Downside Up

by Richard Scrimger

“Well? What are you waiting for?”

  There was room for three on the bench seat. I sat in the middle with Izzy by the passenger side door. We said hi and who we were, and thank you, and no problem. The cab smelled like old leather, old lady, soap, peppermint. Comfy smells. Her name was Linda Mae, and she was from Chicago. She didn’t call it Chicago, though. She called it the Windy City. She had funny names for a lot of things. Trucker slang, she said.

  You might think it was a strange idea, us climbing into a stranger’s truck in the middle of nowhere, chasing down the highway after Dad. Actually, now that I think about it, it does seem pretty strange. But you get used to strange. Your standards change. This was not the weirdest part of our day at all.

  I stared ahead. Dad had driven here a few minutes ago. Right here.

  Linda Mae worked the gearshift.

  “You crying, Fred?” she asked.

  “No.”

  “Huh.”

  I wiped my eyes with my fingers and was surprised when they came away wet.

  —

  We explained a little of what was going on to Linda Mae. Well, we lied to her. It was mostly my story, but Izzy sniffed and nodded from time to time. I invented it as I went along: our aunt’s car breaking down on the way to Bobcaygeon, her sending us on ahead to wait in the restaurant while she waited for help. Dad was supposed to pick us up at the truck stop, but he must have got confused and drove past us. Izzy sat on the edge of her seat, peering ahead, willing the green car to appear out of the lengthening shadows.

  Linda Mae was going right past Bobcaygeon on her way to Minden, so she didn’t mind taking us there. “Not that I believe a word you’re telling me,” she said.

  “What?”

  “Two ankle biters from Hog Town here in the Great White North all by themselves? Not likely. You’re running away, aren’t you.”

  “No,” I said.

  “Whatever. I’ll help you out.”

  She held out a bag of beef-jerky sticks. Izzy shook her head. I took one and chewed away at the tough, salty, meaty stuff.

  “What’s your aunt’s name?” she asked me suddenly.

  I was ready for that. “Elvira.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  I liked Linda Mae. She had a kid’s drawing stuck on the dashboard. I lov gran, it said. Her tough old hands looked like they could do things.

  Traffic was bunching up ahead. Linda Mae shifted into a lower gear. We slowed.

  “So do you want to catch the guy in the Cheap Hardly Efficient?” she asked.

  “What?” said Izzy.

  “Sorry, the Chevrolet? I saw you running after him back there. You want to catch him? Or just get to Bobcaygeon?”

  “Catch him!” said Izzy, not looking away from the road. “Please! He’s our dad. Can you go faster?”

  “Not without hitting the four-wheelers ahead of us.”

  She meant cars.

  “I’ll hammer down as soon as I can. In the meantime, what I can do is put out the word.”

  We started up again. Linda unclipped a microphone from a small box over her head and spoke into it. I can’t do her talk, but she asked anyone listening—anyone with their ears on, she said—to be on the lookout for Dad’s car. She called it “one of them Cheap Hardlys that looks like a hack.” She said we were all on Seventh Avenue heading west, and signed off. “This here’s Windy Belle, give me a shout on nineteen.”

  “We’re on Highway 7,” said Izzy. “Not Seventh Avenue.”

  “Seventh Avenue means Highway 7, honey,” Belle explained.

  “Oh.”

  “Why do you call Dad’s car a Cheap Hardly?” I asked.

  “That’s our little joke,” she said. “Truckers like to make fun of everything. Cheap Hardly Efficient Virtually Runs On Luck Every Time is our way of saying Chevrolet.”

  It took me a while to get it.

  A guy came on the air and said 10-4. A minute later there were a couple more 10-4s and a 10-Roger. The 10-Roger guy said he was Diver Dan. Linda said hi and asked what his 20 was. He said he was heading east on Seventh on the way to the Swamp and would give a shout if he saw the green Chev.

  She was smiling as she hung up her CB receiver. I thanked her for her help.

  “Huh. We’ll see if anyone spots him.”

  “Why do you call yourself Windy Belle?” I asked.

  “It’s my handle, my road name. Most truckers are guys and I’m not, so I’m Belle. And Chicago is called Windy or the Windy or the Windy City. Diver Dan is from the Peg—that’s Winnipeg.”

