Jess and the Runaway Grandpa Read online

  “Brian’s a big boy, now, Mr. Dille, maybe he needs to see for himself. You can’t protect him forever,” Holly interrupted. “He needs to be doing this. He’s the one with the inside knowledge. Nobody else has the slightest idea where they are.”

  Mr. Dille scratched his chin thoughtfully. He shook himself like a dog shedding water.

  “This kid, man. This kid of mine. He’s driven, you know what I mean? Stubborn as a mule, like my grand pappy. I vowed I’d never go back-country again in my lifetime. Now, here I go.” He shook his head, tossed his hands in the air. “Following my son.”

  “Way to go, Mr. Dille,” said Mark.

  It was the longest speech Brian had ever heard his dad give. He didn’t say anything. He just went over and stood close beside him, close enough to smell his expensive cologne. The storm between them had passed. His dad’s arm went round Brian’s shoulder, and Brian felt the warmth. With his dad’s help, he could do anything. He felt the resolve to find Jess and Ernie strengthen. There was hope.

  Holly phoned the RCMP and discovered that no one had heard or seen anything more. There was a gathering of all the volunteer searchers in the parking lot of the Safeway store at five p.m. Brian’s dad phoned and registered at the Riverview motel. Then the four of them went to the meeting.

  “All these people. Who would have thought?” Holly sounded surprised. Brian was pleased to see the crowds.

  Chapter 14 – Setting up Camp

  Jess had found matches in a tin under a loose cushion, so she’d been able to light the fire. She’d made tea, nearly burning her hand on the old kettle, and added branches to the flames. Ernie had wakened and they’d had a little visit. She hadn’t found the hatchet or the bow saw yet, so she kept piling small stuff on the fire. Maybe she could forage further and find a dry stump. She had to think about shelter for the night. The whole van was on such a slant it would not be comfortable. The interior was a mess. She rose to hunt for more wood, stretch her legs, and study the situation.

  In some ways she envied Ernie sitting there praying. She had gone with him to the cathedral some times. It was peaceful, comforting, seemed to help keep life in perspective. Ernie called it keeping in touch with God. Her mom didn’t go to church. Naomi Baines worked so hard with people all the time that she liked to take Sundays to have a quiet time, sleep in, maybe go on a picnic, for a ride in the country, or out to brunch with Jess.

  Unless someone found them soon, Jess wouldn’t be going anywhere with anyone. So much for their long weekend together in Banff, up in the mountains hiking.

  A picture of her mother and Grandma Ruth flashed in her head. They were pacing the floor in the Mather kitchen, a police officer talking on the phone. Anxious looks, tears, wringing hands. Jess felt sorry for them, for what she was afraid was going on at home, but she couldn’t let herself think about them, she had to think about herself and Ernie. She found two fallen birches and hauled them to the fire. She broke them up by stomping on them with her good leg. Pieces of wood flew everywhere. It took so long to do everything. Her knee hurt all the time. Sweat poured down her face, mosquitoes hovered. One bit her temple. She swatted it so hard her head hurt. She fished out the bug ointment, put some on, put a band-aid on a scratch on her hand. Boy, was she glad she had a survival kit in her sports bag. Maybe now she could make her mom understand.

  What about wild animals? What about bad weather? What if Ernie got worse or wandered away? What about her mother and Grandma Ruth hunting for them?

  Did everyone have a head that stewed about how other people were feeling, and who was to blame and how you could help, and how could you keep from worrying so much? Sometimes she couldn’t sleep for worrying about people – like Ernie – and when things got really bad at school she’d remember that her dad had left. Maybe that was her fault too. She chewed her lip. Too bad she couldn’t put a sports bag in her head to store everything in compartments. Life would be easier.

  If she had a sports bag in her head she could learn to meditate, maybe cook or garden to work things through. Only ten minutes allowed for worrying about Ernie, or ten minutes about wanting her work neat no matter what.

  Ernie prayed, her mother practiced yoga, and Grandma Ruth said her meditation came with a trowel attached. She worked in her garden and knitted giant sweaters for everyone. Brian used to draw or make things in Ernie’s shop. His parents always seemed to be out with friends.

