AFTER A MONTH IN the woods, it was getting pretty hard to deny reality. Although we were eating daily, both Mom and I had lost so much weight that we had to pull the cords from our backpacks to string through our belt loops. Game was hard to come by, our dried fruit and dried milk had run out, and we only had a handful of granola left. Our flour supply was low, but worse than that, what was left of it was full of bugs. I saw Mom picking weevils out of the bag one morning, but she still mixed the flour with water to make bannock and we both still ate it, pretending not to see the black flecks baked into it. Our clothing was too light to take us past fall, and our tent wasn’t nearly sturdy enough for winter. Mom’s rifle wasn’t designed to take on big game, and we had already had one bear roam through our camp. Mom had tried to shoo it away with a holler and loud clanging of pots, but when that didn’t work she had to fire a few warning shots of precious ammunition. Though we didn’t talk about it, we both knew our time in the woods was nearing an end. Mom stopped reading her Conan comics at night and instead just lay with me by the dying light of the fire, stroking my hair until I fell asleep.
But of all the things that could have brought us back to Karl, the one that did was something neither Mom nor I could have imagined. I woke up one night with an itchy rear end, and when Mom lit a candle to inspect, I heard her breathe in sharply.
“Pinworms,” she said grimly. “I’ve seen this before. One of the summer visitors’ kids had it on the Kootenay Plains.” She pulled my jeans on and wrapped her arms around me in the dark.
Neither of us could fall sleep again.
“Mommy,” I said as we gazed out at the lightening sky. “What did you write to Karl in that note?”
“Oh . . . not much, sweetie. Just that we were leaving, and not to come looking for us. We’ll see . . . we’ll see if he’s even still there.”
“And if he’s not?”
“We’ll figure something out.” She kissed the top of my head. “Don’t you worry about it, okay?”
“Okay. Mommy?”
“Yeah?”
“Do you think we’ll ever live somewhere else? Like not in a tent or a tipi or another person’s cottage, but maybe, like, in a house or something?”
I waited for a minute, and when she didn’t answer I turned to look at her. Her eyes were bright with tears.
“Maybe,” she replied, and her voice was barely a whisper.
Chapter Fourteen
The first person to see us walking along the shore in the August sunlight was Susanne. She was doing laundry in the lake, wringing a T-shirt out with bright red hands. She dropped the shirt back in the water.
“What the hell? Where have you been? We’ve all been wondering . . . Karl is a wreck.” She pointed in the direction of the camp. “See for yourself.”
Mom nodded wordlessly and walked into the trees with me tagging after her. Susanne followed, spewing questions at Mom that she didn’t answer. She reached our tent and lifted the door flap, and we both looked inside. It seemed empty at first, but then I noticed a lump with a spray of dark hair at the end of Mom and Karl’s bed.
“He’s been like that since you left,” Susanne said to Mom. “Barely moved from his bed. I’ve been bringing him food, but he’s hardly touched it.”
Mom took off her backpack and walked over to him. I stayed where I was, waiting for the lump to move, but it remained still as a rock. Mom lifted the sleeping bag and climbed in beside him. A minute later, the lump moved toward her. I heard a sound like a crying child, a sound I didn’t even know a man could make. I backed quietly out of the tent and sat on the sawhorse to wait.
THANKFULLY, KARL DIDN’T STAY down in the dumps long. In fact Mom’s return seemed like a magic potion. The morning after we came back, I watched Karl roll out of bed, head outside to build a fire and return with a cup of coffee. He walked over to Mom, who was still sleeping, and whispered something in her ear. She sat up and smiled, then lay back naked against the pillows, and took the cup from Karl. I got out of bed and ran over to join her.
“Listen, babe,” Karl said to Mom, rubbing her arm. “Things are going to be different now. I’ve made a decision. This pot-growing thing—it’s losing its appeal, you know? Too damned unreliable. I think it’s time for me to go straight.”
“What are you saying?” Mom asked, reaching out to twirl his chest hair with her fingertip.
