by Nancy Hartry
“I’m exhausted,” said Kerry. “I feel like I’ve been working for a week and it’s only the first day.”
“It’s because everything is new. Tomorrow will be worse and then it’ll get better. Don’t you find that with a new job? Oops, sorry, this is probably the first job you’ve ever had.”
Kerry nodded. “I’m so lucky to get an asshole for a supervisor!”
“He’s just a little man trying to be a big toad in a small pond …”
Kerry choked with laughter. “You mean a big frog!”
“On the first day, it’s important to show him who’s really the boss. You have to stand up to him and not let him push you around. It’s like dogs pissing on fire hydrants, and I’m the biggest, baddest dog in the park!”
Kerry shook her head, trying not to imagine Yvette peeing on hydrants. But thank God that she seemed to know everything about everything. All of a sudden, the clench in Kerry’s stomach was gone. “I’m hungry,” she said.
Yvette opened a bag of almonds with her teeth and passed it to Kerry. “The guys will be here pretty soon. Supper’s at five-thirty. We’re having chicken tonight, no?”
Kerry sniffed the air. She hadn’t even noticed that yummy smell until Yvette pointed it out. Now she needed something to take her mind off her growling stomach. “Um—do you have any pictures of your family?”
“Sure.” Yvette reached into her pack and tossed Kerry a small album. The front had a picture of Audrey Hepburn smoking a cigarette in an elegant cigarette holder. Kerry opened the book up to the first page.
“That’s me,” said Yvette, “the one in the big boot.”
Kerry brought the photo up to her nose to get a better look at the blonde, curly-haired kid in a sunsuit, standing in a hip wader up to her waist.
“Maman was afraid it would fill up with water and I’d drown.”
“Great smile,” said Kerry. “Like you took a puck in the mouth.”
“Could I ever spit water out that gap, from one side of the creek to the other. That’s why I caught so many fish. They were attracted to the spit, and when they got bored of spit, they went for the worm.”
“Who took the picture?”
“Papa. He propped me up in the boot, let me go for a second, and then snapped it. Of course, I didn’t really catch any fish. He’d hook one, pass me the rod, and guess what?—my fish!”
“Sounds like fun.”
“The best fun. He’d carry me into the house sound asleep in his arms, wrapped up in his scratchy red wool sweater with the arms tied tight. I loved that sweater.” She fell silent, then added, “Maman pitched it in the garbage after he died, along with everything else except those flannel shirts—they were hanging on a hook in the garage. For a year I slept with the smell of Papa under my pillow, and then in the morning I’d hide the shirts under the mattress. But finally she found them and washed him away.” She cleared her throat and continued, “Those shirts, a couple of pictures, his hard hat, and this necklace are just about all I’ve got.”
Kerry leaned in for a closer look at a picture of Yvette’s dad and linked her arm through Yvette’s. She turned to the next page, a photo of Yvette in a spaghetti-strap dress hanging onto the arm of a drop-dead gorgeous guy in a tuxedo.
“He’s cute. Is that your brother?”
“My last boyfriend. He was twenty-seven, with a good job at the bank and a car and a house.”
“How old are you, there?”
“Let’s see. I’m nineteen now, so seventeen, about your age. He was divorced and Maman didn’t like him because of that. What about you? Do you have a boyfriend?”
Yvette looked so confident in the picture. Kerry couldn’t imagine talking to a man ten years older than herself, let alone dating him. “Me? Not at the moment.” “Never” would have been more truthful. “I’m too busy,” she said, repeating the reason her mother had drummed into her brain.
“Well, we’ll have lots of chances this summer. Firefighters are big and handsome guys.”
Kerry closed the book. They had the whole summer to get to the next picture. Sitting next to Yvette, she felt twelve and a half.
Without warning, the camp exploded with the sound of pickup trucks skidding on gravel. There was shouting and hooting as car doors slammed. Loud voices teased and taunted. Radios and CD players competed and the whole clearing throbbed with a bass beat. When Kerry peered through the glass porthole in the door, she saw that the clearing was alive with guys, some of them wearing orange coveralls held up by shoulder straps. They all seemed tall and powerful, with strong muscles bulging under tight T-shirts.
