Jess and the Runaway Grandpa

by Mary Woodbury

  “I ache all over, Ernie, what about you? This isn’t like camping in a nice campsite with showers and picnic shelters with roaring fireplaces, is it?” She gazed around. She couldn’t see Ernie anywhere.

  “Ernie? Ernie, where are you?”

  The coyote howled again.

  “Ernie?” Jess craned her neck to see around the trees that encircled the camp. She ran into the bush in the direction that Ernie had gone. Her heart beat like a drum. Thorns on wild rosebushes scratched her face and arms. A raven screeched, its voice harsh as a drunken bully’s. “Ernie?”

  She nearly tripped over him. Ernie was propped up, leaning against a gnarled black poplar.

  “I was praying,” he said, and held up his still-working right hand. “Would you be so kind as to help me find my way home? I don’t know how I got here, but my mother will be worried if I’m out in the woods alone. Call my brother Pete, he’ll come and get me. I prayed and you came.”

  Jess gulped mouthfuls of fresh morning air. For a moment she had been worried sick, worried she had lost Ernie. Holding his too-warm body close to her, walking with him back to their camp, she started to cry.

  “Don’t wander off like that, Ernie,” she shouted. “You scared me. You could get lost.”

  “I am lost, that’s the problem.” Ernie yanked his hand from hers and struggled ahead on his own, grasping tree trunks and dogwood bushes to keep himself upright.

  He slumped onto one of the huge stumps close to the fire and put his head on his right hand. His face was red and blotchy. His left leg stretched out at an odd angle. His clothes were covered with dirt and leaves. His shoes were untied. His golf jacket had a streak of grass stain and one of oil. He shuddered, pulled his right arm and shoulder up and in as if to keep his bones warm. He looked sick.

  Jess had a sudden flash of memory of one time years ago when she and Brian and Ernie had gone fishing at Baptiste Lake. Brian had caught a pike, and she had caught nothing. When they had pulled the boat in to land for lunch and a potty break, she, little Jess, had been angry that Brian had caught fish and she hadn’t, so she’d run off in the bushes pouting, half a baloney sandwich in her hand. She remembered the sharp smell of mustard, even glanced down to see if the streak of yellow was still on her hand. She had been frightened. She’d called and called until her voice was hoarse. Finally, after what felt like hours, Ernie and Brian had found her, hugged her, and Ernie had carried her back to the boat on his strong shoulders.

  Jess moved towards the campfire and picked up the coffee pot with the rolled sleeve of Ruth’s sweater. The least she could do was to carry Ernie now. He didn’t need someone being mad at him.

  “Have we been abandoned here?” Ernie gazed into her eyes as she handed him a cup of instant coffee.

  “No, we haven’t,” she said calmly. Jess tested the coffee with her lip. It was too hot to drink yet, so she wrapped her two hands around the cup for warmth, and the safety of holding something familiar.

  “I have to go for help, Ernie.” She felt his forehead. The old man’s fever was getting worse.

  “I don’t like being alone, do I?”

  “I could get food. Aren’t you hungry?” The situation was worse than she thought. “Do you feel all right?”

  But Ernie had stopped listening. He was staring into the flames and humming a hymn. Jess picked up one of the blankets and wrapped it around his shoulders. Then she slid down to the beach and searched for any packets of treats or juice cartons that might have been missed by the bear. She found one apple juice and a granola bar lying by a rock. She had the last two granola bars stored in her back pocket for emergencies. She spotted her Swiss Army knife in the shallows of the river. She thought her hand would freeze reaching for it. The pebbles and rocks under the current jostled and bumped as she grabbed the knife. She scoured the beach and cove for more items, with no luck. The river gurgled and hummed. It was a silty greenish-brown wide river, with the occasional branch or log cruising by at quite a speed. Maybe with a good boat, she thought, but not a silly inflatable. She pushed the scary proposition away. Ernie wouldn’t be able to row. It would be just her and the river.

  Except for a circling hawk, a flutter of wings on the far bank, she and Ernie were in the wilderness alone. Jess gulped and her ears popped. The sky above was filled with large, heavy, fast-moving clouds. They looked menacing. With the chill wind coming down the river, blowing into her face, she’d say another storm was coming their way. One of those late spring snowstorms that kill all the fresh green leaves, tender plants, early blossoms. A mosquito bit her cheek.

