by Jeremy Bates
CHAPTER 1
38 YEARS LATER
“Annnddddd….” Rex Chapman stretched the conjunction several seconds as they crossed the imaginary boundary line separating the towns of Blaine, Washington, and Surrey, British Colombia, before adding with exclamation, “We’re in Canada now!”
Bobby said from the back seat in his small five-year-old voice, “It doesn’t feel any different.”
“Well, there’s nothing really to feel that’s different, bud.”
From next to him, Ellie, also five going on twenty-five, said, “Nothing looks different.”
Tabitha, Rex’s girlfriend of six months, turned in the front passenger seat of the sporty Mazda sedan to face the kids. “Nothing’s going to feel different or look different, guys, because the United States and Canada share the same landmass. What will be different will be cultural things like—”
“Where are all the bears?” Bobby asked. “Dylan from school says there are lots of bears in Canada.”
Rex glanced in the rearview mirror but could only see a golden cowlick sprouting defiantly from the top of Bobby’s head, and to the right of him, the tips of Ellie’s jet-black Sailor Moon hair buns. Bobby was his; Ellie, Tabitha’s.
“There are bears in the States too, bud,” he said, “especially in states like Washington.”
“Are there owls here too? Owls are my favorite birds.”
“Yup, owls too. But I doubt we’ll see any. They’re nocturnal.”
“Owls aren’t turtles!” Ellie said, giggling.
“I didn’t say that. I said—”
“Where are the Indians? Are we going to see an Indian?”
“I’ll let you field that one,” Rex said, glancing sidelong at Tabitha. Turning forty next month, she was seven years younger than he was. She had the same jet-black hair as her daughter, though hers was cut into a more mature jaw-skimming cut. Beneath her bold brows, her eyes were bright violet, her skin as smooth as porcelain. Despite the ElizabethTaylor-esque look, she saw herself only as a working single mom operating on too much stress and too little sleep, and if you told her that her beauty matched that of any Hollywood actress, she would most likely tell you where to stick it.
“Do you guys want to play I-Spy?” she said, sidestepping her daughter’s questions.
“That’s so boring!” Ellie complained.
“Why don’t you watch something on your iPad then, sweetie?”
“Fine…” Music began to play. “Ugh. Jonas Hill again. He doesn’t have many friends, does he?”
Mario music began to play also, indicating Bobby had gone back to his handheld Nintendo Switch.
Seeing the upcoming traffic light turn yellow, Rex accelerated through the intersection. He wasn’t an impatient driver, yet they’d already been on the road for three hours since leaving Seattle, plus an extra half-hour wait at the border crossing, and they still had another three or so to go. So the less number of reds they had to sit through, the better.
It was late afternoon. The October sky was a washed-out blue, filled with fluffy clouds rimmed white that deepened to a slate gray in the center. Having been born and raised in the Pacific Northwest, Rex knew it wasn’t a question of if it would rain but when. Being mid-October, it was the beginning of the rainy season on the coast, which meant they wouldn’t be seeing much in the way of weather variation other than rain, fog, and moody skies for the next six months.
“Looks like it might rain,” Tabitha said, as if reading his thoughts.
“Hope it’s just a drizzle,” he said.
“You know it doesn’t drizzle around here.”
“You’re right. It’s going to be a downpour.”
“A downpour that comes in sideways with the wind.”
“A torrential downpour that comes in sideways with the wind.”
“Umbrella-killing gale-force winds.”
“Death and destruction all around.”
“And we’re going to be in a little cabin in the mountains.” She smiled. “Sounds cozy.”
“Sounds suicidal,” he said.
“If you don’t like the rain, you live in the wrong part of the world, mister.”
“It’s not the rain. It’s the grayness. Everything’s always gray. November to June. Gray. Don’t you ever get tired of that?”
“Jeez, you’re sounding glum.”
“Yeah, Dad,” Bobby said from the back, “stop being so glum.”
“I’m just saying, some vitamin D sometimes would be nice.”
“Don’t listen to him, Bobby, he’s just being the devil’s advocate.”