  “You know him?”

  “Dan? Sure. We’ve been talking for years.”

  She sped up.

  “Why don’t you call Chicago, Chicago?” I asked. “And Winnipeg, Winnipeg?”

  “Well, what fun would that be?”

  I chewed my beef jerky, thinking about the people out there looking for Dad. I had a lot of catching up to do. I’d blocked him out of my mind so that I didn’t miss him. Izzy must have been missing him all along. Mom too. Now we’d got to a place where Dad was alive, and all these people were helping us look for him. We couldn’t miss him again.

  —

  Nothing much happened for a bit. This part of the highway climbed and dipped past forest and rocks, curving around bigger hills. The direction indicator on the dash said W for a while, and then SW, and then W again. The sun went from in front of us to being on our right side, getting lower and lower. It would disappear behind a faraway hill and then reappear when we got to a flatter stretch of country. It did that three or four times, like a series of sunsets and sunrises.

  Linda Mae noticed it too. “Sun’s playing peekaboo,” she said. I liked that.

  —

  Considering all the super weird stuff that was about to happen, this hour in Linda Mae’s truck—and that’s all it was—was about the quietest, most relaxed time Izzy and I had in upside-down world. I didn’t know it at the time, of course. I sat on the edge of my seat, thinking, I don’t believe it, and, Isn’t this amazing, and, Holy crap. And, Please. Please, please, please.

  One worrying thing was Izzy’s phone. There was no service here in the hills, so we couldn’t get through to Freddie. Izzy stopped trying when her phone beeped, meaning that it was running out of power. She powered off and held her phone in her lap, rocking forward and back, eyes on the road ahead.

  Linda Mae drove fast, honking to get cars out of her way. She used the CB to ask for help. She’d say where we were—her 20, she called it—and ask if anyone had seen any bears.

  We had a couple of false alarms. Another Chevrolet driver came on air himself, calling himself Plazmic. Not Dad. A trucker named Buckeye reported a Cheap Hardly with a blown tire at the side of the road up ahead. We slowed, but it wasn’t Dad’s. Buckeye was a few miles ahead of us. He came on a minute later and told Linda Mae to brush her teeth and comb her hair. She geared down quickly.

  “What’s wrong?” Izzy asked.

  “Bears on the prowl,” she said. A small smile crossed her face as we rounded the next bend and saw two police cars in a row at the side of the highway. A speed trap.

  “Not this time,” she muttered.

  “Bears means police?”

  “Course. Where you from, Fred?”

  “Yeah, Fred,” said Izzy. “Everyone knows about bears.”

  Around the next bend we sped up again. The truck was roaring along. Cars pulled out of our way when we got close to them. Exciting.

  “Is this hammer down?” I said.

  Linda smiled some more. “Toes on the front bumper,” she said.

  Buckeye came on to say he was leaving. Down and gone, is how he put it. “Preeshaydit, Ace,” said Linda Mae. “Keep ’em between the ditches.”

  “Threes and eights,” he said.

  Truckers used lots of numbers. I asked Linda what threes and eights meant and she said good luck.

  —

  We honked hard when a big orange truck drove past us going the other way. He flashed his
lights. Diver Dan. He said threes and eights too.

  “All the good numbers, honey,” Linda replied. “Over and out.”

  We rolled down the highway as night began to wrap itself around us like a blanket. She had that little smile again. She liked Diver Dan.

  All the good numbers, I thought. Nice.

  A high-pitched voice came on the air, wanting to know if we were still interested in our green Chevrolet, because he was parked beside one at the rest stop near the Lindsay exit off Highway 7. “A company car,” he said. “Writing on the side reads STAFFORD PLASTICS.” Izzy sat up straight.

  Izzy grabbed my arm. “It’s Daddy!” she whispered. “Daddy!”

  Linda Mae told the caller it was a big 10-4. “That’s our guy,” she said. “Can you wait for us at the pickle park?”

  But there was some kind of alarm and he had to go. Sorry, he said. Done and gone, he said.

