Uncharted

by Graeme Connell

  Brewster catches a glimpse of the big logo on the back of the leather jacket. Something about Christian Riders Association surrounding a big blue cross. “Hear the Angels Sing” blares from the speakers.

  Happy man, Brewster thinks. Christian riders, eh? He didn’t say, “I’ll pray for you,” and he didn’t preach at me.

  He just listened.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Waiting around is not as bad as he thought it would be. Brewster delights in the silence between the swish of vehicles and the rumble of the diesels. In spite of his engine failure, he’s in a happy zone, far away from the things that pull him down. It’s like being on holiday.

  The cell phone buzzes, announcing an email. Maybe Hannah or Harris, he thinks.

  Hello Brewster,

  I’ve been trying to get hold of you for a few days. You away again? Anyway, contact me because we have some interesting news and developments for your photographs.

  Cheers,

  José

  He drags it into the trash can. Not now. He looks out on the road, wanting to regain the peaceful solitude of just moments ago. The tow truck must be close by now. He gets up and wanders around; out of habit, he checks the ground along the tree line. As he turns back to his chair in the sun, a blue aster nods its head in the soft breeze. He stops and stares at it. This flower, his blue aster, is out here—and it’s just a single plant.

  The roadside chat with Jess has him thinking about the driver in the accident. He speculates that she could be a client of Janey’s because of Jess’s almost immediate recall. He wonders how she is doing, how she is handling her life. It must be awful. After all, she didn’t set out that morning to be involved in such a tragedy. He did get to meet her at the court hearing. He’d suggested leniency to the judge, and although it now surprised even him, he’d expressed forgiveness in his victim impact statement. He considered then, and still does, that she’s suffered enough and that the ordeal and memory would never leave her. How had she been able to deal with it? How about her young children, her husband? Funny how life can change in a heartbeat.

  Why is that blue aster over there? I’d have thought it too early in the season for them to be in bloom. Why does it show itself to me, here and today?

  It’s late afternoon, and the sun is arcing to disappear behind the spruce- and aspen-covered range. Brewster sits in his chair, moving every now and then to catch all the sun he can. Opposite him the mountains are in darkness. His side is still golden.

  Finally, the tow truck passes him and turns around at the Parks Canada Mount Revelstoke National Park information turnout about a kilometre down the road. He’d walked down there while he was waiting and enjoyed reading the information panels encouraging visitors to “wrap your arms around the ancient trees in the world’s only inland cedar rainforest.”

  The young driver jumps from the cab. Big brown work boots that are unlaced, baggy denim shorts and a grubby T-shirt. He’s maybe in his early 20s with tattooed biceps. “Yeah. Gidday. Got a bit of trouble here, eh?” he says in a very heavy accent. He walks to the Jeep and peers into the engine. “Whoa, that’s a stinky one you got there, mate. Definitely a water pump, I reckon. No worries. We’ll get her safely hauled away and into the dealership in Salmon Arm. Trevor,” he says, extending his hand. “But call me Trev.”

  The young man’s chatter hasn’t allowed Brewster to get a word in. Definitely not a local, Brewster surmises. He watches his jovial rescuer unhitch all his chains and tip the deck of the tow truck to winch his Jeep up for the journey.

  “This is a rare one, I reckon,” Trevor says. “Not heard of a water pump failure on these chariots before—not this model, anyway.”

  “Where you from?” Brewster asks.

  “I’m a genuine Kiwi. Ha-ha, bet you thought Aussie, eh? Just helping out me mum’s Canadian cousin for a few weeks before I go climbing around the Rockies. Want to knock off a few of those peaks over the summer before I have to head back home.”

  Trevor’s a welcome companion as he wheels the truck out on to the highway. One of those never-stop-asking kinda guys. For Brewster, it’s an ideal way to pass the time.

  “Me uncle says you want to stay in Revelstoke while they fix your wagon. Didn’t mean that—fix your wagon. Just an expression. Well, I can drop you there, okay? No worries. It’s where we’re based. Suits me too. I’ll deliver this first thing in the morning, y’see.

