“Just go, Dad,” said Nate. “You know Paul. He’s always last minute.”
His father clapped him on the shoulder. “Got it.”
“You’re more nervous than me,” said Nate. “You shouldn’t be.”
His father relaxed his shoulders. “Okay. You’re right. You guys are going to be fine.” He looked up at the enamel-blue sky. “The weather should be okay going in. There’s a storm coming, but not until Saturday. Might mean a long wait coming out on Sunday.”
“Like that’s never happened?”
“Right,” said his father. “Okay, I’m off. Send a text when you get a chance.”
“I’ll send Mom a text. You never even look at your cell.”
Burl smiled.
Just go! Please, before the truth leaks out of me all over the damn platform.
Then his father was gone and part of Nate wished Burl had seen through him. Paul sometimes joked about how Nate was the only kid he knew whose parents trusted him. “What’s that like?” he’d say. Well, right now it was horrible.
“Going it alone?”
Nate turned. It was Gabriel, the baggage hand.
“Yeah. First time.”
“You hear about the storm?”
“Saturday, right?”
Gabriel grabbed the Woods No. 1 Special pack and hoisted it onto the baggage car. The Woods pack was old-school: canvas and leather, designed to hold the front quarter of a moose. “When you coming out?”
“Sunday. And yeah, I know it might be a long wait.”
Gabriel smiled. “Well, you won’t go hungry, eh?” he said, wiping his brow as if the pack weighed a ton.
Nate handed up his snowshoes and poles — big old ski poles with wide powder baskets at the bottom. Gabe placed the gear beside the Woods pack on the floor of the otherwise empty baggage car. “Mile Thirty-Nine, right?”
“You got it.”
“We should be leaving in five,” said Gabriel.
“Excellent,” said Nate. Then he turned to look back through the glass doors into the station, hoping to see Paul at the ticket office waving at him: a last-minute reprieve — a stay of execution. “Let’s do this thing!” he imagined Paul saying. But there was no one in the ticket line, no one in the whole station except for a couple of employees behind the counter, yukking it up.
He was on his own.
Towering rock and endless, marching troops of trees, interrupted by glimpses of a pure-white fastness: a sleeping lake, a river. The Boreal forest “made out of chaos and old night.” It was a line from some writer his father liked. Endless tracts of bush and ragged, jutting granite: the Precambrian shield, the oldest mountain range in the world, worn down over millennia, glistening with snowmelt that had frozen into sheets of ice, blinding in the high, bright sun.
The earth was still winter deep, but the sun in the wheeling blue sky didn’t know it. Sol wouldn’t set until seven-thirty or so. There’d be plenty of time to trek in and trek back on foot for a second load if he felt like he had to divide up what was in the Woods pack. He’d emptied the canned goods into double Ziploc bags and put them, the frozen meat, and bags of frozen vegetables into a cooler. Not that it needed keeping cool. The idea was that if he couldn’t manage the weight of the pack, he could leave the cooler at the head of the trail and come back for it. By snowshoe, if he didn’t feel like digging out the doors to the Ski-Doo shed. He almost thought he’d prefer two trips on foot. He liked the old snowmobile well enough, especially out on the lake doing doughnuts while Dodge raced circles around him in his more powerful machine. But he had this whole kind of ritualistic thing he liked about getting there under his own steam — doing the “man thing,” as Dodge called it. Going up to camp wasn’t the same to folks in the south, driving up to their cottage door, switching on the power. You had this train to catch, first off, and then a hard slog on the trail, where there was a lot more up than down, at least on the way in. You were only truly there when you had everything you needed in the camp — and a fire started to melt the hoarfrost off the inside walls. After that, Nate liked to take a good long minute to stand, mission accomplished, looking out at the lake. It seemed particularly apt on this, his first solo effort. Doing it on foot might even help to work off some of the guilt that churned inside him.
How guilty had he looked back at the train station? Had his dad picked up on it? All it would take would be a call to the Jokinens. There would still be cell communication for a couple of hours or more. But by the time the train stopped at Presqueville, an hour out of Sudbury, his phone hadn’t rung. He’d checked it more than once, made sure it was charged, made sure the ringer was on.
