Eighty Days to Elsewhere

by kc dyer

  The dinner waiting for us is a feast, with contributions from everyone present. Casserole dishes crowd the table, filled with lamb stew, rice peppered with nuts and raisins, and chicken served over noodles. The competing aromas are warm and spicy and sweet. There are teetering piles of flatbread, tomato and cucumber salad, boiled eggs, and a whole table of sweet fried breads, including an enormous box of Tim Hortons donuts. Excited voices fill the air with conversation in Somali and English and a couple of other languages I cannot begin to decode.

  Sumaya is seated with great ceremony at the head of a long table, with Dom and me on either side of her; however, this arrangement doesn’t last long. People move their chairs to get closer to Sumaya, to hear news of her village and her journey. Dom is slapped on the back so much, I’m convinced he’ll come away cheerfully bruised. My own hand is shaken until it’s numb, and I tell the saga of getting my stitches more times than I can count.

  Later, over a plate of sorghum salad and flatbread, Nkruna tells me her own story.

  “I was in the camps in Eritrea from when I was little girl,” she says, her voice low. “My father and both my brothers die in the violence there. My mother and I save all our money so smugglers take us on boat to Malaysia. It was a terrible trip, bad food, bad water. My mother die on the ship.” Her voice falters.

  “How old were you then?” asks Dominic softly.

  “Thirteen,” she replies. “Just like Sumaya.”

  “I’m fourteen, Auntie,” says Sumaya, walking past with a piece of flatbread in one hand and a donut hole in the other.

  At the sound of her niece’s voice, Nkruna straightens. “So you are,” she says brightly. When Sumaya has been pulled away by a couple of teen girls with an iPhone, Nkruna turns back to me. Her eyes are bright, but I see tears in the corners.

  “I work my way to Hong Kong, and build my life there. Then, when I was twenty-nine years old, I came to this country. I want to spare Sumaya all I had to go through as a refugee in Asia, and then a new immigrant here.”

  Her eyes drop for a minute, and I can see her swallow hard before she is able to continue.

  She reaches out and takes one of my hands, and one of Dominic’s. “I cannot thank you enough for all you have done for my sister’s child. She will be safe here. Soon, all she has gone through to get here will be old memory.”

  Dominic leans forward, his elbows on his knees, his half-eaten plate of food forgotten.

  “My mother emigrated from Samoa to Hawaii when she was in her teens,” he says. “She never speaks of the time before she met my dad, except to talk about cooking, of course.” His smile is wistful. “Whatever I can do to ease Sumaya’s transition into life here, I want to help. My mom does too.”

  I start to offer my own words of support, but suddenly, Nkruna releases my hand to enclose Dominic’s hand in both of hers. As she locks her eyes on him, I remember the lady on the Indian train, and close my mouth.

  It’s my turn to listen.

  “My sisters and I, we have done well in past twenty years,” Nkruna says. “We are lucky—we have a trade, and strong backs to work hard.” She smiles proudly. “Today, I have salon here, and my sister has hers in Etobicoke, which is outside Toronto.

  “We are forever in your debt for you bringing our family together,” she adds, beaming at me again. “Both of you.”

  I lean forward to return her hug. “I’m pretty sure she would have made it with or without us,” I say, and Dom nods. “That girl is a force.”

  Behind me, I hear Sumaya’s voice, and I recognize the tone immediately. We turn to find she has everyone under twenty seated against the wall of the small living room. She is standing with her back to us, facing the group of teens, holding one of Nkruna’s hairbrushes in her hand.

  “You think you know rain?” she says, speaking into the handle of the hairbrush. “Let me tell you about the rain I’ve seen . . .”

  Nkruna laughs. “I see what you mean,” she says. “You know, when she was a little girl, and I used to do her hair, I would tell her there was nothing she couldn’t do. At the time, I was thinking, you know—safe place to live, happy family, good career. But this?”