“A job, that’s what I’m saying. Logging’s booming out in B.C. The money’s good, and the weather’s a whole lot better than in this shithole place.”
“B.C.? Again? Okay, but we . . .” She shook her head, then sipped from her cup and lowered it into her lap again. “Well. Where did you have in mind?”
“Celista. I got a line on a job there. It’s right on Shuswap Lake, not too far from Scotch Creek in fact. I make us a little money, maybe we can even get that cottage we talked about. Hey, Small Fry?” He winked at me, and I bobbed my head up and down.
“Okay,” Mom said with a slow smile. “Let’s do it!”
Karl grinned and gave me a high five. I was so excited that I jumped up and took off through the woods as if we were leaving right that second.
“Hey, Small Fry, I think you’re going to need these,” Karl said, tossing me the truck keys, and that just made Mom crack up even harder.
I ran back to her and threw my arms around her waist. We were going to get our cottage!
AT FIRST MOM THOUGHT she could treat my pinworms with her medicinal plants, but after checking in her natural healing book, she decided I needed to see a doctor after all.
“We’re going to town?” I asked when she told me.
“Yep! Come on, let’s get your best clothes on.”
I ran for the tent, feeling a little trembly. Scotch Creek was kind of a town, but today we were going to Calgary, which Mom said was a real city. I shuffled through the stack of clothing at the foot of my bed and finally decided on brown cords and my favorite pink T-shirt. It was a little small for me, but it was my favorite color.
As we hit the highway in the truck and drove west, Karl behind the wheel, I peppered Mom with questions about the city.
“Just wait and see,” she kept saying, and an hour later I did.
In the distance across the plains, I could see a nest of buildings rising into the sky. I leaned closer to Mom as traffic got heavier. We hit the city limits and headed into town with cars zooming at us from every direction. As Karl zigzagged through them, I gazed at houses so close together that I wondered if they all shared one big backyard. After a while, Karl pulled up to a small building with a sign that said CLINIC over the door. Mom took my hand and led me inside, and within a few minutes we were sitting in a small room with gleaming silver instruments hanging on the wall. The door swung open, and an elderly man with a short gray beard came inside.
“So,” he said to Mom, glancing at his clipboard. “Five and a half years old, no vaccinations, no medical history, and no family physician. Where have you been keeping this child, under a rock?”
Mom’s eyes widened. I dug in my pocket, searching for Papa Dick’s roach clip.
“She—she’s very healthy,” Mom replied finally. “Never been sick, really . . . except whooping cough, we nearly lost her then, but that was a long . . .” She cleared her throat. “Anyway, it looks like she has pinworms—”
The doctor waved a hand at her. “Yes, I can read her chart, thank you very much. Pinworms are an expected childhood ailment. What concerns me is your daughter’s apparent lack of care. Why hasn’t she seen a physician before?”
“Because, um . . .” Mom shifted in her seat. “I just haven’t seen the need, I guess. And we live . . . kind of far away from the city.”
The doctor scribbled something on a slip of paper, ripped it off and handed Mom the prescription. As he put his hand on the doorknob, he turned to give Mom one last look. “Children aren’t meant to live like wild animals, you know.”
My stomach lurched as the door clicked closed behind him. Wild
animal? Was that what I was? I looked down at my clothes. A few hours ago I had been proud to put them on, but now I saw the torn knees, the smudges of grime from places I’d wiped my dirty hands and the moccasins coming apart at the seams. I turned my eyes to Mom, who gathered up her purse and reached for my hand.
She was crying by the time we got back to the truck. Karl was waiting for us, tipped back in his seat with his cowboy hat over his face.
“What happened?” he asked Mom when he saw her, and she told him the story between sniffles.
“Fuck it. That’s it,” Karl said, pounding the steering wheel with the palm of his hand. He slid from the cab, and Mom and I watched as he walked to the clinic and through the front door.
Ten minutes later, he jogged back to the truck.
“What happened?” Mom asked.
“Oh, not much,” Karl said, popping the emergency brake and backing out of his parking spot. “Let’s just say Mr. Asswipe might need to see a doctor of his own.”
