by Kirk Landers
Annette called Chaos, who jumped into the van and began investigating every nook and corner. She slid into the farthest seat, where Pender was lying, eyes closed, skin deathly white. The khaki woman was still standing in the open door frame, disoriented, reluctant to sit next to her husband, who looked dead. “We’re leaving right now,” Annette screamed. “Get in!”
The woman started to object.
“In or out! We’re leaving!”
Eric watched the interplay with an open mouth. Christy slid behind the steering wheel, a grim smile on her face. “All aboard!”
The woman got in, fumbled with the door. Eric got out, closed it, and then got back in. Christy sped out in a cloud of rocks and dust, Eric grabbing for his seatbelt, the yuppie woman pitching against the seat.
Annette covered Pender’s upper body with her torso and tried to rub his arms and legs with her hands. His breathing was shallow and weak. She thought he might stop breathing at any moment, thought about what she should do then. Artificial respiration? Strike his chest to stimulate the heart to beat again? She tried to visualize it. She was crying aloud. Couldn’t stop. It was the only thing keeping her going.
Christy made the run from to Atikokan at 140 kilometers per hour on Kings Highway 11.
* * *
Atikokan General Hospital was a rural, forty-one-bed facility with a staff of a half dozen family-medicine doctors dispensing care to the several thousand residents of Atikokan and thousands more spread across hundreds of square miles of the Canadian Shield. The derecho had kept the staff hopping, though—miraculously—only a few Quetico canoeists had been seriously injured, none fatally.
Christy called ahead, so the on-call physician and two EMTs were waiting as they pulled in. They rushed Pender and the khaki man, still unconscious, into the ER on gurneys. The khaki woman entered in a wheelchair.
Thirty minutes later, the physician came out to the waiting area to speak with Annette and Christy. In a small town, Dr. Mary Bonet was their family doctor and a friend.
“They’re alive, but it’s going to be touch and go for a while,” Bonet started. “They’re both hypothermic. We have them on oxygen and IVs, and I’ve started them on antibiotics. We packed them in heated blankets to get their body temperatures back to normal. I’m especially worried about the older man. He has chest congestion and a fever, and his pulse is racing. He could be developing pneumonia.”
“But he’s going to be okay?” Annette asked.
“It’s too soon to tell. He’s in trouble. We’ll have to monitor him closely for the next twenty-four to forty-eight hours.”
Annette closed her eyes and pursed her lips. Good God, not now.
Bonet paused for a moment. “The woman’s health is okay, but she is very agitated over the loss of their equipment and the fact that they are going to miss an important series of dates in various places. She may need to be sedated.”
Annette shook her head.
“Are they customers of yours?” Bonet asked.
“No,” said Annette. “The older man is a friend of mine from long ago. He was my college boyfriend. We ran into that couple on the portage into Pickerel and then fished them out of the water when they capsized. I don’t know anything about them except the lady wore the most stylish clothes I’ve ever seen in the wilderness, and she acted more like royalty than a canoe-tripper.”
Bonet’s eyes widened. It wasn’t like Annette to take such exception to anyone.
Annette hung her head and cried. Christy put her arms around her mother and held her. Bonet put one hand on Annette’s back, her other on Christy’s. “Don’t give up hope,” she said. “He’s in good shape. He’s got a chance.”
“He risked his life to save those fools,” Annette sobbed. “Can you believe that?”
When she recovered, she sat with the registration clerk. The information she had to share was sketchy. She presumed the khaki people’s identification documents went down with their gear in Pickerel Lake, and she knew Pender’s went down when he jettisoned the packs to save the yuppie man. It was surprising, really, how little she knew about Pender. She gave the clerk his name and his last known address, along with the certain knowledge that he didn’t live there anymore. She didn’t know where he was headed after his canoe trip, but she had invited him to stay at her place while he figured things out.
Annette asked about the other members of the Survivors Club. Bill had been treated and released for a broken collarbone. The camper with the head injury had been flown to a larger hospital with neurological specialists. The others just had minor bumps and bruises.