  “Funny. Y’know, I had to haul a Chrysler van through just the other day. Not sure what the problem was there. Some electrical thing, I reckon. It’ll take a few days for them to find out how serious things are, what parts they’ll need. You might have got it in time, so that could be helpful. Uncle says the impeller inside might have jammed, causing it to stop circulating. Good news for you, though: me uncle says it’s a warranty job.”

  Brewster smiles. So much information from this chatty young man, and he doesn’t even work at the dealership.

  “Yeah, I just come to play in the mountains. Love the climbing and tramping—you call it hiking I guess. I’m a mechanic back home. Work on all sorts, even Jeeps, but mostly Japanese stuff. Or Ford.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  “There’s a spare seat at the table I’m using over by the window.” A slight woman, her soft brown hair pulled back in a ponytail, spots him hovering at the entrance to the dining room, plate of pancakes in one hand and balancing orange juice in the other. Brewster waits while the woman picks up a muffin, reloads her coffee and follows her to the table.

  “Very nice of you to offer,” he says. “I was just about to head upstairs to my room. I’ve never been one to just occupy an empty seat, thinking that people always like to be a bit private at breakfast.”

  “Ha, no worries with me,” she says. “Company is good. I’m here often in my job. I’m Irene Steele.”

  “Good morning,” he says. “Brewster McWhirtle. I’m from Calgary.” He munches through his pancakes while watching the sparrows and crows outside finding morsels around the swimming pool and on the gardens.

  It’s been some time since he’s eaten breakfast with a woman. Now he starts to internalize, wondering what he might say without sounding like some predatory male. He sees from her finger that she’s married. Good, he thinks, making sure she might spot the ring on his finger.

  “These automatic pancake machines they have here are quite good,” he says. “I usually avoid things like that, but I’m glad I cooked one today.” Good grief, that’s so lame, he thinks. She probably doesn’t even want to talk.

  He scoops a forkful of pancake and bright red strawberry topping around his plate. He gets the feeling she is looking at his every move. Mmm. I should have gone to my room. He watches the workmen out the window—changing light bulbs, he thinks, or cleaning the glass covers.

  “Would you like a coffee?” Irene says, getting up from the table. “I’m in for seconds with a muffin.”

  “Oh, um, sure. That’d be great. There’s milk here on the table. Yes, that would be great. Thank you.”

  Brewster smiles at her as she walks back from the coffee station. She’s wearing a dark sweatshirt and jeans and what looks like safety shoes, brownish with black toes. Same as he’s seen on road workers. She can’t be much over five foot two and maybe 60 kilos. Nifty little figure. He looks back out the windows as she reaches the table, suddenly bothered by the way he assessed her.

  “There you go,” she says. “And these are the first mugs out of a new brew, hot and fresh.”

  “Thanks so much,” he says. “What brings you to sunny Revelstoke?”

  “Work. I’m here for about three days this time, I think. Came in last night from Calgary.” Her smile is enough to light up Calgary’s Saddledome. “I’m spending today and possibly tomorrow in a dark tunnel, though,” she adds. “No sunny Revelstoke for me.”

  Irene describes her work as a consulting engin
eer on what is a routine inspection of the ventilation systems in the Mount Macdonald railway tunnel.

  “Fascinating,” he says. “I’ll be going over to the Railway Museum a bit later. I’m not what you call a railway buff, but I’m fascinated by the tunnels and the way this all happened after starting out as a political confederation strategy. Besides, I’ve got nothing else to do.”

  “Are you visiting here just to go to the museum?” she asks.

  “Nah, my car broke down about 20 miles east. I had it towed to the dealer in Salmon Arm, so I’m here till the repairs are completed. A water pump issue, I believe. I could have gone there but chose to poke around here for a few days. Revelstoke’s a very historical place.”

