by Natalie Hyde
With anyone else, the reaction I’d get would be something about it being illegal, or getting in trouble, or what if I get caught. All Shard said was, “You’ll need to forge his signature. Are you any good?” This is why Shard and I are best friends. She understands that in our world you do whatever you have to to survive.
“I’m not sure. I know what it’s supposed to look like, though.” I pulled out the registration form that had my dad’s signature on it, to copy.
“So let’s see how well you do,” she said.
It wasn’t easy in the back of a muffin truck, using only a baking sheet for a table and an old receipt and pencil that we found in a drawer. But even with the bouncing motion, I thought I did a pretty good job.
“I think the loop looks too, I don’t know, loopy,” Shard said.
I tried again, making my “g” loop a little flatter.
“Hmmm, now your ‘D’ looks too curvy,” Shard said, holding the receipt up.
“What are you guys doing?” Fiona asked, leaning over to look into the back of the truck.
I wasn’t going to say what we were doing because I was kind of embarrassed that I wasn’t more prepared for all this, but Shard told her.
Fiona reached back and asked for the receipt and the document. “No, this is all wrong,” she said, and bent over the paper. When she handed the receipt back there was a perfect copy of the way my dad signed his name.
“How did you do that?” I asked her.
Fiona looked for a second like she wasn’t going to answer but then just said, “Talent of mine.”
Shard and I studied the signature. “You’ve got some practising to do,” she said to me.
“Yeah, but I’m sure I can get it close enough.”
“Now you only have one small problem.”
“And that is?”
“You don’t look like a forty-year-old man. Or did you think you could just stand in front of the registrar and pass over ID that says you’re your dad?”
Have I ever mentioned how much I hate it when Shard is right?
“I haven’t worked that out yet,” I said. “Maybe I can pretend he’s outside in a car, sick, and can’t come in?”
“Unless there’s a window in the office that the guy can look out of.”
I crumpled the paper and threw it at her. I would have to think of a solution later, because right then I heard Vinnie say something I hoped he never would.
“Cops.” And then he swore. With a family full of losers, drunks and convicts, I’d heard my share of swearing over the years. While I think Fiona had a better swear vocabulary, Vinnie swore loudly, with a lot of emotion. It was quite impressive.
“What do you mean, cops?” I asked, already knowing the answer.
“A cruiser passed by us, and now he’s pulled a U-ey and is following us.”
This was it. I’d be hauled off to foster care before I could get up north and fix things for my dad and me. “I knew they wouldn’t stop looking for me,” I said, hitting the side of the truck in anger.
“You?” Vinnie said. “They ain’t looking for you, kid. They’re looking for me.”
“What did YOU do?” Shard asked. “Mom said you had learned your lesson and were going to fly straight.”
“I did. I did. It’s just that a roadside vending licence costs money, and I was kinda waiting until I got my business rolling.”
“Oh, great!” I said. “Now they’re going to catch me because you didn’t register as the Muffin Man. Perfect.”
“How would they know whether or not you have your licence, anyway? We’re hours past that city we were in this morning,” Shard said.
“They wouldn’t,” Fiona answered her. We poked our heads through the doorway and saw Fiona shaking her head. “And they don’t know you’re in here, either, Chris.”
“So who are they after?” Shard asked.
“Me,” Fiona said.
“You?!” the three of us said at the same time.
“What did YOU do?” I asked.
“Well, we’re getting pretty close to Edmonton and I kinda had a run-in with the law here a few years back.”
“What kind of ‘run-in’?” Vinnie asked, looking back and forth between his side-view mirror and the road.
“Gang stuff.”
“You mean when you were in a motorcycle gang?” I asked. Fiona nodded. “But you got out! You run a respectable, well, profitable business now!”
“Doesn’t matter. Cops got long memories, and that one had a good look at me as he went by us the first time. Looks like my past has caught up to me and they’re going to bring me in.”
“Not if I have something to say about it,” Vinnie said. He pressed on the accelerator.
