Amanda’s mind flashed back to similar experiences in Africa, where the village gathered in the common, and drums and flutes were magically produced. Music is a universal language of joy and community, she thought. The melodies and instruments varied, but they all mimicked the beat of the heart.
It was past midnight by the time she and Chris staggered out of Bobby’s kitchen. Their voices were hoarse and their heads spun. She stumbled in the darkness and linked her arm through his to keep her balance.
“You’re quite the balladeer, you,” she murmured.
“Country folk have to do something on those cold Saskatchewan winters,” he laughed. “But I haven’t sung those songs in a long time.”
Swaying slightly, she gazed out across the rolling meadow, where pinpoints of light still glowed in some of the houses. A thousand replies sprang to her mind, but they were all too intimate. I’m drunk, she thought. Really drunk. And in danger of doing something stupid.
Instead, she hugged his arm briefly before drawing away. “Well, if you’re ever fired from the RCMP, there’s a job waiting for you on stage,” she muttered before marching resolutely on ahead to her tent.
The police reinforcements weren’t due until late the next morning, but even so, Amanda and Chris were barely coherent when a police cruiser towing a trailer pulled into the meadow. A single constable climbed out and greeted Chris with a curt nod.
“Protesters are still up on the highway at St. Anthony,” he said by way of explanation for his lateness. “Tempers are getting ugly because it’s slowing down the shrimp trucks. The sergeant said he’d send out more help if I asked for it. Plus HQ in St. John’s is interested in having a look.”
As it turned out, more help wasn’t needed. The constable interviewed the boys and took more photographs of the boat and the footprints before wrapping the boat into a huge plastic tarp with Chris and Amanda’s help and dragging it by ATV back to his trailer. He was gone by mid-afternoon. He’d shared barely an extraneous word with either Chris or Amanda, except to thank Chris for his help and to tell him he was free to continue his holiday.
“Talkative guy, isn’t he?” Amanda said as they watched the plume of dust from his cruiser trail up the hill. Even with her sunglasses and her hat pulled low over her eyes, the sun seemed too bright.
“Under orders from Poker-Ass, I’m sure,” said Chris. “But this news will be all up and down the coast by nightfall, if it isn’t already. A boatload of fugitives in this little village? That’ll be a legend told for years. It’ll be a whole ship and a heroic rescue by the time those boys are grown, with songs written about it too.”
Amanda chuckled, the beat of the kitchen party still thrumming through her body. “I wonder what will happen to them,” she said. “Especially if they’re fugitives from one of those foreign boats. People in most parts of the world don’t realize how vast and desolate the Canadian wilderness can be. There are no roads or villages for miles, no shelter or food unless you make your own.”
“We know they didn’t show up at Croque, but there are two more villages farther down the coast,” Chris said, spreading the map out on the hood of his truck. “Two more places they might have passed through, if they stick to the coast. I think we should check with the locals at both places. Not just for the fugitives, but also for Phil. If it wasn’t his boat we found, then he might still be looking for one.”
And getting more and more bitter with every failure, she thought. She leaned over Chris’s shoulder to pinpoint the next village down the coast. Conche. No road connected it directly to the one they were in, so they’d be forced to retrace their route inland to the main highway. More miles on that bone-jarring dirt road.
“Do you think we can make it to Conche this afternoon?” she asked. “We’ve lost a day with this lifeboat business, and we’re falling farther behind him.”
He folded the map and glanced at his watch. “Days are still pretty long, so yeah, I think so. Unless the road is even worse than this one.”
The road was rough, the terrain even more rugged, and the hills steeper, but at the end of the trip, they were rewarded with a spectacular jewel of a village nestled in a bay between towering green mountains. The village of Conche was larger and more settled than Grandois, with a grocery store that doubled as a hardware store and a bustling harbour filled with boats. No sooner had they begun their inquiries at the local store than the villagers drifted in to offer help and to volunteer information. Word of their quest had already travelled from Grandois.
