Shelter Read online

  He stopped when he saw me and waited till I caught up to him.

  “Hello, Maggie.”

  I thought I might do a good deed, not for Ted, but for Bea, by delivering him home for supper. Or maybe the good deed was really for myself.

  “How was school?” Ted asked.

  “Fine,” I said. He set off again, wheeling along the road with me beside him.

  “How do you like Williams Lake?”

  “It’s fine,” I said.

  He laughed. “You like the bush better, don’t you? You’re like your dad.”

  It pleased me so much to be told that I was like my dad that for a minute, I just walked along smiling.

  “If you push me, I can show you a good place,” Ted said. The Edwards’ place wasn’t far from the hotel, but we wheeled right past their street. “We can’t go over the railroad tracks in this thing, so we have to take the long way. You’re not in a hurry, are you?”

  I thought of Bea. “No,” I said.

  At the end of Oliver Street I helped push him along to the highway. A small fear took hold of me. What if I lost control of the chair? What if he went wheeling down the highway towards Vancouver? But Ted said, “Here we go! Hang a right. You got a licence to drive this thing, Maggie?” I laughed and felt a lightness rise in me, the giddiness of adventure.

  I pushed Ted with difficulty down a narrow trail bumpy with tree roots and fir needles. Scent rose up as we crunched over them. No wind, but a warmed air, a different air, gently wrapped me. Something invisible inhabited the long shadows and winked from the silver spiderwebs running from wild rose to birch. The knot of worry that had been twisting my gut since Mom left us loosened. My shoulders relaxed.

  “Pretty place, isn’t it?” Ted said. “You keep heading up the river that way, you’ll get to the Fraser.” We could not get very far with the chair. So I parked him and sat down, leaning against a tree.

  He took out his tobacco and began tamping it into the bowl of his pipe. I must have been looking at Ted in a funny way, because he said, “I can tell you how I ended up in this chair. Most people are curious and I don’t mind.” A crow began to squawk and fuss on a high branch above us and the birch leaves trembled. A swallow hovered and dove at the crow and Ted and I laughed. He lit a match, drew the flame into the pipe and a cloud of sweet-scented smoke curled into the air.

  “I was working with an outfit north of here, logging a steep hillside. We lived in tents, rough and ready. It was a gyppo show. That’s what they call a small outfit. That can be okay if guys know what they’re doing. If they’re careful and they get along. But from the get-go, I never liked the way the hook tender did things. He was the boss, but he was strung tighter than a fiddle and he wasn’t happy unless everybody was going in three different directions at once. I was planning to quit as soon as I could.

  “That day I had a bad feeling. It was hot, stinking hot. We woke up to heat and it stoked up to a furnace as the morning went on, sun blazing down on the hillside. Everyone was tetchy, but that joker of a hook tender poked and screamed, jumped on one foot. I sometimes wondered if he was all there.

  “Three of us choker setters were on the crew that day, me, old Jim, and a greenhorn we called Dewy, because he had this soft white face he washed with special soap every morning. We were down in a ravine, attaching the choker and climbing back up in that inferno to get clear. It was exhausting. We decided to take turns, give each other a rest. It’s Dewy’s turn and he’s walking down a steep log. His cork boots got caught up on the bits of loose bark and he lost his gription. Tumbled head over heels and winds up upside down, on his head, out cold. Jim and me climbed down to him and pulled him out, gave him a drink of water and he went back to work. That’s what you did.

  “The day before, some men were standing on a stump watching the logs being yarded. No one saw the haulback catch on the roots of a big old stump. The stump broke loose and came thundering down the mountain, heading straight for these guys standing there, mouths open. It hit the ground about fifteen feet in front of them and flew up and over their heads. Barely cleared them. We teased them about the shave they got that day. But those things can happen, even in the best-run show.”