Afterward, Christy told Annette to go home, shower, change into clean clothes, and get something to eat. “I’ll stay here, and I’ll call you if anything changes,” she promised.
For the first time in days, Annette took notice of herself. Her clothes were rumpled and smeared with tree sap and soil, her hair matted and hanging askew. She could see blisters forming on her toes where the sandal strap rubbed. Her hands were sore from gripping the paddle. Her arms and back ached from the hours of hard paddling. She was glad there was no mirror handy. Her face must look like a Halloween mask. She nodded to Christy and thanked her. “Ask them to set up a chair or a cot or something in Gabe’s room if you get the chance, okay?”
32
Christy called Annette from the hospital parking lot before dawn the next morning. Annette checked Pender, who was still asleep, and then picked up two cups of coffee before joining her daughter. They sat in the van’s open doorway, side by side, mother and daughter sipping coffee, gazing eastward, waiting for the first light to seep into their world while Christy’s daughter, Rebecca, slumbered in the back seat.
“I still remember the first time we did this,” Christy said.
Annette was mute.
“I was thirteen, and I hated it here. I kept telling you I wanted to go live with Dad and be a city girl. I wanted to wear makeup and dresses and go to parties in beautiful houses. One morning you came in and woke me up and hauled me out to the lake and made me sit beside you drinking hot cider in the dark, shivering, waiting for sunrise. I kept whining and moaning, and you told me to be quiet and listen. When I finally did, there wasn’t a sound in the world. I thought you were crazy and I said so. And you said, ‘Keep listening.’ I did, because there wasn’t anything else to do. Pretty soon a little breeze rustled through pines and I heard the needles swish. Then a loon called, and I could hear the mourning in its voice. A fish broke the surface of the water. I couldn’t see it, but I could hear it.
“Then you pointed across the lake, and I could see some light on the far horizon. You said, ‘Watch this. It’s a miracle.’
“And you told me how the sunlight comes every morning, how it chases away the dark, how just before we see it, it lights up Crayfish Lake, then Deman and Stetham and Ridge and Huronian and Mackie and Rule and Windigoostigwan and Nydia, and by the time we see it on the edge of Eva, it has reached us and moved on like the dawn of life moving at the speed of light.”
Christy leaned against her mother.
“You said, ‘You can go live in the city if you really want to, but you should get in touch with this place first. Most people never experience this. You can’t buy it. You can’t save it. You can’t store it in a closet. You can feel it and you can remember it, but only if you experience it.’”
Annette laced an arm under Christy’s arm and smiled.
“I never forgot that,” Christy added.
“How many sunrises did you get up for that summer?” Annette asked, laughing.
“None. But I made my boyfriend watch a lot of sunsets with me.”
They smiled.
“I’m just trying to say I love you, Mom. I hope Gabe makes it.”
Annette nodded, sipped her coffee, put an arm around Christy, and hugged her close. “I love you too, sweetie.”
After a silence, Christy spoke. “I guess the two of you hit it off.”
Annette nodded. “It sort of ebbed and
flowed, but yes, by the time we started back, I invited him to stay with us for a while.”
“That’s great.”
“He was thinking maybe he’d do another week or so in the park, then come by. We were going to paddle to French Lake together. Then he was going to go to McKenzie and come back through the Falls Route. The derecho changed everything.”
“Going to McKenzie in August? Is he crazy?”
“More desperate, I think. It’s probably hard for you to imagine with so much of your life ahead of you, but he’s sixty years old and everything that consumed him in life is gone.”
“But sixty isn’t that old. He’s got lots of years left.”
“It’s not about the future. He lost his history. He said once, ‘Everything I ever did is gone now. It’s like I never existed.’”
They watched the light peek over the horizon and flood toward them.
“Every sunrise erases the night before, and every sunset wipes out the day,” Christy murmured. “Those days and those nights will never happen again. It’s sad when you think about it.”