  Irene nods as her cell phone buzzes. “Oh, the crew will be here in about 15, so I’d better be ready for them,” she says. She stands and offers her hand. As they shake, he mumbles a thanks. She turns to leave but adds that perhaps they’ll see each over the next few days. “Have fun with your day,” she says. “Think of me in that dark tunnel while you sit in the sun.”

  She loads her dishes on to the trolley near the kitchen. Although it’s been a long time since he’s relaxed in a woman’s company at breakfast, he thinks over how she sparkles just like Mel. Then he frowns because he’s comparing again. Why? he wonders. That’s not fair to Mel or to this woman. He sighs, collects his dishes, sorts them at the trolley and picks up an apple, orange and banana from the fruit bowl.

  “Don’t get lost in downtown Revelstoke.”

  Irene steps from the elevator, hard hat in one hand and wearing the yellow-brown jacket favoured by outside workers. He waves and smiles as she heads to the lobby, and he climbs the stairs to his floor.

  As he steps up each tread, he considers the options for his day. Nothing in mind except the Railway Museum and the rest of the day to wander.

  Brewster fires up his iPad and tells Hannah all about the journey, the vehicle breakdown, his unplanned holiday and his breakfast. He has to think twice about the breakfast because he’s not sure how his daughter might react. He tells it anyway. After all, he figures it was just a chance meeting, some friendly chatter with a person who knows nothing about him. Cathartic in a way—a pleasant change for his inner being. He’s been forced to participate in human contact outside his deepening insularity.

  The guest folder contains a couple of sheets of hotel letterhead and an envelope. Should he or shouldn’t he? He thinks Jess’s suggestion to write his wife a letter might have some merit.

  He looks at the blank white page with the blue and yellow hotel logo across the top. He sits back then leans forward and writes down the date on the page. New line. “Dear Melanie.” He doesn’t like that, so he scrunches it up and starts on the second sheet. “My Dearest Melanie.” Better. New line. Now what to write? Slowly he starts, and with tears that at times drop onto the page, he writes about where he is and why. He reads it through and thinks it a bit whiny. He turns over the page and fills the back of the sheet. He doesn’t read that through again, merely folding it in three, sealing it in the envelope and hiding it in a pocket of his backpack. He escapes the hotel.

  #

  The floorboards creak as he moves from exhibit window to exhibit window in the quiet, austere, cavernous railway museum. Black-and-white pictures, maps and the faces of politicians, surveyors and engineers credited with the marvel of the Spiral Tunnels. Their ingenuity and political smarts are documented in the solutions to get the wheat and coal off the prairies and down to the waiting ships in Vancouver. The big link to make confederation real, from sea to shining sea.

  There’s more than a hint of cynicism in Brewster as he views each panel. The government promises to make it happen. The cost? Major. The strategy? Justified. The locomotives and semis on road and rail today illustrate that boldness more than a century later.

  He moves to a small alcove. More black-and-white photographs. Models of the tunnel structure and excavations. The faces of men lured to the task with pick and shovel, muscle and sweat to hack and dig and die, to scratch a living to keep their wives and children, many with their families in some distant place.

  And the Chinese: Far from home and eager for a new life. Eager to meet the challenges in the hopes of sending money to their homeland far away. Eager to bring wives and children to the brave new country. There are no smiles in these pictures, which Brewster predicts were carefully posed. How many in that picture, or this one, did not make it home, did not make it out of the pit? How many succumbed to accident or utter despair in the substandard conditions and lesser pay and food than their white counterparts? One person killed per week, the records show. How many more were there really? he wonders. And who kept the tally?

  As he strolls through the museum, these deaths keep surfacing in his mind. Who told their wives and children, “Daddy won’t be coming home”? Did the police turn up at their door like they did for him? “Sir, your wife won’t be coming home.”

  “I bet some families were never told. The money dried up, and they had to carve out a new life, never knowing. At least I was told within minutes.”

  “Were you talking to me?” a woman asks, standing with her children near him.

