The search party never did find Dodge.
Burl Crow had gone up that awful November day they got the news, but he wouldn’t let Nate come along. They had fought about it. Or, at least, Nate fought, and Burl just waited him out. There had hardly ever been a time he’d said no to his son about going with him to the lake. Just once before, really, a week earlier when Dodge had asked him to come along on the fridge expedition. Nate had stomped to his room and slammed the door. That was a first, too.
The search party had been cut short by the first big snowstorm of the season. It had raged for three days. By the end of it, the snow was thick on the ground and the ice was forming on Ghost Lake. There was no other way into Dead Horse Bay. There was deep forest right down to the waterfront. Another search party had gone up anyway, tried to hack their way in from the trail at the dam, but with no luck.
Dodge was still out there.
A year ago, eight months before the fatal trip, the three boys — Nate, Dodge, and Paul — had gone up to Ghost Lake with Burl over March break. It was a test. If the boys passed, they could go up alone next March. It was next March now. But it was going to be just Nate and his friend from school, Paul Jokinen, heading up on Thursday.
“You sure about this?”
“Yeah.”
His father nodded. Waited.
“What?”
“Have you got some idea about looking for him?”
Nate’s eyes skittered away from his father’s. But you didn’t lie to Burl. There was no point in it. So he nodded.
“The lake’s frozen solid, Nate. Probably ten inches thick. There’ll be a ton of snow.”
“I know.”
“Are you planning anything foolish?” Burl asked.
Nate shook his head, hurt by the implications. “I’m not stupid,” he said. His father nodded. Waited. “Maybe we’ll poke around along the shoreline of Dead Horse. Check out the east side of Picnic Island. You know, in case the current shifted . . .” It wasn’t really a plan; it was more like a deep-seated need to do something — anything.
Then his father laid his strong hands on Nate’s shoulders. “There’s nothing you could have done, Nathaniel.”
Nate looked into his father’s eyes. “He pleaded with me to go.”
“I know.”
“If I’d been there, Dad, I wouldn’t have let it happen. I’d have stopped them.”
“I believe that. Or I believe you’d have tried. But Art Hoebeek . . . he was —”
“An idiot?”
His father frowned. “I was going to say a difficult man to convince when he had an idea in his head.”
“I’ll never forgive him,” said Nate. Then he bowed his head. He’d never forgive himself either, and his father knew it. They’d been all over that.
His father didn’t pass judgment. His mind was focused on Nate and Paul’s upcoming trip. “Nate?” He looked up. “You die out there, son, I’m going to get real angry.” Nate smiled, but his father didn’t smile back. “You have no idea,” he said, shaking his head. “Hell, I’ll be angry with you for the rest of your death.”
Gallows humor. Nate laughed, but it caught in his throat. His father wasn’t being funny. And the line stayed with Nate. I’ll be angry with you for the rest of your death. That was not a fate he wanted to face.
Burl Crow was a teacher by avocation and training, a guidance counselor by profession. But in the bush, he didn’t teach so much as showed and waited. He had expected his three students to ask before they screwed up, rather than warning them beforehand. Think first, that was the crucial thing in the wild.
They had gone over the Ski-Doo, troubleshooting. It was an old model Burl kept in excellent condition. It wasn’t enough to be able to operate it, as far as he was concerned; you had to treat it tenderly and know what to do when it stopped dead in the middle of nowhere. The Hoebeeks had a new-model Polaris, less likely to cause any trouble. Dodge knew the Polaris just fine, so Burl made him conduct a workshop on its finer points. Dodge hadn’t much liked being schooled, but he loved being the center of attention. He had hammed it up, big time. But he knew his stuff and that was all Burl wanted to know.
Thorough. Nate’s father was all about thorough.
The three boys had learned how to safely climb on the roof and shovel off the solar panels so they could have enough electricity for lights, the radio, charging their cell phones. Not that there was any reception, not so much as a single bar — not at water level, anyway. But up behind the camp, high on a cliff overlooking the lake, there was an abandoned shack that a miner had built ages ago. His name was Japheth Starlight, and the Crow camp stood on the old Starlight claim. Nate had never met Starlight. He was long since dead and gone. But his tiny, perfect shack was still there and Burl had kept it shipshape, repairing major bear damage on one occasion, propping it up when it started to list with age. From up there, you could get reception.
“First sign of any trouble . . .”
Dodge had pulled out his cell phone. “Up the hill,” he had said. They all knew the drill. There had been blazes carved on the trees to show the path up to the shack. Burl had the trio find their way up by themselves while he waited below. They tied plastic orange ribbons on branches where the old tree blazes had grown dull with age. Nate had texted his mother from the cliff top. “The eagle has landed,” he wrote. He’d watched for almost a minute until the “delivered” notification popped up. He’d wanted to wait for her to reply but Dodge was impatient, so they’d made their way down the hill back to the camp with Dodge out front leading the way. Nate could still see — would always see — Dodge tramping down that hill through the bush, pulling ahead of him and Paul. Because that’s what Dodge did. He was always on to the next thing, one step ahead of you. Now, in Nate’s imagining, Dodge pulled farther and farther ahead until he disappeared into the bush. Just walked right into the next world, wherever that was.