Presqueville was where Burl had lived after he ran away from his father’s abuse and his mother’s drug-induced stupor. He’d worked for a bush pilot awhile, then stayed with the Agnew family all the way through high school before he went to university. They still saw Auntie Natalie and Uncle Dave every Christmas.
Burl had run away and found a kind of a home on Ghost Lake before Cal burned it down. That was a whole other story. Then Burl had found a real home with the Agnews, where he had begun a new life. They were the only family his father had, as far as Nate knew.
Astrid, on the other hand, came complete with a big, warm Scandinavian family of three large brothers, a sister, and two parents still very much alive. The Ekholms gave him cousins; the Crows gave him mystery.
An hour out of Presqueville, the Budd pulled into Pharaoh, with its rows and rows of tracks. There were more freight cars in Pharaoh on any given day than there were people. It was near here, out in the boonies, that his father had been born and lived until he was fifteen. Nate had never thought of it before, but in going up to Ghost Lake it was as if he were traveling backward through his father’s life. He rested his forehead against the cold window, looking out across the tracks. He was slipping into a sadness he couldn’t afford right now. His father had run away from home for his own survival. And here was Nate running away from . . . from what? From the most loving and perfect parents you could ever hope for. What was he doing?
“We’re going to be tied up for a bit.”
Nate looked up to see the new, cheery conductor lady, whose name he didn’t remember. “We’re so delayed, we timed out,” she said. She must have seen the confusion on Nate’s face, so she explained about government regulations and waiting for a new crew. She shook her head and shrugged. “What can you do?”
“Yeah. What can you do.”
“Can I get you anything? A coffee, soup, chips?”
“No thanks,” said Nate.
She moved along, and when she was gone he palmed the cell phone in his parka pocket. He could end it all here. He didn’t have to wait to be found out. He could just phone home.
“I lied. Paul couldn’t come. Can you pick me up?”
Pharaoh was the last place you could get to by car when you were heading up to the lake. He knew his father would come for him. If he was in a meeting, Nate might have to wait. But Burl would show up as soon as he could. There’d be no recriminations. His father wasn’t built that way. There would be no yelling. No grounding. No docking of allowance. That wasn’t the way things worked in the Ekholm-Crow household. The punishment was no punishment at all.
A freight train pulled into the station, going about the speed of a snail on tranqs. Too noisy to make a call now, he thought.
You’ve got to come, Numbster. You owe me.
Numbster. Short for numb nuts. Dodge had been a sentimental guy.
“What am I going to call you?” says Dodge. He hurls the hardball. Nate nabs it, hurls it back.
“How about Nate?”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah, but you gotta have a handle.”
Smack. The ball hits the pocket of Nate’s glove. He digs it out and throws a high one into the sun.
“I don’t know,” says Nate, watching Dodge shield his eyes and snag the pop-up at the last second. “You could call me Igniculus the Firefly, if you like.”
Nate smiles. “How about . . . Oh, I know: Nate.”
Dodge throws a mean grounder that takes a bad bounce and hits Nate in the chest. Dodge laughs. “Error, error. Runner totally safe at first.”
Nate puts extra mustard on his return throw and watches Dodge hide behind his glove. Nate’s turn to laugh. Dodge hurls the ball back.
“Hey, I got it,” he says. “I’m going to call you Cleveland.”
Nate stares at him. “Cleveland?”
“Yeah,” says Dodge, lobbing the ball back. “You know.”
Nate doesn’t know, but when the ball lands in his mitt the penny drops. “No way,” he says.
“Oh, come on,” says Dodge. “It’s perfect. I love it.”
Nate looks at the scuffed-up ball in his hand, finds the seam. A knuckleball is called for.
“Ouch!” says Dodge as the ball caroms off his mitt and lands in the bushes by the water. “Take it easy, Cleveland.”
