by Henry, Sue
Suspicion grew in Jessie’s mind, and she wanted to ask him just how he had crossed the border, for she didn’t believe he had the funds the Canadians would require of a young person—enough to make it all the way to Alaska. Why else would he be stealing food and not have eaten since lunch?
He shrugged casually, without confirming Maxie’s assumption, looked at his plate to avoid their eyes, and began to eat, plainly trying to mind his manners and not shovel the food into his mouth.
Jessie knew she had been more than a little condescending concerning herself with his finances, but he had turned more defensive than seemed necessary. Now that she had had a better look at him in the light, she was forced to revise her initial impression of a smart-alec teenage thief. He was as reasonably clean as you could expect from someone living on the road. His clothes were of good quality, without rips or patches, and the jacket he had removed to reveal the green plaid shirt had not been purchased cheaply. The label, exposed when he tossed it onto the back of the passenger seat, indicated it had come from Lands’ End—his pack, REI. It made less sense that a well-dressed kid would steal than one who was not, but you couldn’t tell about kids these days—some of the most affluent wore the grungiest clothes, and vice versa.
By the time they finished eating, Patrick could hardly keep his eyes open. He stumbled to his feet and helped clear the table but was clearly all in.
“Thank you both,” he said, reaching for his jacket. “I’ll just be go—”
“You’ll just help me make this table into a bed and crawl into it before you fall over in a heap,” Maxie informed him in a voice that brooked no argument.
8
THE DAMPNESS LEFT BY THE STORM WAS RAPIDLY DISAPPEARING in the next morning’s early sunshine when Jessie went out for a run with Tank trotting along on his leash beside her. As they returned half an hour later, Maxie stepped out of her rig, already dressed for travel, and walked across to meet them at the Winnebago, the handles of two mugs clutched in one hand.
“Good morning,” she called. “Looks like another sunny one. Coffee?”
“Already had some,” Jessie told her, unlocking the door and waving her inside. “Our visitor still here?”
Maxie sat down at the dinette table. “Yes, and this coffee’s an excuse to fill you in. He had a fair go at eating everything in sight for breakfast,” she said with an indulgent smile. “I’ll replenish the bacon and eggs first chance I get. Now he’s working off his obligation over the dishpan.”
“He tell you anything else?” Jessie asked from the back of the motor home, where she was collecting what she would need to take a quick shower before leaving the campground. The campground shower was handy and she wouldn’t have to refill the Winnebago’s water tank.
“Not much, but I’m working on it. He’s going to ride with me today.”
Jessie frowned at the idea. “You sure you want to do that? Don’t forget he stole my lunch, and I don’t think he’s got much money. There was something he wouldn’t talk about.” It worried her that Maxie by herself might make a good mark for a quick grab and run if he was so inclined. She remembered the dark hint of something unidentifiable on his face.
“I think he’s okay, actually,” Maxie said. “A pretty good kid from all I can tell. But there’s something bothering him, for sure, and I’d like to know what it is.”
“You think he’s a runaway?” Jessie came forward and sat down on the other side of the table, a towel and shower bag on her lap.
“If he is, he’s old enough on paper to make his own decisions, but I think there’s more to it than that. He had some kind of nightmare last night that was pretty unpleasant. I didn’t get much of it—a frightened-sounding ‘No, don’t,’ and some groaning. Maybe I can get him to talk if I go at it sideways.”
They looked at each other in silence for a minute, Jessie frowning, Maxie with raised eyebrows, questioning.
It crossed Jessie’s mind that people often wound up in Alaska because they were running. Either they were running to something—a vacation, a job, a relationship—or away from something—unemployment, a bad or failed relationship, a crime, or any of a hundred things people try to leave behind them in starting over somewhere else. A few, like the spouses who were dragged along when the military transferred their mates to bases in Fairbanks or Anchorage, hated the lifestyle or the winters and spent the indentured years longing to go south. A few left on their own. But many who came north were running, for one reason or another. What was Pat’s reason, she wondered? Maybe it was just the adventure that was so attractive to the young—and considering Maxie and many like her, perhaps the young at heart as well.