“There are so many. I wonder if we’ll have to eat in two sittings,” said Yvette.
A middle-aged woman opened the screen door to the cookhouse and clanged a metal triangle announcing supper. The call jangled through the clearing, sending the whiskey jacks flying for cover. The bunkhouse door flew open and a stream of guys ran to the cookhouse, the screen door thwacking open and shut, open and shut, until silence reigned again.
“Well, I guess that answers my question. We better get in there or there won’t be anything left.” Yvette brushed her hair and applied new lipstick. Kerry threw on a sweatshirt that matched her eyes.
“Ready, Kerry?”
Kerry smiled weakly. Thank heavens she had a partner. She’d rather starve to death than walk into a roomful of strange guys. Her hands began to shake and she had a hard time locking the trailer door. Yvette strolled across the clearing and yanked open the screen door. They had taken only two strides inside when the room went dead quiet. Kerry felt the nerves up and down her spine prickle as twenty pairs of eyes stared at her. Yvette kept going, the heels of her boots sounding hollow on the plywood floor. Then she stopped and Kerry crashed into her. What was Yvette doing? Was she going to speak to them? Kerry wanted to run back out that door.
“It’s so sad you’ve never seen girls before,” Yvette announced. “I think you’ve been in the bush too long. You, yes you, the one with the hairy beard—close your mouth. Permit me to introduce my friend Kerry. My name is Yvette and we are your cottage development technicians for the summer. I hope you’ve left us something to eat because we are growing girls.”
The room erupted in good-natured laughter and Yvette bowed to the crowd. But Kerry noticed a sheen of perspiration above her partner’s lip, so maybe this wasn’t as easy as she made it appear.
Yvette smiled at the cook’s helper behind a steam table of stainless steel pots. “I’ll have half of everything. Hold the gravy, and is there salad? Thanks, I can serve myself.”
Kerry moved quickly to take her place. “I’ll have the same, please. Smells fantastic.”
Yvette took her tray and searched the room for a suitable spot, and some of the guys at the front table shuffled along the bench to make room for them. Kerry couldn’t plunk her tray down fast enough. She perched on the bench across from Yvette and, head down, started to eat. She wasn’t listening to Yvette’s chirpy patter, although she managed to murmur “ah-huh” and “oh, no” in all the right places.
In a low voice, Yvette said, “Kerry, slow down.”
“Oh—right.” She hadn’t been aware that she was shoveling her food. It was a nervous habit, eating so fast. Besides, the supper was surprisingly good. There was pork roast with stuffing, not chicken, real mashed potatoes with a blob of melted butter, not margarine, and sides of spaghetti, peas, and carrots that weren’t the least bit mushy.
“This is amazing,” she said to Yvette.
“Food is everything in the bush. It’s what these guys look forward to all day. If you’re not careful, you’ll gain twenty-five pounds this summer.”
With visions of a competition dress that wouldn’t zip up, and her mother’s critical comments, Kerry put her fork down. Then she picked it up again. Not worrying about her weight for one night wouldn’t hurt. And there had to be some compensation for being banished to this place!
The guys returned their trays and were waiti
ng in orderly fashion for coffee and lemon meringue pie or gooey butter tarts, or both. Kerry gaped. “Two desserts? The most I get at home is fruit salad. Mom says desserts are just empty calories.”
Yvette rose from her seat and headed for the salad bar. Kerry felt panic flutter from her stomach to her throat, and even though she wasn’t hungry, she got up and followed her. A guy with white-blond hair and twinkly blue eyes came up behind her. “Which of you two lovely women is the dancer who’s going into kinesiology this fall?”
Yvette and Kerry looked at each other. “The dancer? That’d be me,” said Kerry. “How’d you know?”
“We have our ways. Most of what we need to know is written on the men’s room wall. I’m Didier. I know dancing isn’t really a sport or anything, but a couple of us guys go for a jog in the evening before going to the hotel for drinks. You’re welcome to come with us.”
“Thanks,” said Kerry. “I’d like to, but I have pretty bad shin splints and I have to take it easy.”
