Shepherd's Watch

by Angie Counios

“Yes.”

  “So where do we start?”

  “We figure out what’s out there?”

  “Not much. Forest. Swamps. Deer. Bears. We saw it all the day we got lost.”

  “But there’s got to be something else, something we’re missing, so let’s find out.” He rattles the library door handle again. I think he really expected it to open.

  And sure enough, an older woman appears around a corner inside the library and comes to the door. She says something, but we can only hear her muffled voice through the glass, so we shrug and shake our heads. She searches through her key ring until she finds the right one and unlocks the door.

  “We’re not open yet.”

  Charlie looks at his phone. “Don’t you open at nine?”

  She looks at her watch. “Hmm, would you look at that.” She holds open the door, stepping out of our way. “Well, come on in, then.”

  She leads us up the stairs and we wait beside the front desk until she gets behind it. There is a wood name plaque with “Gladys” engraved on it beside a small dish of pale green mints. Charlie digs into it and pops one in his mouth, chomping down on the hard candy.

  Once she’s seated, she says, “Not used to seeing a couple of young fellows like you on a fine summer’s day. What can I do for you?”

  Charlie gets right to business. “Well, a couple of things, Gladys. I’m wondering if I can get a library card and—?”

  “Slow down, one thing at a time.” She turns to a filing cabinet behind her and rolls out not one but two drawers before finding the application form she wants. She sets it down in front of Charlie and hands him a pen.

  He spies the computer beside her. “Don’t you do this electronically?”

  “Oh, I could,” she shrugs, “but this way I get it all correct and can do it at my own pace.”

  We look around the empty room. “So, while you’re typing that out, we can look around?”

  “Certainly. But you can’t take anything out until I issue you a card.”

  “And you can’t issue a card until—”

  “I assign you a number—”

  “Which I’ll get after you finish typing it out?”

  “Now you’re understanding.”

  Charlie forces a smile. Gladys isn’t going to make this easy for him. He leans down and fills out the sheet.

  “I don’t suppose you have any sort of map section?” I ask.

  Gladys stares at me and I worry that I may have derailed the task at hand. After a long pause, she asks, “What are you looking for?”

  “Local maps. Maybe landscape?”

  “Topographical or rm?”

  “What’s the difference?”

  She scowls at me again. I guess she doesn’t have the patience for my ignorance. “You could check the 900s.”

  I shake my head and search the walls for some sign as to where to go.

  “Shepherd.” Charlie nods toward a doorway. Beyond it is a room filled with wooden bookshelves with the Dewey Decimal classification written in black, flowing calligraphy on old paper and attached to the end of each partition. I give the two of them a thumbs-up—Gladys is definitely not impressed—and head into the room.

  The numbers on the shelves are ordered from left to right so I walk to the back. It’s musty in here, and in the corner are small bluish-green machines that look like hundred-year-old computers. The shelf at the end is where the 900s begin and I study it. Although the shelves are tall, many are only halfway filled. There’s a geographical atlas of the province at the front of one of these and I narrow down my search to that shelf. There are road maps, travel guides, books full of historical maps, geographical maps, geological maps, and other books describing the origins of nearby towns. Finally, at the end of the stack, I locate the book Gladys was talking about: a topographical atlas full of maps detailing the physical features of every inch of the town and its surrounding the area. Beside it is another book containing photocopied rm, or rural municipality, maps that also names everyone who owned land around Estoria at the time of publication. I grab them both and carry them to a table.

  I’m halfway through the topographical book when Charlie comes over.

  “How goes it? Do you have your card?” I ask.

  “Gladys tells me it’ll be another ten minutes. Have you tried the Wi-Fi?” Charlie winces to show his disapproval.

  “That bad?”

  “I think it might be dial-up.”

  “What’s that?”

  He gives me a look. “It means I have a better chance of surfing the net when I’m lost with you in the woods than standing right beside this building’s router. Tell me you have something.”

  I show him the two books I’ve pulled out.

  He takes the one with the rm maps and flips through it. “Interesting. Looks like most of these forests are on provincial land owned by the government.” He shows me a jagged, pixelated shape beside the lake. “See, even the road to your cabin is owned by the political regime.”

  He searches some more. “Nope, there’s nothing, no roads or buildings out where we were lost.” He slides the book back toward me. “Here’s your resort,” he shows me where it cuts a small hole in the mass of provincial land. “It’s separate. But everything west and north of there”—he flips over the pages to prove his point—“is all government property. No one lives out there.”

  He grabs the topographical map out of my hands and examines it. “Here’s Old Fire Tower Road and there’s the hill where the fire tower used to stand.” The lines that circle the tower seem to represent the shape of the hill it’s actually built on. Charlie runs a finger west along the coastline. “We probably found Terry’s glasses somewhere around here and travelled inland here.” His finger trails up a quarter of the page and stops. “But from there, I have no clue how far we got.” He runs his finger back to the shore then looks for where the resort is. “So then we travelled somewhat in this direction—”

  “Until the storm hit, then we can’t be certain,” I add.