He would never be dead to Nate until there was a body. Dodge was up there somewhere. And if anyone could find him, it would be Nate.
You’ve got to come.
Can’t.
Dude!!!
The Mighty Burl has spoken. Too dangerous.
Hold that thought . . .
Nate is still sitting on his bed with the cell phone in his hands, punching out a text, when Dodge phones.
“It won’t be too dangerous if you come,” he says without introduction.
“What does that mean?” says Nate.
“Dad thinks you’re smart. He obviously doesn’t know you as well as I do, but he’ll listen to you, man.”
“Hah!” The laugh erupts from Nate. “You don’t listen to me; why would your father?”
“Because he thinks you’ve got this, I don’t know, deep-woods Canadian wisdom. . . . You know . . .”
Nate isn’t sure if Dodge is messing with him. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Oh, come on, man. You know what I’m saying. Like your dad.”
And suddenly Nate feels uncomfortable, as if Dodge is saying something that’s only sort of a compliment but is something else as well. Something that is always there with Dodge. Their difference. Nate is never just Nate to him. He’s a category. The other.
“You still there?”
“Yeah. I’m just wondering why you’re such a dick.”
“Forget about it,” says Dodge. “All I’m really saying is that if you’re along for the ride, nothing bad will happen.”
“Like I’m a lucky rabbit’s foot?”
Dodge groans with frustration. “Just say yes, Numbster. It’ll be cool.”
Nate changes the subject. Asks about school, how the Wildcats’ season is going, whether Dodge asked that girl out.
“Which one?”
“The cheerleader.”
“Cindi? Man, that is so last week.”
And so on. The appeal to Nate — the demand — is dropped, but he can tell that Dodge is pissed. Then someone calls Dodge to the dinner table and he sa
ys goodbye, just like that.
“I wish you weren’t going up there,” says Nate. But the line is already dead.
And then, two weeks later, Dodge is dead. His father is dead, and skinny little Patrick, always with the puffer for his asthma, is dead. And Nate can’t help thinking if he’d been there, maybe it wouldn’t have happened. Maybe Art Hoebeek would have listened to him. Right.
There is an e-mail from Dodge, two days before the Hoebeeks set off from Indiana.
Numbster — I mean Nate the Great — this is your last chance! The once-in-a-lifetime offer is still on the table. A chance to hang out with the one and only Dodge Hoebeek one mo’ time before the winter sets in. Seriously, man, here’s the deal. Dad knows the weather could get bad. He’s got a backup plan. We get there and if it’s lousy, we leave the fridge at Sanctuary Cove with old man La Cloche. We stay there the night, take the Budd back to Sudbury the next day. We don’t do the big fridge thing unless it’s perfect, right? So come on. Deal?
He didn’t usually sleep in, but it was eleven when Nate got up Wednesday morning. He woke to the house phone ringing. He checked his cell and saw there was a missed message. Paul.
“I’m up,” he called down to his mother when he heard her answering the phone. She appeared at the bottom of the stairs with the cordless in her hand.
“Paul,” she said, her hand over the receiver. She was frowning.
“What’s up?”
“He doesn’t sound so hot.”
Nate took the phone, gulping down his foreboding. He went back to his room, closing the door behind him.
“Hey,” he said.
“I called you at, like, nine.”
“Yeah, well I was dead to the world. Bad night.”
“Tell me about it.”
“This doesn’t sound good.”
There was a pause at the end of the line as big as the northern tundra. “I can’t go,” said Paul.
Nate couldn’t think of what to say.
“I’m sorry, man. Really.”
More silence.
“Talk to me, Nate.”
“What the —”
“I’m grounded,” said Paul. Nate looked out at the snow, squinting at the brightness, trying to tamp down his anger. “And don’t remind me you said not to go to the fricking party.”
“You went to the fricking party?”
“I said don’t remind me.”
“Paul —”
“I know, I know.”
Nate lowered his voice. “Paul, I can’t go without —”
“I said I know Nate. You can’t go to camp unless I go, too. Got it, for Christ’s sake! Don’t rub it in.”
“Jeezus!”
There was a long pause. “Sorry,” Paul mumbled.
Nate took a deep breath. He checked to see that he’d shut the door. The plan was dissolving before his eyes, swirling into nothing just like the snow squalls outside his window.
“We’ve been talking about this trip for months — all year!”
“I said I’m sorry.”
Nate sighed. “I heard you.”
“My folks are, like, through the roof.”
“What happened?”
“Beer pong is what happened.”
Nate was thinking hard. “Could I talk to them?” he asked.
“My parents?”
“No, the Jedi Knights.”
“Well, you’d have about as much chance of talking to the Jedi Knights as to my parents. Man, I got so loaded.” He groaned. “I know — I’m a douche bag. A total fricking douche bag. And if it makes you feel better, I feel like death warmed over.”
Nate sat down on the edge of his bed. It did make him feel better, but only marginally.
“Like I said, I owe you, big time.”
Nate closed his eyes, counted to five, slowly in three languages. “Okay.”
“So . . . you accept my apology?”
“No way. I’m writing down what you said about owing me big time.”
