19
Accidents happen when two or more things go wrong at once, or in rapid succession. With the Athabasca River flood the year Jack left home, it had been several things. Only one of them was marginally human in origin. And one man would pay the price for it.
Paternoster Lakes is a name given to high glacial lakes in the mountains. They reflect the ice-covered peaks that surround them, which are the source of their glacial waters. Each lake, one of a descending chain, marks the spot where the receding glacier paused for a while, depositing a rim, or dam of glacial gravel and silt.
Beaver dams similarly hold back streams in the lower mountain valleys. Beavers build and take care of the dams for their semi-aquatic habitat in the poplar and aspen forest regions.
Beavers were also a lucrative harvest for trappers such as Harley.
The Athabasca River was the collector and channel that drained a large area of lakes, streams, and beaver-dam reservoirs. But it was also a big hydraulic force in its own right, as it tumbled and raced from its Rocky Mountain origins to the lowlands of the prairies.
In the foothills, a chain reaction multiplied the normal and natural forces of the Athabasca River.
The current of the Athabasca ground to a stop, literally, when after years of erosion, it had nibbled away at a high mountain spur by which it passed—a bend with a significant set of rapids in any season. Finally, the last few supporting boulders were eaten away, and a hill of gravel, dirt, and debris collapsed and slid across the river’s course and valley, blocking its flow. The waters simply stopped. Stopped, and began to back up as far as Brûlé Lake, a large natural reservoir.
At almost the same time, snowstorms above the high glaciers, and rainfall below them, trickled and then cascaded into the Paternoster Lakes, filling them.
That big summer storm was also enough to dislodge a big section of ice at the lower edge of a high glacier. That iceberg slid and tumbled into the uppermost Paternoster Lake, and was big enough to create a large tsunami-like wave that washed over one after the other of the chain of Paternoster Lakes. It ultimately sent torrents of extra water sluicing down the streams into the valley below.
That same rain in the foothill valleys filled the beaver ponds to more than their highest levels. However, some of those beaver ponds no longer had beaver to maintain the dams. Their breech and collapse also added to the water already heading down to the Athabasca.
At about that time, the Athabasca water trapped behind the landslide began to find its way through the barrier. It had no difficulty eroding the loose gravel and debris of that barrier, with increasing speed and force. Gravity and timing did the rest, as all the backed-up water piled up in Brûlé Lake, and the added torrents from the mountain valleys combined to charge down a channel that had stopped flowing a day or so before because of a landslide.
The weight of one cubic foot of water is just over sixty pounds.
The average discharge of the Athabasca River, in its normal flow, is 27,650 cubic feet per second.
Boys who play with beaver dams might understand a bit of this.
20
“We’ll stay up here for the night,” Malcolm told Jack. “Maybe two or more, if necessary. Will you be ready to leave by then?”
Jack nodded. The afternoon sun felt good. It warmed and healed. He’d sipped at the little tin of sweetened milk, draining it. And both he and his dad had chewed on and downed some of the smoked fish they’d salvaged.
“We need water,” Malcolm said after a while. “Can you tend to the fire while I go down to the river, wherever it is?”
Jack nodded again and watched as his dad plunged down the long, steep slope. He wondered how much water would be spilled from the blackened tea tin before his dad got back.
The river had been Jack’s distraction and entertainment as he grew up. Season after season, it presented itself in different ways, even in winter. Even though it might be frozen at its banks, there was always open water somewhere, sinister and dark, and always moving.
It was the spring break-up that was the most exciting. Sometimes it would be like an explosive rampage of water and ice. At other times, the river ice would just lift slowly and then break apart and drift off downstream. It always depended on what was happening upstream, and in the valleys and smaller rivers that flowed into the main river of the Athabasca watershed. The Whytes only lived and worked beside a small part of it.