“Are you sure you know what you’re doing?” Fiona asked.
“This ain’t my first rodeo,” Vinnie answered. “Hang on!”
Really? Hang on to what? The truck made a sharp right turn and I was thrown on top of Shard.
“Sorry! Sorry!” I said.
“Watch the hands, mister!”
Then the truck veered to the left, and we were both thrown to the other side. I bumped my head on the front wheel of the bike. I hoped Fiona didn’t see that.
“They’re still following us,” I heard Fiona say.
“Not for long.” Vinnie put the pedal to the floor and the poor old truck’s engine screeched in protest. I was gripping one of the racks that was tied to the wall. Shard was gripping my leg.
We swerved left, then right, then a harder right. I’m sure running from the cops was a bad idea. But no worse than getting put into the system because Fiona made some mistakes in her past. Or because Vinnie was a lazy entrepreneur.
I could hear the crunch of gravel under the tires; we were obviously on a dirt road now. But I never did hear any sirens. That was good, right?
Now tree branches were hitting the sides of the truck too. Where were we? All of a sudden, the truck screeched to a halt. None of us moved.
We all strained to listen. There was a car engine that went by, but it was a ways away by the sound of it. When it died down, I got up from the floor, pried Shard’s hands off my leg and crawled into the cab.
“Are we safe?”
“Safe as in your mother’s arms,” Vinnie said.
How safe was that, exactly? What if those arms were wrapped around you like a warm blanket one day but were pulling the covers up over her head while she spent the day in bed the next? I wished he had said we were as safe as a tortoise under its shell or something. Then maybe I could stop shaking.
I got up from my crouching position and saw that we had pulled into a campground. It was mostly empty, but there were a couple of tents set up farther down the road. Where Vinnie had parked, the trees and bushes completely hid us from the road that ran past the camp.
“I think maybe we’ll spend the night here,” he said. No one argued. I was bruised and sweating from the ride.
“Don’t you think they’ll check here eventually?” Shard asked.
“Nah, we lost the copper back on the county road. We’re good for the night. I’ll just go and make arrangements with the camp office.”
Vinnie hopped out and headed off. He was back in a few minutes and put a white paper in the windshield.
“I need to find a bathroom,” Fiona said.
“I need food,” Shard said.
“Food is coming up. Just need to get this motorbike out of my kitchen,” Vinnie said.
“Uh, Uncle Vinnie? No offence, but I don’t think I could eat muffins again today.”
“What’s wrong with muffins?” Vinnie asked, untying the Ducati. “But no, we won’t have more muffins.”
We got the bike out and Vinnie climbed in and opened one of the top cupboards. He pulled out a couple of cans triumphantly. “Beaners and wieners!” he said.
I was about to say how good that sounded. I mean, really, when a lot of your suppers are pickles and saltine crackers, baked beans and hot dogs sounds li
ke a feast. But Shard reached up and started opening up the rest of the cupboards.
“Why’ve you got cans of beans in here? And toothpaste. And clothes?” Shard turned to Vinnie with a look of horror on her face. “Are you living in here?!”
Vinnie shrugged. “It’s just for a while.”
“What happened to your apartment?”
“Had a little trouble paying the rent on time,” he said. I felt for the guy. That was my dad’s problem too. “Don’t worry, I’ll get another one as soon as my business is on its feet. Why don’t you guys stretch your legs a bit while I warm this feast up?”
Shard and I staggered outside and collapsed on the picnic table that came with the campsite. Fiona wandered back and climbed into the truck to help with supper, I guess.
“I still don’t get it,” Shard said.
“Get what?” I asked, rubbing my bruised knees.
“Why Fiona agreed to take you up here. I mean, she’s got a business to run, she doesn’t get along with her family, she’s got trouble with the police, not to mention an old motorbike gang, but she dropped everything to bring you up here after looking at some dumb old photo of your granddad? It just doesn’t make any sense.”
“It wasn’t the photo. Don’t forget about Uncle Joey. You are asking for paranormal trouble from a restless spirit if you don’t fufill their dying wishes.”
