Rescue at Fort Edmonton

by Rita Feutl

  He ran his hand along the body of the small aircraft, caressing the struts that supported the wings. Janey stared at the plane, amazed. It looked for all the world like one of those First World War fighter planes; the kind that been in those great battles with the Red Baron over the English Channel.

  As if he’d heard her thoughts, Oleksiy said, “You know Wop May helped bring down the Red Baron, don’t you? He got a medal for it.”

  “Oh, is he going to fly up there in this thing? It doesn’t even have a roof for the pilot.”

  “Nah, he’s not flying this one. He says they’re gonna take the Avro Avian. But it doesn’t have a roof over the cockpit either. Who ever heard of such a thing?”

  “Well, it would certainly keep the pilot warmer,” said Janey, tired of looking like she didn’t know a thing. “How are those two supposed to fly when it’s minus 33 or whatever you said? It’s gonna be even colder up there with the wind against them; they’ll never make it if they’ve got to fly such a long distance.”

  “But that’s why the whole thing’s so exciting,” said Oleksiy, his voice rising. “Nobody’s ever really flown up there before. They hardly have any runways, and the snow could make it hard for them, but they’d be saving hundreds of lives.And if they make it, they’ll be heroes. Don’t you know anything?”

  “Yeah, well, I know they’re gonna have planes with roofs over their cockpits; they’re probably working on ’em right now,” said Janey heatedly.

  “Okay, you two.What are you up to back here?” A stocky man, made bulkier by at least two sweaters and a jacket, appeared from the back of the plane. “And what do you mean, they’re gonna have these planes with roofs on ’em?”

  Oleksiy was backing away. “C’mon, Jamie, we’d better get outta here.”

  “No! Wait!” The man grabbed Janey’s coat. “Jamie what? What’s your last name, you?” He tugged her toward him. She caught sight of Oleksiy hovering by the open door, waiting for her to escape.

  “What’s it to ya?” said Janey, mustering all the bravado she could and trying to break free.

  The man was peering at her intently. “It’s not Kane, is it?”

  The sound of her last name made Janey freeze. She peered at the man closely. The fact that there was no sign of a scar made her a little less apprehensive.“Who are you?” she asked, puzzled.

  “I’m Daniel, Louisa Black Bear’s son.”

  Janey stood transfixed.The child in the rafters, who couldn’t get to sleep on the night she was there, now stood before her, a middle-aged man with silver in his hair. He grinned at her.

  “I remember you tellin’ about the phones and the horseless carriages and the planes, and now, here it all is,” he said.

  Oleksiy had stepped back into the building and was circling the pair. “What’s all this about, Jamie? Whaddya talkin’ about?”

  Janey shook the memory of Louisa and Black Bear’s snug cabin from her mind, and turned to Oleksiy. “I think I’ve found us a way to get onto the runway, Oleksiy. This is Daniel Black Bear, the son of an old...friend of mine. Sorry Oleksiy, I don’t think I know your last name.”

  “It’s Kanasewich,” said the boy, shaking the man’s hand.

  “And my last name’s different now, Jamie. It’s been just Black since I started working here. It was easier.”

  Janey was dying to ask about Louisa, but Oleksiy cut in. “So, can you get us out there before they take off?”

  Daniel nodded, and motioned them to follow through the large doors at the end of the building.

  “Tell me about your mum, Daniel. How is she?” said Janey, scurrying to stay out of her companion’s earshot.

  “She’s not with us any more. She died just after I got back from the war,” said Daniel, pulling his jacket tighter around him.

  Janey was quiet a moment. The lively child, the competent mother, and the sharp-tongued old woman all flashed through her mind. Janey had so many questions for her, and now she was gone. “I’m sorry, Daniel.”

  “She led a good life, and she lived with me and my wife at the end, so that was all right. I got a girl called Louisa.And a boy called James.” He smiled at her.“She talked about you a lot, especially near the end. She knew you would come back. Are you back now, or is this your real time?”

  “Oh, this is just a visit, I hope. My real time’s even further ahead.”

  “Can you tell me what’ll be happening then?” Daniel turned to Janey, and she could see Louisa’s inquisitive spark in his dark eyes.