The villagers had seen no trace of barefoot men possibly speaking a foreign language, but Phil and his son had been through a couple of days earlier, wanting a boat. This time he had wanted to buy one outright, but he hadn’t enough cash.
“Boats are our life out here,” one man said to Chris. He was a burly, weatherbeaten man with a florid face and hands the size of hams, who introduced himself as Casey. “I offered him my wife instead, but it was no go.”
Laughter ensued among the other men in the store.
“I might have liked my chances with him,” one of the women shot back.
“The boy really wanted to go out on the sea, so Thaddeus took them out for a spin around the peninsula to the back harbour,” said Casey, pointing out the window to a man unloading wood from his truck. “It was a short run, didn’t even get to show them one whale before your friend wanted to go back in. Then he took off without even a thank-you.”
“Your friend needs a good slap upside the head,” added the wife with the caustic tongue.
“Where did he go?” Chris asked. “Back up the highway toward Roddickton?”
“No, he was after a hike along the shore —”
At that moment Amanda spotted what had escaped her notice in the sea of old pickups parked helter-skelter by the wharf. A rusty black Chevy like the one Phil owned was parked near the entrance to town. She broke away and jogged down the steps of the store and along the street for a closer look. Phil’s licence plate! Her heart leaped. She shouted to Chris. As he made his way over, she cupped her hands to the glass to peer inside. Maps and chocolate-bar wrappers littered the floor. She peered into the truck bed, which was piled high with camping gear and clothes, along with several two-fours of empty beer cans and a pile of empty vodka bottles.
“Looks like Phil was doing some serious drinking,” Chris muttered.
Casey came puffing up behind them, his face now nearly purple. “Yeah, I was getting to that. We never touched the beer. He already had a snootful when he arrived. Like I was telling your boyfriend here, he and the boy took off on foot across to the back harbour. Never came back. The kids went looking yesterday but didn’t see hide nor hair.”
“What’s in the back harbour?” Amanda asked, visualizing the map. Nothing but cliffs and woods, she recalled. She didn’t like the sound of this. Phil’s behaviour sounded erratic and desperate — driving drunk on rough mountain roads with his son by his side and no clear idea where he was going. As if he were in full flight mode.
Casey shrugged. “Just Old Stink. Keeps to himself. Your friend won’t get much help out of him. He hasn’t hardly said a word in sixty years.”
“Except to himself,” the wife added. For all their apparent discord, they were clearly in sync, Amanda thought.
“Is he dangerous?” Chris cut in.
“Old Stink?” Casey snorted. “Might have been at one time if you got in his face, but he must be getting up toward ninety by now. Harmless as a fly.”
“Well —” the wife began, but Chris was thinking like a cop.
“Does he have a gun?”
“For hunting, yeah,” Casey said. “An old Winchester 94. Shoots mostly ptarmigan and rabbits these days, and last time I saw him, his eyesight wasn’t so good.”
“How far away is he?”
“Oh, a couple of miles up the back harbour, on the cape across the way. Yo
u have to reach it by boat, but my brother’s got mine out. Maybe in the morning —”
Amanda jumped in impatiently. “But if it’s across the bay, our friend won’t be able to reach it on foot, either. He’ll still be on this side.”
“There’s an old boat,” the wife said. She was getting in the spirit of the drama. “Part way up the harbour. You can walk to it, and there’s a footpath that we use for berry-picking.”
Amanda glanced at her watch. The sun had already slipped behind the mountains to the west, and within a couple of hours, darkness would settle in. Another day lost, another day farther behind. She called Kaylee, but before she could set out, Chris shook his head at her.
“We might make it there before dark,” he said, “but we can’t make it safely back. And Old Stink’s doesn’t sound like the ideal spot to spend the night.”
“But every night is a night wasted! We have flashlights. Kaylee will keep us on the path.”