“Two days,” Jack thought to himself. He moved his left arm a bit, or at least put some pressure against it. He didn’t push very hard or move it very far. He thought that two weeks seemed like a more reasonable time for letting his arm and that cut mend a bit.
Then he wondered about the little canoe. And, as he did, he noticed a gash in its canvas down near the keel. Even though it still looked sturdy and capable, it had taken a beating from the river. It would need some time to heal as well. He wondered if his dad had noticed. Then he wondered just how they might mend that gash in these circumstances. This was not like back at the house, where there was tar and canvas to make a patch.
There was no driftwood up where they were. However, Jack found dry limbs on many of the trees, that he managed to break off to keep the fire going. His left arm throbbed with every step he took, and then made him wince in pain with each jerk, as he snapped the dead branches from the trees. He had stockpiled very little firewood by the time he heard his dad come up through the bush with the water. The tin was only half full, as he placed it beside the glowing coals in the upwind side of the fire. The water looked muddy.
“You didn’t bring much stuff with you when you left.” It was more of a question from the way Malcolm said it.
They were sitting by the fire, waiting for the water to boil.
Jack could figure out what the real question was easily enough. He just didn’t know how to respond to it, or how much of his ideas and plans he was prepared to reveal. “I was going to stop in Whitecourt to pick up supplies.”
“Or maybe stay there for a while?”
“I wasn’t sure. I’ve never been there,” Jack answered. “I’ve never been anywhere.”
Malcolm ignored that last part, and its implications, avoiding where it might lead. “Not many people stop in Whitecourt,” he said. “Not now. They just pass through. They always pass through. There used to be fur traders back in the old days, on their way up to Jasper, or back down to Fort Assiniboine, and then on to Edmonton. Or all the way down the river itself, and then down the other ones to take them back east.”
Jack watched as his dad prodded the fire and looked at the water trying to boil.
“Then there was the railway,” Malcolm continued. “That only made them pass through Whitecourt faster.”
“But didn’t you live in Whitecourt?” Jack knew some of that part of the family’s history. He’d heard of people clearing the land and trying to farm unwilling soil. The trees they’d cut down clearing the land had been their only real crop, as firewood and lumber.
“We lived somewhere near there,” Malcolm finally admitted.
“And you left,” Jack said hesitantly, knowing what he was saying, and knowing that by saying it, he might also be accusing himself and his own decision to leave. He hoped the water would boil and give them an excuse to do something else.
Making tea only served to flavor the water a bit. Boiling the water had at least served to destroy some of the stuff that didn’t belong in it, or in those who drank it. Malcolm pulled the tea from the fire to let it steep, and let the heavier silt and things settle to the bottom so they could decant it.
Jack watched as his dad did things. He noticed that he was slow and deliberate, not as vigorous as he had always seemed before. Or maybe it was because he, himself, had grown so much bigger over the last winter. Then he wondered if maybe his dad was hurting, too. Maybe hurting in ways that weren’t visible.
Jac
k had never tried to think about things from his dad’s point of view. He’d always been the father of the family. And, willing or otherwise, the family had always trotted along behind him, often trying to keep up to his striding footsteps. They’d gone where he wanted them to go, and they’d done what he wanted them to do. As far as Jack knew, his had been the only real act of rebellion.
After a while, when most of the muddy tea was gone, Malcolm said, “I think there’s a little valley, with possibly a creek in it, just off to the west of us. Anything would be better than drinking this.” He threw what was left of the tea behind him for emphasis. “And it will probably be a few days before the river settles down to anything near drinkable.”
“Is it still high?” Jack asked.
“Higher than it usually is. It will take a while to push all of that water, wherever it came from, down the channels ahead of it.” And with that, he picked up the tea tin and the ax and made for the bush westward. “I’ll be back with some better water.”
Jack nodded as his dad disappeared into the green shadows. After a while, he got up and sought out what was starting to become a trail down to the river below. His curiosity had overcome the pain in his arm. Jack wanted to see for himself what had happened down there.