  Ted held another match to his pipe and the ripe cherry smell floated on the air. “At lunch I sat on a stump. I was soaked with sweat, not a dry spot on me—even my socks were sopping. The bugs were out, I was itching from the dust and bark that stuck to me. I thought about walking off the job, right then and there. That’s how sure I was that something was going to go wrong. It was Friday anyway and I was going home for the weekend, and I’d already decided I wasn’t coming back. This old-timer, Jim, he’d been a faller, was mostly deaf now. All morning he grumbled about this being the worst job he’d ever been on and hadn’t he paid his dues? This fella was comical, Jim. He had no front teeth. He had dentures but he didn’t wear them on the job. I suppose he thought he’d break them or swallow them while he was working or something. He was skinny, too, but still muscled like a racehorse. He knocked over his coffee at lunch. That was the last straw for him. He let out a blue streak of curses from his toothless old mouth. I said to him, ‘Jimbo, why don’t you and me just bunch it and head on home?’ ”

  “So did you?” I asked.

  Ted looked off through the lace of leaves and sunlight and was silent for so long I thought I’d asked the wrong thing.

  Finally he said, “No. No we didn’t leave. We did what you do, which is to finish the job. It’s funny, when I think about it now, how sometimes the good lessons you learned can sink you.

  “We were close to done for the day. I kept thinking about the ice-cold beer I was going to drink when we got to town. Jim was at the top of the ravine, Dewy was down below, and I was standing clear. The whistle blew and all of a sudden I heard a snap, like a giant guitar string busting. There was a shout, some curse I won’t repeat, and guys diving left and right. I saw Jim’s head coming up like an old hound dog sniffing the air. I shouted ‘Jim!’ at the top of my lungs and he looked at me and I saw the change in his eyes as he understood and he made a move, digging in as if to run, then the cable came whipping through the air and carried him right off the hill.”

  “Oh no!” I said. “Did he die?”

  “Oh yes, he died all right.” Ted’s pipe had gone out and he sucked deeply on it, twice, then held it in his big hand on his lap. The sun had sunk behind the hills and the air felt chilly now, the light gone flat and lonely among the trees. But I hadn’t yet heard how Ted ended up in the wheelchair.

  “Poor old Jim deserved better,” he said. “We wrapped him up to bring him home. But then, when we got back to camp, what with all the confusion, we had to wait for our cheques. I couldn’t stand it. I wanted to go. Finally I made up an excuse, I got paid in cash and I got out of there as fast I could. I got a lift to town where my truck was parked and I had a cold beer and supper. Then I felt, well Maggie, I’m ashamed to say it, but I felt glad it wasn’t me. I was just glad to be alive. Really glad. And I wanted to go home.

  “I headed out. It was getting dark, but that time of year it never does get entirely dark. And then the moon came up and the road ran out ahead of me shining like a river. Gosh I was happy. What a beautiful night. Then I thought I heard that snapping sound again, of the line right there in my truck. I thought that was strange. I shook my head and I opened the window to get some fresh air. Bugs flew at my windshield and I saw them coming at my headlights like a gentle rain. Then I heard it again, that crazy whipping snickety-snack. And there in front of me in the headlights I saw someone running along the road. Right in the middle. So I slowed a bit and this runner came alongside my open window and yelled something. I saw his face and it was Jim with that big toothless mouth. ‘What?’ I yelled back and then I heard him, clear as a bell, ‘Wake up!’

  “I opened my eyes. Right in front of me was the grill of a truck, no headlights on. In the split second it took for me to figure out that it was parked on the side of the ro
ad, I jammed on the brakes, then I slammed right into it.

  “Old Jim saved my life, yelling at me just like I’d yelled at him on the hillside. The truck I hit was loaded with a big load of logs, and the driver had pulled off to have a nap. The cops said the tracks showed I had been driving on the shoulder for nearly a mile. The hood of my truck accordioned under his and then the two trucks went slowly over, the weight of the logs carrying us. My truck ended up in the air, clamped onto his grill. I don’t remember any of that. I was in a coma for seven days and when I woke up, I was in a hospital bed in Williams Lake and I’d never have to work as a logger again.” Ted laughed quietly. “That’s it. That’s the story.”

