by Various Orca
One hundred and ten kilometers of walking.
The store—appropriately called The Northern— smelled weird.
Webb stepped inside and saw shelves packed with groceries and a bewildering variety of items, from DVDs to canned peaches to red long johns.
One section had all the stuff he needed to walk a hundred and ten kilometers through a bear-filled, wolf-infested, roadless wilderness.
Webb took a nylon backpack from the wall. Not the kind kids use for hauling stuff to and from school, but one with an aluminum frame that could carry a hundred pounds if needed.
A hundred pounds of rocks.
He took it to the front counter and pulled one of the bank cards out of his wallet.
The guy behind the counter had a leathery, wrinkled face; it looked as if he’d walked to the Yukon and back dozens of times.
Webb put the card on the counter. He had the bank cards to cover any and all expenses that he might face on the journey. Mr. Devine had said that he was allowed to keep whatever was left over after his trip, so the less he spent now, the better. Maybe he’d be able to pay off his guitar. Buy some decent clothes.
“Happy to hold the pack here while you get the rest of what you need,” the old man said, his voice sounding like the rumble of a train coming from the far side of a long tunnel. “You don’t need to leave your card on the counter to reserve it or anything.”
Webb knew the guy could tell he wasn’t a regular here. Of course, in a town of seven hundred, you’d know who lived here and who didn’t.
“How much time you spend in the bush?” Webb asked.
“You mean over the last forty years?”
It was all Webb needed for an answer.
“All I want right now is the backpack,” Webb said. “I’ll come back for the rest later.”
The man grunted and swiped the bank card. His machine spat out a slip of paper. Webb took it from him before the man could check the balance on the card. Webb didn’t want anyone else knowing how much money he was carrying around, even if it wasn’t cash.
“You have any idea what the rest is going to be?” the man behind the counter asked.
“Just what I’ve read about online,” Webb said. “My guess is you know much better than any website what it would take to last a week or two out there. Could you help me?”
The man looked hard at Webb, before extending his hand across the counter.
“Name’s Joey Nicol. Glad to help.”
Webb shook his hand but didn’t offer his own name. “I need supplies for two weeks of hiking,” he said. “Nothing more. I hate carrying more than I have to.”
When he’d lived on the street, the older men and women stole shopping carts to keep their stuff in. Not Webb. If you couldn’t run carrying it, no sense owning it.
“Smart,” Joey said. “Not many people figure that out until they are on the trail. My advice? Don’t get it unless you are going to use it every day. I had a couple of German tourists in here buying a bunch of stuff they might only use once or twice on the whole trip. Like a solar camp shower. Sounds good when you’re in the store, but not after you’ve carried it for ten miles. I couldn’t even talk them out of a heavy-duty flashlight, even though we’ve got twenty-four hours of daylight this time of year.”
Webb nodded, picked up the backpack and headed toward the door.
“Hey,” Joey said. “Watch out for Brent Melrose. I heard you broke his nose.”
Webb stopped, half turned and shrugged like he didn’t know what Joey meant.
“Bulldozer mechanic. We all know what he’s like. Spent five years in jail after busting up a guy in a bar fight.”
So this was life in a small town. Everyone knowing your business.
“Sure,” Webb said. “I’ll watch out for him.”
“You don’t sound worried. You should be. Someone said his girlfriend got back on the southbound jet and left town.”
Webb smiled. It felt good to hear that.
“Nothing funny about it,” Joey said, obviously not understanding Webb’s smile. “You cost him his girlfriend and you busted his nose. He’ll run you down like a dog if he can.”
“Okay, I’m worried now,” Webb said. But not too worried. He’d been beaten up before and had learned he could handle it.
Webb put his hand on the door, but Joey wasn’t finished.
“Not one person in town’s sorry to hear about what happened at the airport,” he said. “So thanks.”
NINE
The truck that began following Webb down Raven Street half an hour later did not belong to a bulldozer mechanic who had spent five years in jail for busting a guy up in a bar fight.
It belonged to the cop. Twenty meters behind Webb. Keeping his cop truck at a pace that matched Webb’s.
Webb turned right on Mackenzie Drive.
So did the cop, twenty meters behind.
Webb passed the museum. This was his third time past it. It was on his to-do list, and after he was finished walking around with stones in his backpack, he would spend as much time there as he could before it closed. He’d seen online that it would have lots of information for what was ahead.
The cop stayed behind Webb. Driving at a walking pace. Pretty boring, but being a small-town cop must be like that.
The cop was messing with the next verse of Webb’s jail song. He couldn’t concentrate.
Webb stopped walking.
The cop stopped driving.
Webb walked back toward him.
The cop stayed put.
Webb reached the truck.
The cop had the window open on his side.
“How do you pronounce your name?” Webb asked, looking at the cop’s nametag. “It seems like we’re getting to know each other, and I want to stop thinking of you as ‘the cop.’”
“Sil-veh.”
“Not Sil-vann?” Webb asked. “Or Sil-vain. It’s spelled S-Y-L-V-A-I-N.”
“The n is silent.”
“Sil-vah,” Webb said.
