Smokescreen

by Nancy Hartry

  “Lots of time.” Yvette yawned and rolled over with her back to Kerry.

  A minute later, Kerry could tell from Yvette’s breathing that she was dead asleep. Kerry felt like pounding the walls. All that waiting and now this! She thumped down on her bed and grabbed the Canadian Geographic Magazine that her mom had pressed into her hand at the airport. She read for the tenth time the article on avoiding a cougar attack. She checked the little map showing the territory of the cougar in Ontario. There’d been unconfirmed sightings, nothing official, but now DNA samples of poop proved that cougars were here. What else lurked in the woods? Snakes? Wolves?

  Kerry was about to shake Yvette awake when her partner yawned and stretched. “A little catnap is the best thing when you’re tired; I learned that from my dad.” Yvette reached into her day pack and set a round tin and cigarette papers on the bed and started rolling.

  She does drugs? Oh my God! There’s more than an ounce in that tin. She’s going to deal drugs from our room!

  When Yvette had a nice little pile of eight joints, she offered one to Kerry.

  “I don’t smoke weed.”

  Yvette laughed. “How old are you? It’s a cigarette. I’m trying to quit so I roll my own.”

  Kerry was relieved. “Well, I don’t smoke anything. Do you have to do that in here?”

  “I wasn’t going to, not unless you were a smoker too. Maybe this will help me to stop. How old are you?”

  Kerry again ignored the question. “It’s one o’clock; we’d better get going. The supervisor is really mad at you already.”

  Yvette checked her watch and opened her large pack. She dumped it on the bed and stacked the contents. First a pile of beige cargo pants and shorts. Then a larger stack of white shirts, some long-sleeved turtlenecks and the rest crisply ironed T-shirts. An assortment of light-colored hoodies and one pair of skinny 7 for All Mankind jeans that looked as if they cost the earth. She hung several faded plaid flannel shirts in the closet alongside a two-piece Gore-Tex rain suit and a Speedo bathing suit. Mitts, hats, and gloves went into the bottom drawer.

  “We’re going to need mitts?” Kerry could hear the shriek in her voice.

  “Come mid-August, it’s likely. And of course you have to wear light colors to keep the bugs away.” As Yvette spoke, she set a fishing tackle box on the dresser and flipped the lid to reveal an array of beauty products, mostly from France. She applied Miss Dior lipstick while looking deep into the oval magnifying mirror resting on her dresser. She pinched her cheeks.

  “You see, I have champagne tastes,” she said. “And a beer budget. I’m lucky my aunt works at Holt’s and gets a fifty percent discount. I’m looking forward to making a lot of money this summer. You too?”

  Kerry nodded. On one thing they agreed—lots of money might make this all worth it. “I think we should get going.”

  Yvette stepped out of her shorts and stripped off her top in one motion. Dangling between her breasts were an Indian arrowhead and an animal tooth strung on a leather thong. She pulled on a white pair of jeans and a v-necked T-shirt that showed some cleavage and a lacy strap. She slipped her colored toes into wool work socks and into worn work boots that had pieces of duct tape capping the toes. She draped a muted gray-blue flannel shirt over her shoulders as if it were a dinner jacket and did a pirouette, admiring herself in the mirror and inviting Kerry’s opinion.

  “You look nice. Can we go now?”

  But Yvette wasn’t through. She searched through a side flap and dumped a handful of stuff on the bed. “Check out this windup flashlight emergency radio combo that doesn’t need batteries. Amazing, eh? And this bug jacket. Did you bring a bug jacket?” She raised her arms and tugged what looked like forest green netting with cuffs over her head. “The hood zippers over the top of my head so I’m entirely covered down to my ass.”

  “So you don’t have super-immunity against bugs?”

  “You have to know that was a joke. You have never been up north in June?”

  “I’ve never been up north. Period.”

  “Oh, man. Well, June is blackfly month. There are always mosquitoes and deer-flies if it’s hot. Ever heard the saying ‘I’m being eaten alive’?”

  Kerry nodded.