  Jess brought over two blankets she had rescued from the camper and a ball of rope. She strung a piece of rope between the tree Ernie was leaning on and a skinny birch. With her Swiss Army knife she cut lengths of rope and tied the corners of the blanket to four trees. The rope between Ernie’s tree and the birch acted as a roof peak. Jess attached the other blanket behind this makeshift tent as a shelter. She had discovered some thin plastic rolled up in the smashed cupboard and attached it to the blankets with clothespins to keep out the rain and wind.

  Ernie watched from his tree, his eyes large, round, a frown creasing his forehead. He was reciting beautiful words in a clear whisper. “‘Sing a new song, make a joyful noise all the earth. Let the seas roar. Let the floods clap their hands: let the hills be joyful together.’ ”

  Jess sighed. Those words must be from the Bible. They were comforting, but still she worried.

  Jess ran to the edge of the little clearing, stared down through the trees to the silt-filled current. It was a cold, forbidding, ancient river. It frightened her. Yet she felt pulled towards it as if it held secrets she wanted to know. A pair of hawks circled and swooped, disappeared behind dark pines on the far side of the rushing current.

  “That river was the highway to the north in the old days, you know. Pioneers and coureurs de bois used it to travel up and down.” Ernie said.

  Jess nodded her head – she’d heard this before, from Ernie and from the geographer who had come to her class.

  “The landing by the town is where people loaded their goods to go to Fort Edmonton. There’s an old trail runs all the way to St. Albert. It’s empty now. The river is deserted most of the time too. We travel on highways, fly in planes. The mighty Athabasca carries sludge from pulp mills, dead trees, runoff from fertilized fields, and the occasional fishing boat or canoeist. The fish have too much mercury, so we can’t eat them.”

  “A couple wouldn’t hurt us, would they?” Jess had rescued the fishing poles and frozen bait. “Can you walk?”

  Ernie pulled himself up by gripping the tree with his right hand and kneeling on his right leg. Jess wrapped his left arm around her shoulder and the two of them manoeuvered their way down the path to the small beach. Behind the old tree with the red paint mark on it, close to the rock-strewn shore, they spotted two old folding summer chairs with sagging yellow webbing.

  “Someone must use this place. You can watch for them, Ernie – while you fish.” Jess helped Ernie to sit in the lawn chair. Its legs were weak, but Ernie wasn’t a heavy man. She handed him his fishing pole, put a minnow on his hook, and tossed it in the river. She made sure his sore left hand was resting on the chair arm and his right was free to hold the fishing rod. When she was a little girl, just after her father had left home, she and Ernie and Brian had gone fishing at Half Moon Lake, before the green algae had gotten too bad. Ernie had baited the hook, taught her how to hold the rod, schooled both kids on sitting still in the boat. Now she was helping Ernie.

  “This is Crown land, you know. All the rivers in Alberta have public land along the shorelines so the wildlife have access to water and food. That’s why I love this province. That’s why I love Canada.”

  “Yes, Ernie, I know.” She was glad he was making sense. When he didn’t, it made her tight in the stomach and dry in the mouth. “I do too.”

  Now Jess could finish setting up camp. It must be past supper time. From the vantage of the beach, she studied the opposite shoreline. She could hear the water rushing over rocks. In some ways the river was company itself, flowing, chattering, hurrying along, busy lik
e another person. Was a person ever really alone by a river? As long as you didn’t have to travel on it or swim in it.

  Ernie slumped over his fishing rod, dozing. His tractor cap was pulled down, shading his face. The sky had darkened. A stray bee buzzed by his right hand, but not in a stinging mood. Jess sprayed his hat and his hands with bug dope. Then she dug into her “survival kit” and brought out another snack. She opened a strip of fruit and chewed as she climbed up to the campsite.

  The fire was dying. She’d have to find more wood. She went back down to the beach and hauled up three fairly hefty pieces of driftwood, threw two on the fire, and laid one close by for later. All this traveling up and down to the river was wearing her out. She wished they’d landed on a piece of prairie instead of this steep river bank.