By the time he digs the ball out and turns to look, Nate is walking back toward his camp. “Hey,” he yells. “What’s your problem?”
Nate doesn’t bother to answer. They’ve been thrown together and mostly it’s great, but some days, Nate finds Dodge too much.
“Okay, okay, okay!” yells Dodge. “I won’t call you Cleveland.” Nate stops but doesn’t turn around. “How about Numb Nuts?” says Dodge. Nate throws his mitt to the ground and takes off after Dodge, who’s already discarded his own mitt and is heading out into the lake, laughing his head off. A battle royal is about to take place, involving such instruments of destruction as pool noodles and wet T-shirts. There will be much laughter and never another mention of Cleveland.
No call came. Nate willed the phone to ring. His parents trusted him. Which only made it worse. By the time the slow freight train had gone and the new crew had arrived and the Budd finally pulled out of Pharaoh and crossed the Timmins Highway, it was going on one o’clock. He pulled out his cell phone one last time. No bars. No chance to change anything now.
Gabriel handed down the Woods pack. The snow was always deepest ten feet to either side of the tracks, where the plow dumped it. Nate had wrestled his way from the passenger car to the baggage car in snow up to his crotch. Gabriel had handed down the snowshoes first and Nate placed the heavy Woods pack on the snowshoes, which sunk an inch or two under its weight.
“Out on Sunday, right?” shouted Gabriel over the gasping of the brakes and the rattle of the idling engine. Nate craned his neck up at him, nodded. “See you then, eh? Have a good one.”
Nate saluted and then fought his way back from the tracks. Gabriel was on the walkie-talkie to the engineer. Soon enough the bell rang and the engine picked up steam. The Budd was on its way, north by northwest. Catching his breath, Nate watched it round the next bend until there was nothing left of it but sound. And after that, the sound of the true north closed in around him, the wind and the shooshing of the tall trees and the raucous shout of a raven out hunting for a meal, in the shining sky.
He was alone. The deal was sealed.
The first hill was the worst. It wasn’t all that long, but it was steep and rocky, and his father, determined to keep the trailhead secret, never cut it back much, so you got your face slapped a whole lot by whippy branches as you carted stuff up the hill. It was only twice as hard in snowshoes.
When he got to the top, he broke out a bottle of water and pretty much downed the whole thing. Despite the sun beating down, it was minus fifteen or so, and that would be the day’s high. He knew for sure now that he’d have to make a second trip from the camp. He took out the cooler and strapped it shut. At this time of year, the bears were hibernating, so you didn’t have to worry too much about leaving a container full of food at the trailhead. In summer, they’d douse the cooler with bleach, just to be sure. Still, it was hard to leave it. He felt nervous for some reason. The guilts again. Was he going to feel like this for the next three days? He shook his head angrily. Then he took a deep nose-hair-stinging breath and set off. He was glad of the big baskets on the ski poles — the snow was powder, soft and deep.
After that opening hill from the train bed, there were three major climbs. Dodge had named them as if they were a series of horror movies: Everest, Killer Everest, and Everest — the Return. The weird thing is that the way was actually easier in winter because there were no rocks and not as much vegetation swatting you left and right. The snow had hardened off a bit once he got deeper into the bush, so he didn’t sink in too much, and, yeah, he was sweating, but the wind that found its way through the trees soon dried his face off.
The cold revived him. Cleared his head. By the time he’d made it up Everest — the Return, he came to a decision. Once he’d settled in at the camp, he was going straight up to the shack on the hill and contact his folks — come clean. He began to compose the text message. He’d offer to come back tomorrow, on the Friday train, if they wanted. He’d check with them Friday morning.
“Had to do it,” he’d text. He wouldn’t try to explain. They’d either get it or they wouldn’t get it; either way he’d take the consequences. The decision bloomed in him as something right. Since the train wouldn’t be back until around one or so tomorrow afternoon, he might even have time to dig out the Ski-Doo in the morning and go tool around Dead Horse Bay, have a quick look.
Or maybe he wouldn’t.