“Is it?” asked Annette. “Or is it the real miracle of life? Every day is a new day. Every night is a new night. A constant flow of new beginnings.”
They finished their coffees, looked in on Rebecca, who was still sleeping soundly. Then Christy walked into the hospital to continue the vigil at Pender’s bedside while Annette took Rebecca to Canadian Shield Outfitters, where she would shower and change and tend to her granddaughter while she started picking up the pieces of their merged outfitting businesses.
* * *
As a sun-drenched morning blossomed outside the hospital window, Pender stirred again, mumbling nonsensical syllables. As she had before, Christy stood at his side, took one of his hands in hers, and talked to him in a quiet voice.
“Good morning, Gabe Pender. Welcome to a beautiful day in Atikokan, Ontario, Canada. I’m Christy. I’ll be your guide this morning. Ask me anything you want about northwest Ontario, and if I don’t know the answer, I’ll make something up.”
His eyes remained closed, but his fingers jerked slightly.
“Hello, Gabe Pender. Are you in there?” The morning-shift nurse had told her to encourage him to come to a conscious state.
She squeezed his fingers lightly and continued talking. Nothing. She sat down again, looked out the window, wondered what Rebecca was doing right now, how her mom was holding up. Pender stirred again. She went to the bedside. This time his eyes flickered open. He blinked several times, trying to focus.
“Do you know who I am?” she asked. He didn’t look as if he was really conscious.
He murmured something so weakly she couldn’t hear it. She bent lower, putting her ear near his lips.
“You are your mother.” He said it in a raspy whisper followed by a cough that seemed to hurt him horribly.
“I’ll call the nurse,” she said.
“Why?” He smiled weakly. His eyes closed. He mumbled something but drifted off in the middle of it.
Christy paged the nurse. She stared at Pender. He looked dead. The nurse swept into the room and took his pulse without a word.
“Is he alive?” Christy asked when the nurse let go of his wrist.
“Yes. Did you say he opened his eyes?”
Christy nodded yes. “He talked, too.”
“What did he say?”
“He told me I looked like my mother.”
“That’s a good sign,” said the nurse. “About his health, I mean.” She smiled at her humor. “His pulse is stronger, too. The doctor will see him shortly, but he may go in and out of sleep for some time.”
“So the outlook is good?”
“It’s better than it was last night.”
When the nurse left the room, Christy called her mother.
“He woke up for a minute.” Her voice was excited. “Well, for a few seconds actually. But he talked. The nurse said it was a good sign.”
“He talked? What did he say?” Annette was elated and at the same time feeling guilty for not having been there. What if he was disoriented and looking for her? A stranger in a strange land.
“I asked him, ‘Do you know who I am?’ And he opened his eyes and he said, ‘You are your mother.’ I almost fainted. Then he went back to sleep.”
Annette smiled. Pender had a way with words.
* * *
Mother and daughter sat down to lunch in Pender’s room.
“Tell me about the dog,” Christy said.
Annette told her about the Stuarts and finding the dog on her way to the island. Trying to boat-train him. The confrontation. Swapping their lost gear for the dog.
“Chaos is a great name for him,” Christy marveled. “But he’s really a sweet dog. Are we going to keep him?”
“Maybe. He follows Pender everywhere, and Pender just loves the guy. Maybe he’ll want to take him when he goes, but maybe not. The places he was talking about traveling to aren’t good dog places. Stockholm. Paris.”
“He doesn’t seem like the Euro type,” said Christy.
“Well, he mentioned the Maritime Provinces, too. Can you see him in Nova Scotia?”
“Maybe, but Newfoundland seems more like the guy you’ve told me about.”
Before Christy could ask another question, Gus and Bill knocked softly and entered.
“How’s the li’l fella doing?” Gus whispered.
Annette almost laughed out loud, two huge men trying to be quiet and polite. “You can talk in a normal voice, guys,” she said. “He woke up for a minute this morning. He told Christy she looked like me. We’re trying to decide if she should be insulted.” Annette smiled so they’d know it was a joke.