Didier looked sympathetic, making him even more gorgeous. “Whenever you’re up for it.”
Yvette returned to the table with a plate heaped with salad, no dressing, and two cubes of cheddar cheese. She frowned at the butter tart and the slice of lemon meringue pie on Kerry’s plate. “Well, I can see you’re not anorexic. But you didn’t tell me you were injured, or that you’re a dancer. What kind of a dancer?”
“Irish. And I’m fine, but I’m not good enough to compete for the rest of the season.”
“Like Riverdance?”
Kerry nodded. “I’ve been doing it since I was a kid. It’s been my whole life up until now.”
“Ah-hahh, now I get it. Shin splints—that’s some kind of muscle thing, isn’t it? I hope your legs are strong enough for fieldwork. It’s not safe to go into the bush if you’re not healthy. Did you mention this to Buzz?”
Kerry took a mouthful of butter tart and syrup dribbled down her chin. “Jeez, Yvette, I’m new but I’m not stupid. Really, I’m okay. I just can’t dance at the moment and my mother didn’t want me hanging around if I couldn’t compete. She’s obsessed with winning. Besides, I don’t see how shin splints are going to stop me from riding around in a boat.” As she spoke, the metal teapot she was using dribbled puddles of golden tea on the table, and Yvette mopped it up with her paper serviette. “Seriously, they told me I’d be working in an office, otherwise I’d never have taken this job. My mother would freak if she knew what’s going on—which actually makes it almost worth it. You don’t know me yet, but I’m no quitter. I’ll prove it to you.” Wow, where did that come from? Kerry thought, but she realized that she meant every word.
“We’ll see. We have to work as a team, you know? Working in the bush isn’t an individual thing. You have to rely on your buddy. I have this thing about safety. For me, safety comes first.” Yvette wiggled in her seat, humming tunelessly while tapping her fingers against her coffee mug, looking jumpy.
A couple of guys were lighting up cigarettes. “I don’t know why I’m surprised they can smoke in here. I guess it’s kind of their residence,” Kerry said. “Look, if you want a smoke all that badly, why don’t you just have one?”
Yvette fished around in the bottom of her pack and came up with a slightly bent, somewhat untwisted “roll your own.” Before she had a chance to get out her pink Bic lighter, Didier lit her cigarette with a wooden match.
“Merci beaucoup.”
“When do you girls go out on the lakes?”
Yvette blew a long breath of smoke skyward. “Tomorrow. I like to do a dry run to test the equipment before we go on a big trip.”
“Good idea. I’m the crew boss of one of the fire units, and I’d be happy to answer any questions you have. Most of the guys you see are in the forestry program at Lakehead. This is my third summer here.”
“Lucky,” said Kerry. It was just one word but it brought her into the conversation. If only I had more experience with guys, she thought.
“Yep, it’s pretty nice up here, especially in the summer, but it’s hard to make a buck in winter. Do you know where you’re headed tomorrow?”
“Not a clue,” Yvette said.
“There are some good spots north of here, off this highway.” Didier leaned over and flipped the plasticized Ontario road map off the wall and set it down on the table between them. “There’s a put-in on Trout Lake and another one just here.”
“They’d better be easy ones because we’ve got a pig of a boat without a trailer,” said Kerry. “And a pig of a boss.”
“Ah, Harcourt. He flunked out of Waterloo engineering fifteen years ago and was lucky to land a job, so he can’t be happy with Yvette here rubbing it in his face.”
“Wow, you’re well-informed,” said Yvette. “I can’t help it if engineering kind of runs in our family.”
“Well, I have a tip for you girls. Stay on his good side if you don’t want to be on the receiving end of a sore paw. Buzz can be as grouchy as a bear.”
“What do you mean?” Kerry’s heart thumped out of her chest at the prospect of the supervisor hitting her. But nothing would surprise her with that guy.
Didier ignored her and yelled at a burly guy across the room, “Hey, Aubrey, you know this lake. Where should these girls put in? Hey girls, meet Aubrey, nickname the Bear Whisperer.”
Kerry shook hands, a firm, dry handshake, with a guy who looked at her with brown eyes so deep she thought she might fall in. “Why do they call you the Bear Whisperer?”