  Linda Mae pulled out to pass an RV. I asked her if there was anything wrong. She didn’t reply. Izzy still had a hold on my arm. I could feel her trembling with anticipation. Me too. Dad. Dad. Be there, I thought. Be what I need you to be—whatever that is.

  I thought about the time Dr. Nussbaum sat me at his round table and had me draw my family. Put in everyone, he said, which I thought was funny. A sunny afternoon—the window frame made a shadow across the blank paper. Why is Casey so big? he asked when I’d finished. It looked like the dog was carrying me. I guess he was a little big. I don’t know, I said.

  —

  REST AREA AHEAD, said the sign. Linda Mae pulled into the right-hand lane. Someone came on the CB radio with a 10-33—an emergency. There was a giant accident—a mile-high mess-’em-up, he called it—a few miles ahead of us. He sounded pretty calm about it, considering it was an emergency. Better back ’em up, everybody, he said.

  The rest area parking lot was deserted. No green Chevrolet.

  “Don’t worry,” said Linda Mae. “Your daddy won’t be far away. He’ll be slowed down by that accident.”

  Neither of us replied.

  The sun was staying below the hill line now, but there was still light in the air. It was hard to judge distances. A car coming toward us would be far off, and then in an instant, it’d be right beside us, close enough to read the license plate.

  Two police cars behind us. Linda Mae pulled into the right-hand lane to let them pass. No sirens, no real rush. One of the drivers put a hand out the window to wave thank you to us.

  —

  I had a horrible thought. So horrible I couldn’t stop thinking about it. My dad died in a big accident. What if that was what was happening here? There was an accident up ahead, and Dad was driving toward it. My dad—the only one I had. What if he was about to die right now? What if I saw it happen?

  Horrible.

  We rounded a sharp bend and there it was, spread in front of us like a lawn sale of broken toys—two lanes of highway littered with flashing lights and stopped cars. Linda Mae jammed on the brakes. I felt the seat belt bite into my chest. Linda Mae took down her CB and asked if anyone else in this parking lot had their ears on, and did they see Dad’s car. No answer. She put the truck in neutral, gave me a Kleenex. I balled it up in my hand.

  “There!” cried Izzy.

  She pointed way up ahead. A tanker truck and a car were turned sideways, blocking the road. Looked like the tanker had smashed into the back of a car. In the twilight I couldn’t tell what color the car was, but it looked dark.

  Horrible.

  Izzy opened the passenger side door and leaped out. I slid after her. Before I jumped, Linda Mae grabbed my arm.

  “I’m sure you’ll find him,” she said.

  “Yeah,” I said. And jumped.

  That was the last I saw of her. I wish I’d said a proper good-bye, taken a second or two to tell her how much I appreciated everything she’d done. But I was distracted at the time. I’m sure she understood. I think about her now and then—Windy Belle, with her funny talk and her big heart. If I ever see her truck cab stopped somewhere, I’ll knock on the door and say, You don’t know me, but you were very kind to me in another world. Thanks.

  —

  I followed Izzy’s flapping red shoes along the side of the highway, past the stopped cars and radio static and flashing lights.

  We were the only ones running. Knots of people talked. Police officers pointed. Nobody seemed very worried, even though there were lots of dents and broken glass, even though there was a smell of gasoline that got stronger as we ran.

  Izzy was getting used to being lighter and faster than usual. When a police officer smiled and put up his hand to stop her, Izzy jumped right over him. I followed suit. We were getting close.

  Dad’s accident had been like this. A highway in Ontario, a smash with a tanker truck. Was he going to die here and now? Was he dead? Couldn’t be. Casey was alive in this world. Dad had to be too. Had to be!

  There’d been a fire in our world—the tanker that ran into Dad had exploded. That hadn’t happened here. Or not yet.

  The tanker part of the truck was leaking from where another car had smashed into it from behind. We ran to the car—the green car—the green four-door Chevrolet. The trunk was smashed into the tanker’s front bumper. The driver’s side door of the car was open.

  A figure slumped lifelessly over the wheel.

  We stopped running. The driver was still. So still. Izzy grabbed my arm.