She was not completely comfortable with Maxie driving alone with Patrick. They didn’t really know him—not much more than his name, where he came from, where he said he was going, and that he was touchy about either his finances—or lack of them—or his privacy. She said as much to Maxie.
“Oh, I’ll be fine,” the older woman assured her. “Even in May, before the tourists fill the roads, there’ll be lots of people between here and Jasper, where I’m going to stop tonight. When I pull over today, I’ll make sure there’s somebody around. We’ll be going through national parks. I’m pretty cautious, Jessie—have to be when you travel as much as I do. I’m also a decent judge of people.”
Acknowledging that Patrick seemed a nice enough young man—even if he did snatch lunches—Jessie knew it wasn’t up to her and swallowed further protest. They had just agreed to look for each other on the road and to meet that night at Whistler’s Campground in Jasper National Park, when Patrick came knocking, with Stretch on his leash for company. Tank went to the door to greet his small new friend.
“Hi,” Pat said, peering through the screen. “Dishes done, Maxie. You want me to unhook the water and electric?”
“You can help. I’m coming in just a minute.”
“Come on in,” Jessie told him, taking a sip of the rapidly cooling coffee to validate Maxie’s excuse for her visit. “Sleep okay?”
From the grin he presented as he shut the screen from inside and turned to face her, she would never have guessed he had anything to hide that could frighten him into nightmares.
“Better than under this place. Especially with you threatening to pepper-spray me out of there,” he teased. “Maxie tell you she’s offered me a ride? I really appreciate it, Maxie.”
“Yes, she did.” Jessie gave him a very straight and level look. “You’ll behave yourself—right?”
“Sure,” he agreed easily.
Sure seemed to be a word he used a lot—along with that cherubic smile, she thought. She wondered if there wasn’t a certain amount of calculated charm mixed with his appealing red hair and boyishly freckled face.
She wasn’t sure—not sure at all—and couldn’t help speculating.
Shower taken and checklist of things to do before moving the motor home completed, she left Dutch Creek half an hour behind Maxie and was soon cruising the highway between the retirement communities and tourist attractions that continued for twenty miles to the popular town of Radium Hot Springs. There she stopped long enough to fill the gas tank, but didn’t see the Jayco motor home and went on up the road to Golden.
Tank was once again snoozing comfortably in the passenger seat when she turned east on the cutoff to the Trans-Canada Highway and was almost immediately following the folds of the mountain-side as the road snaked upward, high above a river full of whitewater rapids in a gorge far below. There was a fair amount of traffic, and except for pulling over once to take a picture, she paid more attention to her driving than to the scenery through this area. Soon they were once again headed downhill into a valley defined by sharp peaks that could only have been carved by the slow frozen passage of ice-age glaciers, toward the entrance to Yoho, the first of the Canadian Rocky Mountain national parks.
A few miles past it, beside a wider and more peaceful river, she came to the town of Field. Pulling into the parking l
ot for a visitors’ center that was situated between the highway and river, Jessie almost laughed with pleasure at the sight that confronted her. A low flat bridge spanned the stream, and the small village that rose from the opposite bank, set against towering peaks that made it appear very small, had a distinct air of fantasy about it. A handful of streets climbed the first low hill, one above the other like steps parallel to the river. A cottage with mullioned windows and an extremely steep roof that framed its front door stood at the top of one cross street, adding to the European flavor. A square stone building that had once been a railroad station stared stolidly across the remaining tracks through windows so symmetrically placed that they formed a face, with a stone stoop for a smile below the nose of a door. It tickled Jessie’s sense of humor. It was like Brigadoon, she thought, entranced by the idea. It almost seemed reasonable that if she were to return the following day the village would have disappeared for a hundred years. Impulsively she decided not to drive across the bridge; her impression of Field was too engaging to spoil by seeing the town up close.