  “I’ll try, but can I first see this guy with the funny name fly off with the medicine?”

  “You mean Wop May? Yeah, I don’t suppose his parents thought it would turn out this way when they named him after old Wilfrid Laurier.”

  “Who?”

  Oleksiy, who’d been trying not to eavesdrop, burst out: “You know! The prime minister before the war. Don’t they teach you anything out East?”

  “The same,” said Daniel, grinning. “Wop is just short for Wilfrid. Wop says it was better than being named after John Sparrow David Thompson, the fella not too long before Laurier.”

  “Sparrow’d be good, since he flies so much,” said Oleksiy, laughing.

  “How come you know so much about him, Daniel? I mean, Mr. Black?” asked Janey.

  “I’m one of the mechanics here.You put all those ideas into my head, Jamie, that night in the attic, and I just kept following these machines.” He nodded at the tiny airplane in front of them, surrounded by a crowd of people milling about and stomping their feet against the cold.

  It was an old-fashioned biplane, with two sets of wings covered with cloth, painted grey and held together with wire cables. “The wingspan’s twenty-eight feet and it’ll cruise at sixty miles an hour,” said Daniel proudly. If you park two modern cars nose to nose, that’s about the distance from wingtip to wingtip, thought Janey. She went up to the side of the plane and ran her mitten along the G-CAVB lettering.

  “What’s that kid doin’ there? An’ this one over here?” Somebody grabbed the collar of Janey’s jacket and yanked her back.

  “It’s all right, Jameson, these two are here with me,” said Daniel, putting a protective hand on Janey’s arm.

  “Yeah? Well, just make sure they don’t wreck anything,” said the man, giving Janey a final shake before letting her go. She turned to look as the man stomped away, grumbling.

  “That Jameson.Always sticking his nose into things. Keeps trying to run for city council, but the voters won’t have him,” said Daniel, watching the retreating figure go up to a group of reporters.“I bet he figures if he comes out here it’ll make him look good.”

  Janey watched a well-dressed man brandishing a lit cigar shake hands with anyone who’d let him. She knew that he wasn’t the same Jameson who’d made her life miserable before. This guy was younger, but maybe he was related. She asked Daniel.

  “Oh yeah, I seem to remember my mother mentioning something about you and old man Jameson,” he said. “He’s long dead, but this guy’s a grandson. Looks like he’s cut from the same cloth.”

  Memories of her last meeting with Martin surged through Janey. “Hey, Da...Mr. Black, whatever happened to George Lucas? Do you remember? When I was there, they were pitching his dad’s house into the river valley.”

  “Yeah, there was something like that when you were here last,” said Daniel. “I think they packed up and moved away.We never heard anything more about them.”

  As they spoke, a car nosed its way through the crowds and spluttered to a stop in front of the aircraft. A man stepped out, bearing a box wrapped in a plaid blanket and tied with a string.

  “You’ve got to keep this warm, May,” he said, handing it to a man bundled up in a fur coat. Flying goggles glinted from the top of his leather pilot’s hood.

  “Yes sir, Dr. Bow.The charcoal burners are already lit in the baggage compartment. They’ll be snug and warm there.”

  Janey’s fingers were numb with cold and she could
hardly feel her toes. How could he possibly keep anything warm in an open-cockpit airplane made with some sheets of canvas and a few bales of wire? She peeked into the airplane.Why – the burners were hardly bigger than the barbecue her dad set up for picnics.

  She stared at the man shaking hands with well-wishers on the field. He was probably younger than her dad, but not by much. When he smiled at someone, he had a friendly, amiable sort of face, but under that huge buffalo coat and tiny flying helmet he hardly looked the tall, dark, and handsome hero type.

  “Ain’t this just the most exciting thing, Jamie?” Oleksiy had come up and clapped her on the back. She nodded, watching May do up his coat, pull up his collar, and tug down his goggles. He wrapped a thick, woollen scarf around his neck and tucked the ends inside. Janey’s own neck began to itch in sympathy. She hoped he wasn’t allergic to wool, the way she was. He’d be scratching and itching for the next 600 miles. He could really use one of those cool ski masks they’ve got now, she thought, or at least something soft under all that wool. Her mittened fingers rose to the silk scarf she’d taken from her grandfather’s trunk.

