by Various Orca
The screen went black.
I felt like I had been encased in concrete. I could see. I could breathe, but just barely. But I couldn’t move.
The old man was dead.
He’d died over two months ago, and no one told me.
“Was there a funeral?” I asked.
Mr. Devine nodded.
“And?” I said. Anger and resentment collided inside me, the two emotions that caused me the most trouble. “They didn’t want me there, is that it?”
“No, that’s not it,” Mr. Devine said. “As soon as I got the news, I made every attempt to contact you. But you had moved, and ever since the nine-eleven attacks…” His voice trailed off. He didn’t have to explain. I’d been hearing that phrase for practically my whole life. It was as if the whole world had been turned upside down on that one day. Nine-eleven explained a lot of the stupid rules the Major had to follow. It explained the ridiculous level of security on every base I had ever been on. It even explained why I’d been hauled out of line in front of all the other airline passengers once, ordered to remove my shoes and stick my arms out so I could be wanded like some kind of wannabe jihadist. “Let’s just say that I had to jump through a few hoops before I could locate you and your father, and by the then it was too late for the funeral. As for my mission at this time—your grandfather specified a meeting in person, and since you were, uh, unavailable…” He paused. He was referring to the wilderness boot camp the Major forced me to go to. “Your grandfather thought highly of you, Rennie.”
“He did?” I’d thought highly of him too, once I’d met him. I’d been thinking it would be nice if he felt the same way about me. After all, we’d sure seemed to hit it off. “Really? He said that?”
“He did indeed,” Mr. Devine said. “And he directed me to give you this.” He picked up the envelope and handed it to me.
I stared at it. I wasn’t sure that I wanted to open it in front of the Major.
“You have to read it now, Rennie,” Mr. Devine said. “That way, I can answer any questions you might have.”
My hand actually shook when I ripped it open. I pulled out a typewritten letter and read it silently.
Dear Rennie,
One of the biggest regrets of my life is that I never knew your mother. That makes me feel all the more fortunate that I was able to get to know you before it was too late.
I know you have been through a lot, blamed yourself for things that are not your fault and punished yourself when no punishment was called for. Believe it or not, you aren’t the only person to have done this. There are times in everyone’s life when we confuse sorrow with blame, when being powerless makes us lash out in anger and when we do things that we regret. Often this happens when a loved one dies, leaving us to wonder why this had to happen to them, why it didn’t happen to us instead.
Now I will tell you another of my regrets.
A long time ago, a plane I was flying had engine trouble. If it hadn’t happened in the middle of a blizzard and if I hadn’t been a bit hungover, I might have been able to save the day. But that isn’t what happened. The plane crashed in the interior of Iceland. I was the only person who walked away—and then only after my best friend died in my arms.
I was near death when an angel appeared and guided me to a sheltered spot. I have never forgotten her face, as you will see. When she faded from sight, I thought she had abandoned me to the afterlife. But when I opened my eyes again, a young doctor named Sigurdur was standing over me. I believed it was a miracle that he had found me. It was only a few days later that I recalled seeing a red scarf marking the spot where I lay.
When Sigurdur came to visit me in the hospital, he said I had imagined the scarf. He grew uncomfortable at my talk of the angel. And so I let it be. It was only recently, as I went through my belongings, that I found a letter in the pack I carried that day. The letter convinced me that the angel was real. I suspect, but cannot prove, that Sigurdur knew this all along. I do not know why he denied it. The letter also stirred up new regrets.
It is perhaps foolish to dwell on something that happened so long ago. I owe Sigurdur as much as I owe my angel. But he is gone now, and, though I never knew her name, I suspect she is too.
Mr. Devine will give you something. I want you to take it to the interior of Iceland—he will tell you exactly where—and bury it, for my angel and for my friend. I can never make up for that day, but with your help I can acknowledge it and memorialize it.
Sincerely,
Your grandfather, David McLean
When I had finished, both the Major and Mr. Devine were looking at me.
“He says you have something that he wants me to deliver,” I said to Mr. Devine.
He nodded, opened his briefcase again and pulled out a small package wrapped in brown paper and tied with string. I opened it and stared at the small journal inside. I flipped it open. Dozens of its browned pages were filled with sketches of a woman—the same woman. There was something else—a sheet of pale-blue paper tightly folded and brittle with age. I unfolded it carefully and scanned the writing, but it was old-fashioned, spidery writing and hard to read.
“What does his letter say?” the Major asked.
“He wants me to do something.”
“What?”
FOUR
“No,” the Major said when I told him, making the decision the way he makes all his decisions, without hesitation.
“Mr. McLean made provision for all expenses to be covered and for a guide to take Rennie on this journey, if that’s what you’re concerned about,” Mr. Devine said. In contrast to the Major, he was almost Zenlike.
“That’s not what I’m worried about,” the Major said. “He’s not going.”
The old me would have been in his face before he finished talking. The old me would have told him where to get off, right after daring him to try to stop me. But I wasn’t the old me anymore. At least, I was trying hard not to be.