Aubrey chuckled. “I guess because I’m Metis and I study bear behavior. Right now I’m a fire crew boss, but I’d like to be a conservation officer one day.”
“Where’s the best place to launch our boat?” Yvette interrupted.
Aubrey leaned over the map. “There’s rapids at the outlet of this river, so avoid that. I’d suggest the lower end of the lake beside this tourist camp.”
Didier and Aubrey couldn’t be more different, physically. Kerry tried hard not to stare. One dark, one bright white, but both so big and muscled. Didier is movie-star hot. Aubrey is … interesting with that cleft chin. Is it my imagination, or does Yvette not like Aubrey at all?
Yvette was fumbling for her lighter, and Aubrey leaned over and relit her mangled cigarette. She didn’t bother to thank him.
“Well, good luck tomorrow. It’s supposed to be a windy day so there could be quite a chop, so take care,” Didier said. “Oh, I forgot. You’re invited to the bunkhouse for drinks tonight at seven-thirty. I know it’s early, but we have to work tomorrow.”
“I’ll walk you back to your trailer,” Aubrey offered.
“You don’t have to,” said Yvette.
“I know, but it’s no problem.” He held the door for the girls, and Kerry was struck by his height and quiet strength as she walked past him. She’d never met anyone like him, so reserved but so confident.
When they reached the trailer, Aubrey leaned close and lowered his voice. “Make sure you lock your doors at night. We’ve had some funny things go missing around this camp, and at the office.”
“No one mentioned this,” said Yvette.
“No one wants to admit there’s a problem.”
“What kind of things?” Kerry’s voice sounded wobbly to her own ears.
“Gas cans. Flares. A radio. Barbecue lighters. Even a brand new Sea-Doo. Tons of stuff.”
When they got back to their room, Yvette pulled her large pack from under her bed and braced it in front of the door. She hung her boots over the door handle. “I need a nap before tonight. This way, if they come through this booby trap, at least we’ll hear them. Maybe then we won’t show up under the heading of ‘stuff’ that goes missing.”
“You mean I’ll hear them. I’ll bet you can sleep through anything,” said Kerry.
“I sleep like the murdered.”
“You mean the dead.”
“Exactement.”
Kerry crawled into bed but her mind kept racing over all the things tha
t had happened in just one day. She could hardly believe she’d left home just yesterday. She felt as if she’d been here a week. I’m not sure I’ll be able to last. I’ve never met people like this before—especially Yvette. I wonder what Mom and Dad are doing, and if they miss me.…
“Hey, Yvette, how can you stand it? I’m going mental not talking to my friends, let alone my family. It feels so weird being cut off like this.”
“I’m used to it. Love the ones you’re with, as they say. Summer jobs up here are intense, and then you go back to your normal life. Now, have a nap or you’ll never be able to last tonight.”
“Yes, Mom.” Kerry wadded her thin pillow under her neck and hugged Rover, burying her face in his raggedy fur.
Normal? I haven’t got a clue what normal means anymore.
CHAPTER 5
Y vette woke up first and went out. She came bounding back up the steps of the trailer, smelling of cigarette smoke. “Someone sent you a letter even before you left home!”
“That would be my mother.” Kerry yawned and fired the envelope into the bottom drawer of the dresser.
“Aren’t you going to open it?”
“She’s a head case,” Kerry sighed. “And she’s the one who sent me here. If I can’t dance, I’m useless. But now she’s probably had second thoughts, probably expects me to dump this job and start dancing again, no matter what the doctor says.”
“Oh, she’s one of those pushy backstage moms.…”
“She frames the ribbons I win and hangs them in the rec room beside my trophies. She’s always at my poor dad to put up more shelving. There’s a lot of pressure on me to win. She’s a freaking perfectionist about everything, even how I glue my socks—”
“You glue your socks?”
“With surgical glue, so they don’t fall down when I compete. Points off if your socks fall down. She even controls what wig I wear. One day I’m Lady Gaga in curls, and the next day I’m a redhead. I just got a flashy new competition dress, and it must be killing her that I can’t wear it.”