  Impulsively, she pulled it off and ran over. “Mr. May! Mr. May! Here.” She thrust the scarf into his gloved hands.

  “What’s this for, kid?” Wop May turned from the reporters and onlookers to examine the delicate piece of white silk.

  Janey grew embarrassed. She was acting like one of those stupid groupies at a rock concert, flinging bits of clothing at the stars. She hardly knew what to say.

  “It looks like it’s silk,Wop,” said one of the men at his elbow. “I read somewhere that you could put that against your mouth and your breath wouldn’t freeze up against your skin.You oughta take it.”

  Wop pulled one hand out of his glove and fingered the flimsy material. “Thanks, kid,” he said, looking Janey in the eyes.

  “I hoped, I hope...” She felt quite flustered. “At least it’ll make your wool scarf less scratchy.” As he turned away, she asked desperately, “You don’t know an Amanda Logan, do you?”

  “Can’t say’s I do. But thanks for the scarf.” He turned. “Let’s go,Vic. It’s not getting any warmer.”

  While the two pilots climbed into the plane, Daniel had Janey and Oleksiy stand by each wheel. “When I signal, you remove the chocks,” he told them.

  Janey grabbed Daniel’s sleeve. “What chocks?”

  “The pieces of wood under the wheels,” said Daniel, before the sound of an engine catching cut him off.

  With a thumbs-up sign from May, Daniel gave the propeller blade a mighty heave. The crowd cleared the runway and Daniel signalled Janey and Oleksiy. They removed the chocks and the plane lurched forward. It scooted along the snowy runway and then it was airborne, a disappearing grey speck in a cold winter sky.

  “Wasn’t that somethin’? Wasn’t that just the best thing? Boy, I hope they make it.” Oleksiy was clapping his arms against his sides and jumping up and down. Janey realized it had less to do with excitement and more with the cold. As she watched the plane vanish, she felt oddly deflated. Something, some odd feeling, told her that this moment had been important. But she couldn’t quite put her finger on it, and the boy’s babbling was distracting her. So was the cold. She felt it seeping into her jacket and through the soles of her feet. How much colder it must be for the two pilots flying straight into the north wind.

  Oleksiy interrupted her thoughts.“You don’t have anything to eat in one of those nice warm pockets, do you?”

  Janey shook her head. “Yeah, I’m hungry too. I wonder if Daniel, I mean, Mr. Black, has anything to eat.”

  But Jameson was dragging Daniel over to the press. “They just want to get a shot of us together,” he said, leading them to a group armed with pencils, pads, and microphones. Then as Janey and Alex watched, a reporter bundled Daniel into a car and drove away, leaving Jameson waving his fist at the retreating vehicle. “Those Journal newshounds will do anything to get a scoop,” muttered a bystander, as the other reporters ran off to their own vehicles.

  “I think we’d better head into town too,” said Oleksiy, watching the crowds clear. “Where do you live, anyway?”

  “Me? Well, I just got here, so I don’t really have a place...”

  “You’re like me, then. Did you run away too?”

  “Run away? ’Course not. I just...” She thought of her grandmother in the hospital, probably being operated on right now. Her dad sitting on one of those awful, uncomfortable plastic chairs, or pacing the long hallways. “I just came here to do something.”

  “Well, if it was to watch the plane take off, that’s already happened.They won’t be back until tomorrow earliest.We’d better find us someplace warm.”

  He eyed the cars and trucks pulling away from the airport. “There, look. If we grab on the back of that truck there, we might get somewhere. Let’s go.”

  A truck with horizontal wooden slats surrounding its bed was just pulling away from the road. Janey ran as hard as she could, and caught at the slats. That was the easy part. Pulling her feet up, so they were resting on the truck’s bumper, instead of dragging on the road, was much harder. Oleksiy must have had practice at this sort of thing. He was already in the truck bed, and he helped haul her over the slats. They clambered forward through gunny sacks to sit, backs propped against the cab, out of sight of the driver.

