Due North

by Jackson, Melanie

  “I suppose,” Judy agreed. She really wanted a new stove.

  Okay, so Big John wasn’t looking out for me, but at least he was looking out for something. Self-interest was a good motivator.

  “Thanks, Big John.”

  “Don’t mention it, kid. And I mean it, don’t mention it. Not to anyone, you hear me? Not to anyone at all. And you owe me a favor.”

  “I hear you, Big John.” I reached out and squeezed his hand for whatever gratitude and fondness still remained in my weary soul. I was exhausted and wanted nothing more than to go home and have a long nap.

  Big John would need lots of coaching though, and it was getting on toward eight. We agreed that having me stand beside him while he either phoned or radioed in his report would be best. Big John’s reading skills were sketchy.

  “So, when do I get me own share of the treasure, Big John?” Fiddling Thomas wanted to know. “I surely could use a new truck.”

  “All in good time, Thomas. All in good time,” Big John assured the man, shooing him away from the office door where we were retreating. “We must rid ourselves of the body and the law first. We will also have to see about how best to dispose of the jewelry and such.”

  Before too many more embarrassing questions could be asked, Big John used his big booming voice for one last attempt to get everyone’s attention, calling the meeting to an end, and asking everyone to clear the room and to travel safely. The crowd continued to talk excitedly over their common interests and squabble over their common differences as they put on their coats and wandered to the door.

  And just as fast as that, they were all gone. Except for Whisky Jack, who was still huddled over his drink and mumbling to himself. The saloon was empty and quiet. Big John took this opportunity to use the rotary phone on his desk and begin dialing. It seemed weird that he would know the number for the police in Winnipeg. Big John waited nervously for the connection while I coached him through his other ear about what he needed to say.

  “Wait for the questions to begin or I’ll never remember,” he cautioned. “And don’t lean over me. Look, I’ll repeat them. You give me the answer. I’ll repeat that. The result is a relayed conversation. It’s as simple as that.”

  That really was simple but weird. Combined with his knowledge of the phone number I immediately figured that he had probably done this exact same thing a time or two before, and I started wondering if Big John had another life that I knew nothing about. Like his daughter, he had spent some time away from McIntyre’s Gulch.

  The phone rang and rang. While Big John waited for someone to pick up at the Royal Canadian Mounted Police Headquarters in Winnipeg, we looked to each other in nervous expectation. This was the point of no return. I have always avoided the police, but we were, with forethought, planning on lying to them now.

  Chapter 4: The Cabin

  I closed the door behind me and Max yipped hello. Smiling, I knelt by the stove to light the fire and ruffle his fur. I always have a fire laid in the hearth, ready to start with the strike of a match. This is important in cold country when a fast fire might be all that’s standing between you and death from hypothermia. It was one of the first things that Big John and Wendell had taught me.

  “I need some hot chocolate. And silence. My ears are still ringing.” Max flopped on his rug and grinned at me. He had had a good long run and was willing to accommodate my request.

  What a day it had been—dead bodies, stolen money, and endless arguments with my neighbors. It was the second most stressful day of my life. Still and all, it was worlds better than the worst day, so I decided not to feel sorry for myself. It was too easy to lapse into HDD (Humor Deficit Disorder).

  And what could be worse than finding a body, you ask?

  On the day that the bottom dropped out of my world and I had to disappear or get arrested, I was actually somewhat prepared for the parting. Not entirely of course, but more than the average person who might need to fall off the face of the earth.

  For starters, my family—excepting my father—was gone and I was already fending for myself. I knew from the beginning that the guys I shared the dilapidated Victorian with were up to something that was maybe a little bit questionable and perhaps illegal. Definitely illegal, since they smoked marijuana sometimes. But since I needed a cheap place to live and off-campus housing was scarce, I told myself that they were just dedicated environmentalists, like the people in Greenpeace, and that it would be okay to live with them until I found something else I could afford.

  And mostly it was. Until the night that I discovered that “like” Greenpeace wasn’t the same as real Greenpeace. These guys were green alright, but peace wasn’t part of their agenda. They wanted the United States off of foreign oil and were willing to go to extremes to make their views known. Those views apparently included the idea that the sincerest expression of belief was to get yourself killed, fighting for your cause.

  The guys worked odd hours and were often away from home on “green demonstrations.” About a week after I moved into my little room, they mentioned how it was sometimes difficult for them to get to the bank during business hours and would I mind if they added me to their joint checking account and I started doing the banking for them?

  Being underage, I had no checking account of my own and this would mean that I had a regular place to cash my payroll checks from the janitorial service and the pizza parlor where I worked part-time. I could have asked my father to open an account with me, like most kids did, but past history had proven that I would be unlikely to enjoy the fruits of my labors if I let Dad anywhere near my money. Dad likes to gamble. On anything and everything. With anything and everything, including my college money, which I had saved all through high school in a cookie jar in my bedroom. The offer from the guys seemed like a godsend. And I felt I owed them a favor since they had taken to walking me to and from my night classes whenever they were in town. There was a rapist on campus and they were protecting me.