Bobby didn’t reply, and Rex wasn’t surprised. The boy didn’t speak to Tabitha unless it was absolutely necessary. He was taking his mother’s absence pretty badly, and from his erroneous perspective, Tabitha was to blame for the absence.
The silence in the wake of Bobby’s pointed lack of reply lingered in the car. Rex rested a hand on Tabitha’s thigh. She covered it with hers.
“What’s a devil’s abby cat, Mommy?” Ellie asked abruptly.
“It’s someone who argues with you just to argue, hon.”
“Why?”
“They just like to argue, I suppose.”
“But why?”
“They just… Are you being a devil’s abby cat right now, sweetie?”
“No!” she replied.
“I think you are.”
“Devil’s abby cats are stupid!”
“Totally,” Tabitha agreed.
“Hey, are you calling me stupid?” Rex said.
“Yes!” Ellie said.
Rex zipped through another intersection in the nick of time and felt absurdly proud of this accomplishment. On the left, a Tim Horton’s coffee shop slipped past, followed by a Best Western with a neatly manicured garden of alpine flowers, and an auto repair shop hidden behind a phalanx of old tires. Surrey was one of Vancouver’s southern suburbs, and like most suburbs, it consisted of wide roads, ample trees, a network of telephone poles and their corresponding wires, commercial shops, and pleasant houses, none of which were too big nor too small.
It took them roughly an hour to get through Vancouver before they were once again surrounded by raw nature.
“Any idiots out today, Dad?” Bobby asked out of the blue, with a confident nonchalance that made him sound ten years older than he was.
Tabitha laughed. “Does your dad call a lot of drivers idiots, Bobby?”
He didn’t answer her.
Rex said, “Haven’t run into any yet, bud. Hope it stays that way.”
The Sea-to-Sky Highway continued north along the shore of the steep-sided Howe Sound, a network of fjords populated with small islands, and up into the Coast Mountains, where it cleaved through forested slopes and clung precariously to cliff walls, all to the backdrop of majestic ocean vistas.
While Tabitha and the kids oohed and ahhed at the sights—even catching a glimpse of a circling bald eagle hunting for its next meal—Rex remained focused on the road. With all the twists and turns, driving demanded his full attention. Still, every now and then his eyes meandered to the rugged backcountry, and he had the same thought each time: there wasn’t another freeway in North America, not even the I-70 through Colorado or the I-80 over the Sierra Nevada, which matched this remote, pristine beauty.
After another hour or so they reached the charming mountain town of Squamish, a haven for the outdoorsy types and renowned for its gushing waterfalls, stomach-dropping suspension bridge, and the Stawamus Chief, a huge cliff-faced granite massif towering seven hundred meters into the sky. Rex filled up the Mazda at a gas station, bought some candy bars for the kids to nibble on, and then they were off again.
“I want the Snickers!” Ellie said when he told them what he had.
“Can I have a Twik?” Bobby asked.
“You mean Twix, bud.”
“No, I only want one.”
He passed the Snickers and Twix back over his shoulder, then said to Tabitha, “Got a Mars and Kit Kat left.”
“I’ll pass,” she said, patting her stomach. “Got to stay trim for this guy I’m seeing.”
“Lucky guy, him. But I’m sure he’d like you just as much no matter your weight.”
“He is a sweetheart.”
“Eww!” Ellie said around a full mouth. “You guys are gross.”
“Someday you’re going to have feelings for boys too, sweetie,” Tabitha said. “Just so you know.”
“I already do have feelings, Mommy. I hate them.”
Leaving the waters of Howe Sound behind and heading inland now, the Sea-to-Sky Highway continued its ever upward ascent, snaking through hilly meadows, dense old-growth rainforests, and extinct volcanoes. It was a rollercoaster ride, the turns steep and sudden with some gradients approaching ten degrees. Rex had dreaded this part of the journey as a kid, not only because of the sickening blind corners and dizzying elevation, but because rockslides or accidents had been a regular occurrence, often trapping his family on the road for hours, which had always seemed like an eternity.