Instead, I counted to ten slowly—twice. Only then did I say, in a reasonable tone, “But it’s what Grandpa wanted.”
“Grandpa!” the Major snorted. “Eight months ago, you didn’t know the man, and now you call him Grandpa?”
My cheeks started to burn. My hands started to curl into fists. Those were my warning signs. If I didn’t do something right away, my temper would get away from me.
I drew in a deep breath. I forced myself to think of my long-term objective—to get the Major to agree to let me go—and to strategize the best way of achieving that. It sure wouldn’t be by yelling and screaming.
“But he was my grandfather,” I said in a quiet voice.
“I don’t care if he was Père Noël,” the Major said. “You are not going and that’s that.”
Mr. Devine gazed evenly at the Major for a moment.
“Mr. McLean made full provision for Rennie’s further education,” he said.
“Further education?” The Major stared at him as if he’d said the old man had made provision for my transport to Mars.
“Rennie indicated to Mr. McLean that he wanted to go to university,” Mr. Devine said.
The Major stared at me, waiting for an explanation for this ridiculous statement.
“It’s true,” I said, bracing myself for what I was sure would follow.
“You don’t have the grades, Rennie.”
“I know. That’s why I enrolled in school again.” I didn’t mention that it was an alternative school. To the Major, alternative meant phoney.
“You what?” I’d seen a lot of expressions on the Major’s face recently, but that particular kind of surprise wasn’t one of them.
“I figure if I work my butt off, I can get into Lakehead.”
“Lakehead?”
“They have an outdoor recreation and parks program there. I want to take it.”
The Major was looking at me now as if he was pretty sure that someone or something alien had taken over my body, or at least my brain.
“What ar
e you going to do with that?” he asked.
“Maybe work in a national or provincial park. I don’t know.”
The Major let out a long sigh. There it was: I don’t know. There was no alien. It was all me. Monsieur Je-ne-sais-pas. That’s what he called me—a lot. What are your plans for tonight, Rennie? I don’t know. What the hell do you think you’re doing, Rennie? I don’t know. Where the hell did you get such a stupid idea, Rennie? I don’t know. Je ne sais pas.
“You’re not going.”
“But Grandpa—”
“No.”
“Mr. Charbonneau—” Mr. Devine began.
“Major Charbonneau.”
The lawyer nodded. “Mr. McLean has made similar requests of his other grandsons.”
“They’re all going to Iceland?”
“Not exactly. One is going to climb Kilimanjaro—”
Why couldn’t that have been me?
“Another is making his way to Spain.”
Spain sounded good too.
“Each boy has a request to fulfill. Their parents have all agreed.”
“I don’t do things just because other people do them, Mr. Devine,” the Major said. That was true enough. “And I don’t appreciate anyone, least of all a complete stranger, presuming to tell me what I should and shouldn’t allow my son to do.”
“I would never make such a presumption,” Mr. Devine said. “But…” He sighed and produced another envelope from his inside pocket. This one he handed to the Major, who ripped it open and began to read. His face was ferocious with annoyance when he started but had softened somewhat by the end. He folded the letter and shoved it back into the envelope.
“Well?” Mr. Devine said.
A minor miracle happened.
“I’ll think about it,” the Major said.
“I’m staying at that little bed and breakfast near the train station,” said Mr. Devine. “I’ll wait there for your answer.”
Mr. Devine left. The Major tucked the envelope into one of his uniform pockets.
“I have to get back to work,” he said.
“But—”
“You haven’t finished your chores. I expect you to have them done by the time I get home.”
“Yes, sir!” I clicked my heels and gave him a crisp salute. For once I wasn’t being completely facetious. I wanted him to say yes. I would have given my left arm to get away for a few weeks, even if it meant going to Iceland, wherever that was. I wasn’t entirely sure. All I knew was that it wasn’t here, the Major wasn’t there, and the old man wanted me to go. That was more than enough reason to pack my bags.
I picked up all the clothes from the floor of my room, scooped them into the hamper and carried them downstairs, where I started a load of laundry. I mopped the bathroom floor and the kitchen floor. I ran the vacuum cleaner over the carpet in the living room. I emptied the dishwasher of all the clean dishes and refilled it with the dirty dishes that were piled in the sink. I moved the laundry from the washer to the dryer and put together a casserole while I waited for the dry cycle to finish. By the time the Major reappeared, the casserole was in the oven, the laundry was put away, and I was slicing tomatoes for a salad. The Major, who is usually pretty slick about hiding his feelings, stood in the doorway to the kitchen, briefcase in hand and stared at me in astonishment.
“Supper will be ready in five minutes,” I said without turning around.
He disappeared and was back again exactly five minutes later. I’m not kidding. The kitchen timer went off just as he pulled out his chair at the table. He’d showered and changed out of his uniform and into jeans—the only jeans on the planet with a knife-edged pleat down the front of each leg—and a blindingly white T-shirt.
I served him some casserole and passed the salad. We ate in silence for a few minutes. Then he put down his fork and leaned back in his chair.
“I still don’t like the idea, Rennie.”
