Look out, world, I thought. Here I come. One of Woody’s kids from Hell!
I was about to sneak closer to the cafe, when I heard the RCMP cruiser coming back. I dove into the ditch, almost smashing my face on a rock. I rolled behind a tree just in time.
“Jesus, look who’s going to jail!” I whispered. As the cruiser whipped by, I saw a tall guy in the back seat, pounding his handcuffed wrists against the window.
I guess that’s one way to get kicked out of camp. Kill the director’s dog.
I shook my head. “You bastard, Wade.”
As much as those cinnamon rolls were calling me, I decided to give Ritchie’s Roadhouse a pass. Too much going on. I turned, not left toward Whitehorse—that’s the first place they’d look for me—but right, toward … I didn’t know what.
There was a lot more traffic on the connecting road, so I doubled back and started hoofing down the old railway tracks. I was glad to see small trees popping up between the railway ties. I wouldn’t be bothered by a train anytime soon. Probably hadn’t been one down that line in twenty years.
I could openly walk in the sunshine, a free man, just me and the bears and the wolves, until I keeled over from starvation and they started picking my bones.
THE CABIN
I hadn’t planned to celebrate my freedom in an abandoned log cabin. I hadn’t planned anything other than to get the hell out of that concentration camp. But after no sleep the night before, and a brutal day of clumping along the railway tracks in my scarecrow boots, I felt like the walking dead.
Where to sleep? At one point, I lay down on a thick bed of moss, unbelievably comfy, and almost passed out. But when I heard something screeching in the woods, the thought of sleeping in the open lost its charm. I dragged myself off the moss and kept walking, till I found an old cabin beside the tracks.
It looked a hundred years old, everything carved out of the wilderness—the door, the bed, the lone table and chair. Replace the log walls with adobe and I could have been back in Guatemala, visiting Diadora and her goats.
I cracked open the cupboard and discovered a couple of broken candles, a box of matches, and an empty bottle labeled “Gibson’s Finest Whiskey.” I sniffed the bottle, then slammed it down as memories of my father invaded the stillness.
I jumped when something metallic crashed to the floor. An old dented gold pan. I rubbed my fingers over its flat bottom, imagining it covered in gold dust. I thought about the prospector who had lived here by the river. Was he lonely? Did he ever find his Eldorado?
Someone had left a note on the table, scribbled on a piece of cardboard. I brushed the dust off and held it near the window.
Hello person/people of the Yukon! I am Lisa Kemble, a 17-year-old drifter from Calgary, Alberta. If you are reading this, please email me when you are back in civilization. I would like to get to know other drifters whose path led them to this special place. Enjoy your stay in this awesome cabin! ([email protected])
“Hah! Calgary!” I said out loud. “How cool to connect with her once I’m back online!”
I noticed a rolled-up sleeping bag hanging from the ceiling, probably to keep mice and stuff from wrecking it. I pulled it down and unrolled it on the bed. I crawled inside, catching a faint rosy scent that might’ve been Lisa’s. “Thanks, Lisa,” I said. I’d like to think she left this bag for fellow drifters like me.
I lay there for hours. Couldn’t sleep. I saw myself from the cabin ceiling, from the top of the big pine tree beside it, from the mountain ridge above that, from a cloud hanging over the valley. My mind zoomed out like Google Earth, until I was a tiny speck of nothing swallowed by the wilderness.
That loneliness ambushed me again, like I’d never felt anywhere but in these mountains. It was like the silence sucked it out of me and held it under my nose.
You’re a nothing! shouted the silence, and a nobody!
My mind wandered to a story William had told me about a local prospector who went crazy from loneliness and threw himself in front of a train. My eyes popped open when I realized this had to be his cabin!
I buried my head in Lisa’s sleeping bag. I breathed in her scent. I squeezed all the comfort I could from the friendship of a girl I’d never met, who lived a million miles away.
It seemed to work. I calmed down.
I was good at this. After all, didn’t I do it all the time online?