  “Well, you better believe it. There are many stories about people lost in the woods who go crazy because of the blackflies and bury themselves up to their necks to get away from them. The little buggers take pieces of meat out of you, especially behind the ears, the ankles, the neckline, waistbands, wherever they can sneak in. Kids are always getting the scabs infected. Sometimes you see them wrapped up in cheesecloth so they can play outside. They look like small white mummies sitting in the sandbox, with dribbles of blood here and there. June is the worst month up here.”

  Kerry felt completely useless and stupid. Her heart was racing so fast she could barely breathe. Her knee began to itch and she couldn’t help scratching it. “I … I don’t have the right gear, I mean, even my T-shirts are too dark. Maybe … I’d better go home.”

  “Maybe you should.” Yvette paused for several seconds. “Kidding! You can probably borrow stuff from the office. Anyways, if it stays hot like this, the bugs won’t last long.” She took off her net jacket, rolled it up, and tucked it in the bottom of her chest of drawers. “Time to go.”

  “We’re so late!”

  Yvette tapped her watch. “The office staff are at dinner now. In the north, the offices close at noon so the workers can go home for a big meal. We have time to walk.”

  “Noon? My phone says it’s almost two o’clock.”

  “Voyons, Kerry, don’t you know we’re an hour behind? We’re in a different time zone from Toronto.”

  “A different time zone?” said Kerry. “More like a different planet!”

  CHAPTER 3

  K erry walked gingerly along the highway into town, trying to keep up with Yvette but rapidly falling behind. She could see Yvette turning and walking backwards to check on her progress. Stabbing, needlelike pain traveled up and down her shins. She flapped her hands, riling the bugs. Yvette was out of sight now and Kerry limped faster. Finally Yvette waited for her to catch up.

  “Sorry, uh, these boots are new,” Kerry lied.

  Yvette rolled her eyes and entered the office of the Department of Forestry and Parks. As no one was back from dinner yet, the receptionist showed the girls to the boss’s office. Yvette headed straight for a coffeemaker in the corner.

  “Coffee?” she asked.

  “Thanks, no, I’m not a coffee drinker. I’m starving, though.”

  Yvette rummaged around in her pack and threw her a granola bar. “So, what do you drink?”

  Kerry was confused. “I drink gallons of water when I’m working out.”

  Yvette laughed. “We have a winner here! I mean what kind of booze do you drink? And don’t tell me something lame like Brandy Alexanders.”

  “I don’t drink. I’m underage.”

  “Great, great!” Yvette rolled her r’s like a Scot. “So do you perhaps grow your own?”

  “Very funny.”

  “Many things are illegal, you know,” said Yvette. “Illegal, immoral, or fattening.”

  Kerry felt herself being surveyed from top to toe. She knew that she was tall, lanky, and flat as a board, and that she looked like a dancer, with her great turned-out boats for feet, and legs up to her neck. People were always telling her that her gray-blue eyes were expressive. She must look like a scared jackrabbit at the moment. She’d always had trouble with new people and situations, and Yvette was making her feel younger and smaller inside with every question. Yvette has done everything! My life’s been nothing but dance and homework. Thanks, Mom! Kerry stared at the floor and waited for the next question she wouldn’t be able to answer.

  A man’s voice boomed from the hall. “Oh God,” Kerry said, “here he comes! He sounds mad.”

  “Relax,” said Yvette, crossing her legs and shrugging off her flannel shirt. “Watch and learn.�
� She sprawled one arm casually across the back of the empty chair beside her, striking a relaxed but powerful pose. When the supervisor shuffled in, filling the doorway with his stocky frame, the girls were rewarded by a startled look on his face.

  Yvette waited until he’d folded himself in behind his metal desk before extending her hand to him. “How do you do? I’m Yvette Bernier and I’ve dislocated your schedule. Please permit me to apologize.”

  The supervisor sat back in his chair and swiveled from side to side while Yvette’s outstretched hand hovered above the desk. Finally he took it. “Buzz Harcourt … and you’re late. I’ve no intention of paying you girls for today. It’s been a total write-off.”

  “No, please, that’s not fair to Kerry, who arrived on time. I think you should reconsider her case, at least. I was unavoidably late because Air Canada lost my baggage. Perhaps it would be better to pay us as if this was a travel day?”

