knocked out or anything. But her bike was lying on top of her and before I could haul it off I had to untangle her foot from between the bars. She didn’t bawl any harder and she could sit up all right and move everything, so I was pretty sure nothing was broken. But she had a doozy of a scrape up one side of her leg. Her elbow and shoulder were smucked up pretty bad, too, and her sundress was filthy, with a long rip in the skirt.

  Good thing she’d fallen into the ditch and not onto the road. Someone had a guardian angel close by.

  I used the rest of our water to wet the bottom of my T-shirt and clean her off as good as I could. Soon she started to calm down. Her crying turned into hiccups and sniffles.

  “I want–hic–to go home.”

  All the time I was cleaning her up I was keeping one eye on the dog. It was sitting there at the end of the row of trees, watching. But I guess that dog was happy enough with having chased us past its yard. Still, I didn’t really want to go back that way. I was starting to figure out that this whole thing wasn’t just lame, it was stupid. As if there was any real chance of finding Tommy out here. It figured that Dad would be right. And now Lena was hurt. It was time to call it quits before anything else went wrong.

  “Yeah, okay,” I said. “See if you can stand up.”

  She could stand on her own two feet all right, even if she was a bit wobbly and winced when she stepped on her one foot. I made her walk it off by the side of the road. I was brushing the dirt off her clothes when a pick-up pulled close beside us and stopped. A man rolled down the window. “You kids need some help?”

  “We’re all right, thanks,” I glanced quickly at him, but he wasn’t someone I knew. So I looked away again and hoped he would leave.

  “Sure you don’t need a ride somewhere? The little girl looks hurt.”

  I didn’t like how he sounded too much. Or how he looked sort of sideways toward the farmyard behind us. And there was something weird about his beat-up brown truck with the white shell over the back. The knot in my gut tightened.

  Lena was pulling on my sleeve. “Let’s get a ride home, Elsie.”

  “Shhh!” I whispered, leaning close and pretending to fix her hair up. “We don’t take rides from strangers, remember?”

  Lena’s eyes opened wide. She nodded.

  “No, thanks,” I told him. Then I pointed to the next farm up ahead a ways and out-and-out lied. “We just live there.”

  The man glanced at the farm. He shrugged. “If you say so.”

  He closed his window and the truck pulled away, slowly. Instead of driving off the truck was crawling along ahead, like the guy was watching and waiting to see what we would do next.

  And then I knew what it was that was bothering me about that truck. It was the same one that had run us into the ditch before. I was pretty sure it was the same one I’d seen on the street and by the pool, too, except now the back of the truck had been covered.

  My imagination took off at a gallop.

  “C’mon, you have to get on your bike,” I told Lena.

  “My leg hurts.”

  The dog was sitting there at the corner of its yard still. It had stood up but stayed put when the truck stopped. If that dog hadn’t been there, I would’ve turned Lena around and pedaled straight back to that farmhouse right then.

  “I know.” I picked up her bike. “Only you have to get on the bike and ride anyways. Just to the next farm. Can you make it that far? I don’t want to stay on the road with that man watching us.”

  Lena straddled her bike. “Is he a bad man?”

  “I don’t know. He might be.”

  We pedaled slowly, but the truck stayed in sight up ahead the whole time. I was hoping that the lie I told about where we lived had long enough legs to get us home safe and sound. When we finally reached the next driveway, I breathed a huge sigh of relief.

  Lena looked around nervously. “What if there’s another dog?”

  “Then we pretend that it’s ours,” I said, sounding braver than I felt. “Let’s just hope someone is home.”

  For once we had a bit of luck. We followed the driveway along a row of evergreens and no dog came bounding after us.

  “In here.” The driveway turned into the yard behind a tangled clump of lilacs and caragana. Lena stayed with our bikes out of sight of the road while I went up to the house.

  That was when I figured out how come everything was so quiet, when I saw the rickety old house with no paint left on it even. And how come the bushes were all overgrown. The farm was abandoned. I tried the door, just in case. It wouldn’t budge.

  “He’s still there,” Lena called. “I can see the truck through the trees.”

