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‘Are you awake, honey? I think he’s awake, doctor. Sam, are you all right?’
Katie was bending over him now, obscuring the plaster shapes with her pale face. Sam smiled dreamily, remembering the photos they had taken in a booth in Calgary Airport, waiting for Katie’s parents to arrive from Vancouver. The booth’s exposure had been set for Katie’s fair white skin, and Sam’s dark Indian face had come out as a featureless brown blob. Katie had laughed hard at the four useless snaps of herself kissing what looked like an old brown football propped on the shoulders of a suede jacket. Sam had laughed too, but had stopped laughing when he saw the look on Katie’s parents’ faces as they realized that the Indian guy standing next to their daughter was not the cab driver waiting to relieve them of their luggage, but the man she had told them so much about. The man she had thrown it all away for. The man she had married.
‘Can you hear me, Mr Hunt?’
Alan Harris was leaning into Sam’s vision, bringing with him a faint smell of linoleum.
‘Sure. I hear you. I hit the deck, right?’
‘Right. How does the head feel?’ The doctor put his stethoscope to his ears and pulled back the goosedown comforter to put the cold metal to Sam’s chest.
‘Okay, I guess. How long have I been out?’
Katie’s face bobbed back into view. ‘A big scary fifty minutes, you wicked man. The doctor’s been in and out of here all day like he’s planning to move in.’ Her voice softened, and she put a hand to his brow. ‘We thought you were a hospital case. I can’t tell you what I’ve been going through or how glad I am to have you back.’
Sam closed his eyes again. Fifty minutes. What made him black out? His head was starting to hurt now, and the realization that he must have junked a whole day’s work was starting to make itself known in that area in the pit of his stomach reserved for anxiety. He opened his eyes abruptly. ‘Jesus, Katie. What about my shift? I was standing in for Ben. Did you call the office?’
‘Sure I called the office. They said they hoped you were okay and not to worry. And I called the museum, so I can take a few days off if you don’t feel like getting up right away. Stop chewing over it.’
Sam closed his eyes again, listening to the doctor making soft cooing noises to Katie about how everything seemed fine and when he was to take the painkillers and how she was to let him know if Sam’s head got sore and how were the kids and shit.
As he heard Katie closing the front door and the front wheels of Doctor Harris’s car having big trouble helping him leave the Hunts’ icy driveway, Sam drifted into gentle velvet sleep quite unlike the cold dark place he had been for the last fifty minutes.
Katie looked in from the bedroom door at her sleeping husband, his face no longer contorted as it had been since Andy next door helped her carry him inside, calm the children and call for help. For hours he had sweated and moaned as though someone were roasting him over a spit, but now he was just plain asleep.
His straight dark hair, damp with sweat, lay over the face she loved, and she exhaled lightly with relief that he was going to be all right.
But two things still bugged her. First, why he had passed out at all, and second, that for nearly fifty minutes of his blackout he’d been shouting and muttering in Siouan. Sam hadn’t spoken a word of Siouan since before they were married, except once when they’d had a minor car accident while Billy was a baby. He’d sworn briefly and violently in the ancient Indian tongue as Katie screamed, clutching Billy, and the car skidded off the highway, to rest harmlessly and mercifully on the verge.
He never used it again. The language of losers he called it. Whatever was bugging him in his dreams was powerful enough to turn back the clock for Sam and pull that long-abandoned language out of his past and into his mouth. It made Katie uneasy, although right now she couldn’t say why.
In half an hour she would go and collect Jess from Mrs Chaney, but now she could use a coffee and some time to herself. In the tiny kitchen, she switched the TV and the coffee machine on at the same plug. The local cable station was talking about the blast. Two ski patrollers killed, half the mountain gone above the Corkscrew tunnels, the railway blocked by rubble and ice. It was also a mystery. Some nervous reporter in a big anorak was standing in the car park beside Ledmore Creek stuttering that so far they could find no explanation for the size or violence of the blast but that theories included a pocket of methane gas detonated by chance.