“She can do that any time. Ashes aren’t going anywhere.”
“So she’s got a conscience. Is that such a bad thing?” I was getting edgy. I was trying to trust Fiona. Trust that she wasn’t taking me up north to get her hands on Granddad’s claim herself. I mean, she said she knew all about him and the claim. Now she knows the claim is about to be up for grabs. What’s to stop her from ditching me somewhere and taking it for herself? I was talking myself into a nervous breakdown. I had to trust Fiona. I had no choice.
Shard didn’t have to, though. She made a sound like a tire deflating. “Face it, forger boy, there’s something else going on here.”
I really, really hoped this was one of the rare times when Shard was wrong.
CHAPTER 19
WILL YOU BE MY DAD?
Who would have thought that the floor would be more comfortable than flour sacks? Me. Which is why I slept on a blanket in the doorway to the cab. When I woke up, Fiona was curled up on the passenger seat, Shard was on her flour-sack sofa and Vinnie was missing.
I crawled up the driver’s seat and tried to look out the window. I guess as we went farther north, even at the end of June, the nights could still be chilly and our body heat had caused the windows to fog up. I wiped a circle with my hand and saw that Vinnie was sitting at the picnic table reading a paper. My scrambling around woke Fiona.
“This trip is like every camping nightmare I’ve ever had, come to life. All I need now is for a giant spider to crawl out of the dashboard vents,” she said.
I couldn’t help it. I had to look at the dashboard vents, you know, just in case. Fiona scowled. I opened the driver’s side door as quietly as I could, so as not to wake Shard, and got out.
“Top o’ the morning!” Vinnie said in an Irish accent.
“Morning. Uh, where’s the bathroom?” I asked. Last night it was so dark with no street lights that I didn’t have the nerve to walk by myself across the mostly empty campground and had to resort to the bushes at the back of our site.
“Vault toilet is at the end of this road, on your right.”
Vault toilet? What was a vault toilet? Please tell me it was just a nice bathroom with a really, really tall ceiling.
It wasn’t. A vault toilet is a fancy name for a latrine … you know, a wooden hut built over a large hole in the ground. I was so grossed out. I made a promise never to complain about real bathrooms again, no matter how old, cramped and smelly they were.
When I got back, there was an unmistakable smell of eggs and bacon. Shard was sitting at the picnic table, head down in her folded arms.
“Morning,” I said.
“Mmmp,” came the reply. She was so not a morning person.
I walked around to the back of the truck and almost collided with Vinnie as he came out holding two plates of muffins. I poked my head around the corner, looking for the eggs and bacon. Nothing was on the stove. Back at the picnic table, Fiona passed out some napkins. The smell was definitely coming from the table, but all I could see were muffins.
“Come on, Chris, dig in. These are my Breakfast Bonanza muffins. I just made them up: hash brown bottom and scrambled eggs with bacon on top. I melted cheese on a few too,” Vinnie said.
There’s no way I would have thought of cooking breakfast in a muffin tin, but it was actually delicious. “You should put these on the menu. People would go crazy for them.”
“You think so?” Vinnie asked, smiling. “Well, you just never know where you’re gonna find inspiration.”
“Yeah, who would have thought running from the police while taking a fugitive north would be so good for business,” Fiona said sarcastically.
“So, what’s the plan?” Shard asked, reaching for a second Breakfast Bonanza.
“Well, I was thinking that since most of us in our little group would rather not run into the police again …” Vinnie paused and looked at the rest of us. We all nodded. No one wanted another scary drive like yesterday. “… we’ll stick to some quieter back roads from now on. It’ll take a bit longer, so why don’t we clean up and get going. Maybe use the bathroom once more before we hit the road so we don’t have to stop for a while.”
It only took a few minutes to put everything away and tie up the Ducati again. I passed on the bathroom break, but Shard went. When she came back she looked like she was gagging. I decided to just try and hold it until the next gas station.