She walked Tank, gave him water, and made a quick visit to the visitors’ center to buy a large-scale map of Jasper National Park, which she would reach that afternoon. Making herself another ham and cheese sandwich reminded her of the one that had gone missing the day before, and she wondered where Maxie and Patrick were as she ate it. She placed the second half of a can of tomato juice in a cup holder next to the driver’s seat, along with one of her favorite Snickers bars, and, with one last delighted glance at Field, moved the Winnebago out of the parking lot.
She waited for a truck and three cars to pass before swinging back onto the roadway, headed northeast.
During the afternoon, Jessie thought several times of Maxie and wondered how things were going in her attempt to break Patrick’s reserve. But this route was all new to her, and the scenery as she left British Columbia for Alberta was soon so overwhelming that she all but forgot to be concerned for her new friend’s welfare in her own attempt to absorb all she was seeing.
The Icefields Parkway, which runs 143 miles north through the Rocky Mountains, connecting Banff and Jasper National Parks, is one of the most scenic highways in the world. The earth’s continents are huge rock plates that float on the semi-molten core of the world and are therefore in motion like rafts on a pond. Some, like the Pacific plate, lie under oceans, but they still move. Millions of years before Jessie began her drive along the parkway, the Pacific and North American plates collided, and the thicker, heavier North American plate forced the lighter, thinner Pacific plate to slide under it, as it continues to do. This, of course, happens so slowly it can be difficult to measure, but enormous pressures resulted from the collision, causing parts of the North American plate to buckle and rise in folds and crests until they finally became the magnificent Rocky Mountains, backbone of North America—the Continental Divide.
These mountains were at first much broader and higher, but the ice ages that followed created glaciers thousands of feet deep, which ground over and through them, carving off gigantic swaths of rock before they retreated to reveal sharp peaks and wide, sweeping valleys.
Nowhere along their length do the Rockies present themselves more majestically than on the Icefields Parkway, and Jessie was soon enthralled with the incredible views. Everywhere she looked there were mountains that seemed to hold up the sky, walls and cascades of stupendous peaks that parted to reveal even more in the distance. Large glaciers still flowed between some of them, and many smaller ones hung high among the ridges, their ice compressed to pale blue colors that glowed like jewels in the sunlight. She was soon wearing her camera around her neck to have it handy when she pulled off the road, stopping at two or three of the dozens of viewpoints.
Before she knew it she had traveled almost half the parkway and arrived at Bow Summit, 6,785 feet above sea level, the highest point on this section of the road. The parking area faced south and was crowded with people milling about—some absorbed in spotting the bighorn sheep that were taking a midday lie-down among the rocks high above the road, too far away for pictures, others gazing down at the road that drew a narrow line from one end to the other of the glacial bowl of an impossibly wide and graceful valley.
From this vantage point high on a mountain, Jessie watched an eagle circling in the air below, riding the thermals to stay aloft without flapping its wings. It seemed odd to look down to watch him soar. At this height the air was cool and brought the pleasant scent of evergreens and new spring grasses warmed by the sun. Fluffy white clouds moved slowly above a few of the peaks, but most of the sky was a remarkable clear blue.
She wished there was less traffic so she could listen as well as look for birds, but vehicles passed regularly on the parkway and many of them pulled in to take advantage of the views, so there was always the sound of some car, truck, or RV in motion nearby. Though most of the hundreds of people who drove the Icefields Parkway each year went no farther than British Columbia, a significant number, lured by the mystique of the far north, used the parkway as a route to Dawson Creek, where the Alaska Highway officially started. From past trips Jessie knew she would undoubtedly see some of them more than once as she traveled the long road home, becoming familiar with the sight of them on the road and in campgrounds. It was a friendly kind of thing that she enjoyed about the trip, but at the moment she wished she had less company in this particular spot.