Behind him blue lights flashed and people walked about pointing aimlessly. Katie poured herself a coffee, smiling at the ineptitude of local news, but deep down she was still worried why Sam had measured his length on the path not at the precise moment that pocket of methane had gone up, but moments later when they looked up at the smoke. The doc said it could have been the shock-waves if Sam was already feeling lightheaded from an encroaching infection. Katie didn’t think so. Shock waves don’t take that long, and Sam sure didn’t look like he was coming down with anything other than usual early morning grouchiness.
Katie had stomached enough of goddamn blasts and blackouts for one day. She switched off her worries, switched channels and sat down at the table to catch half an hour of a Green Acres re-run.
When Gerry turned up at the door, the snow was falling so thickly Katie could barely make him out. The snowman on the doorstep handed a conical shape to Katie and said, ‘Peace offering.’
She smiled, took the flowers already frosted with snow, and pulled Gerry in by the elbow.
Gerry shook himself like a dog in the kitchen. ‘Christ. This is going to make the ski company wet themselves.’
Katie already had the coffee machine back on. ‘Yeah. And not a whisper of it on the forecast. I want my money back from the weather channel. Grab a seat.’
Gerry installed himself at the kitchen table. ‘I heard from Billy at school. Is Sam okay?’
‘Yeah. He’s fine. We don’t know what all that fainting was about. Probably saw the hockey scores.’
She turned her back on Gerry and fished out a couple of mugs from the dishwasher.
‘Listen Katie … about the other night …’
‘Forget it, Gerry. It’s no big deal.’
‘It is a big deal. Claire’s my sister. Uptight corporate woman maybe, but my sister nevertheless, and I’m ashamed she upset Sam.’
Katie sighed and joined him at the table, toying with the defrosting flowers in their soggy paper wrapping. ‘You know the problem, Gerry. You’ve known us for nearly ten years. Sam just doesn’t think he’s an Indian.’
‘Kind of hard to forget. Especially when you look at Billy and Jess.’
Katie laughed.
‘I know. Sometimes I’m glad I can remember giving birth to them, or I’d think I had nothing to do with their creation at all. The Crosby DNA’s sure got mugged somewhere along the line by Sam’s.’
‘Is he mad at Ann and me for bringing Claire?’
Katie shook her head. ‘No. He’s mad at being born a Kinchuinick Indian and growing up on a reserve.’
‘Claire’s real embarrassed. She wondered if we could maybe have you all round to our place for supper before they head back to Montreal. But I guess if Sam’s not well …’
‘Let’s leave it, Gerry. But thanks for the thought.’
He nodded. The coffee machine gurgled its message that the brew was up.
‘So how’s school anyway?’
Gerry lightened up, his duty done. ‘It’s shit. As usual.’
‘The kids all talking about the explosion?’ She put two coffees in front of them.
‘And some. Of course now they’re also talking about this blizzard. They figure they’ll get time off if it keeps up.’
‘Billy seems distracted right now Gerry. Have you noticed?’
Gerry cupped the mug in his hand. ‘Can’t say I have. Was he upset by Sam collapsing?’
‘I don’t know. I just detect something disturbing him. Probably nothing. I thought you might notice, but I forgot teachers just practise riot control these days.’
‘Up yours.’
Katie laughed and drank her coffee. Gerry took one sip and stood up.
‘Look I really have to go. Just came to leave these.’
‘The coffee that good, huh?’
He kissed her on the ear and made for the kitchen door, then paused when he looked through the glass panel. ‘Hey, I think you should loosen up with the disciplinarian dog-owner bit and let Bart in. He’s carrying more snow than a blue trail.’
Katie came to the door. ‘I tried this morning, thanks Doctor Doolittle. He won’t come in.’
Gerry stepped into the blizzard again.
‘That’s huskies for you, huh? Bye!’
Katie waved goodbye, and looked over at Bart. Gerry was right. The dog was outside his kennel, almost completely covered in snow.
‘Here Bart. Come in boy.’ She patted her thigh.
Bart looked at Katie and then resumed his vigil, staring towards Wolf Mountain as if it were made of prime sirloin.
‘Jeez, a dysfunctional dog. That’s all we need. Next stop the Oprah Winfrey Show.’
Katie brushed the snow from her hair and shut the kitchen door.