As we pulled out, I heard pings on the metal truck roof that got faster and harder as we got moving. I was happy to hear the rain. I hoped the downpour would hide us a bit by keeping people off the streets. Maybe the cops would decide to stay inside in a doughnut shop drinking a hot coffee too, instead of patrolling the highways, looking for criminal bakers, bikers and runaway minors.
Of course, hard rain hides other things — like highway numbers and signposts. After a few hours of backcountry roads and hundreds of turns, it became obvious from the yelling and swearing, which I could hear over the rain pounding on the metal roof overhead, that we were lost.
“No! Left on Highway 49 — left!” Fiona said, raising her voice to a scream.
“That wasn’t Highway 49,” Vinnie said, matching her in volume. “That was 35 and we’re still going north.”
“No, we’re heading east! Turn around.”
“I can’t turn this thing around on such a narrow road. And I can barely see the shoulders in this rain.”
Fiona’s answer was some kind of arrrrgh.
Somehow we seemed to get back on track, heading north. Lunch was hot dogs from a roadside truck. It should have taken us only a few minutes to get our foil-wrapped dogs, but Vinnie got into a conversation with the owner about the ups and downs of a food-truck business. Vinnie got me to reach around the bike to get some of the day-old muffins, which he traded for spicy beef and olives. I couldn’t imagine what kind of muffins he was planning on making with those.
I wished he’d hurry up. I hated being impatient, but this trip had already dragged on for so long. I just wanted to get up there and get it all over with. Besides, I was starting to come up with a plan about how to get around the age thing — I was going to ask, well, beg Vinnie to pretend to be my dad.
It’s a pretty good plan, don’t you think? I was sure I could trust him. Vinnie was too nice a guy to steal the claim from us. And as for looks, they’re roughly the same age and height, not that that really matters. It’s not like we’d ever have to see the registrar again.
I had one little problem with this plan: I had to convince Vinnie to impersonate my dad in a government office, which was, well, illegal. Okay, so it was a big problem. But
at least I wouldn’t have to try and find somewhere to buy a fake ID and forge my dad’s signature. And really, for a guy who was driving around selling muffins without a licence and living out of a food truck, I didn’t think he’d be too fussy about handing over a form pretending to be someone else.
It was really, really late when we pulled into another secluded campground for the night. Fiona said we were about ten or eleven hours out of Dawson, and she and Vinnie were too tired to drive all night. Vinnie sprung for some firewood at the camp office, and supper was reheated spicy beef from the hot dog stand and more baked beans.
“Is this all you have? Cans of baked beans?” Shard asked her uncle.
Vinnie looked down at his bowl and then said in a small voice, “They were on sale. Besides, I like baked beans.”
“Yes, but every day?”
“You know,” Fiona jumped in, “when my business was just starting up and I was fixing motorcycles in the back alley between drink orders just to scrape enough money together for the rent, I lived on nothing but ramen noodles for five months. I would have killed for a can of beans.”
Vinnie looked up at her in surprise and gave her a lopsided grin. Fiona held up her bowl to clink it with his in solidarity.
“Oh man,” Shard whispered to me, “is this going to be one of those ‘we walked ten miles to school in minus-thirty-degree temperatures, uphill both ways’ speeches?”
I nodded, because Vinnie and Fiona had started trading stories about how tough they had it. He picked empty wine bottles out of recycling bins to get the deposit back and she washed her clothes in the kitchen sink with dish soap. He once had a beard for eight months because he couldn’t afford razor blades and she used crazy glue and tire patch kits to fix holes in her shoes. I tuned it out after a while. Who needed to be reminded about what it was like to be poor? I was trying to get away from that, not relive it.
So we’d be in Dawson tomorrow. I only had one more day to talk to Vinnie about my plan. I didn’t know how to bring it up with him, but I knew there was someone who could help me with that.
“So, your Uncle Vinnie,” I said to Shard. We were walking to the regular indoor bathrooms in the campground after supper, while Vinnie and Fiona tidied up. “He’s a pretty helpful guy, right?”