Chris’s eyes narrowed as he studied the distant cliffs and the steep forested mountains along the shore. “One wrong step, and we could be in serious trouble.”
“Please, Chris. I don’t like the sound of things. Phil sounds desperate!”
She knew he wasn’t happy, that as a cop he should be the voice of caution. But damn it, you don’t trek through the gun-toting jihadi hordes of northern Nigeria without learning how to survive.
She threw some power bars and emergency supplies into her day pack, tossed it over her shoulder, and set off. A short reconnaissance trip, that was all.
Either he’d follow, or he wouldn’t.
He followed, as did Casey and an entourage of villagers, who picked their way single-file along the shore path. The tide was coming in, and tongues of foam licked over the rocks toward their feet. As the harbour widened, Amanda scrutinized the distant cape ahead. Had Phil been fool enough to try to swim across? Even if he could manage the distance, the waves and tides, not to mention the cold, would kill anyone who ventured out.
As she was crossing a small patch of stony beach, Casey suddenly called out from behind. She turned to him inquiringly. He was scanning the rocky hollows and scrubby bushes along the side. Finally he shook his head.
“Boat’s gone.”
“Whose boat?”
He shrugged. “Everybody’s. We leaves it here for those that wants to get across the harbour. Good berry-picking up on Cape Rouge over the other side. Old Stink chases the kids off when he catches them.”
She studied the pebbled sand. It was still damp and washed smooth by the last high tide, and all traces of the boat and footprints had been erased. The distance to the other shore looked nearly a mile, and the waves packed a punch as they rushed in. Phil was an inexperienced Prairie boy and Tyler was eleven years old. Moreover, they had left almost all their gear in the truck.
“What kind of boat is it? Big?”
The man laughed. “Little go-ashore, gets you from here to there. Someone put a 9 hp on ’er a while back that works sometimes.”
Chris was studying the opposite shore through binoculars. “I don’t see a boat over there.”
“Well, nobody be fool enough to try to land on them rocks, not even your friend. You go up the cape half a mile or so, dere’s a small beach. But Old Stink keeps his boat and stage dere, and his house is just up the hill, so your friend might have got a bit of an argument.”
“We have to get over there,” Amanda said.
Casey shook his head. “Not tonight you don’t. I can take you over in the morning.”
“But —”
“We have to go back to get my boat. Too late today.”
Amanda chafed. She knew he was right, but she was staring out at the surly sea one last time, almost willing Phil and Tyler to appear, when a small piece of debris caught her eye. Bobbing up and down in the waves farther down the bay. She squinted. The area was now in deep shadow from the mountains to the west. Was the light playing tricks with her eyes? She took Chris’s binoculars and focused them on the water. At first she saw nothing, but eventually a dark shape flashed briefly into view before being swallowed by the waves. Then again. Each glimpse so tantalizing yet too fleeting to be identified.
She pointed it out to Casey. “Is that the boat?”
He shielded his eyes. She could tell he was about to deliver one of his typical shrugs, so she held out the binoculars. “Please.”
His blue eyes rested on her thoughtfully, deeply set in his weathered face. They softened a little. He took the binoculars.
“Too small for a boat,” he said. “Could be part of a boat, but could be nudding. A fallen tree, a piece of old dock. Lots of debris washes up into that arm at high tide.”
“We should check it out.”
For the first time, he grinned at her, showing a classic Newfoundland sense of play. “In the morning, my dear. Time to go back before the bears start thinking about dinner.” As if to reinforce his words, he turned to retrace his steps along the path. Chris turned to follow. Amanda cursed her own impotence. That piece of debris beckoned, so close and yet utterly beyond reach. The sun was sinking deep behind the hills, and they would be in jeopardy themselves if they went out on the water.
Moreover, she acknowledged with a sick feeling, if that was a piece of that boat out there, it might be too late anyway.
“First light?” she called.