  The odd, nagging feeling Janey’d had as the plane took off hadn’t disappeared. She watched the hangar shrink into the white landscape, and wondered whether she should be leaving the airport. Each time she’d entered into the past, it had been through the site of the future airport hangar. There was something about the airplane, or the airport, or the flight that was connected with her.

  Perhaps she was done. Perhaps her mission, to stop something terrible from happening, had already taken place. But she’d done nothing yet, except talk to Daniel and learn that Louisa had died, give Wop May a silk scarf, and remove the chocks. How was any of that supposed to help? So maybe he’d stay a little bit warmer and a little less itchy on his flight to save hundreds of lives. Big deal. That couldn’t have been why she was here.

  She sighed. On top of everything else, how was she supposed to get back to her real time? Before, it had always kind of happened to her. What was she supposed to do now, fling herself off the riverbank or find some kind of hole to jump into?

  The truck was gearing down and turning. Oleksiy looked worried. He motioned her to cover herself with some of the gunny sacks. The vehicle sputtered down a long driveway and stopped. A door clanked open, and moments later, they could hear rusty hinges squealing in the cold.The truck door banged shut and the vehicle moved slowly forward.The engine cut out and, in the silence, Janey and Oleksiy hardly breathed.

  “Hello, girls,” a woman called as she climbed out of the truck’s cab. “I’ll be out to see you after I’ve changed into Eric’s overalls.”

  Another squeal of hinges and a large door banged shut. Suddenly it was dark and much quieter. Janey and Oleksiy lay there an extra minute in silence, then sat up at the same time.

  “Cows,” said Oleksiy, sniffing the air.“That’s good, and bad.”

  “Why’s it bad?” Janey asked in the darkness.

  “They don’t like me.That’s one of the reasons I left my uncle’s farm. How was I supposed to milk the cows when they kept trying to kick me?”

  “So why’s it good?”

  “Milk.They’ve got it, and it’s warm. And it means we’re in a barn with lots of hay, where we can sleep tonight. I was hoping we’d get into the city by this evening, but maybe this is better.”

  Janey grew suspicious. “How are we supposed to get the milk if they keep trying to kick you?”

  “I ain’t gonna milk ’em.You are,” said Oleksiy with an air of finality, jumping from the truck bed. “Take a couple of these gunny sacks with you. It’ll make the hay itch less.”

  “Wait a minute! I’ve never milked any cows! How do you expect me to...”
>
  “A city boy, eh? I bet you think milk just appears by magic in glass bottles in the milkman’s cart.”

  Ha! thought Janey. Wait until he finds out about plastic bags and cardboard containers. She eyed the creatures staring at them over the sides of a large stall.

  Oleksiy had dropped his sack by a ladder and collected a bucket and milking stool by the door.

  “Here,” he said. “Climb over with the bucket and try that one over there; she looks like she’s got the most to give.”

  Now that her eyes had adjusted to the dark, Janey could see the steam erupting from four pairs of large nostrils.

  “Uh-uh,” said Janey, backing away. “Those are big, big creatures. I’m not goin’ in there. Are you crazy?”

  Oleksiy sighed. “If you don’t, then we’ll spend the night with empty stomachs, which will make it a lot harder to forget the cold. C’mon.They look like nice cows.”

  “If they look that nice, you go in and milk ’em. At least you know how to do it.”

  Oleksiy sighed again, grabbed the bucket and stool, and swung over the boards. As he landed, a calf started up from the hay bed and skittered over to one side. One of the cows took several steps toward the boy.

  “Easy now, easy now,” said Oleksiy. Another cow started forward from the opposite direction. The calf began bawling.

  “Here now. Easy now,” said the boy again. Janey couldn’t help but notice his voice breaking at the end of every sentence. The cows did not look easy. Suddenly, the cow with the calf swung her body around, so Oleksiy was shoved against the barn wall.The stool clattered against the boards, and the boy called out: “Jamie! Get the farmer. I’m in trouble.”

  Get the farmer!? And get caught!? Janey reached over the boards, picked up the stool by one leg, and brought the seat down on the cow’s rump. The cow moved away grudgingly, and Oleksiy bolted out, nearly barrelling Janey down as he leapt over the boards.