  Jess toured the wreck of the smashed top rack and the trampled bushes again in a desperate search for more foodstuffs and camping equipment. She found two skinny mattresses beside a giant fallen pine tree. A tin of corned beef and a jar of coffee creamer leaned against a poplar stump. She put them with the rest of the food. What she wouldn’t give for the hatchet or the bow saw. She’d watched Ernie saw up thin birch fast. Birch made a good fire, but breaking it over her knee had made her left knee hurt as much as her right, the one she’d caught under the dash. It might get very cold tonight. There might be bears or coyotes out there, and a good fire would keep them away.

  Should she go back to the road and try to find help? How far was it to the nearest farm? If only she’d paid more attention as they bumped and joggled along that dirt track. Should she make a big fire to attract attention? But fire could get out of control so easily. Then finally there was the river. If the inflatable boat was in the wreckage, she could take them out that way. She shivered, remembering the rushing river of her dream and the mighty Athabasca swirling below.

  Bang! Crash! Noises in the woods to the south. Jess’s heart thundered in her chest. The birds stopped singing. No breeze stirred the leaves, no twig snapped. She peered around the corner of an old black poplar with fungi shaped like saucers attached every few feet up its near side. She could see nothing but the startling green of new growth. She blinked and strained her eyes. Nothing moved.

  I am not alone. I share these woods with others. Was that an elk, a moose, or a bear? She gulped. A deer wouldn’t make that much racket. Elk or moose she could get out of the road of, but bears might be a different matter. Suddenly, memories of bad movies on late night TV with nasty men in dark woods flooded into her mind. She shook her head in an effort to send them away. She hugged the tree, felt the bark bite into her palm. A slight breeze rustled the leaves.

  Don’t be a silly goose, she told herself. This is northern Alberta. Nobody’s going to hurt you. Whatever was out there had gone away or lain down to sleep. Get on with setting up camp.

  Inside the makeshift tent, she rolled out the camper mattresses and the sleeping bags and plumped up the expandable pillows. It looked quite cozy. Just to be safe, she put rain gear and boots from the broken clothes cupboard into the shelter as well.

  Jess took one last look around the crash site. That’s when she spotted the yellow vinyl inflatable boat partially hidden under a crumpled chunk of the camper’s door. She hauled it out into the open and stared at it, waves of nausea rising in her throat. She hoped she wouldn’t have to use the boat. It wasn’t designed for rivers, was it? Just quiet fishing lakes.

  Jess had a quick memory of herself and Brian and Ernie scrunched in that boat three years ago. That floppy boat had barely held the three of them then, and it was hard to paddle. She chucked it at the base of the marked tree along with its two plastic paddles and the foot pump.

  Ernie was singing hymns.

  Jess whistled under her breath as she pumped air into the boat. The sun sank below the orange and lilac sky behind the western hills. The northern sky looked dark and stormy. She helped Ernie up the bank to the campsite. The ravens scolded her continually and the hawks circled overhead, one bold sparrow chasing the giant hawk’s tail.

  She was afraid that no trace of the old camper’s route to the river would show unless someone looked very closely and spotted a tire skid, a bent birch, or a broken saskatoon, its blossoms crushed. Besides, she had heard no cars, only noises from heavy trucks across the impossibly wide river. The current was too fast for a boat to cross. The old Ernie would have known how fast the river was flowing.

  She and Ernie camped above the Athabasca might be the only people in the world. If anyone was hunting for them, they were doing it quietly or the hunt was focused in a different direction. Probably they were dragging the lakes. On TV, they always dragged lakes for missing persons. But this wasn’t TV or a book, it was real life.

  Chapter 15 – Brian, the Hunter

  “What possessed Jess?” Sonny Dille asked as he and Brian drove up the highway and turned into the park at Baptiste Lake after the five o’clock meeting in the parking lot. It was still light, thanks to being up north.

  Then he answered the question for himself. “In all ways but one Jess is a normal kid. Most kids are pretty self-centered, but Jess has an overwhelming desire to help others. I think she grew up too fast after her dad did a bunk, I mean, since her father left. He had problems. You were too young to notice, Brian. It made Jess a worrier. She tries to read people’s minds and figure out when they need something. She’d go with Ernie to protect him, to keep him company.”