  Sure enough, the half-ton was parked a little ways up the road. Maybe there was a good reason for it to be stopped there, but I didn’t like it much. What if that guy already knew nobody lived at this place?

  “I want to go home,” Lena repeated. “Phone up Dad and tell him to come get us.”

  “This place is deserted. There is no phone.”

  “Elsie! He’s coming back!”

  She was right. The half-ton swung around right there in the middle of the road and was heading our way.

  “C’mon!” Grabbing our bikes, we raced across the farmyard and behind the sagging barn. I was trying to think what we should do, and what that guy might do if he found us, and at the same time I was looking for a place to hide. We could hide in the barn, only that was probably the first place he’d look.

  Then I saw a road, more like two dirt ruts really, leading through the pasture behind the barn. The road ran beside the fence separating the pasture from a field. At the other end of the pasture, maybe half a mile away, was some bush. The guy might give up rather than look in the woods. At least there’d be places to hide.

  “This way.” The loop of wire that held the gate shut was tight, too tight for me to pull it off. My fingers slipped and I sliced myself a good one on a sharp end poking out.

  “Hurrryyy!” Lena looked over her shoulder.

  We shoved our bikes under the bottom wire and crawled through after. In two seconds we were racing like mad down the dirt track, scattering a flock of pigeons having lunch in the field. Looking back, my heart sank. If the pigeons hadn’t given us away already, we were in clear sight of anyone who came out behind the barn. And our bikes were kicking up a trail of dust a blind man could follow. Never mind that Lena was falling behind. She was crying, and I knew her sore foot was making it hard for her to pedal.

  We were never going to make it all the way to the woods. I thought about maybe hiding in the field, only the grain didn’t look tall enough.

  Then I saw this huge old tree, standing all by itself a short way off the track. I had another bright idea, and steered Lena toward the tree, bouncing over the rough pasture. We ducked behind it, peeking out to see if the man was following still.

  He was out of his truck, standing at the gate behind the barn. I couldn’t see too well from here, but it looked like he was trying to unhook the wire. One thing for sure, he wasn’t trying to be a good Samaritan. My imagination wasn�
�t running hog wild for no reason.

  “What are we going to do?” whispered Lena, sniffling a little but trying hard to stop crying.

  Good question. I put my arm around her and hugged her close. She was shaking, but then so was I. All I could think was that we were done for, because you bet he’d seen us. No way could we outrun him to the woods, not with Lena’s sore ankle and with him in a truck. About all we could do was climb the tree. It was a big one, and we should be able to get pretty high up. Maybe he wouldn’t climb up after us.

  Yelling for help wouldn’t do any good. There wasn’t a soul around to hear us.

  A loud snort startled us. Something really big gave a still louder snort behind us.

  “What was that?” Lena’s eyes were huge.

  There was another really, really loud snort. Uy uy uy.

  “Don’t move,” I whispered. Slowly, I peered over my shoulder. A bull stood there close by, too close. A huge bull. It paced back and forth, stopping to snort and paw the ground with one hoof, swinging its head low.

  “Lena,” I said, as calmly as I could while my insides were shaking all over the place. “I’m going to boost you up this tree, okay? Climb up as fast as you can.”

  For the second time, that tree turned out to be handy. Lena scrambled up onto the lowest branch with a little help from me. I shimmied up right behind her, not a minute too soon, either. My feet were barely off the ground when the bull charged straight at us. Lena let loose, screaming her head off.

  Holy Moses. I yanked my feet up, closed my eyes and hung on, waiting to be pierced through. At least this was probably a better ending than if that man in the truck had got to us first.

  Only nothing happened, except I heard the loudest snort yet and practically felt that bull’s hot smelly breath. The hairs on the back of my neck stood on end, that’s for sure. But the bull must have veered off at the last second, because when I got up the guts to look, it was circling around and getting ready to come at us again.

  “Go, go!” I shoved my little sister higher up the tree.

  One good thing. From up here we had a pretty good view of the pasture and the farmyard, too. As soon as I was sure we were out of the bull’s reach, I looked to see if that man was still there. He was. He was sitting in his truck, watching the fun. Maybe he couldn’t unlatch the gate, either. Or maybe he didn’t want to tangle with the bull.