  “You’re in for a surprise, you pest, the winter isn’t over yet.” She rubbed the sting. The back of her hand was covered with a pattern of thorn scratches, one knuckle red and raw from sawing. Her feet felt squished in the soggy sneakers, her jeans felt clammy and cold, and her body craved a hot bubble bath. “Mom would be shocked at how ready I am for a nice long soak in the tub,” she told the flowing water.

  “Have you gone?” Ernie’s anxious voice called.

  “Not yet. I was trying to find anything left by the bear. He took my sports bag.” Jess scrambled up the steep bank to the campsite. Her stomach rumbled. She wanted a banana and a glass of orange juice so badly she could taste them. Her mom always had fresh bananas in a bowl in the middle of the dining room table. She blinked, thinking about her mom and Ruth, worrying themselves sick.

  By now with any luck they were staying at Grandma Ruth’s relatives. When Jess’s dad had moved out, Ruth had brought Naomi and Jess to the farm for a few days. Ruth’s brother said the two women were like the Bible story about Ruth and Naomi, except in the Bible Naomi had been the mother and Ruth the younger woman. The point of the story was that Ruth and Naomi journeyed together and made a home for themselves. Jess was glad her mom and Ruth had done that – stayed together ever since she, Jess, had been little. She loved them both.

  She sighed and thought of the long climb up past the van, up the ridge to the next flat area, and finally up the last ridge to road level. She would have to walk along the gravel road until she came to a farm. How far was it? How she wished she had company for that journey.

  There would be search teams looking for them. Last year a girl and her dog had wandered away from a campsite near Red Deer and been found after three days, safe. Jess held on to that encouraging story.

  Jess gave Ernie her birch staff, the juice pack, and the granola bar. She took her Swiss Army knife and cut a sapling for a walking stick, giving it a sharp tip. She took the compass out of her pocket and checked due north. She was going to walk east up the hill. It was important not to get lost. She loaded the fire with fresh logs, hunted through the debris of the camper for anything besides Grandma Ruth’s big sweater to put on over her wet clothes. She found spare bug repellent for Ernie. A tin of beans rolled out as she shifted the cabinet. Mentally she thanked the universe for lunch.

  “I’m going now, Ernie. It may take a while. I’m going for help and food.”

  Ernie looked up, a puzzled expression on his face.

  “Don’t leave the fire, okay? You tend the fire.”

  He stared into the flames. “Mend the tire, right.”

  Jess shook her head. She looked up at the sky. A cloudy afternoon. She’d have to hurry.

  Jess rolled up the sleeves of the big sweater, double-knotted her sneaker laces, and picked up the freshly peeled staff.

  “Well, I’m off to see the world, Ernie.” The words floated in the air like smoke.

  The path that the van had slashed through the woods was clear. Jess followed it up the steep bank towards the road. She had to grasp at shoots and willows to pull herself up. She must have half a kilometer or so of rough terrain to cover. She didn’t know how far it was to civilization. Coyotes didn’t bother people, did they? The bear was long gone, wasn’t he? Ernie wouldn’t wander away again, would he? Would she find help soon enough?

  The sky above darkened. Winds in the treetops moaned. A loud c
rash, a feeling of the ground shifting beneath her, told her a tree had fallen in the forest. A squirrel scolded from a spruce grove. Jess collapsed under a giant pine tree. The ground was littered with pine cone shells, husks, and tiny mushrooms. It smelt of rich earth and musty leaves. Jess picked some Labrador tea and put it in her pocket. She was afraid of eating the mushrooms. She only knew two varieties for sure – green rusellas and boletas with their bright orange tops and hairy stems.

  She could see the trees silhouetted against the sky by the top of the first ridge. Another ten minutes and she should be at the road.

  “If it wasn’t for Ernie teaching me about the woods, fishing, camping, and life outdoors, I’d be in a real pickle,” she told the squirrel who was chattering away from a branch of a tree. It must be awful for poor Ernie, who knew all sorts of stuff, to lose his memory. A writer who had visited Jess’s class last year had reminded them that creativity in art and stories came from memory and imagination.