  “I’ll take that under advisement,” muttered Harcourt. He shuffled through the papers on his desk. “You need to fill in these payroll and income tax forms. There’s also a confidentiality document where you have to swear you won’t give away any government secrets. You girls will be working ten days on and four days off, unless we drop you into a lake, in which case you’ll work until the project’s done. Then we’ll arrange to pick you up. The job has a fancy title but all you’re really going to do is dig test pits for septic systems and tell us where you find decent cottage sites.”

  Kerry felt her eyes bulge. Dig? In Toronto they said I’d be writing reports. I can’t do this!

  “Of course you pay overtime?” asked Yvette.

  “There’ll be no overtime. Ever. You’ll work eight hours a day.”

  “Even if we’re stuck in a tent in a place with nowhere to go, we’ll be working without pay?” There was an edge to Yvette’s voice now.

  Harcourt put both hands on the desk and lifted himself partway out of the chair. “Listen, sweetie, if you don’t want this job, I’ve got lots of local kids who’d love to make $14.50 an hour larking about on the lakes, looking for places for people to build a cottage.”

  Kerry kicked Yvette in the ankle. Yvette opened her mouth but closed it again, and they both turned their attention to the pile of paper. Yvette was reading slowly and carefully, while Kerry signed everything without reading it. When Yvette finished with the last form, Harcourt stood up impatiently. “I’ll take you to the warehouse and you can start gathering your equipment. But all you’ll really need is a shovel. As I said, you’re going to do a lot of digging this summer.”

  Kerry finally found the nerve to speak up. “You’ve lost me. I thought we were working in the office. My mother said I’d be writing reports.”

  “Yeah, right.” Harcourt held up a binder. “This here is the manual on how to fluffy up a cottage development report, according to the government’s policy bozos in Toronto. Up here, the only thing we care about is the number of cottage sites you find that are capable of taking a septic system. You’re going to have to dig a four-foot hole on every suitable site to see if you hit groundwater.”

  Yvette, eyes glazed, lifted her head. “Excuse me, sir. I have another question. Don’t we have to be licensed to do that kind of work?”

  The supervisor looked at her over his glasses. “You’ll do what you’re told,” he said.

  Yvette rummaged in her day pack for a notepad. She bit the cap off her pen and started writing.

  “What’re you doing?” Harcourt asked.

  “I’m just making a note that I asked if we needed special training, and how you responded. I like to keep notes as things come up. I also noted that you don’t want to pay us for today even though it’s just after dinner now. I did this job last year in Chapleau, so I know what to expect.”

  It was so quiet in the room that Kerry could hear a fly committing suicide inside the overhead light fixture.

  “Listen, missy, I won’t be intimidated.” Harcourt turned his attention to Kerry. “And you. Do I look like a babysitter, here? What are you, sixteen?”

  “Seventeen,” Kerry whispered.

  “Great. You have a driver’s license and a boating permit?”

  She nodded.

  “Well, I don’t know who you know in the government to have landed this job. Maybe you have friends in Ottawa? You speak Frog, right?”

  “I’m the one who speaks French,” Yvette said. “My father was French.”

  “Was?”

  “He’s deceased.”

  There was no murmur of condolence from Buzz. He finished witnessing the confidentiality forms and motioned them to follow him. On the way to the warehouse, he introduced them to other staff only when someone was bearing down on them in the hallway. Each time, he’d say, “These are the two summer students from down east, the ones who are going to look for cottage sites for the Sale/Lease program.” As there was never any exchange of names, Yvette properly introduced herself and Kerry, making sure that everyone knew that she was no “down-easterner”; she’d been born in Winnipeg and brought up in Labrador, and had lived in Northern Quebec and then in Cornwall, Ontario.

  The concrete-block warehouse by the lake was stacked from floor to ceiling with racks of equipment, including outboard motors, pumps, and canoe packs. Kerry fingered the nozzle of a fire hose that had come loose from its coil.

  “Don’t touch that stuff,” Harcourt said, pushing her away. “It belongs to Forestry. Take what you need from the Parks side only. Everything is numbered and tagged and you log it out in this book.”