He stopped from time to time to listen, and to check on his arm and adjust its sling. By the time he got to the height of where the river had rushed up through the trees, he knew he had reached his own limit. The muddy silt from the river was like slushy snow underfoot. Even by hanging onto the trees with his good arm, it was a treacherous trail. In places below him, Jack could see where his dad had slipped in his effort to get water from the river. He wondered how often he’d gone back down to refill the tea tin. It also explained why he had set off to find a creek.
At the point where he turned to retrace his steps upward, Jack stopped to look around. He still wondered if the big canoe was somewhere, possibly snagged by a tree.
It wasn’t. But the rope that had tied it was. Part of it still dangled from the lower branch of a big tree. It almost pointed to where his dad’s knife was lying, an odd shape among the flattened and silt-covered grass and leaves.
One after the other, Jack and Malcolm made their way back to the campfire. Both, in their own way, had been successful.
“About a hundred yards or so,” Malcolm explained, nodding back to where he’d emerged from the bush. He placed an almost full tea tin beside the fire. It looked a lot more drinkable than the Athabasca water.
“Me, too,” Jack said, “but that way.” He pointed down the hill. He’d seen that his dad had noticed his hunting knife stuck into a heavy piece of wood near the fire. Jack guessed he was pleased. He’d seldom seen his dad without that knife.
“You must be feeling better,” Malcolm said, hiding the beginning of a smile in his beard as he sheathed his big knife.
“I was just curious about the river. You know.” Jack shrugged and let it tail off. “I only got that far,” he added after a while, pointing to the knife. “It was slippery. I didn’t want to fall.”
Malcolm nodded in response. He stoked the fire, and then rummaged about in their supplies to make some supper for the two of them.
21
It was almost dusk when Jack and his dad ate. Even after hours of boiling, the dried beans still retained some of their bullet-like quality. One of the smoked fish that Malcolm had cut up into it near the end added some flavor. Hunger probably made the soupy meal taste better than it was. Tea would finish their day. In the flickering flames of the fire, Jack glanced over at his dad from time to time. Maybe it was the lengthening growth of beard and the increasing grayness of it, or maybe it was the stress of the last few days and, in particular, the experience of being trapped in that cold, raging river. Whatever the reason, Jack thought he was looking at a much smaller man than he had known.
“How old were you when you went away to war?” Jack asked. Although, in the stillness of the darkening evening, it felt and sounded like he had just blurted it out.
Jack had never really asked his dad anything of personal significance before. Talking was not part of the family routine when Malcolm was present. But now they seemed to be equals, because they were both victims of the same circumstance. Now, instead of watching his dad and Harley talk by the campfire, Jack felt he was a part of the society the fire created.
“You were in your twenties, weren’t you?”
Malcolm nodded, staring into the fire.
“Did you want to go?”
“It seemed like a good idea for a lot of reasons.” Malcolm hesitated, mesmerized, as it were, by the flickering flames. “We answered the call to fight for king and country,” he said after a while. “We pretended we were tired of farming and signed up for the cause.”
Jack sensed there was more but pretended to be satisfied. His conversations had seldom been with anyone other than his little brother, Cyril. And in those, he had been the one whose opinion mattered, the one in authority. Now it was almost as if he was talking man-to-man with his father.
“How many of you went from Whitecourt?” Jack asked.
“Five. We had to go to Edmonton to sign up. Three of us had never been as far away as Edmonton.”
“It’s a big city, isn’t it?” Jack asked, continuing in the same tone. He wanted to hear more. He really was curious.
“Edmonton’s high up above another river. Lots of streets, lots of trains, lots of people,” Malcolm acknowledged.
Jack almost looked at his dad, but instead let his gaze veer toward the tea tin. He didn’t know where their conversation might lead, but sensed that his dad didn’t want to get there too quickly, if at all. He felt strangely satisfied that his dad had said as much as he did.