  She shakes her head, and then the three of us clink our cups of sweet Somali tea, and drink a silent toast to one remarkable kid.

  chapter fifty-seven

  IMAGE: Coast Mountains at Sunset

  IG: Romy_K [Vancouver, Canada, April 24]

  #BeautifulBritishColumbia #CompetitionReignited

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  The party spills out of the house into the backyard, which is packed with what feels like every member of the Canadian Somali diaspora, here to wish Sumaya well in her new home. My stomach is full to bursting with all the luscious food, making up for my total lack of appetite in Alaska. As the afternoon darkens, the rain eases up until only a faint mist floats through the evening sky. Everyone is eager to chat with Dom and me, but I am feeling antsy. The clock is ticking.

  Apart from the youngsters, it seems many of Nkruna’s friends came to Canada in the nineties and early part of the century, when Mogadishu was a war zone.

  “It is much better there today, and some of the younger ones, they go back,” explains Fawzia, whom I’m fairly certain is another of Sumaya’s aunts—Nkruna’s sister. “They want to bring investment and safe places back to Somalia.”

  I think of all that Sumaya went through to come here, and my stomach clenches a little. “And you? Do you plan to return one day?”

  Fawzia shakes her head firmly. “This is my home now,” she says. “My sisters and I, we work hard to get what we have. But I support the rights of my people to be free to make their own choices. Not everyone has had the same success as we have, coming here.”

  She points her spoon at a group of young girls circling Sumaya, each vying for a chance to tell jokes into her hairbrush. “Umoja, there in the pink? Both her brothers were lost to gangs. One died in a shooting and one is in jail.”

  “That’s awful,” I mutter.

  “But some good came from the bad. Umoja’s big sister, she works with gang members now. Helping them get back in school, or find jobs. She’s very good at it.”

  “I guess with her brothers to use as examples, she can probably be persuasive,” I say, and Fawzia grins.

  “She’s also much pretty girl,” she says, waggling her eyebrows at me. “Especially when I do her hair!”

  Later, I follow Nkruna into a little lean-to behind the kitchen. This tiny space only has room to hold a huge chest freezer and two muddy pairs of rubber boots.

  “You having a good time?” she asks me, while expertly filling a large ice cream tub with ice from the freezer. “This party to welcome Sumaya, for sure, but also for you and that handsome man of yours. We want you both to know how thankful we are.”

  “Oh, he’s not my—that is—we’re not . . .” I stutter, and her eyes widen.

  “Are you telling me you haven’t indulged in that juicy bit of man flesh you been traveling with?” she asks incredulously.

  “It’s—it’s not like that,” I mutter, feeling my face flaming. “We’re—uh—colleagues, sort of. With a—a—common goal.”

  She rolls her eyes in a way that makes it clear where Sumaya picked up her skills. “Girl, can you not see the way that man look at you?”

  “Really, Nkruna—it’s not like that at all.” Changing the subject, I pat my stomach. “Thank you so much for that delicious feast. I don’t think I’ve ever eaten better food in my life. But, I was wondering . . .”

  She clunks the overhead door to the freezer closed and drops the newly filled pail on top. “Anything,” she says before I can finish my sentence. “Anything you want, missy. Name it. It’s yours.”

  “Just your Wi-Fi code, if you don’t mind. I need to get online to find the fastest way back to New York, like right now.”


  She scoops up the bucket in one hand and sticks her other arm through mine. “Follow me. I’ve got the router jimmied up in a little closet in my back room, and the signal don’t travel out here so good.”

  After dropping the bucket of ice on the kitchen table, she leads me away from the throng toward a quiet hallway in the back of the small house.

  “Thank you so much,” I say again. “For everything. It’s such a relief to know Sumaya is safely with you. She seems so happy here already.”

  She squeezes my arm as we pause outside a door. “That girl had some adventures, for sure. She told me about your race,” she says, and clicks her tongue disapprovingly. “Seems odd you can’t hop a plane to get yourself home.”

  I can’t suppress a sigh, which to my embarrassment comes out sounding more like a yawn.

