Fire in the Stars

by Barbara Fradkin

  She laughed. “It’s safer to hang on,” she yelled into the wind. “I promise to respect your virtue.”

  His arms slid around her again as cautiously as if he were grasping a gossamer web. They bounced and jolted down the road, leaning into the rollercoaster of twists and turns. A ridge of rounded coastal mountains loomed ahead, dense with spruce and fir. The road picked a path through it, climbing and twisting. After an apparent eternity, they began to spot small fenced gardens and stacks of firewood along the roadside, sure signs that they were approaching a village. A picturesque cemetery appeared on their right, well kept and surrounded by a low picket fence. Farther on, the first modest village houses were tucked into the hills.

  Amanda had read up on Croque that morning while Chris made breakfast. She knew that it had begun as a French naval station in the mid-seventeenth century to supply and protect the French fishing vessels that fished the coastal waters of western Newfoundland. Three centuries later, the government of France still maintained the small cemetery where its officers had been buried.

  The village itself was small, less than two dozen houses scattered like faded children’s blocks over the hills. Despite the handful of trucks and cars parked outside, some of them and the washing hung on the lines, it had an abandoned air. As they rumbled through the village, Amanda’s heart sank. The hills were gentle, and the ocean, when they finally caught a glimpse of it through the buildings, was a small inland fjord barely wider than a river. A few small fishing boats were tied up to a weather-beaten wharf. There were no wild and rugged cliffs here, no roaring surf.

  And no sign of Phil’s truck anywhere.

  She parked the bike by a sign commemorating the French station, let Kaylee out, and they all waded down through the overgrown grass to the old wharf. All that was left of the grand French presence was a group of ageing wooden stages propping each other up like a row of drunken sailors. The little fjord sparkled serenely in the sun.

  “Okay, that was a waste of time,” Chris muttered, surreptitiously massaging his rear. “Hard to imagine this little place was once a bustling naval station.”

  She had to admit he was right. Driving in, she had seen a community centre of sorts, but no other sign of commerce or prosperity. But she heard the sound of hammering nearby and climbed the slope to find an old man repairing the front steps of his home. Quizzically, he watched her approach, as if strangers rarely ventured to this remote little relic of history.

  Kaylee raced up to him and dropped a piece of old driftwood at his feet, breaking the awkward moment. The old man laughed as he threw it for her, and she was off, a flash of red through the tall fronds of grass.

  “We’re looking for our friend,” Amanda said, producing her cellphone photos and repeating her story about the mix-up in meeting place. As she spoke, another old man emerged from his house and the two of them had a brief exchange. She couldn’t understand a word of it, but could hear the doubt in their voices.

  “Yeah, they come by,” one of them said finally, “but there’s not much here. No place for them to stay, no boats for rent, neither. Only fifteen families here now, and most of them old-timers. The young ones are gone away to work. We told your friend to try Grandois just up the coast.”

  Another gravel road, as it turned out, that branched off at Croque and led to the open ocean farther north. On the map, Grandois looked even smaller than Croque, so Amanda was delighted when they topped the hill by a little white church and saw a postcard-perfect fishing village spread out below them. Boats of all shapes and sizes lay on the pebble shore or bobbed against the wharf, and gaily painted houses were sprinkled in the meadow that curved around the cove. A few vehicles were parked in front of the houses, a woman was hanging out her laundry, and another played with her baby. Amanda spotted a man working on a fishing net on the wharf and headed down the hill toward him. This time Kaylee bounded gleefully after the sandpipers on the shore.

  Chris repeated their story about searching for a friend. As he spoke, other men emerged from yards and houses. Soon a small crowd of men in blue jeans and windbreakers had gathered. Their faces were tanned and creviced by years on the open sea.

  “Yes, we seen him,” said one. “The man with the young fella. He wanted a boat for a few days to go out to the Grey Islands, but we didn’t have none to spare.”