  “I’m building memories and Ernie’s losing them. What a pair!” She gripped a dogwood branch and continued her journey up the steep bank. Her foot slipped. Her hand stung like blazes where she grasped a thorny rosebush instead of a dogwood. She would have to get the needle out when she came back. A bee buzzed close by. A plane droned overhead. The smell of rotting wood assailed her as she climbed. Gashed topsoil with grubs and beetles crawling in among turned-up roots, smashed saplings, and torn leaves and blossoms revealed the path of the van. A cloud of midges circled her head. She swatted them and looked down towards the campsite near the beach.

  Smoke and sparks rose from the fire, all she could see of the campsite through the foliage of early spring. She had come further than she thought.

  Jess stood stock still on the hill, a few hundred meters from the top. Her heart beat fast and she gasped for breath. Down below was Ernie by the campfire, hopefully putting a log on now and then.

  “Help! Help! Fire!” Ernie’s voice rang out.

  Jess sprang down the slope as if the bear were after her, leaping and diving, sliding and slipping, the bank of dogwoods. She stumbled down the steep bank. A poplar tree that she didn’t remember lay in her path. She boosted herself up and as she did, she heard a loud crack. The log beneath her shifted and crashed to the forest floor. Her left foot was caught under a branch. A long scrape with drops of blood spurting from it appeared on her ankle. She wiggled and wiggled until her foot came free, leaving her sneaker trapped. The pain in her foot and ankle were severe. She had to get the sneaker. She pulled with her might. Finally the shoe dislodged.

  Far below near the water black smoke rose in the air.

  Jess hobbled down the hill, not putting weight on her left foot, grimacing in pain.

  “Help! Help! Bert, where are you?”

  “I’m coming,” she hollered. Her voice sounded like a screech. Her foot hurt so badly she wanted to cry.

  Ernie stood by the van, his right hand holding the jack, his white hair flying in the cold wind. The tire had rolled down the slope into the campfire and was engulfed in flames. It smelled horrible. Jess grabbed Ernie’s old work gloves and the birch fire stick and rolled the tire down the hill and into the river. It sizzled and spat. Then she grabbed Ernie’s arm and hollered. “What were you trying to do?”

  “You said mend the tire. I remember that.” He grinned. Ernie stared at the jack in his hand, the wrench and nuts from the back wheel of the van lying on an oily rag on the ground. He shrugged his shoulders. Jess couldn’t figure out how he had managed to take the tire off with only one working hand.

  “How can I help, Ernie? I don’t know what to do.” Jess cried. Her foot hurt. “Sometimes you’re all right. Sometimes you aren’t.” She threw herself down. “I shouldn’t get so mad. It’s not your fault.” Jess wiped the tears from her eyes. How did her mom care for so many people? Naomi never lost her temper with them. She never even got angry with Jess. I want my mom, she thought. I want to see her so bad my insides hurt as bad as my outsides.

  Ernie shook his head, and blinked.

  “At least, you’re safe. That’s what’s important.” Jess rocked back and forth. The pain in her ankle made her teeth ache.

  “Am I safe?” Ernie stared at her, his eyes dark and sad. “Am I really?”

  Chapter 22 – Brian Finds a Clue

  Brian and his dad were driving down the back road toward Ernie’s old school. They’d stopped and gotten directions from the restaurant owner. Sonny had slept in, much to Brian’s dismay. It was early afternoon Saturday and they’d had a late pancake brunch out at Grandma Ruth’s brother’s farm. The RCMP wanted Ruth to stay put. Naomi didn’t want to leave Ruth, but at the same time she wanted to join the search. Sonny and Brian had said they would meet them in town later and check signals.

  “Doing nothing is harder than you can imagine,” Naomi had told Brian.

  “We’ll phone if we find anything,” Sonny had promised.

  As they turned down the side road that led to the school, the smell of something nasty burning wafted in the air. A strong wind was blowing from the north.

  “What’s that?” Sonny asked. He peered through the window as if the gravel road ahead would give him an answer.