  “Sounds easy enough.” Kerry gave him a bright smile. “Are there any women firefighters here?” she asked, trying to make polite conversation.

  “What kind of dumb-ass question is that? Haven’t you heard we got a quota system here? Those assholes in Toronto deny it, saying it’s all about merit, but don’t you believe it. We get stuck with broads. But we don’t have any right now. Good thing, too. Do you think you could walk around all day with a seventy-five-pound pack on your back? Could you?”

  Kerry stepped back as if she’d been hit, feeling the sting of tears in her eyes. She willed herself not to blink. Yvette caught her eye and made a farting sound with her mouth on the back of her arm, and it was all Kerry could do to keep from bursting out laughing. Yvette turned her back to the supervisor and started rummaging through sleeping bags. “These arctic bags are perfect. Is our boat docked somewhere?”

  “It’s in the yard.” He motioned for them to follow him out to where all manner of boats were turned upside down on the grass, like turtles basking in the sun. Harcourt headed to the back fence and pointed to a steel, flat-bottomed boat rusting along its seams.

  Kerry watched while Yvette nudged it with her toe. “Well, she looks sturdy enough,” she said, “but it’s going to take a lot of horsepower to get her plowing through the water. Where’d you hide the trailer?”

  He sighed and rolled his eyes. “Lady, there is no trailer. You’ll just have to lift with your knees like the rest of us and heave it into the back of the truck.”

  “Come on, that thing’s a tank. It’s not possible for two girls to lift it. What about this little aluminum one? It looks perfect.”

  “Belongs to Forestry. Listen, if this job is too tough for you, I’m sure they have something cushier in Toronto.”

  Yvette narrowed her eyes and stepped toward him. “I’m a bit confused, Monsieur Harcourt. Maybe it was missing in my file, but I’m going into second-year civil engineering at Waterloo. I know my way around boats.”

  “We do things different here. And you sure don’t look like any kind of engineer I’ve ever seen.”

  “I think we’ll be okay to handle the boat, Mr. Harcourt,” Kerry said hastily. “But do we get a phone in case we have an emergency out on the lake? You know, if we run out of gas or something?”

  He laughed. “You see all this rock? Cell phones are pretty much useless around here. So the answer is no, you won’t get a phone.”

 
“Hang on, please,” Yvette said. “It’s a good question. We need a radio when we’re out in the field—you know, the kind the fire crews use.”

  “There are no radios or satellite phones available.”

  “I saw a whole warehouse full of them a minute ago.”

  “That stuff is for Forestry and you can’t touch it. I don’t have a budget for phones for summer students and—”

  “Let me get this straight,” Kerry said. “You’re sending us out in the bush for ten days or maybe more, hundreds of miles away, without any way of communicating with anyone?”

  “Correct. That’s my policy.”

  Yvette fished in her bag for her little notebook and wrote furiously, saying under her breath, “No trailer … no radio …”

  Harcourt grinned and jangled a set of keys. “Do I look like I’m worried? Your chariot awaits, girls.” He tossed the keys high above Kerry’s head but she caught them. “There’s a red Dodge pickup truck parked out front. It’s for business use only. It’s new and a rental, so go easy on it. Got it?”

  Kerry nodded and Harcourt stomped away. When he rounded the corner, Yvette kicked the steel boat with her steel-toed boots. The sound reverberated but she didn’t make a dent. Kerry grabbed the rope and gave the boat a tug, but it was immovable.

  “We need to stay as far away from that guy as possible. He’s a jerk,” Yvette said.

  “I don’t see how we can, if he’s our boss. I wonder what ‘Buzz’ stands for.”

  Yvette snorted. “How about ‘Buzz Off’?”

  CHAPTER 4

  W hen they went out to the truck, Yvette took charge. “I’ll teach you how to do a circle check.” She found a logbook in the glove compartment and marked down the starting mileage, then walked around the truck checking for dents and scratches. “Tell me if the taillights and the headlights are working,” she called from inside the cab. Kerry watched while Yvette tested the wipers and adjusted the mirrors. She honked twice, pulled out, and let Kerry in. When they got back to the bunkhouse, it appeared they were still the only ones home.