“Drink tea,” Harley suggested, or warned, as Jack began chewing on his second mouthful. “Don’t eat too much at once.” He left it at that, knowing that Jack would learn soon enough on his own.
“I wonder what the railways are up to these days?” Malcolm floated the question over the fire, as a way of giving Harley a chance to speak about the news he might know.
“They move faster and faster, those things,” Harley muttered. “They’ve been working on a rail line to go north. It crosses somewhere downstream.” He didn’t sound happy to say it.
Malcolm nodded, waiting for more.
Jack said nothing either, but he wondered about what might be happening downstream, and where that might be.
“Change, change,” Harley hissed.
Jack didn’t look over at him, out of politeness or deference, but he could imagine Mr. Harley shaking his head as he said it.
“First the traders, then the farmers and the lumbermen. And then the railways to make it all go faster.” Harley shook his head.
“It makes you wonder what’s next, doesn’t it?” Malcolm prompted. Although Jack couldn’t understand why. He’d seldom heard his father talk so much, or for so long.
“They will find something,” Harley said. “Just like they found the farmland up by the Peace River. They want to put plows and farms up there, where things to eat won’t even grow.”
At that point, Jack didn’t know whether Mr. Harley was growling, or maybe just quietly laughing. He didn’t look over to find out. He just kept on listening, and thinking, and wondering.
“Soon the prairies and the bush will all disappear, like the buffalo and the beaver.”
They might have talked some more, but Jack didn’t find out. His dad nodded for him to crawl in under the canoe for the night. He was probably ready. He’d been in the water, pulling the canoes for most of the day. And most of that up to his waist and beyond in the cold Athabasca.
Jack would have liked to hear more, but tomorrow he would be on his own. He had a lot to think about.
Jack wondered about his big decision, as he rolled himself up into his blanket, somewhat sheltered by their small canoe. It was old and beat up, with lots of patches on its canvas. Most of them were just tarred into place. He wondered how the canoe would stand up to the trip that he intended to take. He also wondered about Cyril, the only one who knew something of his plans. Then he wondered about the three of them—Cyril, Amelia, and his mom—waiting at the house, downstream. Waiting and wondering, too, he imagined.
Jack pretended to be asleep when Malcolm finally turned in for the night, banging his head on the gunwale as he did so. Jack tried to focus on the stars moving above them. Eventually he did fall asleep. Tiredness had overcome doubt and worry.
9
“Now, boy.”
It was the next thing Jack heard. And with that command, Malcolm nudged his son’s feet.
Malcolm was already standing in the still dark mist that wafted around them. The hiss of the river’s currents and eddies was the only noise. That and the snapping of twigs, as Harley blew the coals of their fire back to life, and then encouraged the flames with larger and larger kindling, and then branches of driftwood that Jack had laid by the evening before.
There was time for tea and a bite of the sausage that Harley offered again. Then Jack watched, as Harley and his dad tossed their things into their canoes, checked the lashing of things, and then climbed in themselves. Jack had only served to speed things up for his dad until they got to this point. From here, Malcolm and Harley would help each other around or through any hard spots. Jack had learned in his first year of helping that his dad did not want his company up to Hinton. He’d known better than to ask why, even back then.
Jack kicked the fire apart as a precaution, even though there wasn’t much left but coals. He then looked around at the world of the river that was now all his own. He tied his blanket pack and spare paddle to the center thwart in the canoe, and set it into the pool of the small creek from which his dad and Mr. Harley had set out a while before. He had no other gear and no food. He knew his dad would not want him to have any excuse or reason to dawdle.
The small canoe and the river’s currents had been the only sport that Jack and Cyril had known in their summers beside the Athabasca. Close to their house, the river was slow enough for them to experiment and learn what it took to make the little canoe do what they wanted it to. Malcolm had been down there to guide them at first. Probably because Rose had insisted or threatened in some fashion. Jack later suspected that his dad had been concerned for the safety of his work canoe.
“Well, here we go,” Jack whispered to the small canoe, as he rested on both gunwales and climbed aboard.
With a few strokes, Jack was into the current of the Athabasca. He had done this trip, and helped with the furs in the large canoe, three times before. Depending on the currents, it usually took five or six days of hard work to cover the seventy miles upstream, and then one day for the trip back down. He’d always been told to pull out an hour before dark, if it took longer.
The wind was from the south, funneling along the river valley. A good day to be letting it help push him along. The added push gave Jack the opportunity to look around. He was surprised at how much he remembered from previous trips. At least the trips downstream, going back. Going upstream, to link up with Mr. Harley, there had been too much work, just to keep the big canoe moving.
But now, easing along in the sunshine, Jack had time to look and think. He could see elk along the shores from time to time, as well as other smaller game. There were also a few eagles taking advantage of the south wind.
The darker the water, the faster it moved. Dark water was where the deep channels were, and the faster currents. The noisy, frothy stuff elsewhere indicated the places where the river was shallow, or maybe a stretch of rapids.