When they passed a turnoff to the ski resort town of Whistler Blackcomb, Tabitha remarked she would like to visit there someday, and Rex made a mental note to plan such a trip on their one-year anniversary, if they made it to that point, though he couldn’t see any reason why they wouldn’t, given how smoothly their relationship had progressed thus far.
Thirty minutes onward they entered the rustic town of Pemberton, which wouldn’t have been out of place in an Old West movie, a consequence of its ranching and mining culture during the gold rush era.
“A McDonald’s!” Bobby said.
“Can we stop?” Ellie asked.
Rex glanced at the McDonald’s on the right: with its quaint cedar façade and covered walkways, it resembled a saloon from the 1920s. “We got our own stuff to make hamburgers, guys,” he said. “Besides, we have a schedule to keep. Don’t you want to reach the cabin before it gets dark?”
“Are there bears there?” Ellie asked.
“Well, yeah, but they won’t come near us. They’re more scared of you than you are of them.”
“I’m not scared of them,” Bobby said defiantly.
“Yes, you are,” Ellie said. “Everybody’s scared of bears.”
“I’m not!”
“Are too!”
“Am not!”
“Guys—enough!” Tabitha said.
They drove through farmland for a number of kilometers before climbing once again into the snow-capped mountains for the final, and most treacherous, leg of the journey. Coniferous trees prevailed here, the blend of fir and pine in the lower elevations gradually giving way to spruce and aspen the higher they got. Nearly ninety white-knuckle minutes after this, they arrived at an intersection of deep gorges in the lee of the Coast Mountains where the tiny community of Lillooet was located. They crossed a wooden bridge over the Seton River, a tributary of the Fraser, and were immediately greeted by a totem pole carved from an enormous western red cedar. Bobby and Ellie yapped and pointed. Rex pulled to the side of the road so they could all have a gawk.
“It’s huge!” Bobby said, pressing his nose to his window.
“It was there when I was a kid,” Rex said, noting that it was even taller than he remembered, perhaps fifty or sixty feet top to bottom.
“Why are the faces so scary?” Ellie asked, leaning toward Bobby’s side of the car as far as her seatbelt straps would allow.
“They’re just animals,” Bobby said.
“One’s a beaver,” Tabitha said. “See its teeth?”
“The top one’s a bird!” Ellie said.
“Looks like an eagle,” Tabitha said.
“What’s that one with the big nose?” Bobby asked.
He was referring to the face carved into the bottom of the pole.
“It’s a mosquito,” Rex said.
“I hate mosquitas!” Ellie said. “They bite!”
“Everyone hates them,” Tabitha said. “That’s why that one’s at the bottom.”
“That’s not exactly true,” Rex said, putting the car in gear and pulling back onto the road.
“You like mosquitos, Daddy?” Bobby asked.
“What I mean is, a lot of people think that the most important figure on a totem pole is placed at the top. But it’s actually the reverse. The most important one is at the bottom to support the weight of all the others atop it. That, and it puts it at eye level with the viewer.”
“I didn’t know you were such a connoisseur of Native American art,” Tabitha teased him.
“My father told me that one summer.”
“What did grandpa do, Dad?” Bobby asked. “Was he a pilot like you?”
“No, he was a humanitarian.”
“What’s a human-tarian?”
“It’s like a vegetarian,” Ellie said assuredly. “But they eat humans instead of vegetables.”
“Not quite, honey,” Tabitha said. “It’s somebody who helps others less fortunate than themselves.”
They crossed the old CN railway tracks that served the Lillooet Railway Station, then made a right onto Lillooet’s Main Street—and Rex was immediately clobbered with a myriad of nostalgic memories. The big Swiss-looking hotel that greeted them. The old pizza parlor with its hand-painted sign. The mom-and-pop convenience store, where he’d often spent his weekly allowance on gummy bears and sour keys. The House of Jade Mineral Museum, the Royal Canadian Legion where “EVERYONE IS WELCOME,” and the Esso gas station. There was also the cinder-block supermarket where Rex had always checked the slots of the gumball machines for forgotten change. The pub that was still reminding people with its signage that it sold “Ice Cold Beer,” and where his dad had always bought his cases of Labatt 50 and Coors Light. The I.D.A pharmacy, the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce, and next to the post office with its Canadian flag flapping in the wind, the iconic Goldpanner Restaurant, which used to offer a weekend buffet, and perhaps still did.