6 (#ulink_12d987ec-609e-5caf-80d4-35dc6d9b4c95)
Frank Sinatra was giving it all he had in the chorus of ‘It Happened in Monterey’, when Ernie Legat’s horny hand stretched out to the cab’s stereo and cut the cassette. Ol’ Blue Eyes was God to Ernie, but he liked to hear what the engine was up to when he hit Wolf Pass. In weather like this, with a full forty-ton load of frozen seafood behind him, he would be lucky to see second gear. That would be on the way up. On the descent into Silver, he could probably do with a parachute.
The snow was coming at him in the headlights like a corny asteroid storm on Star Trek, hypnotizing him with flakes that became rods of relentless white motion as they streaked past the windshield, and despite the work of the snowploughs, the road wasn’t giving away many clues as to where it stopped being road and started being ditch.
Ernie coaxed the eighteen-wheeler into a first cautious gear change as the gradient started to introduce itself.
‘Come on, you bastard.’
Ernie reached his paw out again to turn up the heater, figuring getting more heat in the cab would take some of it out of the engine. The truck was doing its best.
In the back, two hundred lobsters, bound for plates on the east coast, slid backwards an inch on their plastic pallets as the Peterbilt started its journey up the one-in-fourteen pass.
The snow was getting thicker with every foot Ernie climbed, making him curse that last coffee he’d had at Mabel’s. No wonder he hadn’t seen another truck for twenty miles. The sneaky sons of bitches waving hello to him back in Lanark must have known how bad stuff was up here and either left hours earlier or cut loose for the night in the parking holes down on the Trans-Canada. Not a sniff of trouble on the CB.
Well shit on them. Ernie liked to get where he was going, and even though this was shaping up to be one of the worst winters he could remember, it would take more than a blizzard to knock the stuffing out of his schedule.
He was getting near the summit now, and the old tub hadn’t put a wheel wrong. Nice and slowly, that was how to take it. Ernie could feel the road flattening out, and even though all he could see in the dark and through the snow was about fifteen feet of white featureless ribbon, he’d worked this godforsaken road often enough in daylight to guess he was right underneath the peak of Wolf Mountain. That meant at least two miles of even cruising before it was hang on to your hat for the slide down into Silver.
The chorus of ‘It Happened in Monterey’ started to form itself into a hum on Ernie’s lips. It died just as quick as he saw the figure up ahead. Standing at the side of the road was a man in a long black coat with his ungloved hand out, casual as you like, thumbing a lift. Ernie figured it must be at least minus thirty-five out there, but this guy was just standing in the snow like he was hitching a ride from some pals in a beach buggy on Sunset Boulevard.
Ernie started to brake. It was real fortunate for the guy in the coat that the truck was on the flat. Braking in snow like this was jack-knife city, but this was an emergency.
What the hell was a guy in a coat doing up here near midnight in a snowstorm, at least ten miles from anything remotely resembling civilization?
The truck managed a standstill about twenty yards past the man and Ernie watched in the wing mirror as the figure walked, not ran, but walked, slowly up to the passenger door, his face lit only by the red side-lights.
The company didn’t allow hitchers, but this was life or death and the way Ernie saw it, he had no choice. He hadn’t seen another vehicle either way for at least two hours. How long had the man been standing here, casually waiting for his lift?
Ernie braced himself for a hospital job, wondering how many fingers the guy would still be able to call his own after a minimum of two hours without gloves. He was already planning the detour to Silver’s RCMP station when the cab door opened.
A rush of cold air entered every part of Ernie Legat as the man held open the door and looked up at his driver.
‘Jesus Christ buddy, get in and shut the fuckin’ door will ya!’
A pale, thin face held two ice-blue eyes that looked straight into Ernie’s soul. The man’s age was hard to place. A line-free face crowned with white hair, and skin that was almost translucent, belied a look in his eyes that seemed a great deal older.
The only illumination, from the single weak cab-light, was not doing much to help this guy’s bid to get a bit part in a beach movie, but despite his pallor the hitcher’s smile was disarmingly warm and charming. Not the smile of a man who has just cheated death.
Ernie motioned to the man with a hand that was already losing feeling in the tips of its fingers, and as the stranger looked calmly around the cab like a man buying a secondhand car, the cold was becoming more than he could bear.