I was woken hours later by a pain in my stomach, a notch or two above fungry.
I checked the cupboard for any food I might have missed in my zombie state the night before. Not a crumb. I made a mental note of Lisa’s email address, then scrambled down to the river to dunk my head. When the snails and green scum on the rocks began to look appetizing, I realized my drifting days might soon be over if I didn’t find food.
CARCROSS
What is it with baked goodies in the Yukon? I was still clomping south down the tracks when my nose started jumping again. Not cinnamon rolls this time. Pie! The abandoned rail line had swung closer to the road and I could hear traffic, even voices. Following my nose, I snuck a peek across the road at another pit stop. Spirit Lake Lodge. An old couple sat on the outside deck, eating ice cream cones.
A big kid came pounding down the stairs, holding a lemon meringue pie. I bit my lip. He carefully set the pie on the hood of a car then ran inside, like he forgot to ask for the keys. A raven started circling above the pie.
“Oh, no you don’t,” I said to the raven. I blasted across the road, grabbed the pie, and ran.
I heard a screen door slam behind me just as I ducked into the woods.
“Hey! Where ya goin’ with my pie?”
The kid had a thick American accent. I’d just caused an international incident. I hit the tracks and kept running, so fast there were hunks of meringue flying up in my face.
Once I’d dealt with that hunger, another one surfaced, even fiercer than the first.
To get an Internet fix.
The tracks led straight to a little village that a rusty sign told me was Carcross. It was a pretty little place, parked at the sandy junction of two big mountain lakes. But what I found most appealing about it was all the satellite dishes. One on every house. Even though I was miles from nowhere, I knew that where there was satellite, there’d be Internet. And where there was Internet, I could be a somebody again.
I tucked in my tattered shirt, jerked down my Blue Jays cap, and slunk along the edge of town. I toyed with looking for a library that could plug me in, but Woody had probably given them a heads-up about me. What I really needed was—
There!
A little house backing onto some sand dunes. It had a big beautiful satellite dish hanging off the back deck. No cars in the driveway. No dog tied up. No sign of life.
I staked out in the bushes behind the house and watched.
I inched a little closer, hiding behind a toolshed.
I crept right up to it and tried the back door.
Didn’t budge.
“Jesus!” I whispered, not quite believing what I was doing.
Maybe Woody was right. We are the kids from Hell. I’m already stealing stuff. What’s next?
I jumped away from the house. I started easing back toward the dunes, ready to get the hell out of Carcross, to follow those tracks wherever they led … when I glimpsed little green lights inviting me to come inside.
I moved up to the window and cupped my hands against it. There on a desk was a WiFi-router, flashing brightly with every tickle of the World Wide Web. Right beside it, an open laptop with tropical fish swimming across the screen.
“Yess!”
I pulled the door again, now with two hands. I ripped the screen off the window and clawed all around it. I pulled the back door with all my strength, this time bracing both feet beside it.
Bolted solid.
I searched the backyard for something heavy, found a big piece of pipe, and rammed it through the stained glass beside the door frame.
I’m in!
The minutes passed. Hours maybe. I was oblivious to time. To the cottage I’d busted into. There was only the friendly glow of the screen and the rush of emails, messages, and posts to catch up on. I was lost in the world I loved, updating my blogs, tweaking my profiles, sanitizing any comments. I was in the middle of an email to my new drifter friend, Lisa, when I heard a bark at the back door.
I froze. For the first time, I noticed blood pooling over the keyboard. It had leaked from the wound I got jumping Woody’s fence.
Heavy knocking.
“Ian?”
I turned toward the voice. Through the smashed glass, I saw a telltale yellow stripe on the pant leg of an RCMP officer. One hand rested on his holstered gun, while the other kept knocking.
“Ian. We know you’re in there. Please come out.”
I got up and walked to the door as if to the gallows. I slowly opened it. The sunlight killed my eyes and I staggered backward into the room.