  “Right.” Charlie says, studying the map. “There’s nothing out there, though. It’s just hills and valleys.”

  “And trees.” I pull the book over to me and look at the place where we found the glasses. I move my finger past where Charlie traced our path until I come across a creek that winds its way from the north, then turns west toward the lake. “This whole area burned in that forest fire twenty years ago. Nothing could have survived it. And even if it did, the firefighters would likely have found it.”

  Charlie’s face lights up. “Maybe they did.”

  chapter 83

  Charlie jumps up and goes to talk to Gladys. “Do you keep web archives of the Estoria Journal?”

  I think he’s already talking above her level of technical comprehension, but she throws a hardball right back at him.

  “We have everything on microfiche. Is that what you’re asking for?”

  “Uh…”

  She glares and waves Charlie over to a stack of thin file drawers.

  “What year do you want?”

  “Not sure. About twenty years ago, there was a forest fire?”

  “Ah, yes, the summer of ’94.”

  She tugs one of the drawers open and it’s full of cartons the size of matchboxes. She runs her finger over them until she finds the one she’s looking for and pulls it out. Guiding him over to the machine in the corner that looks like an old computer, she flips a switch and the screen lights up like a digital projector.

  She opens the box, pulls out a roll of film and slips it on a peg, unrolling it and guiding it through the machine before hooking it to a spool on the other side. She cranks a handle and images and text zip past on the screen. It takes me a second to realize that it’s the newspaper.

  Charlie whistles. “Whoa, this is just like a spy movie. Are you real
ly James Bond, Gladys?”

  She isn’t amused. “Each roll has two months on it. The fire started in July and burned until August.”

  She continues spinning through the reel until she arrives at the front page of the July 21st edition. The front-page headline reads: wildfire rages. Below it is a photo taken from the bridge of a thick, dark cloud rising above the forest, blocking out the sun.

  “That looks like a beast,” Charlie says. “It says it took out almost fifty thousand acres of woods.”

  “They actually thought it would skip over the river and take out Estoria,” Gladys says as the memory comes back to her. “They brought in water bombers, the army, almost everyone.”

  “What started it?” Charlie asks.

  “Lightning.”

  “Why didn’t they catch it sooner?”

  “They should have, but it was dry and the winds pushed it far and wide before anyone arrived.”

  “Did anyone die?”

  “I remember a couple of firefighters got caught when the wind shifted…”

  “Any civilians?” Charlie asks.

  “Not that I ever heard of.”

  “There weren’t any settlements or businesses out that way?”

  Gladys is suspicious. “What exactly is your interest in all this?”

  “Curiosity,” Charlie says mildly. “I like to know about the places I visit.”

  “Well, there’s more about it in the history books.”

  This piques Charlie’s interest. “Can you show me those?”

  She sighs. “You know, I haven’t even had my coffee.”

  “Gladys, you do this for me and I will get my friend here to buy you your coffee.”

  She brings over Keepsakes and Memories: A History of Estoria and Charlie hands it to me. I hunt through its contents while he spins through the microfiche.

  It turns out Estoria was a part of the early fur trade, a meeting place where First Nations and Europeans bartered their goods. By the mid-1700s, a line of trading posts had been built along the river, including a spot just east of Estoria where the bridge now stands. A fort was later constructed and eventually burned to the ground when trading was no longer profitable. In the early 1900s, settlers came and homesteaded in the area, and stores and lumber mills soon followed. When the railroad arrived, the town was established where present-day Estoria now stands.

  I flip through accounts of the first schoolhouse, the first grain elevator, and the first railway station. There are stories about curling bonspiels, hockey teams, and elections. It’s interesting in its own way, but nothing seems relevant to our search—that is, until I find a personal account from Barry Pederson, the last forest ranger to occupy the Estoria fire tower.

  I slide it over to Charlie and Gladys catches sight of it. “Ah, yes, Barry…”

  Charlie looks over at her. “Do you know him?”

  She gets a funny look on her face and I wonder if they’d been sweethearts or something. “He’d come to town for dances and all us girls wanted our chance with him.”

  This amuses Charlie. “Quite the ladies man?”

  “He could cut a rug with his footwork,” she agrees, and she actually giggles.

  “Did you two ever hook up?”

  Gladys scowls at Charlie. “He was always a gentleman.”

  Charlie turns away from her. “Uh, huh…”

  “Anyhow,” I say, interrupting this strange line of questioning, “it says he served with the Forestry Department for over thirty years.”

  Gladys nods. “He worked at the fire tower until they shut it down in 1978.”

  “What happened to him?”

  “The damn government moved him to town and into an office. He was none too happy about it. Still misses the woods.”

  “Still?”

  She glowers. “Of course. He’s up at Spruce Vista.”

  Charlie and I stare at her.

  Gladys looks exasperated by our ignorance. “At the nursing home, up on the hill.”

  chapter 84

  Charlie and I have spent almost an hour at the library, and step out to call Mom for an extension. “We’re running a little behind.”