‘Silver?’
‘Sure,’ he replied impatiently. ‘Get in.’
Huge flakes of snow whirled into the cab, settling on the dumb kidney-shaped plaid cushion on the dashboard that Amy Legat had sewn for her husband, for use when his behind got numb after ten hours of non-stop.
The man climbed carefully into the passenger seat, closed the door, folded his hands on his lap and looked straight ahead.
The cab was colder than Hell and Ernie’s breath was coming out in fast, thick clouds. Fast, because for some reason he was a little breathless after the excitement of finding the guy way up here. Thick, because the temperature had dropped to something that would freeze the balls off a polar bear.
He groped for the heater. It was already on full. The cab would heat up again once they got going. Once they got going. God, why was he driving at two miles an hour? Get this thing moving.
The truck shifted a gear and picked up speed, but Ernie was driving without seeing. All he could think of was the guy in his peripheral vision, lit only by the instrument panel now, sitting silently three feet away.
No explanation seemed like it was going to be offered, but Ernie was damned if he wasn’t going to be repaid for the rule-breaking ride with at least an interesting tale. ‘So what the hell you doin’ out there, fella?’ Ernie settled back into his brown bead seat cover to enjoy whatever the hitcher had to offer.
‘Just working my way towards Silver. Thanks for the ride. Looked for a while like I was going to have to walk.’ The man beamed across at his saviour, and before Ernie could demand an expansion, the man continued in his soothing pleasant voice. ‘Do you know Silver well, Ernie?’
Ernie shot a surprised glance at him. ‘How do you know my name?’
The man leant over and tapped Ernie’s company ID, a plastic card hanging from a chain that also supported a tiny cowbell with Austria painted on it, that his daughter brought back for him from a school trip fifteen years ago. Ernie’s photo glared out from the ID like a man in pain, and the real Ernie glared over at his passenger, his face matching his picture. ‘It’s right here. Unless that’s not you.’ The man seemed pleased with himself. ‘Silver?’ He reminded Ernie, who remained locked in his frown.
‘Oh I know it well enough. Right now it’s choked with folks slidin’ around on the hills with wooden sticks stuck to their feet like damned fools, but in the summer it goes right back to bein’ the no-shit-happens, assholes in RVs, railroad town it always was. You got business there?’
The man smiled and looked out of his window, his face turned away from Ernie. ‘Yeah. I’ve got some business to take care of there.’ He turned back, beaming that smile again. ‘Thought I might pick up some work.’
Ernie saw a chance. ‘Well you sure would be plenty suited to skiing work, fella, being able to stand out there in minus God knows what without so much as a chilblain. How come you ain’t frostbitten, with no gloves or nothin’? And if you don’t mind me pryin’, how’d you get up there? Didn’t see no car.’
The man picked up Amy’s cushion, turning it over in his soft white hands, examining it as though it were made of porcelain. ‘Got dropped off from another ride a few hours ago. Didn’t expect it to be so cold, so I dug a snow-hole. Just off the road back there.’ He looked across at Ernie, studying the driver’s face closely. ‘An old Indian skill I picked up years ago. Outside, forty below. Inside warm as toast. Don’t even need a coat once you’ve sealed the entrance. Heard the truck coming and I just strolled on out to borrow the ride.’
Ernie mulled it over. ‘So the Indians dug snow-holes? Good to know the useless drunken bums could do somethin’.’
‘That’s a truth and no mistake,’ replied the man with a new tenor to his voice.
Ernie looked across at the man in his truck and his gaze was returned with an unfaltering stare that even in the dim light of the cab Ernie could read as a warning.
He changed the subject.
‘What kind of trucker would let you out there? It’s only ten more miles to Silver, and the road ain’t exactly goin’ no place else.’
The man’s face creased into a smile. ‘Did I say it was a trucker? It certainly was not, Ernie. Like you say, no knight of the road would make such an uncharitable drop. It was a goon in a four-by-four pick-up, and I guess he just got tired of my company. Driver’s prerogative. Still, mustn’t grumble. I’m going to get there anyhow.’ He grinned. Hugely. ‘Thanks to you, Ernie.’