  The guys didn’t drink often, just before they went off on one of their nature weekends. My roommates—let’s call them Tom, Dick, and Harry—sometimes threw themselves a little party before they went off to save the environment. Usually I didn’t attend their revels. I was seventeen, on a scholarship that paid tuition and little else, and exhausted from working two part-time jobs that barely paid for books and housing. But that night I happened to be home, happened to be in the mood for a beer, and happened to get drunk on one beer because I never imbibed before and couldn’t know that I am horrible about holding my liquor.

  The guys thought that this was hilarious and let me stay with them while they were making fake IDs: driver’s licenses and passports—Canadian ones. This didn’t seem strange to me at the time. After all, underage kids always wanted driver’s licenses so they could get beer and go to clubs and things, and trips over the border for cigarettes and medicine were common, Canada being right there and all. Of course, the guys weren’t underage, but my reasoning skills had always been a bit hazy and I really was feeling that beer. I figured they were selling them to minors. Seeing my interest in their work, they asked if I would like to have one too. And, God help me, I said yes. This was my second mistake (assuming that moving in with environmental terrorists was my first error).

  They asked me who I wanted to be. That was easy. I had just read about a town in Canada where everyone had red hair. I looked for other stories about the place, but there were none. I couldn’t even find it on the map in the library.

  My own Bozo the Clown tresses had been the bane of my childhood. The idea of living in a place where everyone had red hair was terribly appealing. Like Shangri-La for a troubled teen. There were only two family names in McIntyre’s Gulch. Obviously, one is McIntyre. The other is Jones. And since I am not fond of my real name (and you’ll excuse me if I don’t share it with you) I decided on the nickname my late Grandpa chose for me: Butterscotch.

  A couple hours’ work and I had a Canadian passport. It said I
was Butterscotch Jones of McIntyre’s Gulch.

  We had a laugh about my picture (I look pretty drunk in the photo), and I put the passport in my sock drawer and thought no more about it until the evening news the next weekend when I was eating my late dinner of cold pizza. The lead story was about an explosion at an oil refinery. A man-made explosion. Tom, Dick, and Harry were named as persons of interest to the authorities and anyone having any information about their whereabouts should contact the police. Assuming that they were not three of the four corpses discovered in the ashes the next morning.

  The guys didn’t come home and I panicked. If I had not been my father’s daughter, if Mom or my grandparents were alive, if I and my family had not had several run-ins with unsympathetic arms of the law, like child protective services and the IRS, maybe I would have done the normal, responsible thing that citizens do in these situations. But I am what I am, and a hasty but fairly thorough evaluation of my position—sharing a home and bank account with environmental terrorists who had killed someone—I decided that my best bet was trying my fortunes elsewhere. With some hazy idea about laying down a false trail, I sent a misleading note to my father’s last known address, saying I was tired of college and I was hitchhiking out to California to become a movie star.

  Which I didn’t really do. Because I had this Canadian passport and an idea of a Shangri-La where they would accept a girl just because she had red hair and was named Jones.

  Border crossings were different back before 9/11. No one looked twice at a young woman without much luggage returning to a small town in northern Canada. They might have been interested if they had seen how much money I was carrying in my fanny pack. The guys’ bank account had had almost ten thousand dollars in it and, heaven help me, I had taken it all. But I have an honest face and they never looked at me twice.

  Thank goodness it was May. I would probably have died getting to McIntyre’s Gulch if I had made the attempt in winter. As it was, it took me almost a week of hitching rides and flights to get there. And once I was in town, I was so tired that I wasn’t in any shape for fighting off the homicidal weather that rules six months out of the year.

  I took a room at the pub. They have three that they rent out to the very infrequent tourist and travelers that need to stay overnight. Big John was delighted to discover that I was already a Jones, and having the reddest of red hair, he was prepared to claim me as kin. So were all the other Joneses and even the McIntyres. There are very few young people in McIntyre’s Gulch. People with families usually move away since the only other option is homeschooling, and there is no social life for children and little for adults.

  They asked very few questions of me, just letting me rest up until I felt able to join in with local life. Big John found out that I had been studying accounting and gave me a job balancing his books. They—the Joneses and McIntyres—let me move into an abandoned cabin at the edge of town whose owner had died the previous winter. Black Bart McIntyre had been very old and very miserly and not inclined to spend money on frivolities like electricity or generators, so no one else wanted his leaky old cabin anyway.

  The first time I saw my new home, I almost chickened out. Though it was May, there had been a cold snap and the cabin was covered in cabin sweat (hoarfrost) inside and out, cluttered with junk, and smelled because animals had been living in it. But Big John lit a fire, and when he used some tar paper and shingles in the pantry to patch the roof, the place began to warm up and feel more homey. Big John’s daughter gave me a mop and some cleaning products as a housewarming gift and we cleared away the clutter. The sun came out. Things began to seem possible. Even desirable.

  And where was I going to go? I was just turned eighteen, wanted for consorting with ecoterrorists, and had a father that would probably turn me in for the reward money if I ever told him where I was. My burning bridge kept the fire under my tired feet and kept me running when any sensible person would have given up. I could learn to do without certain things like cable television and cell phones if it kept me out of jail.