He wanted so much to be the one to find Dodge, no matter how horrible it would be. It was what a best friend should do. He didn’t need Dodge in his dreams demanding him to come to know that. He didn’t owe Dodge anything. Not really. His dad had made sure he understood that.
“You couldn’t have stopped him,” Burl had said.
“Mr. Hoebeek?”
“Or Dodge.”
“I could have stopped Dodge. And Trick would have listened to me.”
“Yeah, well . . .”
He shook the memory out of his head. He’d go take a look, swing around the bay in the sled, and then do right by his parents.
He passed the halfway point. It was pretty well all downhill from there. He felt better already, full of optimism. His load felt lighter. Hah! A cliché, but completely true nonetheless.
He came to a tree weighed down with snow, its trunk cracked. It was tipped diagonally across the trail so that he had to duck low to get under it. Every spring his father came up early with the chain saw to clear the fallen trees from the trail. By then, this would be one of them. It was big, probably a foot thick. He patted the trunk and the nearest branch above dumped a weight of snow on his head.
“All right, already. Lesson learned,” he shouted at the tree, laughing as he dug the snow out of his collar. It was good to laugh.
He knew every turn of the trail, and as he got closer and closer to the lake his sense of excitement grew, not to mention his hunger. Finally, he passed the trail that led off to his right to the Hoebeeks’ camp. Two hundred yards to go. His first lunch would come before he set off back to the track. His second lunch would come upon his return. That would leave a good few hours before he cooked supper. By then the camp would be toasty warm. He had a thriller to read on his Kindle, some new music downloaded on his phone, and there were cards if he wanted to play some solitaire.
It was all good. It was all going to be okay.
And then suddenly he stopped dead. It wasn’t all good.
It wasn’t going to be okay at all.
A door opened. Just that. The scariest sound in the world.
There was one more turn in the trail before he arrived at the open ground where the camp stood, overlooking the lake. He could see the gap in the trees, up ahead. He could see a corner of the woodshed but not the camp itself, not from here. If someone crossed the yard toward the outhouse, he’d see them, though he doubted they’d see him, even if they happened to turn and look; he was on the dappled path, just another shadow. He stood perfectly still, not sure what to do. There w
ere only two properties at the north end: the Crows’ and the Hoebeeks’. After you passed the Hoebeek turnoff, the trail led directly to the Crows’ and nowhere else. The trail ended at the lake.
The door he’d heard opening now slammed shut. Nate let out his breath. It wasn’t his imagination. He thought it through. Something might have happened to the door. Maybe a bear had trashed it sometime last fall and it was swinging back and forth on its hinges. It was the outer door, the one into the sunporch. He doubted even a bear would have gotten through the heavy wooden door to the camp inside the porch. It had never happened before, but his father had told him tales about the damage bears could inflict. Which is why the camp had shutters on it with nails pounded into them, business side out, to douse the curiosity of any critter, animal or human. But there were no shutters on the porch door.
A door damaged by a bear: that was one possibility.
The other was that someone had just stepped out of the door and gone back inside again. By now Nate had stood stock-still for five minutes. The cold that suddenly coursed through him was only partially due to the temperature.
Dodge.
The idea poleaxed him.
He survived.
He’s set himself up at the camp, living off rice and —
No, this was stupid! Impossible. It was going on four months since he’d disappeared. And it wasn’t even his camp! For all Nate’s fantasizing, he couldn’t believe it. Calm down, he told himself. He summoned up his father: WWBD?
It’s winter. What’s the first thing you do when you arrive at the camp? Right: light a fire. And, to turn the old saying on its head, where there’s fire, there’s smoke. Why hadn’t he smelled smoke? He sniffed. Nothing. So maybe the door was unhinged for some reason. He felt unhinged himself. He risked walking forward, sticking well over to the side of the path, until he reached the woodshed, where he could peek out at the camp.
Smoke.
Smoke was pouring out of the chimney, all right, but the wind was strong from the southeast, blowing the smoke across the end of the lake. He could smell it now that he was this close.
The Starlight Claim Page 3