  “Ah. Um. Sorry,” Brewster says. “I guess I was just thinking aloud.”

  “Easy to do when you see these pictures,” she says.

  Brewster nods to her and takes himself upstairs, past the amazing model railway display. He walks out to the balcony and admires the old poster pictures and paintings around the walls depicting train travel, the age of the locomotive and the glory of rail travel to the retreats in the Rockies. He bypasses the opportunity to “drive” a loco or watch a video, and he heads into the open air, breathing in the freshness of the present.

  He sits in a small park, intrigued by the architecture that’s more than a century old, and he considers what this community had been before technology, highways and modern transport slowly scuttled its economy. Freight locos three kilometres long rumble through the town at all times of the day. A stone cairn tells of Walter Moberly, the British Columbia surveyor who found the Eagle Pass for both railway and the Trans-Canada Highway.

  #

  There used to be days when he wanted to stomp on his cell phone. Every time he thought like that, it would buzz. Generally it was something to do with his business or a call from Melanie. He’s become addicted to its beeps and bells. This time, far away after a brilliant sunny day, his connection with the world rings through. Hannah, he expects, checking up on him. She’s just like her mother.

  Dear Mr. McWhirtle,

  My name is Clotilde Chiasson. I live here in Calgary, and I’ve been given your name about the possible collaboration of a wildflower book project that you are working on for Fish Creek Park. I am a botanical artist, and when they found me drawing in the park recently, they suggested you and I might combine our talents for a useful book, for the better understanding of the flowers that bloom in the park.

  They tell me you are an excellent photographer and have produced some captivating images of the rare, the common and the beautiful. As for me, I am an artist. I draw the parts of the plants in minute detail, from flower to stem to leaves, and in some cases to roots.

  Please let me know when we might meet to discuss. It sounds an intriguing project, and it’s one of which I’d like to be part. I’d like people to see what I do.

  I should tell you too that I am profoundly deaf, the result of an illness that invaded my life in my 20s. I do speak though, both French and English, and I lip-read as well as sign.

  Regards,

  Clotilde Chiasson

  Brewster sits back in his hotel room easy chair. He’s uncomfortable. Any contribution he makes is on behalf of his wife, not this deaf lady. I bet this is what José was getting at in his note the other day—“some news and a new development.” This must be the new development.

&nbs
p; He feels a big grumpiness coming on. “So they’ve decided I have to share this,” he mutters. “Well, they can jolly well do without me.”

  He shuts down the iPad with a pouty flourish, tosses it under his pillow and escapes to the elevator. His mind is on a nice, satisfying dining experience, being waited on hand and foot. “After all, I am in this luxurious place.”

  He closes his door and heads to the stairs, once again avoiding the elevator. He pauses, rethinks and returns to his iPad.

  Dear Ms. Chiasson,

  Thank you for your inquiry. Your work sounds interesting. At this stage, photographing the park’s wildflowers is only a potential activity that I may undertake on behalf of my wife, who died a year ago. I’ll be meeting with the park people in the next few days and will advise them accordingly.

  Brewster McWhirtle

  On a whim he reckons that if Irene is back from her day, they could find a restaurant together. He writes a brief note, puts it in an envelope and heads to the lobby, asking them to slip it under her door because he does not know her room number.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Compared to yesterday, the dining room is almost empty this morning. Brewster finds a table in the corner and looks out over the patio at the sparrows circling the tables, pecking at anything that might resemble breakfast. He wants to share his cereal with them but remembers it’s not a good idea to ladle out human food to the wild birds

  “Mind if I join you?”

  Irene doesn’t wait for an answer and puts her muffin and juice down. She heads back to the servery to collect her toast, yogurt and coffee. “Sorry about last night,” she says. “I got your note okay, but I didn’t get back till after 10:00. We had a few issues in the tunnel and I had to spend time at the office with my crew. Your idea sounded a whole lot better than my takeout pizza.”