In general, everything was as he recalled. Nothing had really changed. It was almost as if the tired community had remained locked in a time bubble for the last thirty-eight years—
“I knew there were Indians here!” Ellie blurted suddenly.
Rex had no idea what she was talking about until he spotted four men standing in the parking lot of a budget inn, smoking cigarettes. They wore jeans and plaid lumberjack shirts. Their Native American heritage was evident by their dominant coloring, smooth features, and straight, dark hair.
“You shouldn’t call them Indians, Ellie,” he told her.
“Huh?” she said.
“They’re called Aboriginals.”
“Abo-what?”
“Aboriginals. That means they’re the original inhabitants of this land.”
“Abodidinal.”
“Yes, that, or Native Americans. So try to use one of those instead. Okay?”
“Okay.”
“Thank you.”
Rex caught Bobby mumble, “You’re so stupid,” under his breath, which prompted Ellie to reply, “Like you knew! You’re the stupidest stupid head in the world!”
The north end of the town deteriorated into a grungy industrial zone, which included an A&W restaurant that had been a teenage hangout when he was a kid, and a relatively new open-air strip mall he hadn’t known had existed until now.
“I need to go to the bathroom,” Bobby said.
“Can’t it wait, bud?” he said. “We’re almost there.”
“I really need to go!”
“He’s going to pee his pants!” Ellie said.
“Am not!”
“Are too!”
“Am not!”
“Ay yi yi,” Tabitha said with a sigh.
Rex was thinking about doing a U-turn to head back to the A&W when, ahead on the right, he spotted a rickety old A-frame house that, if his memory served him correctly, was a mining museum that also doubled as a tourism center.
He made a right into the parking lot, which was empty of any other cars. “S
hould be bathrooms in here if it’s still open,” he said, stopping before a maple tree resplendent with fall leaves. He killed the engine. “But let’s not dally, okay?”
Everybody got out of the Mazda, four doors slamming in quick succession. Rex breathed in the cool, fragrant air, which was redolent with pine needles and wood smoke from a burning fire. He led the way to the log building that had VISITOR INFORMATION CENTER hand-carved into a thick slab of wood above the front door. A signpost next to the porch bristled with arrows indicating the distance to everywhere from Bangkok to Paris.
“Hey, isn’t that cool?” Rex said, indicating the post. “How far does it say Seattle is, Bobby?”
“I really need to go, Dad.”
“Okay, okay, just hold on a bit longer.”
The steps up the porch creaked loudly beneath his feet. A sign hanging in the door’s mullioned window read CLOSED, though the lights were still on inside.
Rex rapped on the door and waited.
“Dad…”
“I know, Bobby. Hold on.”
He rapped again, and the door opened a moment later. An elderly woman dressed in a brightly-patterned dress stood on the other side of the threshold. She was tall and delicately built with a short-cropped white perm, ski-jump nose, and sagging jowls. Bright red lipstick contrasted garishly with her sun-weathered leathery skin. Kind eyes probed Rex from behind tortoise-shell eyeglasses. “I’m sorry,” she said, offering an apologetic smile, “we’ve been closed for a little while now. We’ll be open again tomorrow morning—”
“My son just needs to use the restroom,” Rex said. “Would that be possible? We’ve been driving all day.”
“Oh, I see.” The woman glanced at Bobby, who was cupping his genitals in dramatic fashion, and her smile became genuine. She gathered the fabric of her dress around her thighs and stepped back to allow them to enter. “Come in, please.”
The interior of the museum/tourist center was one large dilapidated room with raked ceilings from which depended three antique brass fans. A smorgasbord of glass display cases contained all sorts of metals and minerals. Others held old mining tools, surveyor’s instruments, and black-and-white photographs depicting life at the turn of the last century. In one dark corner stood an eerily life-sized exhibit of two haggard prospectors panning for gold over a creek bed. Nearby, a fire burned warmly in a stone fireplace.