At one point, Jack said, “Damn!” quietly to himself. He had been dreaming or thinking, and hadn’t heard the gravel starting to tumble and bounce under the bottom of his canoe before it was too late, and he had to step out and float the canoe over a gravel bar in the middle of the river. He could imagine the eagles up above, laughing.
The river was never the same, even from day to day. Its level fluctuated with the seasons, and pulsed in harmony with the storms and rains up higher in the mountain valleys, right up to the glaciers. Jack remembered Mr. Harley once saying that the heart of the river was up in the high mountains. That had been a couple of years ago, when they had waited out a storm at the meeting place.
The sun was about an hour above the trees, when Jack came to a bend and a small island that he recognized as the last one before he got close to home. There would not be enough time to pick up his things where he had stored them and get a good distance farther down the river. He decided to pull out on the eastern shore and spend the night. That way he could also look over to where their house was, and maybe see some signs of activity. Maybe some smoke rising up when his mom would be cooking.
Jack thought of building a fire for himself, but soon put that out of his mind. If he could maybe see the smoke from the house, then they might see the smoke in the river valley. He knew, or imagined, they would be looking for him—although he knew it wasn’t too unusual for other people to be traveling up or down the river sometimes.
He and Cyril had often wondered about what it might have been like when the Athabasca River was one of the east-west trade routes, back in the really old days. That was when Jasper House had been an outpost, and when Fort Assiniboine had been the terminus for the overland route to Edmonton and its fort on the North Saskatchewan River. But, for more than fifty years now, it had been the railways that had taken on the role of linking east and west, and branching out to bring in many more resources than the rivers ever had.
Jack shivered through the night. And then, in the gray light of dawn, he li
stened for any echoing sounds of an ax that might tell him someone was awake across the river. Finally, he wished for a wind to blow the mists away, so he could cross over and cover the last few hundred yards to where he had cached his supplies.
“I hope my things are there,” Jack whispered to himself, knowing that if they weren’t, Cyril had not kept his secret. And yet, he almost wished they might not be. He had planned all of this for more than a year. But now, now that it was time to actually do it, he almost wished he didn’t have to go through with it.
Jack spotted the ancient pine standing out from the rest of the forest, as he eased his way down the river, and then waded his little canoe ashore. His small stash of supplies was wrapped in oilcloth near the base of the pine. It was as he had left it. That, and the little canoe were his passport to a new life.
He ached as he took the little bottle with the note from the folds of the oilcloth and placed it in the crook of a sapling near the pine. A piece of red cloth acted as its stopper. Tears welled in his eyes, as he remembered what he had written. He blinked and imagined how it might be read. He’d told Cyril he would leave a note. It was the only way. Jack knew he would not be able to face his mom and explain his decision. He knew she would have many arguments and reasons for him not to go through with it.
It was about midday when Jack glided onto the upper end of a small island. He wanted to be able to look back as far as possible, even though he knew no one would be able to come after him. The big canoe would still be within a day or so of reaching Hinton, and he had the only other canoe. Maybe he just wanted to take one last look up into the valley that had been his home for more than half his lifetime. Maybe he needed to think and reassure himself.
“Maybe what I really need to do is eat.”
Jack said it out loud to fill the emptiness, and was actually startled to realize just how loud his voice could be in the wilderness, with nothing but the steady hiss of the river to mute it.
Jack pulled out a couple of small rubbery potatoes he had taken from the root cellar. Seed potatoes, maybe. He’d wondered at the time if his mom would notice. He rubbed off the eyes and washed them in the cold water of the Athabasca. He munched slowly on small bites of potato, figuring that the slower he ate, the more his hunger could be controlled.
“It’s the only way, isn’t it?” Jack reasoned within himself. “I’ll sort things out at Whitecourt. Maybe I’ll even get a job there.” Then he wondered how a person went about becoming a lumberman, or maybe hiring on with a farm. Really, he didn’t know how many, or how few, his possibilities were.
He savored the last mouthful of his second little potato, rolled up his oilcloth and his supplies, and set off again.
Jack paddled and drifted as long as he could, before calling it a day. He’d frequently caught himself looking back over his shoulder. Finally, he pulled in at the mouth of a small creek on the western shore, thinking it would be good to wake up on the sunny side of the river. He also hoped he could get a fish in the creek. He knew it was too early for berries of any kind.
It didn’t take him long to organize a fire and touch one of his matches to the shavings and the kindling. With a fire going, he lifted the canoe up to a flat spot, pulled out his supplies, and set his tin to boiling in the edge of the fire. Two of his dozen carrots from the root cellar would be his supper. That and whatever else he might find close at hand. Fish, maybe, if he was lucky and patient.
Maybe a half-hour later, not fish, but frog legs went into the pot.
Hunger and the vagaries of nature can impose some odd compromises on a person’s meal. Jack mused about such things as he dumped the severed hindquarters of three frogs into the pot to join the simmering chunks of carrot.