Casey waved his arm. “Before first light, my dear.”
True to his word, Casey was down at his wharf readying a little skiff when Amanda crawled out of her tent the next morning. He had already loaded a tool kit, a pile of PFDs, and a tank of gas, and was tinkering with the motor. Mist was slowly wisping off the bay, shimmering pink against the pre-dawn sky. The ocean lay at half tide, and water glistened in pools along the rocky shore. Gulls and gannets swooped overhead.
“You don’t need to do all this, Casey,” she said. “You have work to do, so why don’t we just rent your boat —”
“What, and miss the adventure? And the chance to get away from the wife for a bit?”
Amanda laughed. “Okay, but at least let me pay for the gas.”
Even that offer was met with argument until she put her foot down. Dawn was a faint smudge of peach over the ocean when Casey, Chris, Amanda, and Kaylee piled into the little skiff and headed around the tip of the peninsula into the ocean swell. Amanda sat in the bow, which rose and fell as the boat slammed the waves and sent arcs of spray along the gunnels. Kaylee huddled against her on the narrow seat, her ears flattened and her eyes wide.
The swells softened once they’d rounded the northern tip of the peninsula and passed through the narrows into the back harbour. Casey slowed so they could search the shoreline. The mist had swirled away and visibility was good. Amanda searched with a mixture of hope and dread. Nothing. Nothing but endless rock and brush and spindly spruce struggling up the slopes. An inlet here and there, where gap-toothed shacks and broken wharves lay half-reclaimed by bush. They passed the beach where the boat should have been, but it was still empty. Farther up the bay, the dark shape they had seen in the water yesterday had disappeared. Likely carried out on the tide, Casey said.
Finally Casey steered the boat into a little cove on the opposite shore, where a sagging shed bleached almost white and missing half its roof sat on the edge of the pebbled shore. A skinny wharf of equal vintage wobbled out over the water. Seagulls flapped in hopeful circles.
“Old Stink’s wharf and stage,” Casey shouted over the noise of the motor.
Amanda’s heart sank. There was no sign of the little boat, nor any other boat. Casey guided them into the cove, cut the engine, and let the boat drift toward the wharf.
“Stink’s boat’s gone. Must be out fishing.”
They had passed numerous craft out in the open ocean, and Casey had waved to most of them. “Was his one of the boats we saw?” Amanda asked.
Casey shook his head. “But Old Stink follows his own clock. Been known to go out in the middle of the night just so he don’t have to say hello. He can navigate by the echo of the cliffs, knows every trough and shoal by heart.”
The wharf was within reach, but Casey made no move to grab it. “Not sure there’s much point us going ashore. Nothing here. Maybe your friend planned on walking all the way to Croque.”
“How far is that?” Amanda asked.
“If you’re a crow, twenty kilometres or so. If you’re on foot, maybe two or three times that, through dense bush and bog.”
Kaylee’s growl stopped her mid-thought, seconds before the dog launched herself from the bow of the skiff onto the wharf and ran to shore. Calling to her proved useless. The dog stood on the shoreline, rigidly still and apparently deaf. Casey laughed.
“Don’t think she liked the boat ride.”
Amanda studied Kaylee carefully. The rigid stance and stiff tail suggested threat. “I don’t think it’s that. There’s something on shore.”
“Likely not something we want to meet, then. Let’s get her back in the boat.”
Casey secured the boat and they clambered onto the rickety wharf, which listed dangerously underfoot. Amanda took a deep breath and regretted it instantly. The stench of rot and old fish was suffocating. Casey grinned. “This ain’t nudding compared to his cabin.”
A thin path led from the shore up the slope. Kaylee stood at the entrance to it, her nose sifting the putrid air. Then her hair rose along her back and a low whine sounded in her throat. Before Amanda could reach her, she took off up the path and disappeared into the woods with her nose to the ground. Amanda yelled and scrambled over lichen-covered rocks to keep up.
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