I heard a familiar laugh. “Ho-leee, you look like a friggin’ scarecrow!”
I uncovered my eyes and saw William standing beside the cop. A little white dog circled his heels, growling at me.
“You sure love these solos, eh?” William said.
“How … how the hell did you find me?”
William pulled out his iPhone and waved it at me. “You might want to turn off your location function next time you’re banging away on a computer,” he said. “Between that and my partner here, you were a sittin’ duck.”
“Your what?”
William clapped his hands and the dog jumped into his arms. “You thought Togo was amazing. Meet Butch.”
I squinted at the dog. Locked in his jaws was a piece of plaid pajamas torn from my ass.
A SECOND CHANCE
I wanted the cop to blare his siren like he did for Wade. Give me the flashing lights, handcuffs, the whole bit. Tell the world, “Look out, dangerous criminal on board! One of Woody’s kids from Hell!”
The shoe fit well after what I’d just done. That must be who I am.
But I didn’t even get the siren. “Hard on Butch’s ears,” William told me, as he kissed his dog in the back of an RCMP cruiser bombing north up the Carcross road.
I didn’t say much, didn’t ask what would happen to me. Until we turned left at Ritchie’s Roadhouse, I figured I was going straight to the jail in Whitehorse. Or straight to the airport and back to my dungeon in Calgary. That is, if my father didn’t kill me before I stepped through the door.
But the cop was taking us straight back to Camp Lifeboat.
It wasn’t a prison guard I had to face, or my father. It was Woody.
We arrived in the middle of supper. Spaghetti again. The dining hall went silent when we walked in. Woody hardly looked up from his plate when the cop handed me over. “Have a seat, Ian,” Woody said.
I just stood there. The smell of meat sauce got my nostrils flaring. William and the cop whispered behind my back. Alyssa and Obie stared at me like I was standing before a firing squad. Morris made a gurgly noise as he ran a thumb across his neck.
Woody pushed an empty plate toward me and motioned for me to sit. “Please, Ian. You must be hungry.” He looked tired, beaten down, somehow.
Then I remembered about his dog. About Wade.
“Too bad about Togo,” I said, surprising myself.
Woody’s lips tightened. “Yes … Thank you.”
I scooped some spaghetti out of the pot, just enough to cover my plate.
Woody watched my every move, like I’d already taken too much.
I started putting some back.
“No, no,” he said. “Take as much as you like. You’ve had a long day.”
I heaped some sauce on top.
“Bison meatballs,” Woody said, leaning back and folding his arms.
I got the weird feeling that there really was a firing squad waiting for me, and this was my last meal. Why would Woody be so nice at a time like this?
“Sorry I screwed up,” I mumbled after a couple of mouthfuls.
Woody waved at the cop. “Thanks, Roger. We’ll take it from here.”
I looked up at Woody. “What happens now?”
Woody sighed. “Addiction can make you do crazy things.”
“Why did he do it?” I said.
“I’m talking about you, not Wade.”
“Yeah, but I’m not …”
Woody raised his eyebrows. “No?”
Carrie came running out of the kitchen with soapsuds on her hands. “Ian! We were so worried about you. Welcome home.”
I almost choked on a meatball. “Home?”
“It’s either here or a young offenders center in Edmonton,” Woody said.
“Where you sent Wade?”
“Correct. Wade gave me no choice. In your case, I’m leaving that choice up to you.”
“Me?”
“A second chance,” Carrie said, pulling up a chair beside me.
I was almost knocked over by her cheerleader freshness, and suddenly realized how I must stink.
“You’ve had a little setback, Ian,” Carrie said. “You fell out of the driver’s seat and your addiction took the wheel.”
“But I—”
Carrie hushed me with a finger over her lips. “Let’s agree you’ve hit bottom, okay?”
I shrugged. “I dunno … Did I?”
“I certainly hope so,” Woody said firmly.
“Stick around and we’ll help you take back the wheel,” Carrie said. She gently lifted my wounded hand. Fresh blood was leaking through the bandage William had put on in Carcross. “Oh, my. We better get Berna to have a look at this.”