  “He’s…he’s…” She swallowed. “This is…it. How it happened.” She swallowed again. “Five minutes late. I didn’t…You said…”

  She slumped down onto the shoulder of the highway and let her head fall forward. I sank down next to her.

  “You said…you said…this was the place for lost things. So I was hopeful, you know? And this…Dad…”

  She lifted her head and a long wordless thing came out of her mouth. Not a yell or a scream or a shout but all of them together.

  I waited til she finished. Then I said, “Yeah.”

  The gasoline smell was everywhere. The tanker could go at any minute. I was too upset to care. So it exploded, so what?

  And then the driver moved.

  His arm lifted off the wheel and fell against the seat. He turned his head to face Izzy and me. And his eyes were open. He was alive. Dad was alive. Of course he was. I should have had more faith in the upside-down world. Izzy ran over to hug him.

  I held back. For a year I had had no father, and no memory of one. And now here he was, alive. I felt shy.

  Dad. My dad.

  Izzy was on her knees by the driver’s side door and had her hand on Dad’s arm. She was talking to him, patting him, telling him how happy she was to see him, how he was going to be fine. He heard her. He blinked and opened his eyes. And smiled.

  “Hi there, you two. What are you doing here?”

  I can’t tell you what it was like to hear him say this, this normal thing. To see his eyebrows go up, his lips start to widen into a smile.

  Can’t tell you.

  “Hi,” I said. “Hi Dad.”

  —

  A flash of light made me look up. The sun was behind a hill off to the left, and its rays caught something overhead.

  I’d seen that kind of flash before.

  There was another smell to go alongside the gasoline. Smoke. There was a whiff of something sharp and metallic. Izzy looked up and swore loudly. I didn’t blame her. The dragon circled lower. And the closer this one got, the scarier she looked.

  “What’s wrong?” said Dad, who still seemed a little woozy. He looked up and nodded.

  “Oh,” he said.

  Leathery wings spread wide, the dragon came in to land. She beat the air to stay still for a second, then dropped with heavy thump. The ground shook.

  Remember the dragon Freddie helped in High Park? Trapped in the tree root, hissing and steaming, almost cute? This dragon wasn’t like that. Not like the dragon I saw by the lake either—the one carrying away the old baba.

  N
o. This was the sort of dragon that devastated towns. She was black, not silver. And she was as big as a house, dirty and smelly and mean-looking. Her eyes blazed like bonfires. The dry grass around her claws smoldered and blackened. She walked around the back of the car, leaving smoking footprints.

  Dad was struggling out of the driver’s seat. His face was calm, resigned. He waved at the dragon. The way you wave to a friend—over here.

  “What are you doing, Daddy?” Izzy asked him.

  “When your time comes,” said Dad, “there’s nothing to do.”

  Freddie had said the same thing. What did Dad mean? His time had come?

  “NO!”

  I shouted the word. The dragon was on the passenger side of the car. I ran around to face her, too mad to care how much danger I was in. Or how ridiculous I looked. Anger does that to you. We’d come all this way, Izzy and I. We’d found our dad. We were not going to lose him now.

  “NO,” I shouted again. “GO away, you stupid dragon! DO NOT take my dad. It is NOT his time.”

  You know how a dog puts its head on one side, like it’s thinking something out? Casey does that—did that. The dragon did it too. Wisps of smoke or steam came out her snout.

  “SHOO!” I yelled. “Go on, get out of here!”

  I waved my hands over my head like—well, like an idiot. And—would you believe it—she went. Flapping her jetliner-sized wings, she took off, lifting straight up, but angled a bit, tail dragging.

  I went back around to the driver side of the car. Dad was still behind the wheel.

  “Why’d you do that, Buddy?” he asked me.

  I almost broke down. Dad used to ask me just that question, in just that tone of voice, when he didn’t understand something I’d done.

  “I don’t want you to go,” I told him. “I don’t want the dragon to take you—wherever they take you.”

  “But it’s my time.”

  “No it isn’t. It isn’t!”

  I wiped my eyes. My heart filled up like a sponge. I couldn’t breathe right.

  “You never told me there were dragons, Fred,” Izzy whispered.

  “Yeah. Did you see me scare it away? Did you? I yelled shoo and it went. Like that!”