Actually, it wasn’t entirely a novelty. Jack could remember when he and Cyril had made some boyhood experiments with frogs and other small “game,” as they had called them in their previous summer adventures. It did make his tea taste a bit oily, though, when he boiled some up later in the evening.
When the sun settled into the mountains behind him, the campfire became Jack’s friend and muse. Had he reached the point of no return?
No, that had probably come during the last winter. That was the night when, under a full moon, Jack had been helping his dad stretch some pelts harvested from a small trap line close to the house. And, of course, he hadn’t done it right, or hadn’t done it the way his dad had wanted. But then, had he ever been able to please his dad in anything?
Whatever the problem or argument had been, Jack remembered facing up to his dad and squaring off. Even if he could not remember the argument, he could remember standing there, looking straight back at his father, and thinking it would not be much longer before he’d be as tall as him.
But what really stood out in his memory, when he’d set back to work at his father’s orders, was that he had had his hand clenched around the small skinning knife. And, when he looked down, he could not tell where the blood from the mink ended and his own began. He also knew that some future confrontation would not, or could not, end with one of them backing down.
Jack also realized he did not understand his father. Probably never would. Maybe they were too much alike in their stubbornness.
In the enervating midday heat of the next day, Jack said a quiet, “Oh-oh,” as he looked farther ahead than the immediate current. On one side of the river, there were steep bluffs denuded of trees, and a lot more large boulders then there had been upstream. And the river itself seemed to drop away. Safety dictated that he should land, walk ahead along the shore, and see what might be in store for him and his little canoe.
Jack was suddenly out of his afternoon doldrums and alert to his surroundings. He knew he had to land his canoe on the inside of the coming bend and its possibly rough water. It was only by getting out and wading that he was able to pull his canoe to shore in a current that now seemed to be slipping sideways.
It was a beautiful summer day. If it had been him and Cyril out on a day’s adventure, they would have laughed at the challenge ahead. They would also have taken it as a sign to explore for a while, and then head back. But this was the first big challenge of Jack’s new life. One that he would have to deal with on his own.
Jack knew the first rule that safety imposed—check what’s ahead.
He imagined a narrowing channel through a gorge, with white water at its base. As he picked his way over boulders and gravel bars, and the inevitable tangles of uprooted trees and driftwood that had been washed down from somewhere during a spring break-up, Jack had a religious expletive to add to his earlier, “Oh-oh.” An entirely logical “Holy shit!” was offered in reverent and solemn respect for the might of the Athabasca River, at this point in its descent.
Jack had heard of something called the Gooseneck rapids. Probably from Mr. Harley at an evening cooking fire one year. He’d described the river as splitting and forging its way around an island in a long, sweeping bend.
“That must be the Gooseneck,” Jack whispered to himself, as he surveyed the reality of what Mr. Harley had described. “And that’s the neck of the beast,” Jack said at last. “That’s the side to avoid.”
However, avoiding it, and getting to the smaller channel on the inner side of the island, presented a challenge. And that channel, the one Mr. Harley had said the fur traders called “the voyageur channel,” was one whose approach, or entrance, he had sailed right by, while mesmerized by the tumbling waters of the main channel.
“Shit!” Jack yelled in frustration and anger. Frustration at having come upon such an enormous obstacle. Anger at having come this far and now having to look for an alternative. Something that obviously wouldn’t be easy to do.
When you’re caught, or trapped, you look around. First at the enemy, then at the situation, and then at a possible escape or alternative. All of it made Jack say, “Shit!” again. Several times. He even shouted it the last
time, just because he could. He was alone. He was boss. He was in charge and responsible for his own destiny. And he had made a mistake!
“Damn it all!”
As he looked around, he wasn’t even sure that the one dark shadow he had passed was the voyageur channel. It was just a hole, sheltered by some overhanging trees on one side, and some rocky outcroppings jutting out into the river on the other. He’d have to fight his way back up to those rocks, just to be sure. Going upstream, at least, was one thing with which he was more than a bit familiar.
It didn’t take Jack long to drag the small canoe back to that rocky point to check things out. His frustration soon turned to smiles, as he bounded along on the island side of a small channel and discovered that he was, indeed, on an island, and looking at a route that would avoid the Gooseneck rapids in a series of gradual steps.
Jack checked his little canoe and the few things he had brought with him. He made sure things were lashed in, as he realized that, once again, he had come to a point of no return. At least, not an easy one.
Often, when you’ve selected the most agreeable of two options, you let your guard down, just a bit. Maybe because you think that success is within your grasp. This is not a lesson that can be taught. It is learned through experience.
Jack didn’t say “oh-oh” again until he got close to the end of the voyageur channel—the last step before it merged with the main river again.
Here, the smaller channel slid sideways in a long bend along the Athabasca shore. It was a bend that was overhung with trees, toppled in the spring run-off. Jack and his canoe were swept toward that shore.
There was no way out. No way to dig in and keep the canoe from getting sucked along in the current at the outside of that bend.
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