  “That doesn’t surprise me,” Mom says over the phone.

  “Well, Charlie says the library is better than he expected.”

  “Really?”

  I look through the glass doors to where he’s standing at the front desk, checking out another Hemingway novel. “Uh, yeah. You know how he is. Get him talking books and he doesn’t shut up. He’s friends with the librarian now and everything.”

  As if she can hear me, Gladys looks up at me and glares. Fortunately, Mom has seen Dad and Charlie chat it up about books, so I’m not stretching the truth too far.

  “I suppose he does like his literature. How much more time do you need?” Mom asks.

  “Half-hour to an hour?”

  “Hmmm. That seems like a lot.”

  I throw myself under the bus. “He thought that maybe we could sit down for coffee and visit with Laurie for a bit.”

  Mom’s quiet on the other end of the phone, chewing on the options. “All right. One more hour, then home.”

  “Thanks, Mom.” I hang up as Charlie steps outside.

  “All good?” he asks.

  “Surprisingly, yes. Like I always say, communication is a positive thing.”

  He rolls his eyes. “Ready?”

  “Uh-huh. A quick visit to Spruce Vista?” I ask.

  “You know it isn’t a part of our bet?”

  Curiosity eats at me. “How about I allow it this one time?”

  “You sure? Wouldn’t want you to feel cheated.”

  I nod and Charlie smirks. We jump in the car and drive up the hill to find the town’s last forest ranger.

  chapter 85

  None of my grandparents made it to a nursing home. Mom’s parents lived in their home until Grandpa died and then Grandma passed away only a few months afterward. Dad’s parents lived on the other side of the country and when the time came, they moved into seniors’ housing, which allowed them independence and daily visits from assisted living. So when I step into Spruce Vista, I feel unsettled.

  Although it has a lot of windows, the place is unusually dim, with rows of fluorescents spilling cold light down the hallways. Across from the entrance is a hall with a shuffleboard table and a piano where several residents are arranged in a circle and secured in their wheelchairs. An open doorway leads to a carpeted room where relatives visit their loved ones in hushed tones. A memorial made up of the pictures of a man and a woman who have recently passed away stands on a table between the two rooms, surrounded by flowers. We need some directions, but I don’t see a front desk or even a listing of the residents.

  “I think we’re going to have to ask someone,” I say.

  Charlie is extraordinarily quiet, just like he was on the boat after we were found, but he spies a nurses’ station down the hall and walks toward it. I follow. He approaches a dark-haired nurse a little younger than my mom.

  “I’m wondering if you can help us find Barry Pederson?” Charlie asks.

  “And you are?”

  I expect Charlie to come up with some complex lie, but he surprises me. “My name is Charles and this is Anthony. We don’t actually know him, but we read about him being a forest officer back in the day, and we’re wondering if he’d tell us about it.”

  She considers Charlie’s request. “He doesn’t get many visitors these days.”

  “We promise not to stay long.”

  She laughs. “That’s what you think. Come with me.”

  She guides us back the way we came, past the entrance. We travel down a long hallway that turns left, moving through an open room filled with residents and a blaring television. An old man reaches up to cop a feel of the n
urse, but she brushes him away without even acknowledging him.

  We continue down the hallway, and as we pass one door, we hear the moans of an older woman. None of it affects our guide, or Charlie for that matter, but I can’t help but feel a chill.

  As we pass another doorway, a wheelchair shoots out, but the nurse grabs it before it hits her shin.

  “Dorothy, we’ve asked you to stop doing that.”

  I see a woman grinning at the edge of her bed, an oxygen mask over her face, one hand resting on the tank. We take a final turn and the nurse leads us to a closed door.

  She knocks. “Barry, are you awake?”

  Without waiting for an answer, she enters the small room. It has only a bed, a dresser, a closet, and a door to a bathroom. A radio is playing 1950s rock ’n’ roll, but Barry’s nowhere to be seen. She does a quick inspection before heading out into the hallway again.

  “He does this sometimes.” She goes down to the end of the hallway and looks into another resident’s room. A woman is napping in bed while an older man with a white beard, red suspenders, and different-coloured socks relaxes in the rocking chair.

  The nurse takes him by the hand. “Come along, Barry.”

  “Just waiting for my dance.”

  “Let Helen rest.”

  As she leads him into the hall, he hears the music playing in his room and he shuffles his feet. “Come along, Katheryn,” he says, slipping his other hand onto her shoulder.

  She doesn’t stop him but instead dances him toward his room. As I watch the two of them shake and shimmy their way along, I can see what Gladys was talking about. Barry must be seventy or eighty years old, and he’s still got moves that would put some of my friends to shame. I’m scared he’s going to blow a hip—or his whole body—but his enthusiasm for the music is infectious.

  The nurse manoeuvres him back through his door as the song ends. He finishes with a flourish, then says, “If I were a little younger, I would have dipped you, Katheryn.”

  It seems Barry’s given her a workout and she has to catch her breath. “It’s good you didn’t—I might not have made it back up!”