Mom stared at Karl for a moment, and then shook her head. “You’re kidding. Please tell me you didn’t hurt him.”
“Damn straight. Nobody messes with my gals.” He steered toward the street and hit the gas, causing the wheels to chirp against the pavement. “Now. What say we go and have a little fun.”
KARL SAID HE HAD some stuff to take care of, so he dropped Mom and me off at a gigantic store that he said sold everything in the world. Through the front window, which was twice as high as our canvas tent back home, I could see smiling ladies putting money into big metal machines. Karl pulled his wallet from his back pocket and peeled off a few twenties.
“Now off you go,” he said to Mom. “I’ll pick you up in a few hours.”
Mom and I walked into the store and stepped onto a moving staircase. I watched people passing on the way down, their eyes forward as they ignored everyone around them. I couldn’t believe how different people dressed in the city. Ladies wore pants and jackets that matched, and men wore shirts that were open so low I could see the hair on their chests.
“I’ve got a surprise for you,” Mom said as we cruised past racks of dresses. “I’m buying you a new pair of pants. And some underwear.”
I gaped up at her. Mom had been promising me underwear for a while, but I hadn’t actually believed it would happen. “Really?”
“Yes.”
“Underwear!” I shouted, jumping up and down. “Hooray! Real underwear!” A few women stopped to stare at me, but only one of them smiled. I lowered my voice and grabbed Mom’s hand with both of my own. “Thank you, thank you . . .”
“Okay. Just three pairs, though. We have to make sure we save enough money for your prescription. God knows how much that’ll cost. And then there’s lunch, and I need tampons, and—Cea?”
I didn’t answer. Something had caught my eye that made even the exciting promise of new underwear fade in comparison. Before me was a low stage set up in the shape of a T. A small crowd was gathered around it, chatting as they watched the two women walking its length. One of the women had blond hair and the other had brown, but they were both tall and thin with bright white teeth. Their hair shone under the store lights, and their skin was as white as milk. From where I stood I could even see their fingernails, which didn’t have a speck of dirt under them. They looked like women who had never tripped as they were walking or had food stuck in their teeth. Even more than that, they looked like women who had been grownups since the day they were born.
“Mom,” I finally breathed. “Look. Barbie dolls. Real-life Barbie dolls.”
Later, on the ride home, I sat thinking about my day. Besides that mean doctor, it had been the best one ever. In my lap were three new pairs of underwear, which Mom said I could wear just as soon as my pinworms went away. When I had told Karl about the real-life Barbie dolls, he said that I might even be pretty enough to be one myself someday. When we were nearly home, Mom and Karl were having a road toke when a cop pulled us over, but instead of busting us, he just asked Karl to clean off his license plate and then drove away. Mom was so happy about that, she rolled up another joint right then and there to celebrate.
IT WAS BECAUSE OF Kelly that I was playing beside the truck on the day it all went down. The dirt road wasn’t a place I usually thought to go at all, but two days before we were supposed to leave Lake Minnewanka, I had woken up to find Kelly sitting outside our tent with a stray cat in her lap. I got out of bed and squatted down beside her, eager to pet it, but Kelly grabbed the cat’s head and forced its face toward me.
“Look,” she said. “I cut its whiskers off.”
I backed away from her in horror. It was early enough for the adults to still be asleep, so I took off and wandered through the woods, trying to talk myself into believing that the cat hadn’t felt any pain because it was probably just like getting a haircut.
After a while, I ended up at the dirt road near Karl’s truck. There was a small pond just past it, so I walked close in the hope of finding a frog or two. There were none to be seen, but I did spot some tadpoles, the next best thing. I took off my sandals and stepped into the water. And I was here, stalking my prey with cupped hands, when I heard the car.