“Not vaah. Veh. Like ven, except like you are hinting that the n is there. Didn’t you ever take French in school?”
Webb tried it again.
“Much better.” Sylvain grinned.
“Well,” Webb said, “I have a taxpayer’s complaint. It’s about the gas and time that the police force in this town is wasting. Where should I file that complaint?”
“Police station,” Sylvain said. “I think you know where it is.”
“Excellent,” Webb said. “How about you drive up there, and I’ll meet you as soon as I can?”
“No. How about I just keep following you till you get there?”
“How about not?”
“Because as soon as I’m gone, you’ll head the other way and disappear,” Sylvain said. “I need to stay close because when Brent Melrose finds you, it will get ugly. And he will find you. Only took ten minutes for someone to call the police station about a suspicious guy walking up and down carrying a big backpack.”
“Maybe I’ll file a harassment charge against you then.”
“I don’t think so. That would mean another trip to the station, and you don’t like dealing with cops. Which is why you would disappear as soon as I drove away. If I did. Which I won’t.”
“You don’t know me that well,” Webb said. “We just met. I couldn’t even pronounce your name right.”
“You can now. And I know you aren’t a taxpayer. Buskers don’t pay taxes.”
Webb glared at him.
Sylvain just smiled. “Living on the streets,” he said. “No home. Just a guitar and the money you make when people throw cash in your guitar case.” Another smile. “Your stepfather likes to talk. He said he had you followed for a while, just so he knew what you were doing. He runs a security firm, right?”
“Please,” Webb said, “call him Elliott. Hard not to puke when I’m reminded that he married my mother.” It wasn’t the cop’s business that he didn’t live on the street anymore.
> “Elliott likes to talk. Says you have a first name too. Jim. Where’s your guitar, Jim?”
“Hotel.”
“Stay with George tonight. It will be better for you.”
“Not for George.”
“Then I guess I’ll keep following you,” Sylvain continued. “Just so you know.”
“That changes things,” Webb said. “A lot. Can I jump in the back of your truck and catch a ride back to the Northern?”
Sylvain nodded and Webb jumped in.
When Sylvain slowed for the next corner— like Webb knew he would because Webb had walked this stretch three times already, Sylvain right behind him—Webb threw his backpack out, then jumped out after it. It took a lot of effort to hoist the backpack and run, but he made it into the trees and disappeared from sight before Sylvain could stop the truck and get back to the spot where Webb had bailed.
If Brent was looking for a fight, Webb thought, it would be better to deal with it now when he could see it coming.
TEN
THEN
In Toronto, in the lawyer’s high-rise office, three days before Webb’s arrival in Norman Wells, Mr. Devine addressed all six grandsons in the vacuum after all the adults had left the room.
“Well, gentlemen,” he said, “I’m assuming that nobody saw this coming.”
“Grandpa was always full of surprises,” Bunny said.
“So I guess because of that we’re not that surprised,” Steve added.
“Interesting perspective,” the lawyer said. “The only way you would have been surprised is if he didn’t do something to surprise you.”
“Pretty much,” Steve said.
“So if he’d done nothing, then you would have actually been surprised, which wouldn’t have been a surprise. Sort of a Catch-22, don’t you think?”
“Do you think, sir, that we could go on?” DJ said. “I believe we’re all anxious to hear what you’re going to tell us.”
Webb was happy to simply watch. Whatever was going to happen was going to happen, regardless of what he did or said.
“I’m sure you are,” Devine answered DJ. “But actually, I’m not going to tell you anything.” He paused. “Your grandfather is. I’m going to play a video your grandfather made.”
The lawyer walked over to a television in a big cabinet. He turned to face the six grandsons. “I was in the room when your grandfather recorded this. I think all of you will be at least a little surprised by what he has to say.”
He turned the TV on and there was Webb’s grandpa.
“I’m not sure why I have to be wearing makeup,” David McLean said, turning to face somebody off camera. “This is my will, not some late-night talk show…and it’s certainly not a live taping.”
Someone in the room with his grandpa laughed.
“Good morning…or afternoon, boys,” he began. “If you are watching this, I must be dead, although on this fine afternoon I feel very much alive. I want to start off by saying that I don’t want you to be too sad. I had a good life and I wouldn’t change a minute of it. That said, I still hope that you are at least a little sad and that you miss having me around. After all, I was one spectacular grandpa!”
His cousins started laughing, and Webb joined in. It felt good. He didn’t laugh much anymore.
“And you were simply the best grandsons a man could ever have. I want you to know that of all the joys in my life, you were among my greatest. From the first time I met each of you to the last moments I spent with you—and of course I don’t know what those last moments were, but I know they were wonderful—I want to thank you all for being part of my life. A very big, special, wonderful, warm part of my life.”
The old man took a sip of water. Webb noticed his hand shaking. He must have been nervous.
“I wanted to record this rather than just have my lawyer read it out to you. Hello, Johnnie.”
“Hello, Davie,” Devine replied.
“Johnnie, I hope you appreciate that twenty-year-old bottle of Scotch I left you,” his grandpa said. “And you better not have had more than one snort of it before the reading of my will! But knowing you the way I do, I suspect you would have had two.”