  “Probably from the pulp mill, or natural gas,” Brian said. “There’s always something stinking up here. I wish they’d leave the earth alone, instead of prodding it, digging it up, tossing trees down.”

  “It’s the old environment versus economy battle. A developer bought my father’s farm in Trinidad for peanuts, cut it up, and sold it for thousands. Nearly killed the old man. He couldn’t take it. Started drinking. No wonder I don’t like the country. It kills people.”

  “It doesn’t have to, Dad. You have to learn to live with it – not let it overwhelm you. Some people treat nature as if it were the enemy. Cooperation is the key.” Brian flipped through the CDs looking for some cool tunes. “That’s what Ernie used to say.”

  “Ernie gave you a lot of good advice.”

  Brian nodded. Please, Ernie, don’t be dead, not before I see you. He wanted to say thanks.

  “Is that the cemetery the RCMP said to watch for?” Brian tossed the disks aside. “The school is supposed to be in the next woods.” An overgrown arch of caragana fronted a small field surrounded with white poplar and silver birch. The car slowed.

  “I see it! I see it!” Brian pointed to a dilapidated log building with a row of windows with tiny panes in them. The car pulled off the freshly graveled road onto a grass track. The grass was beaten down by tires from trucks and four-by-fours.

  “Maybe that’s their tracks,” Brian said hopefully. “Maybe they’re here.”

  His dad patted Brian’s shoulder as the two of them walked to the old school. “I never noticed what a stubborn guy you are, Brian. When you decide to do something, watch out.”

  The schoolhouse was empty, except for two old desks and rows upon rows of stored mushrooms that some squirrel family had forgotten. The teacherage was no bigger than an old-fashioned one-car garage and held a broken bedspring and one end of a metal bed. A different family of small animals had lined all the shelves with mushrooms.

  “Life moves on. What we don’t use, some other critter does,” Sonny Dille said. “I’m beginning to understand old Ernie Mather.”

  “I was hoping they’d be here,” Brian sighed. He led the way out the door and around the back. A dinted, ancient tackle box lay open, rusting in the grass. “ I wonder if that was Ernie’s?”

  Brian’s dad had gone striding down a grass track towards the river. Brian ran to catch up with him.

  “Spooky, isn’t it?” Brian said.

  His dad kept walking. “Is that how it feels to you, spooky?”

  Brian took giant steps to keep up with his dad, glad he was finally big enough to catch up. “I guess it just feels like a lot of people, real people, went to that school, and walked through these fields just like us. It’s as if….”

  “Opening the door to this
old schoolhouse we see the whole history of human beings in this country,” his dad mused, “complete with mouse droppings, chipmunk nests, and mushroom stores. I envy Ernie in some ways. He at least knew enough to remember his roots and return to them.” Sonny Dille bent over and pulled on a stalk of grass until the fresh sprout slid out. He stuck the tasty new growth into his mouth.

  Brian reached over and took his father’s big hand in his for a moment and the two of them strode towards the river. He could hear the swish and gurgle of the current over rocks on the other side of the rise.

  The rushing river showed through the trees. Dark, full clouds skimmed the hills on the other side. The smell of something stinky, like burning rubber, was getting worse.

  “I wish I knew they were all right,” Brian sighed as they skittered down the bank to the pebbly beach that stretched out into the river. A startled deer launched into the current and swam over to an island in the centre. The end of the island was stacked with weathered logs, stumps, and branches thrown up by high water or storm. “I feel like they’ve been lost for days. But it’s only been twenty-four hours.”

  The two of them wandered along the water’s edge looking for clues of some recent fire or visit.

  Brian’s dad wiped his forehead with his new red cowboy handkerchief. He sat on a bleached pine log with roots taller than a bear. “I don’t think they’ve been here.”

  “When we find them, I want to talk to Jess. I need to explain…”

  “That you’re a normal kid. That you make mistakes. What?”

  Brian pointed to some blackish smoke upstream. He was ignoring his dad’s remarks. He didn’t know what he was going to say to Jess. If she’d talk to him.

  He was standing at the river’s edge, watching the deer scramble out of the water and disappear on a path into some birch woods on the narrow island. “What’s that funny thing hooked onto that driftwood?”