  Nkruna’s face immediately looks concerned. “You need rest, Ramona. Let me make bed up for you in my back room.” She reaches for the door handle.

  I’m so tired, I can hardly think, but I can’t even consider sleeping until I’ve sorted out the rest of the journey. Before I can say a word, the door swings open and Dominic steps out.

  “Report filed, transportation sorted,” he says, nodding. “Thank you for the quiet space to get it all done, Nkruna.” He steps back, swinging the door wide. “You coming in, Romy?”

  I slip past, averting my eyes from both of them, but he doesn’t seem to notice.

  “Good. Got a text from Powell for us to Skype in as soon as possible. Not sure why.”

  I glance up to see Nkruna, her hand on the doorknob and a funny little smile on her face. “I’ll close this to give you two some privacy,” she says. She manages one final eyebrow waggle in my direction before closing the door.

  All of this is lost on Dominic, who is logging his tablet into Skype.

  “I need to get my report in,” I mutter, as the familiar Skype tone bee-boops through the room. “And I have to figure out where to catch a train . . .”

  Dom turns to reply, but is interrupted by a sudden burst of noise from his screen. What looks like a stiff blond helmet emerges, which eventually coalesces into the back of Teresa Cipher’s head.

  She appears to be at some kind of party.

  When she turns to face us at last, it’s clear she’s on her phone. The sound quality is terrible, and the picture is bouncing all over the place.

  “Darlings!” she says effusively. “Are you together? How simply marvelous! Much more efficient this way, absolutely. Powell filled me in about the disastrous crossing. Where have you ended up?”

  Dom leans out of the view of the camera and mimes taking a drink. I’m not perfectly clear if he means Teresa’s question makes him need a drink, or whether he’s commenting on her own state of clearly heightened cheeriness.

  Maybe both.

  I lean in closer to the screen.

  “We’re outside Vancouver, Canada, Teresa. I’ve got a report ready to file on the crossing.”

  “What is that on your eyebrow?” Teresa asks loudly. “Are you all right?”

  “I’m fine,” I say quickly, and step to one side so Dom can be front and center. “Just a little bump to the head.”

  “A little bump?” she cries, and her face wobbles in and out of focus as she waves the phone around. Behind her I can see a large round table with a group of men seated around it.

  “Honey,” says a gruff, strangely familiar voice from somewhere behind her. “Are ya in or . . .”

  The voice garbles and then dies as the screen goes momentarily blank.

  “You need to hold the phone steady, Ms. Cipher,” says Dominic patiently.

  The picture returns.

  “There. I’ve propped you against my handbag,” says Teresa, and her face reappears, now at a more conventional distance from the screen. “Apologies for the unusual setting for this call, but I’m afraid something rather important has come up that I simply can’t afford to miss.”

  Anything that takes her mind off the fact that we are not in San Francisco is fine by me.

  “Our ship was blown off course, and we’ve ended up in Vancouver,” Dom says.

  “That’s right,” I chime in. “But I’m quite sure it’s still possible for me to make my way down to San Francisco, and then on to New York before May first.”

  On the screen, Teresa glances down at her watch before looking up again. She’s quiet for a long moment, and I can see the men behind her are playing poker. One of them, wearing a cowboy hat, throws his cards down in disgust.

  “I’m out,” he splutters, and then Teresa’s face fills the screen again.

  “Well, in the first place, I’ll accept your change in itinerary as inevitable, as storms are considered acts of God, according to the ExLibris principles. I’ve been to San Francisco dozens of times, and am fully prepared to present that element of the journey to our client myself.”

  “So—you want us to head straight to New York from here, then?” I ask.

  Her expression becomes more serious.

  “It seems apparent the two of you have joined forces,” she says. “Of course, the May first deadline remains firm. I must remind you that the original parameters of the agreements entered into—with both of you—remain intact. Whomever walks through the doors of the ExLibris offices first, having met all the conditions, of course, will be considered the winner.”