I stood up straight and looked along the road, shading my eyes against the morning sun with my hand. It was a police car. My stomach dropped. I leapt from the pond and sprinted into the trees toward home, not even feeling the rocks and twigs that stabbed at my bare feet. My mind was racing as fast as my legs: cops—pot plants—slammer—
When I was halfway back to camp, even before Mom could see me, I started waving my arms and screaming. “Mom!” I yelled. “The cops! The cops are here! Hide the pot plants!” I flew into camp and saw her standing in front of our tent, a look of confusion on her face. I ran full speed ahead until I slammed into her legs, and then threw my arms around her and sobbed.
“It’s okay, sweetie, it’s all right . . .” Mom said as she stroked my hair.
Karl came around the side of the tent, zipping up his fly as he walked. “What’s going on?” he asked, looking around. “Did I hear you say—?” He stopped in mid-sentence, and I followed his eyes.
Two cops were moving toward us through the trees, pushing branches out of their way as they walked. I stared at their pants, spellbound by the yellow stripe running down each leg. They reached us and stood side by side, one with his hand over a black club stuck through his belt.
“Are you Karl Hofler?” he asked, and Karl nodded. “Then you’re under arrest. Please place your hands behind your back.”
“What the hell—”
“Just do it, sir,” the cop said, and Karl turned around. The other man pulled out a walkie-talkie and said something into it. A voice crackled back at him, and he put it away again.
I started to cry, burying my face in Mom’s belly. “What’s going to happen?” I said to her. “Are they going to take you too—?”
“Shh . . .” Mom whispered. “It’s okay.”
I heard a metallic click, and pulled away from Mom to peek at Karl. He was standing turned away from us with silver handcuffs on his wrists.
“Now are you going to tell me what this is all about?” Karl asked angrily.
“Sure,” said the cop with the club, taking Karl by the arm and turning him around. “You’re under arrest for property theft. In a few minutes, we’ll have two more officers here to recover the stolen property. You may want to take your child elsewhere, ma’am,” he said to Mom. “They’re going to be going through the contents of the tent and dismantling it. And you, my friend,” he said to Karl, pulling on his arm, “are going to jail.”
I watched in shock as the cops led Karl away from us. Moments later, I saw another pair of men walking toward us. Their mirrored glasses glinted in the sun. I broke away from Mom and ran into the tent, gathering up Suzie Doll, my Big Blue Book, my pink jewelry box and whatever else I could lay my hands on.
Mom came inside and watched me for a minute. Then she slumped down on my bed and
started to cry.
SINCE I DIDN’T HAVE a backpack and had returned my borrowed one to Larry and Susanne, I piled all my belongings under a tree. Mom had done the same with her stuff, and was now running around looking for one of Karl’s new duffel bags. I sat on the ground in front of my treasures to guard them. There was nothing to do now but wait. The cops were already inside our tent, looking over a list of typed words and checking things off as they found them. I knew there wouldn’t be many checkmarks, as most of our stuff had been destroyed in the fire, but my main concern was the tent. With Karl gone, where would Mom and I live now?
Two hours later, my mother and I watched the policemen take our home down and roll it up like a big log. Then each of the men took an end in one hand, heaved a bag of loot over their shoulders with the other and started back toward their cars. Mom pulled me into her lap and held me as she cried. After a few minutes, Larry and Susanne sat down quietly beside us.
“You can stay with us,” Susanne said to Mom, touching her shoulder. “Don’t worry. We’ll get him back.”
Mom nodded through her tears, but her eyes told us what she really believed.
MOM INSISTED THAT LARRY and Susanne’s tipi was already crowded enough with four bodies in it, so instead we borrowed a nylon tent to sleep in. Larry drove Mom into Calgary to try to get some information on Karl’s arrest, but all the cops would tell them was that Karl had been assigned a lawyer and a bond of five thousand dollars. Mom came back to camp and went straight to our tent to cry. I sat in the tipi with Kelly, eating a bologna and mustard sandwich.
Larry said not to worry, because the Karl he knew always came out on top. “Bad luck hasn’t been able to get the best of him yet, and I don’t expect it ever will,” he said to us with a wink.
North of Normal- A memoir of my wilderness childhood, my unusual family, and how I survived both Page 13