The Major isn’t precise just with his time and his appearance. Or just with rules and the law. Or tidiness and orderliness. He’s also precise—extremely precise—with his choice of words. So my ears pricked up. He hadn’t said, “No, and that’s that.” He had said, “I still don’t like the idea.”
I knew better than to interrupt. I forked a slice of tomato into my mouth and chewed slowly.
“What kind of man sends teenaged boys all over the world?” the Major said.
“He was like that,” I said. “He had this idea that if you get out of your comfort zone and take on something, especially if it’s for someone else, you can learn more about yourself in a few days or a few weeks than you ever could in a whole lifetime of just doing the same old cautious thing day in and day out.”
“Since when did you ever do the cautious thing?” the Major asked.
“Okay, so maybe he meant that a person has to get out of his rut from time to time. Try something different.”
“He told you that?”
I nodded.
“It makes a lot of sense,” the Major said.
“You would have liked him. He was a good guy.”
“I know.”
“What?” I stared at the Major. Like I said, he was precise in his choice of words. He hadn’t said, “Maybe,” or “I doubt it,” or even, “I guess we’ll never know.” He’d said, “I know.”
“I did like him. I liked him a lot. But—”
“You met him?”
“I talked to him.”
I remembered. But that conversation had lasted ten minutes, tops. When I said that, the Major fixed me with one of his patented you’ve-got-to-be-kidding looks.
“My delinquent son disappears, calls me from Toronto after a couple of weeks and tells me he’s staying with his grandfather, and I’m not going to check out what he’s doing there?”
Well, when he put it like that…
“We talked for a couple of hours.”
“A couple of hours?” That didn’t sound like the Major.
“Well, he did most of the talking.”
Now that sounded right.
“A lot of it was about your grandmother. The rest was about you. He saw a lot in you.”
He saw a lot? What did that mean?
“What about school?” the Major asked.
“Huh?”
“You said you enrolled in school. That was true, wasn’t it?”
I nodded. “It’s semestered. I start in January. I was going to see if I could pick up a few credits in night school in the meantime.”
The Major pondered this.
“If you were to do this,” he said finally, “if you were to go to Iceland…”
I caught my breath and held it.
“…you’d be careful, right?”
“Yeah. Sure.”
“By which I mean, you wouldn’t do anything there that you’re not allowed to do here—”
“I don’t do that stuff anymore.” I really didn’t. “That’s what that whole camp thing was about, right?” Well, okay, so maybe it had started out as an alternative to a juvenile detention center. But they knew what they were doing at that camp. They’d made me think. So had my grandfather. In fact, he’d started me thinking. I took off in the first place because I didn’t want to show up for a meeting with my youth worker. I didn’t want to hear what he had in mind for me. I’d ended up at my grandfather’s because I couldn’t think where else to go. We’d talked. And talked and talked. By the time I came home, I’d more or less decided to deal with it. And if that meant spending a few months at boot camp with a bunch of other screwups, okay, I’d do it.
“And use a guide,” the Major said. “The lawyer said that’s provided for.”
“Sure thing.”
“And prepare properly. For a thing like this, it’s all in the preparation. If you went, you’d be going to a country that’s just south of the Arctic Circle.”
“Yeah?”
“I know it sounds great, but it can play havoc with your circadian rhythm.”
&nb
sp; “My what?”
“Your sleep patterns, Rennie. It’s also not an easy place to get around. The whole country has maybe 300,000 people in it, and they’re scattered around the edges in tiny settlements—the ones that aren’t living in the capital, that is. You’d need to drive, and I’m not at all sure you’d be able to rent a car there. Usually you have to be twenty-one for that. We’d probably have to make some other arrangement.”
I’d forgotten all about my supper by now. He was talking as if he was going to let me go. Either that or I was dreaming—big time!
The Major sat up a little straighter and looked hard at me from across the table.
“One way or another, you’re going to be gone in another year, two at most. You’re going to be making all of your own decisions.” He paused and looked at me again. “Before you do this, Rennie, I want you to prepare. I want to see your plans. And you have to promise that you’ll stay in touch. D’accord?”
French. He was speaking French, which he only ever did when he was being dead serious.
“D’accord, Papa,” I said. I would have agreed with the devil himself to be able to make this trip. “Anything you say.”
FIVE
I had just secured the straps on my duffel bag when the Major appeared.
“You have everything?” he asked.
“Yup.”
“Sweaters? Longjohns? Parka? Gloves? Hat?”
“Yup, yup, yup, yup, and yup.”
“Because the average temperature is maybe seven degrees Celsius—and average doesn’t mean that’s what it’s going to be. It could be—”
“A lot colder or a lot warmer. I know what an average is, thanks,” I said, maybe a little too testily considering my math grade.
“Did you remember sunscreen?” he asked. “Just because it’s going to be cool, doesn’t mean your skin can’t burn.”
“Got it,” I said.
“Hiking boots? If you’re going into the interior, you’ll need them. The terrain is pretty rough, especially if you run into a lava field—”
“Got ’em.” I began to count, slowly, under my breath. Jeez, he was going to drive me nuts.