  I pushed Ted’s wheelchair through the chilly dusk back along the trail, across the highway and up the Edwards’ street, even when Ted could have rolled it himself. Bea and Jenny were clearing away the supper dishes when we came in bringing a drift of fall air into the steamed house. Jenny looked up in a combination of surprise and relief. Then she arranged her mouth into a tight-lipped line and tried hard not to smile. Bea said nothing, didn’t meet our eyes, just disappeared into the kitchen. Ted hung up his coat and wheeled over to the table where his bare plate sat staring up between fork and knife.

  “I’ll get your food,” said Jenny. I should have helped, but I didn’t want to go in there. I went to the bathroom and washed my hands. Then I took my place at the table and began to eat. Jenny sat and watched, smiling a little now.

  I waited for the slams and crashes of Bea’s rage to reverberate off the kitchen walls and come ringing through the house. But I heard only the rush of water filling the sink, the sucking of the dish detergent bottle and the clink of silverware against glass.

  Jenny passed me an envelope across the table. “This came today.” Jenny & Maggie was written in Mom’s handwriting in pencil on the envelope. I took out the letter, a single thick sheet torn from a sketchbook.

  Dear Girls,

  I hope you like Williams Lake and are having fun living in a town for a change. I’ve sent some money to the Edwards to cover your expenses, so if you need anything, just ask Mrs. Edwards. You can buy yourselves a treat now and then, too. Don’t go crazy, though! All is well here. Bye for now.

  Love Mom

  There was nothing in the letter, nothing about when she was coming back, or where she was, or where Cinnamon was. My eyes filled with tears but I kept eating. I wouldn’t cry in front of Ted. I thought of him instead, out on the lonely road with old Jim running alongside him.

  “I think I’m going to try and get a job,” Jenny said. “I saw a sign at Frank’s. I could be a waitress or a cook. Couldn’t I?”

  “Sure you could,” Ted said.

  “I’d have to arrange it around volleyball practices, though. The Duchess Creek team is coming to our school to play us. Cool, eh?”

  I heard her, but I was out on that road, with the night insects flitting around in the headlights of a truck lifted right off the ground.

  [ TWELVE ]

  IF I WALKED TO THE END of Yorston Street, where the Edwards’ house was, I could see the lake, and the smoky blue hills beyond it. I sat out there sometimes and waited for the moon to come up. I thought that wherever Mom was, she’d be looking at the same moon.

  A path wound from the end of the street down to the stampede grounds. I always cut through there on my way to school, though it took me longer. Mornings, leaving the Edwards’ house, the fresh air was a balm, the nowhere between house and school a sanctuary of dirt, weeds and wind. I took my time. Escape ran through my mind like a melody. I picked up snatches without really noticing. Kicking a clod of dried manure, I thought horses would be perfect for packing gear through this country, covering some distance. I never thought of a destination, except back. I could picture her smiling when she saw us, trying not to, trying to hide how proud she would be that we had done it, we had found her.

  When I tried to fit Cinnamon into the picture of Mom working in a logging camp, the uneasiness I carried constantly billowed up in my body and I thought I might vomit or my legs give way. A cat in a logging camp wouldn’t last long. She would be dragged off by a coyote or, with her white fur, picked from the night by an owl or a hawk.

  At school, Mrs. Wallace, the teacher of the split grade six and seven class, had decided that I was an exemplary student, and she had taken to reading out my descriptive paragraphs to the rest of the class and singling me out for special jobs like writing on the chalkboard. It must not have occurred to her that this would make my classmates even more suspicious than they already were of the new girl who carried her books in a paper bag and whose running shoes were stained with mud and grass.