As Jessie was aiming her wide-angle lens toward the valley, a group of four people in their twenties, two couples, walked up to a car parked just behind where she was standing at the guardrail. She couldn’t help overhearing their conversation as they paused and opened the trunk to get soft drinks from a cooler, though after a quick glance she pretended to ignore them and just listened.
“But what’d he want?” one of the women asked.
“Some kid they were looking for.”
“It’s pretty easy to see who’s stopped here, isn’t it?”
“Not just here—somewhere along the parkway.”
“Hm-m. Little kid? Lost?”
“Naw—a teenager. Hitching, or hiking. I told him we hadn’t seen him.”
“How’d you know that? What’s he supposed to look like?”
“Seventeen or eighteen years old,” he said. “About five-eleven, red hair.”
Jessie’s attention was instantly caught by this description of Patrick Cutler. Could it be anyone else?
She listened more closely as the woman’s voice rose to declare, “But I did see a kid like that.”
“Where?”
“At that place we stopped for gas—you know, the one where we got the postcards? He was getting into a motor home with an old lady.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. I noticed because she had a cute little wiener dog on a leash.”
Sure that Maxie would not have been overjoyed at the designation of old and the offhanded dismissal in the young woman’s voice, Jessie had to grin, remembering that everyone over thirty seemed old to someone that young. But this expanded account told her it had to be Patrick.
Interested now, the second young man joined the conversation. “Who was looking for this kid—and why?”
“Those two guys I was talking to—the ones in the cowboy getup. They said he was hiking and they were supposed to pick him up along the parkway.”
“Pretty casual way to arrange it. There’s a hundred and fifty miles of this road.”
“Yeah, well—they’re gone, and it sounds like he got a ride anyway. Let’s go back to Banff—I’m hungry and it’ll be time for dinner when we get there.”
As he closed the trunk and went to unlock the car, Jessie turned to watch them leave. She caught the eye of the young woman who had seen Patrick with Maxie, who smiled thinly and shrugged. “Whatever,” she said, and climbed into the car with her friends.
They backed out and turned south on the parkway, leaving Jessie to stare after them, frowning.
The incident conf
used and concerned her as she returned to the motor home and prepared to leave the viewpoint. How many red-haired young men of eighteen could there be on one 150-mile stretch of parkway? Especially young men who were riding with an old lady in a motor home with a dachshund? But why would two men be looking for him seriously enough to ask strangers if they had seen him? Too late, she wished she had asked what these two men looked like—perhaps Patrick would have known who they were. She’d like to have been able to describe them and see what he had to say.
She pulled away from Bow Summit still pondering what she had heard, seen, and felt. Even the sight of the huge Athabasca glacier below Mount Columbia, the highest point in Alberta at 12,294 feet, did not distract her for long, perhaps because she was used to seeing glaciers in Alaska, though they were not often so close to a well-traveled highway. So, anxious to reach Jasper for several reasons and with questions that needed answers, she bypassed the Columbia Icefield Centre’s busy parking lot and tourist facilities overlooking a remnant of the great sheet of ice that had once spread across most of Canada, and drove steadily north to meet Maxie.
9
WHISTLER’S CAMPGROUND IN JASPER NATIONAL PARK was enormous, with hundreds of spaces for motor homes, campers, and tents arranged in loops within a road that circled the perimeter. Pulling up to the kiosk at the entrance at almost four o’clock, Jessie wondered how she would ever find Maxie, but soon learned that her new friend had booked adjoining spaces, with one in Jessie’s name, and had left her a map with clear directions.
Driving slowly around the outer road, she was pleased to see that it was more like a park than a campground and was surprised to see an elk placidly grazing close to the road near two campers. The velvety brown female didn’t seem to notice or care that two people with cameras stood only a few yards off, clicking away—didn’t even raise her head as Jessie passed in the motor home, tires loudly crunching gravel. In half an hour, with a quick stop at a sani-station to fill her water tank and empty the wastewater holding tanks, she had found loop 64 and the spaces Maxie had reserved.