At the other end, someone was speaking to Paul, his mother, by the sound of it. “That was my jail guard,” he said mournfully. “I’ve got to get off the phone. See you, okay? Once I get out.”
“Like in five years?”
“Maybe I’ll get early parole if I load the dishwasher.”
Nate smiled, despite everything. “Maybe I could bust you out,” he said.
“Yeah, get the Mission Impossible team back together.”
Nate managed a halfhearted laugh. Actually, he’d been thinking of a helicopter and a rope with knots in it. “See you,” he said.
“Yeah.”
Click.
Nate pushed the off button and chucked the cordless onto the bed beside him. He stood up, crossed the room to the window, and leaned on the sill. The temperature had dipped to minus twenty-five Centigrade.
“That would be minus thirteen, to you, Mr. H.,” he muttered to himself.
The sun was dazzling. Ah, March in Northern Ontario. It was snow-globe stuff outside, not a real snowfall.
There was a knock on his door.
“Yeah?”
Mom poked her head in. “Is he okay?”
“Uh, yeah,” said Nate, wiping the gloomy look off his face. “He just has a headache.”
His mother stared at him. “So everything’s still on?”
The pause before Nate spoke was little more than a nanosecond. “Yeah,” he said, sticking both thumbs in the air.
“Good,” said Astrid. “This is going to be so exciting, right?”
“Right,” said Nate. “I can hardly wait.”
There were only two ways into Ghost Lake: a plane or the Budd car. The Budd was a diesel train, usually two cars long, that traveled from Sudbury northwest to White River. It went up one day and down the next, with no service on Monday. It made a handful of scheduled stops along the way, but you could get the engineer to stop anywhere you liked. The trail into the camp at Ghost Lake was at Mile 39 out of Pharaoh, about three hours north of Sudbury. The camp was a two-kilometer hike from the track, or a mile and a half in Hoebeek. But however you measured it, the hike in was a long one, carrying everything you needed on your back. Which is what it came down to in winter when the Kawasaki Mule was shut up tight in its shed. There was emergency grub at the camp, dry goods and cans. But basically, you carried everything in or did without. If you were staying for any length of time, you could come back to the track with the snowmobile, but that was for wusses.
Nate shook his head. He should have gone to the damn party. He could have kept Paul on the up and up. Reminded him about Thursday. Dragged him home —
“So have you made up your mind?”
Nate looked up. Astrid was smiling at him from behind a loaded grocery cart. He was standing in the canned food aisle with two different brands of beef stew in his hands. “Yeah, pretty much,” he said. He was going to put one can back on the shelf and then remembered he was shopping for two. He put them both in the cart. There was food there for four days, for two teenage boys.
His mother frowned. “When you get back I’m putting you on a strict diet of fresh vegetables and fruit,” she said, shaking her head at the contents of the cart. Nate summoned up a smile that wouldn’t have registered above 2.5 on any kind of smile-o-meter.
His mother’s frown deepened.
“What?” he said.
“Is something wrong, Nate?” she said.
“No. Why?”
“Are you getting cold feet?” He shook his head. “Because you can always change your mind.”
“What is this? First Dad and now you.”
She held up her hands in surrender. “Just checking.”
For one moment he thought he’d break down and confess. But then there was Dodge in his head whispering to him.
You’ve got to come, Numbster. You owe me.
“I guess I’m just a little nervous,” he said.
“It’s a big deal,” said Astrid, “without your father along and all.”
“Yeah,” he said.
“Nate, you don’t have anything to prove.”
“Right,” he said. “Of course.” But that was also a lie.
He glared at the pile of groceries he’d be carrying in himself. Could he do it in one trip? All those hills. All that snow. Alone.
“I’m good,” he said.
Astrid reached out, cupped his chin like he was a child, made him look into her eyes. Another shopper walked by, staring at him surreptitiously, as if he were about to get scolded. He concentrated his gaze on his mother; it took every muscle in his body. She wasn’t exactly a mind reader, but there was no fooling her. He must have passed the test. She smiled. “Well, let’s get this stuff home. Early night, right?”
“Right,” he said. He even managed a smile. He was a better liar than he’d have ever guessed. The idea didn’t give him much comfort.
Astrid had a class field trip to a power plant Thursday morning, so she was going to be up and out early. Dad was going to drop Nate off at the train station on his way to school. It may have been March break for the students, but his father was on some kind of planning committee.
“We picking up Paul?” he asked.
“Nah, his dad’s going to drop him off.” Nate stared straight ahead. The lying wasn’t getting any easier.
“Nervous?” said Burl.
“Mostly just excited,” said Nate, and a little chunk of him broke off inside, like an iceberg calving into his bloodstream.
The Budd left at nine if it was on time, which it seldom was. There weren’t many passengers this time of year. In summer, there might be scores of them, troops of Boy Scouts and gaggles of trippers, a dozen canoes to load, lumber for construction, sometimes an ATV. This time of year, there’d be a handful of intrepid souls, the odd trapper, or maybe somebody’s grandmother heading all the way to the end of the line.
Burl looked at the time on his wristwatch, looked up and down the platform.
The Starlight Claim Page 2