“He did know me well,” Devine said.
“I just wanted—needed—to say goodbye to all of you boys in person, or at least as in person as this allows.” On the television screen, David took another sip from his glass. His hand was still shaking.
Webb found that significant. He’d never seen his grandpa nervous. David McLean had lived into his nineties, strong and healthy. His hands had never shaken before.
“Life is an interesting journey,” David said from the television, “one that seldom takes you where you think you might be going. Certainly I never expected that I was going to become an old man. In fact, there were more than a few times when I was a boy that I didn’t believe I was going to live to see another day, never mind live long enough to grow old.”
This was a man who’d been a pilot in World War II, been shot at over France, had had adventures all over the world. Webb knew that the man on the television screen was not exaggerating.
“But I did live a long and wonderful life. I was blessed to meet the love of my life, your grandmother Vera. It is so sad that she passed on before any of you had a chance to meet her. I know people never speak ill of the dead—and I’m counting on you all to keep up that tradition with me—but your grandmother was simply the most perfect woman in the world.”
Webb’s own mother—David’s daughter, Charlotte— was close to perfect too. At least she had been when Webb’s dad was alive. He bit back a heavy sigh, thinking of his mother outside the lawyer’s office. So close. But truly, so far away.
“Her only flaw,” David continued, “as far as I can see, was being foolish enough to marry me. She gave me not only a happy life, but four daughters…four amazing daughters. I just wish she could have been there to watch them grow into the four wonderful women who became your mothers.”
Webb’s grandmother had died when the girls were young—the youngest, Aunt Vicky, was only four at the time. David McLean had raised the girls on his own. Webb wished his mother had followed that same path when his dad had died when Webb was ten.
“I was always comforted by the thought that I believed she was watching them too,” David said from the television. “Sitting up there in heaven or wherever. I guess as you’re hearing this, I have an answer to that question. I pray that I’m with her now.”
He raised his glass again and toasted his grandsons. “Being both father and mother to my girls meant that I was always running fast to try and do everything. Sometimes the need to earn a living got in the way of me being there for my daughters. There were too many school plays, violin recitals and soccer games that I never got to. And that was why I made a point to be there for almost every one of your games and school events and concerts. This was both a promise I made and a complete joy. You boys, you wonderful, incredible, lovely boys have been such a blessing…seven blessings. Some blessings come later than others.”
Seven? Webb squinted, as if looking harder at the screen would help his hearing. Six. There were six grandsons. Obviously a mistake, but he didn’t give it much thought because he wanted to give his grandpa his full attention.
“But I didn’t bring you here simply to tell you how much I loved you all. Being part of your lives was one of the greatest achievements of my life, and I wouldn’t trade it for anything, but being there for all your big moments meant that I couldn’t be elsewhere. I’ve done a lot, but it doesn’t seem that time is going to permit me the luxury of doing everything I wished for. So, I have some requests, some last requests. In the possession of my lawyer are some envelopes. One for each of you.”
Webb glanced at Mr. Devine, who stood at the side of the room holding envelopes fanned out like playing cards.
“Each of these requests, these tasks,” David continued, “has been specifically selected for you to fulfill. All of the things you
will need to complete your task will be provided—money, tickets, guides. Everything. I am not asking any of you to do anything stupid or unnecessarily reckless—certainly nothing as stupid or reckless as I did at your ages. Your parents may be worried, but I have no doubts. Just as I have no doubts that you will all become fine young men. I am sad that I will not be there to watch you all grow into the incredible men I know you will become. But I don’t need to be there to know that will happen. I am so certain of that. As certain as I am that I will be there with you as you complete my last requests, as you continue your life journeys.”
On the television screen, he lifted up his glass again.
“A final toast. To the best grandsons a man could ever have. I love you all so much. Good luck.”
The video ended and his grandpa was gone.
ELEVEN
NOW
It didn’t make Webb feel any better that Sylvain had been correct in saying it wouldn’t take long for Brent Melrose to find him.
When a kid on a mountain bike approached Webb on the path through the trees, Webb was thinking about bears. And how all his previous ideas about cleverly climbing a nearby tree to escape a bear were not so clever after all.
First of all, Webb knew that grizzlies can’t climb trees, but black bears can.
That was good. If you have a choice between out-climbing a grizzly or out-climbing a black bear, it’s the grizzly you want to out-climb. Grizzlies are huge—not that black bears are tiny—and more unpredictable and bad tempered.
Webb also knew that if you’re attacked by a female grizzly it’s better to play dead. But with male grizzlies, you are supposed to fight like crazy and hope for the best. Hit them on the nose, scream and kick. Prove to the male that messing with you is a mistake.
As if a 150-pound human is going to make a 600-pound grizzly think that it’s a mistake to get into a fight. Sure. And Elvis is still eating donuts, and the Toronto Maple Leafs are going to win a Stanley Cup one day.
But second—and to Webb, this was the crucial issue—how do you know whether you are being attacked by a male or female grizzly? Yes, if the grizzly is with a couple of cubs, go ahead and assume it’s female. Other than that, how are you going to know? Wait until you are on the ground trapped underneath it and then reach down and see if there’s anything to grab?