Finally, Malcolm said, “You sleep under the canoe. I’ll stay here by the fire. I’ve got a big blanket if I need it.”
It was halfway between an order and a suggestion. Either way, Jack knew their conversation was over. He also knew that his left arm was beginning to throb, as the coolness of a clear night settled around them. After a detour into the bush, he gingerly eased himself under the overturned canoe and pulled his small gray blanket around him. Not an easy task with only one arm. As he looked back toward the fire, he could see his dad hunched beside it, a dark silhouette that might just as easily have been a boulder.
Malcolm knew what his boy had been asking. Talking about his going to war, but probably wondering why he’d escaped into it. From the frying pan into the fire, he mused, smiling wryly to himself as he remembered those days of his life.
He’d been in his twenties. Oldest of the five “English boys” from Whitecourt. Oldest, and probably expected to look after the other four. They’d wanted him to be like their guide and platoon leader. But things hadn’t worked out that way. They were in different outfits, because that was the way the army had thought it should be. One of the Whitecourt boys even got into the flying corps. And into being killed. His parents never seemed to forgive Malcolm Whyte for that.
Two of the others were wounded pretty badly. Malcolm had heard about that through the stories and rumors that made their way up through the trenches. And they were probably the lucky ones. But some wounds don’t heal. And being given a medal was not much compensation for the one who had lost an eye to shrapnel and subsequent infection. “Lucky to be going home because of that wound,” some had said. And some of them would gladly have traded places and paid that price. To them, an injury could be the ticket for going home and getting out of the hell of the trenches.
Lance Corporal Malcolm Whyte. He involuntarily felt for the spot on his arm where that single chevron to denote his rank had been. It had been an arbitrary promotion, maybe because of his age, that he had not asked for. He’d felt old before, but in those muddy months in Belgium, it became real when he saw the fear in the eyes of younger men or boys assigned to him, whenever the shelling st
arted again, and again, and again. Quivering in those trenches was not the glory and heroics any of them had signed up for, or dreamed about, back home in Canada.
Jack didn’t know what his dad’s dreams were that night. But they did wake him, as he slept fitfully and nursed his arm through that painful night. He heard the incoherent grunts as Corporal Malcolm Whyte shouted something, over and over, to the men who were in his charge, his care, in the muddy trenches, somewhere in Belgium as another battle raged.
22
The snapping of twigs and branches for kindling was the next thing Jack heard. The cold of the morning had awakened Malcolm. And the only way to cure that was to get up and get a fire started.
“Look after the fire while I get some water,” was the greeting Jack received as he stumbled toward the welcoming fire. Malcolm headed for the creek he’d found off in the bush somewhere.
Jack added more wood to the fire and then went off to continue his routine of waking up and looking for some more firewood for the day ahead. He was surprised to discover that his left arm didn’t hurt as much with every step he took.
“My arm feels like it might be ready to travel, maybe tomorrow,” Jack said, as his dad put the water into the edge of the fire for tea.
“It’s not your arm but the river that will tell us when we can leave,” Malcolm replied. “It’ll have to be down to near normal before we’ll be able to go back up it. It was still up among the trees yesterday.”
Jack realized that the river was not like his beaver dam of a few summers before. With the river, everything was bigger and took longer. “How far up do the river valleys go?” he asked, wondering about the origin of the flooding.
Malcolm shrugged. “A few hundred miles up to the glaciers and the passes, maybe. All of the rain from the last few days probably added to the flow.”
They sat in silence for a while. Jack held half of the smoked fish that his dad had given him up to the fire to warm it a bit and maybe make it taste better. Fish and tea seemed to be it for breakfast. Jack wondered if his dad had brought enough beans to maybe cook up during the day. He was thinking of a coming meal, and maybe enough leftovers for the next morning. He wondered about that, and he wondered about what his dad had been dreaming during the night to make him shout. But he said something that was probably a lot safer for the time being.
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