  We both nod obediently, and with a final, haughty raise of her eyebrow, she ends the call.

  I flop back in my chair, exhaustion weighing me down. Having Teresa Cipher approve the change in itinerary should feel like a huge triumph, but there’s still so much to do. So many miles to go before I sleep.

  Dom, on the other hand, looks exultant. “Bullet dodged,” he says, dusting his hands off theatrically. “Sumaya’s safely with Nkruna and the rest of her aunties, and Teresa isn’t holding Vancouver against us.”

  “That is good,” I admit. “And listen—I’m grateful you didn’t mention the whole thing with my injury. All the time in the hospital cost us at least a day.”

  Dominic leans back in his own chair, and for the first time, I can see lines of tiredness creasing the corners of his eyes. “You didn’t ask to be thrown down those stairs. It could have been any of us,” he says. “But right now, all I want is another Timbit. Join me?”

  I shoot him a tired smile. He might be my competition, but we definitely share a taste in donuts. “I can’t. I need to send this report in, and then find a train that’ll take me to New York. Before I fall asleep over the keyboard.”

  I flip open the lid of my laptop and reach for the slip of paper with Nkruna’s password.

  Dom heaves himself out of his chair. “Okay,” he says. “Send your report. But before you walked in here, I looked up the trains, and they run sporadically—at best—this time of year. So I reserved two seats on a ski bus heading into the Rockies. Once we get into Alberta, we can pick up a Greyhound the rest of the way.”

  “Two seats?” I say. “Like—one for me too?”

  He gives a little shrug. “Teamwork got us this far,” he says. “I don’t see why . . .”

  Behind him, the door springs open, and the air is suddenly filled with shrieks of laughter.

  “I told you, I told you,” giggles Sumaya. “No make-out. You owe me five bucks, Nkruna!”

  And ten minutes later, in spite of the fact—or perhaps because of the fact—she’d made a game of my embarrassment, Sumaya gives me a giant hug by the front door of her new home. “I’ll never forget you,” she says, squeezing me tightly. “Now, you need to go ahead and win, okay?”

  “Okay,” I say as she runs over to hug Dom.

  He walks up, grinning. “She told me she wants me to win,” he says. “Just so you know whose side she’s really on.”

  Out front, a competition has arisen over who will help us get
on our way. Several people offer their cars, including one man who tells me he lobbied to get Uber to Vancouver for three years. “Free enterprise wins out!” he declares, waving his flat cap jauntily.

  In the end, one of Nkruna’s friends, dressed in his Surrey RCMP uniform, gives us a lift in his squad car to the bus stop in Downtown Vancouver.

  “Neighborhood outreach,” he says when we offer to pay him for driving so far out of his way. “Thank you for bringing that little girl back to her family.”

  After waving goodbye, we are the only two people not wearing goggles to climb into the ski bus. And in spite of the noise and the party atmosphere, I curl up in my corner seat near the back and fall solidly asleep.

  I don’t wake up again until many hours later, when, with the world still enveloped in a pure, velvet darkness, the alarming sound of a shattering axle beneath us brings the bus to a skidding halt.

  chapter fifty-eight

  IMAGE: Canadian Rail Line

  IG: Romy_K [Craigellachie, Canada, April 25]

  #BrokenAxel #LastSpike

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  I like to think the fact I was completely unconscious before the axle broke, and only semiconscious for a few seconds after, plays in my favor. Also a positive? The coach does not spin out or flip over on its side. From my spot near the back, all I feel after the snapping sound, is a jerking side-to-side motion, like being the kid on skates at the end of the crack the whip line.

  When the bus finally settles, angled uncomfortably up a snowbank on one side of the highway, I’m completely unhurt. Not even a wrenched neck.

  I do, however, find myself virtually encased within the long limbs of one Dominic Madison. As soon as the bus stops moving, he unfolds himself from around me.

  “Ah . . .” he says as I look up at him, speechless. “When I felt the bus go sideways, I assumed the crash position around you, since you were asleep on my lap.”