  “Well now, that’s not quite right, Tom,” said another, this one older and greyer. “He didn’t seem like he knew how to skipper a boat and he had no gear, so no one wanted to rent him theirs.”

  “I offered to take them out in my boat,” said a third. “Show them around the islands. Still a few whales in the bay, and lots of migrating birds. Gannets, terns, puffins. But he weren’t interested in that.”

  “He has some temper on him, your friend,” Tom said. “The young fella was tugging on his arm saying it’s okay, Dad, we can go back to St. Anthony and take that boat tour. But the dad said he had something much more exciting in mind.”

  “Even tried to buy my old boat over there,” said the older man, pointing to a small skiff lying in the grass. “I said she hadn’t been in the water for five years and she’d sink like a stone before she got half a mile off shore.”

  Amanda shielded her eyes from the glare of the water and stared out to sea. The coastline curved and looped into points and peninsulas, with several small islands within easy view.

  “Are those the islands he wanted to visit?” she asked.

  “Oh no, m’ dear. Some much bigger ones way out in the ocean. You can’t see them from here.”

  She followed his finger but could see nothing but shimmering silver. “How far are they?”

  “Oh … a good fifteen, twenty kilometres?”

  She shivered. That was a long way to travel in a sinking boat. She fetched her binoculars from her side bag and trained them on the ocean. Even with the powerful magnification, she could see nothing beyond the low-lying points and islands that cluttered the waters in between.

  “Nothing but birds there now. Used to be villages on them islands,” said Tom. “Until the government shut them all down and moved everybody to the mainland back in the fifties. My father was born out there, so was Ted here. That was some rugged life, b’y.”

  Kaylee had been frolicking along the water’s edge, trying to engage the sandpipers in play. One of the men hurled a stick of driftwood out into the water and she splashed out after it, diving headfirst into the surf and emerging with the stick clamped between her teeth. She raced back to the fisherman and flung it at his feet.

  “Oh, now you’re done for!” Chris laughed. “How many hours do you have to spare?”

  Another stick, another gleeful dive. Amanda shifted her binoculars to the nearby islands and shoreline beyond the village, searching for signs of habitation. For Phil’s truck. For any clue. The land stood empty and untouched as far as she could see. Nothing but scoured rock, grassy heath, and tangles of spruce, battered and misshapen by relentless time.

  A twitch of movement shot across the lens. A moose browsing the shore? A bear? She focused harder. Rocks and scrub hid her view, but then the figure emerged again. Two, three, maybe four separate figures, leaping nimbly across the open rock before disappearing behind spruce again.

  Human. Running full tilt toward the village. She waited with her binoculars trained until they came into view again. Closer now. A faint shout drifted in on the wind.

  Kaylee perked up her ears and turned in the direction of the sound. Spotting the figures, she grabbed her stick and raced toward them. The fishermen turned to watch the figures approach. Running, leaping, flailing over the rocky shore.

  “What in the love of …? What have those boys got on their tail?”

  Amanda could see now that they were children, gangly-

  limbed and fearless on the treacherous rocks. She thought they looked more excited than afraid, but the fishermen were frownin
g in apprehension. When the boys finally splashed through a shallow tidal pool and came within earshot, Tom held up his hand.

  “Where you to, Bobby?”

  The lead boy reached them and bent over, panting to catch his breath. Before he could speak, a second one arrived and managed to blurt out, “’Dere be a boat!”

  “A boat? Yes, b’y. Das an ocean out there.”

  “No!” exclaimed the first boy. “On the shore, washed up in the bush.”

  “Lots of stuff washes up on the shore over the years, son.”

  “No, Dad! This weren’t there last week when we went clam-digging. And it’s not a fishing boat. More like a lifeboat, with a big hole punched in its side.”

  Chris was instantly alert. “What kind of lifeboat?”

  The boy shrugged. “Can’t tell, but maybe it’s that boat the cops are looking for.”

  Chris was already on the move. “Show me.”