  The other student she often singled out was a Carrier boy named Vern George. He was in the seventh grade. Vern kept his head down. He had white North Star running shoes with blue stripes, but one of his laces was a piece of twine. This intrigued me. Mrs. Wallace liked to ask him, “Vern, are we keeping you awake?” but no one laughed, the way they did when she said the same thing to Marv Dressler, the class clown. Vern smiled mildly at her. When she changed the seating arrangement so that my desk was beside his, I saw that he kept a book tucked inside his textbook. His head was down because he was reading, not frightened like I thought.

  One day I was sitting on the school steps after the dismissal bell, carving a small branch with Dad’s knife. I was waiting for Jenny, because we were planning to walk to Stedman’s together. I had pared off the bark and was trying to carve my initials into the smooth, peeled wood when Vern came out, carrying an armful of library books. I looked up at him and then turned back to my stick.

  “What are you doing?” he said.

  I jumped.

  He laughed, something I had never seen him do. “I scared you.”

  “No you didn’t.”

  “Can I see?”

  I handed him the stick. “I just started it.”

  He turned it over in his hands. “Cool.” And he handed it back and walked down the steps and off the schoolyard. I went back to carving the stick, but lifted my eyes every now and then to watch as he disappeared at the end of the street, his arm tucked around the library books.

  When Jenny came we went to Stedman’s, where she bought navy knee socks and I bought grey wool work socks, then I left her at her new job at Frank’s Chicken and Pizza.

  At the Edwards’ house, I let myself in and was surprised to find that Bea wasn’t home, though the TV was on, The Flintstones theme song drifting from the living room. In the two months or so that we’d been here, I had never seen Bea leave the house, though she must have gone out to get groceries while we were at school. The door to her bedroom was ajar. In there was a dainty roll-top desk she called a “secretary.” When Ted asked her where some paper was, her answer was almost always, “In the secretary.” It was where she sat to pay bills, and if Mom had written a letter to the Edwards, that was where it would be. Maybe she had explained herself more to them.

  I wondered if I had time to look through Bea’s desk before she came back. Their bedroom was at the back of the house so I couldn’t watch for her coming out the window, but I thought I would hear her come up the steps. I got a glass of milk and a cookie, took a bite then put it on the coffee table in front of the TV. If I heard her coming, I’d scoot out to the couch and she’d never know.

  The Edwards’ bedroom smelled of Yardley lavender powder and the menthol liniment Ted used. The bed had been made, the nubby white spread pulled tight and tucked under the pillows neatly. Why go to the trouble when you’re only going to get back in it later? The desk was closed and my eye fell on the little keyhole. I hoped she hadn’t locked it. But no, Bea Edwards had no secrets worth locking up. I stopped to listen, but I heard only Fred Flintstone’s “Yabba dabba do!” and Barney’s chortle. There were some bills in one compartment. I leafed through them quickly. In another, there were a few envelopes and on one of them, the Edwards’ address in Mom’s handwriting. But the letter inside was even
briefer than the one to us: “Here’s the amount we agreed on. Thanks for helping us out. Irene.” I checked the front of the envelope. No return address, but over the postage stamp there was a red post office stamp that said Kleena Kleene. I put the envelope back, closed the desk and went to the couch to watch the rest of The Flintstones.

  Out the window, I saw it was snowing, just a few light flakes straggling down, and there was Bea, coming up the sidewalk wearing her short, black fur-topped boots and a yellow woollen tam with a pompom on it. I felt a tinge of pity for her and the bland life she led.

  By the time Jenny got home, there was enough snow to soak her canvas running shoes. A sharp wind had begun to sweep across town and snow eddied around the yellow porchlight. Jenny burst through the front door, gasping. “My feet are icicles!” She kicked off her shoes and stood in her knee socks, shivering over the heat register.

  “Maybe school will be cancelled tomorrow,” I said.

  “We can always hope.”

  Bea called from the kitchen, “It’ll be gone by morning.”

  “Three feet of snow on the ground in two hours and she thinks it’ll be gone by morning,” Jenny said to Ted.