“This is your daughter?” asked Gus. “Oh yes, sure. I can see it. I don’t like to agree with the li’l fella, but I see his point.” He crossed to Christy and extended a hand in greeting. “Ma’am, I’m Gus, and this one-armed bandit is my best friend Bill. Your mom and this mean old man here probably saved our lives.”
Bill waved with his good arm, the other one trussed tightly to his chest in a V shape, much like Annette had rigged it. “It’s true,” he said. “Your mom’s the best canoe tripper we’ve ever seen.”
“And we’re pretty experienced ourselves,” said Gus.
“My wife’s here to take us home,” said Bill. “We wanted to thank both of you for everything.”
Annette waved a hand. “We thank you. I know Pender would if he was awake right now. And I certainly do. You were good company. And Gus, even Pender said you were the best portager he ever saw.”
“The li’l fella said that? Really?”
Annette nodded in the affirmative.
“I’ll bet those words came hard.”
They laughed quietly. Annette told Bill it was good to see him when he wasn’t in pain. He beamed.
“You can get your canoe over at the CSO building,” she said. “The staff knows who you are. Check the gear, too. I’m not sure which packs made it. We had to toss ours overboard when we fished the khaki people out of Pickerel. Did you hear about that?”
Gus nodded. “It was the talk of the town this morning. Some reporter at the White Otter Inn was telling everyone about the rescue on Pickerel yesterday and how one lady had to get everyone to French Lake on her own. I knew that was you.”
“Actually, it was Pender who dove in and saved them,” said Annette. “That’s how he got hypothermia and pneumonia.” She glanced at him sadly.
“And it was those yuppie shits he saved?” Bill said it more than asked it. “What a waste.”
“We saw them checking out of here when we came in,” he added. “The guy looks like he’s been in a train wreck, but the lady looks like she’s going to the prom. They saw us and neither one of them said a thing. I bet they didn’t stop in here either, right?”
“Right.” Annette shook her head slowly in wonder. “Some people.”
“No kidding,” said Gus. After a long silence, Gus shook his head
and smiled. “Pender damn near killed me, and I was trying to help him. Then he turns around and damn near kills himself to save two people who wouldn’t lift a finger to help anyone. Go figure, huh?”
“Pender has a universal wisdom to cover that,” said Annette.
“Okay, I’ll bite,” said Gus.
“Life can be a mind fuck.”
Gus stared blankly at her. “I don’t get it,” he said.
“Would you have let them drown?”
“Hell yes!”
“No, you wouldn’t,” said Annette.
“Why would I want to save people like that?”
“Because it’s not about people like that, not for people like you and Pender.”
Gus glanced at Bill. Bill shrugged and said, “Maybe you two were related in a previous life.”
“We were probably brothers,” said Gus.
Gus and Bill scribbled their addresses and phone numbers on a piece of paper. “I’d like it if you’d let me know how Pender’s doing,” said Gus, handing the paper to Annette. “When he’s up and about—and he will be up and about, I know it, he’s way too mean to die—tell him I meant what I said at the plane.”
“What did you say?”
“He’ll tell you.”
After the men left, Annette turned to Christy. “How do you suppose that reporter heard about the rescue yesterday?”
Christy blushed. “He may have been over at CSO when I hauled in the gear last night. There were a bunch of people there, and I did some braggin’ on my mom.”
“Why were so many people there?”
“Well, Eric and I went back to French Lake to get the canoes and the gear, and I called Dan to let us in at CSO. The word must have just spread. Someone called the Progress, and their intern and some other reporter came, maybe from Toronto?”
“What on earth did you tell them?”
“Pretty much what Gus said. I told them you had led a bunch of stranded canoeists out of the park after the storm. When no one else could get out, you got them out. And somewhere on Pickerel, you found this man and woman who had capsized, and you paddled into French Lake yourself with three half-dead people and two canoes in tow.”