  The boat was upside down under an old spruce whose spreading branches shielded it from view until the group was almost upon it. Chris tramped around it, fighting the spiky spruce branches as he looked for a registration number. Amanda could see that a section of the siding had been smashed and broken off where she figured the number should be. Deliberately or victim of the ruthless sea, she wondered?

  Beneath her curiosity, dread needled into her gut. What if Phil, in his single-mindedness, had taken this boat, and foundered on the rocks? She wasn’t even sure he had lifejackets, let alone other survival gear. Were he and Tyler lying on the bottom of the sea, or washed up on the shore somewhere farther down?

  Chris raised his head to study the stony shore. It was low tide, but the wavering line of broken shells and seaweed clearly marked the high water mark, at least fifteen metres below the boat. His face was a mask of dispassion. “Could the waves wash it up here?”

  Bobby’s father shook his head. “There been some big storm surges this summer, but none strong enough to toss the boat that far.”

  “Looks like it’s been hidden, then.”

  The boys were dancing around, excited now that Chris had identified himself as an RCMP officer, each eager to impress him with their detective skills.

  “We never seen anybody,” Bobby said, “but there are footprints in the sand.”

  Chris whirled around. “Where?”

  “We’ll show you!” The boys raced off.

  “Stop!”

  The boys froze in place until Chris reached them. “Stay on the rocks and don’t go close. You point out where they are and I’ll check.” As if seeing their disappointment, he smiled. “We don’t want to destroy evidence, do we?”

  Amanda called Kaylee over and leashed her so that she wouldn’t add excited dog prints to the scene as well. Together the small posse worked its way farther along the shore, careful to stay on the rocks. Chris bent his head to scrutinize each small patch of silt and mud in the crevices between the rocks. Amanda recognized bird tracks and small mammals, but no humans.

  Farther along in a sheltered inlet, a swath of natural sand beach sparkled in the sunlight. Surf had washed seaweed, shells, and other ocean flotsam up to the high tide line. Below that line, the sand was washed smooth and clean, but above it footprints and other gouges were easy to make out. Some were the boot treads of small children, but at the far edge of the beach, larger prints had dug deep holes in the soft sand.

  Amanda felt a rush of relief. Whoever this was, they had survived the wreck. Chris signalled for them all to stop while he walked cautiously forward, staying in the soft wet sand below high tide. Amanda watched with frustration and anxiety as he circled the patch of sand, clambered up on the nearby rocks, and took out his camera. He snapped a dozen shots, fiddling with the zoom and the angles, before disappearing over the ridge ahead. Kaylee strained at her leash, mirroring the impatience they all felt. Gulls wheeled overhead and sandpipers returned to capture the minute creatures the waves lapped up. The wind rippled through the low-lying bushes, where bright coral berries nestled among glossy leaves. Amanda idly wondered if they were Newfoundland’s famous partridge berries.

  After an apparent eternity, Chris’s tousled head bobbed into view above the ridge and a moment later he came back along the edge of the rocks to the safety of the beach. He signalled Amanda with a slight shake of his head before skirting the footprints and returning to the group.

  “No more sign of them. I have to report this boat, but there’s no signal here. The town of Roddickton has the closest RCMP detachment, so we’ll go there and give them these photos. Meanwhile I need to rope off this section of the shore until the police arrive. We have to protect the evidence. It could be our friend and his son, or it could be those potential fugitives.”

  He sent two of the boys back to the village for a long length of rope. The other boys had a dozen questions. Will the police bring dogs? A helicopter? Trackers? Can Kaylee track? Chris teased them with bets that Kaylee could find every last ball in the village. Once they realized that he was not going to speculate further, the boys sensed the drama was over and began drifting away. Amanda and Chris were left to the silence of the surf and the gulls.

  “What do you think?” she asked.

  His brow furrowed unhappily. “I don’t like it. That boat’s not a regular fishing skiff. Possibly a lifeboat, although it’s pretty small to be out on the open sea.”