  Some conveniences were more necessary. I took some of my stolen nest egg and got hooked up to the power, which is erratic, but nice when it works. I had a phone (a crank kind that was some kind of relic which only reached the other homes in town. Being the last to join, my signal was nine short rings). I bought a newer and more efficient wood burning stove that fit into the existing fireplace, and a backup generator which everyone insisted (correctly) I would need in the winter. Oh, and high-protein puppy kibble. A neighbor, Wendell Thunder, who raises wolf hybrids gave me a puppy as a housewarming present. That’s Max.

  Wendell and I have a little bit of history. We bumped pelvises a few years back, when I was too young and stupid to consider the consequences of a relationship gone bad in a town that small. Though it didn’t work out between us, he is still kind of in the background, looking out for me. Mostly I appreciate it. I hadn’t indulged in an affair since then. I have a lot of freedoms, but not sex without borders. That was part of my new not being stupid credo. Besides, though I am fond of them, I’d rather eat spiders than sleep with most of the men in town.

  I don’t have a regular landline at the cabin, though some people in town do, and we could have run a phone line from the pub. But the phones almost never work anyway, and who would I be calling? Every friend I have left in the world lives right there in town. If there is an emergency, I rely on the phone at the pub or the town radio, like everyone else.

  “Ready for dinner, Max?”

  Max is always ready for dinner. I forced myself to my feet and headed for the kitchen (the part of the cabin that is not the living room or either of the small bedrooms or the privy).

  At first glance, the décor in my cabin might seem a little hostile. There is a shotgun on the wall (mine), an ax (also mine), and a skinning knife (the previous occupant’s, but I liked the look of it and left it). The deer antler chandelier is also a little sharp and unfeminine, but it is good to have candles and oil lamps around when the power goes out. Running a generator can get expensive. Wood for the stove is free, if you put in the time and effort to collect it and keep it dry. I always have a nice pile inside, but it is hard to read by firelight.

  I don’t have a lot of girlie things and no photographs of family. But I have a painting of Max that I had paid a traveling artist forty dollars to paint, a jar of dried celosia and amaranth from Judy the Flowers’ garden, and a small wood carving of a caribou on my scarred coffee table that Wendell had made for me last Christmas.

  And there are books. Everyone in town brings me their books when they are done with them. And the Wings always stops at the thrift shop in Little Forks to see what they have that’s new. I stack them against the walls when I am through reading them. They make excellent insulation, though I had the feeling that they would not protect me from what was coming.

  Big John had agreed to deal with the Mounties when they came, but that twitchy little extra sense that warns me when trouble is near was feeling restless. I had avoided the law for a decade, but I had to face the fact that my time for avoiding that part of life might be over. Once the law was in McIntyre’s Gulch, there wouldn’t be anywhere else to run.

  Chapter 5: The Mountie

  Horace Charles Goodhead, or Chuck as he preferred to be called, an inspector with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, was having a rough time of it. He had flown in small planes, puddle jumpers, into the remotest parts of the Canadian Outback, but he’d never had a flight quite like this. First of all, it was winter. He never flew in winter. Secondly, he was crammed into the passenger seat with a box on his lap. He was astounded to find that the bulk of the plane was jammed to the rafters with supplies being flown into the tiny town of McIntyre’s Gulch. Particularly objectionable was the assortment of cheeses that were left to ferment freely within the flight cabin. Chuck barely had room to scratch his nose, let alone search for an air sickness bag, which probably wasn’t provided anyway.

  The Mountie,
a moniker which Chuck had always loathed because it summoned up images of that idiotic cartoon character, had stumbled upon the plane service while searching the Internet for flights out of Winnipeg. They were few and far between this time of year. Or, perhaps at any time. This was the only plane he could find that flew to his destination, a place he knew next to nothing about. There was almost nothing in the records about McIntyre’s Gulch.

  The trip was not his idea, nor had he volunteered for the investigation into an obvious accident, which hardly seemed like something for the Mounties anyway. But Chuck knew punishment when it was shoved down his throat. He had been a little too assiduous at his job and had showed his boss up when he had inadvertently demonstrated to the press that politics, and not ability, had led to his boss’s last promotion. And maybe, just maybe he had been a little too enthusiastic about trying to improve procedures at the office.

  Chuck remembered back to his last conversation he had with his boss, the one during which he’d been assigned this case, the one that hadn’t gone well.

  “You, Goodhead. Come here for a second. I want to have a word with you.” The Chief Superintendent looked miffed. Of course, he almost always looked miffed if there wasn’t a camera on him.

  “Yes, sir,” Chuck said, coming to attention and saluting. He hoped it didn’t look mocking.

  “I wanted to talk with you about all those damned letters I keep receiving from you.”

  “All addressing important improvements including economies and efficiencies to be had within the department.”

  “Yes, yes. I’m sure. Look, Goodhead.”

  “Yes, sir?”

  “I want the letters to stop.”

  “Sir?”

  “Sir, what?”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “I want the letters to stop.”

  “Yes, I know what you said, sir.”

  “Good. Then see to it.”