The next day, while William and I were pulling weeds in the vegetable garden, he told me that Wade was kicked out to avoid another murder. “His own,” William said. “Never seen Woody so messed up. Or so friggin’ mad. Togo was like a … whatchacallit … a soulmate.”
Sweet Loba. Could I ever relate.
William also told me that I could be jailed “a long, long time” for breaking and entering a private home. “I know what I’m talking about,” he said, like he’d been there, done that.
Luckily the people who owned the house I’d busted into never laid charges against me. I later found out from Mom that it was because Dad not only paid for the window I’d smashed, but also gave them a fat check plus several shares in his gold company—a mineral near and dear to Yukoners’ hearts.
For good measure, he even sent Woody a well-timed donation to help keep me out of jail.
Thanks for that, Dad.
If my father was good at anything, it was protecting the McCracken name from the crimes we’d committed.
Most of the time, anyway.
CANOE LESSON
“Hey, look, there’s my scarecrow,” I said to Carrie as she drove our crew of delinquents to Annie Lake. The scarecrow stood in the same little vegetable patch I had dived into during my great escape. Now it wore an old wetsuit, snorkel, and mask. It toted a beat-up speargun. Plastic flowers poked out the top of its snorkel.
“Wow!” Carrie said. “A total remake. That’s what our canoe trip could do for you, Ian.”
“Yeah, right.”
“But first, you need to learn how to paddle.”
Woody had gone ahead with the canoes and had them lined up on shore by the time we pulled in, bright red canoes with a lifeboat logo stuck on the side.
Fifty days in one of those things? I thought. I’d been trying real hard to be Canadian, but canoes were as familiar to me as flying saucers.
Much to my disgust, Woody assigned Morris and me to the same canoe. He put me up front, the bow, I was told, and Morris in back—the stern. I’d never touched a paddle in my life. I got the feeling Morris hadn’t either but, of course, he faked it in front of Woody. While I struggled just to get my life jacket on, Morris was acting like he was Joe Outdoorsman, lining the paddle up against one eye and sniffing it.
“Birch, right?” he said to
Woody.
“Good guess,” Woody said. “Try maple. Now get in and try paddling out to me.”
In one smooth movement, Woody gripped the gunwales of his canoe, swung his body into it, and kicked off from the gravel shore. He paddled effortlessly out into the crystal lake with a kind of poetry of motion I hadn’t seen since watching Magno play his guitar.
Woody had taught us basic “canoe etiquette” in camp. But nothing could’ve prepared me for the feel of that canoe. It came alive as soon as I touched it.
Morris had already taken his throne in the stern, with the canoe still half on land.
“Like, I’m supposed to drag you in, or what?” I asked him.
“You want me to get my feet wet?” he said. “Of course you drag me in. It’s a lot of work back here, you know, steering and everything.”
While Morris made a big show of grunting and pushing his paddle in the gravel, I tugged and twisted the canoe until we finally got it afloat.
“Next time, you might want to launch it first,” Woody shouted, “then get in.”
I turned to Morris. “See?”
He threw me a quick finger.
I stepped into the bow. The canoe rolled like a frisky dog.
“What the fuck are you doing?” Morris said, white-knuckling the gunwales.
“Center!” Woody shouted. “Always step in the center!”
I tried to climb in again. The canoe bucked like a horse.
“Stay low!” Woody shouted.
I shifted my weight too fast. One gunwale bit the surface and buckets of water poured in.
“Hey!” Morris yelled as water swirled around his designer hiking boots. He jumped up, flipping the boat completely, which, in turn, knocked me flat on my ass.
As I lay belly up in the shallow water, I could hear clapping from the shore.
“Go, team!” Carrie shouted between fits of laughter.
WHITEWATER
I can still feel the sting of rope burns around my neck. As much as Morris might have liked to kill me, I don’t think this was how he’d planned it.
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