  “Phil might have settled for any boat in the mood he was in.”

  He nodded. “But the fugitives were also in what looked like a lifeboat. And they were spotted in the sea only about thirty kilometres north of here.”

  “What about the footprints? Could you tell anything from them?”

  He nodded. “Two people at least.”

  Her eyes widened.

  “Both adults, I’d say.”

  “But Tyler is eleven. He might be at that age where his feet have outgrown the rest of him.”

  “I know.” He gazed into the distance, chewing his lip.

  “What? There’s something else, isn’t there.”

  “Two things. They could mean anything, but I have a cop’s suspicious mind. First of all, the footprints were barefoot.”

  “So? Maybe their shoes were wet.”

  “I hope so, because those rocks will shred feet in no time.”

  “And second?”

  “The village is barely a kilometre to the north, yet they headed south. Away from help. Into the wilderness.”

  Chapter Eleven

  After another bone-jarring rollercoaster ride, they retrieved Chris’s truck and drove on to Roddickton to talk to the detachment commander. Roddickton had only three RCMP officers who were responsible for a vast swath of remote wilderness, and one was on a training course, but the commander, Corporal Willington, seemed thrilled at the possibility of genuine intrigue. He was a chubby, jovial man with a loud, infectious laugh who plied them with tea and filled every spare moment with chatter while they awaited instructions from the investigator in St. Anthony about the seizure of the boat. It was nearly an hour before the order came for Chris to return to protect the scene until reinforcements arrived the next day to remove it.

  “If Sergeant Poker-Ass thinks I’m camping out on those sharp rocks with the bugs and the bears, he can dream on,” Chris muttered once they were safely out of the station. “We’ll set up camp on the village heath; that’s close enough.”

  By the time they returned to Grandois, the long shadows of the mountains had stolen over the village, and the salt air had chilled. They set up their tents in the meadow and were just about to cook dinner when Bobby arrived with an invitation to dinner from his parents.

  Grabbing a bottle of wine, Chris and Amanda headed gratefully to the white bungalow perched on the slope above the cove. The kitchen was clearly the centre of their house. It was large, welcoming, and redolent with the smells of frying fish and cabbage.
The wooden table, which bore the scars and burns of decades, easily fit ten people. Bobby’s mother, a stout woman of boundless energy and talk, whirled around the kitchen tending the stove, fixing tea, and piling up platters of fish, potatoes, cabbage, and fried salt pork.

  “This looks fabulous,” Amanda said as she helped to set out plates. “Thank you so much.”

  “A real Newfoundland meal,” the woman said. “Nudding fancy, mind, but it’ll fill you up.”

  As they ate, it seemed as if the entire village drifted in, carrying cakes, berry pies, and bottles of blueberry wine, so that by the time the meal was finished, the room was packed. People laughed and traded quips so rapidly that Amanda struggled to understand every third word. She could tell from Chris’s expression that he was equally befuddled.

  Then someone produced a harmonica and a bottle of screech, Bobby’s father dug out a guitar, and soon the whole house vibrated to the beat of Celtic rock. Kitchen spoons and pot lids became percussion instruments while the wood floor shook with the beat of dancing feet.

  “It’s a kitchen time!” Bobby’s father shouted. “In the old days, before all this TV and Internet, there was nudding to do on the long, cold nights but play songs and tell stories.”

  Amanda’s first shot of screech nearly tore her throat out, but by the third, she was tossing it back like a native. Chris was keeping up too. As one song finally came to an end, he reached over and took the guitar. Tucking it into the crook of his arm, he ran his long fingers across the strings in a rich, warm chord. Once, twice, and then with a grin, he broke into a rollicking rhythm and began to sing. Amanda recognized the melodies of Slavic folk music. The villagers hooted and began to stomp their feet. Before long they were joining in the chorus even though they didn’t understand a word.