  Brian nodded and gazed out the window. “We parked in that spot often.” He swiveled his head to keep the boat launch in view.

  The car pulled onto the beach, close to the shore. Two guys were cleaning fish. The waves lapped on the beach. A blue heron flew off, its long legs dangling like chopsticks.

  “I wish it was Jess and Ernie there instead of a pair of fishermen,” Sonny said. He sat behind the wheel of his jeep, stroking his chin.

  Brian stared at the two men with tackle boxes open beside them on the picnic table. He hopped out and went over, asked them if they had seen Jess and Ernie, or the old camper. They shook their heads in unison.

  “Kids who have an alcoholic parent grow up too fast,” Sonny sighed. “They keep trying to fix things. Make things nice. I know what that’s like.”

  Brian scratched his head. His dad seemed to be taking a journey all of his own. “You’ve never drunk a lot, Dad.”

  Brian couldn’t remember ever being out with his dad for this length of time on his own. Each member of his family went their own way. His mom with her friends. His dad with his buddies. And Brian – since Ernie and Jess – who did he spend time with, talk to? The guys were all right to play with, but they didn’t talk. Not like Ernie had. He missed Ernie.

  He looked at his dad’s big clean hands resting on the steering wheel. It was strange. His dad had immigrated to Canada from Trinidad to go to university. He had met and married Brian’s mom. He’d never been back to Trinidad, wouldn’t talk much about it. Didn’t talk much about anything.

  “Don’t you get homesick for Trinidad?”

  “Homesick?”

  “I was thinking that Ernie was homesick for the old days, back when he was okay.”

  “You’re a funny kid, Brian.”

  “Sometimes. The kids laugh at my jokes.”

  “No, I mean funny-strange.”

  “So, do you…. Get homesick? I want to go to Trinidad some day. When we did our family tree in grade four, I got really curious.” Then Brian stopped talking. He remembered that his dad didn’t talk about Trinidad much and had told him to forget it.

  Sonny sighed. “I ran away… not like Ernie. I knew what I was doing. I wanted to get out, go somewhere else, become a different kind of person. I chose Canada. Going back would be hard. But I’d like to see my mom. She won’t travel on airplanes. All these years I’ve tried to keep my past separate from my life now, my new family, city, job, and friends. Now, out here scouring the countryside for Jess and Ernie, I’m getting homesick for Trinidad.”

&n
bsp; “Let’s walk, Dad. We can watch for signs of the camper, signs of them fishing.” Brian opened the car door. “Maybe when everyone is safe we could go to Trinidad? But first we’ve got to find the runaways.”

  “Isn’t this private property? Won’t people ask questions? And my shoes aren’t built for this.”

  “Dad, please?”

  “When I was a kid growing up in Trinidad, we had a little farm. I took care of the pig. I hated that pig. I hated the muck and mud in the yard. It stank. I swore I’d never be a farmer. I’d never cut sugar cane.” Brian’s father sprayed himself up and down with bug spray before they set out.

  They hunted for signs of Ernie or Jess until the light started to fade in the sky. Brian’s dad walked as if he was trying to keep the dirt off his shoes. Both of them were weary and discouraged as they drove back into Landis.

  Thunder crashed. Lightning flashed across the sky to the south. Sonny rolled up the windows of the jeep. Rain spattered the windshield.

  “This landscape is so different than Trinidad. It makes my head hurt. When I first got to Canada I thought I would freeze to death, and the prairies were so dry. A big change for a poor boy from the Caribbean. I washed the soil off my skin. I washed the grime from under my nails. I washed the smell of poverty away. I do not want to get to know this country too well. It makes me feel vulnerable. Like Jess and Ernie.”

  Brian gazed at his dad. His father concentrated on the road, but Brian figured his father wasn’t seeing much of Alberta’s northern roads. He was thousands of miles away. Sonny slowed down as they pulled into town. It appeared deserted.

  “Maybe someone else has discovered something,” Sonny Dille said.

  “This doesn’t look like a town with good news,” Brian sighed.

  “Let’s check the motel, see if there’s any messages. Ruth and Naomi must be here by now. They’re probably both staying at the farm.”