Читать книгу Wildwood - Elinor Florence - Страница 8

August

“It’s a scorcher, eh?” commented Edna, the plump, red-faced woman behind the hotel desk. I chuckled politely before I realized that she wasn’t joking. Edna patted her damp forehead with a tissue. “It’s twenty-three above. That’s the hottest day this year so far.”

I converted Celsius to Fahrenheit in my head — twice, to make sure I wasn’t mistaken. Seventy-three degrees Fahrenheit did not a hot day make, but we were in the far north now. As we entered the hotel restaurant, I saw several people in shorts and tank tops. Bridget and I were wearing jeans and jackets.

We found a booth in the corner and Bridget hid under the fake wood-grained tabletop while I placed our order for bacon and eggs. After the server left, I passed Bridget an antiseptic wipe and we surreptitiously cleaned our cutlery under the table.

I tried not to look too closely at the upholstery on the banquette, which had a pattern designed to hide the dirt, a swirling print like purple and brown storm clouds. The carpeted floor was dark brown, marked with heavy black streaks resembling tar, probably from the oil patch workers. Four young men at the next table wore steel-toed boots and orange reflective vests.

This was oil country. Northern Alberta had gigantic reserves of crude oil — the third largest in the world after Saudi Arabia and Venezuela. The “oil sands,” as they were called, produced billions of dollars in revenue and employed tens of thousands of people.

The room seemed unnaturally hushed. Breakfast at an American restaurant was a noisy affair, but here everyone was speaking in low voices, even the oil workers. Two older men in plaid shirts and suspenders quietly discussed the advantages of a forty-foot versus a thirty-foot combine header as if they were spies exchanging secrets. They might as well have been, since I had no idea what they were talking about.

As usual, Bridget refused to eat. I cut her toast into narrow strips and coaxed her to dip them into the golden egg yolks. She managed to get a few bites down while I wondered again how many calories a child her age needed to survive. She balked at drinking her orange juice because she said it tasted funny. The food was delicious and the coffee excellent, but the bill came to an astonishing $17. My dwindling funds wouldn’t last long at this rate.

I sang “You Are My Sunshine” while we drove away from town, along the paved, four-lane Mackenzie Highway that ran north and south through the forest like twin silver ribbons. Bridget refused to sing along. She sat in the corner of the seat, sulking.

The sparse traffic consisted mostly of trucks: tankers, pickups, and four-by-fours with equipment stacked in the back, all heading to the northern oil and gas fields. I was greatly encouraged by the quality of the highway. We should be able to drive eighty-eight miles in eighty-eight minutes.

As we sailed along, I marvelled at the vastness of this forest that lined the highway on both sides and extended to the horizon. At intervals the bush was broken by fields of waving grain, pastures of lush grass, and ponds of shimmering sapphire. Rocking horse oil wells dotted the fields, their red metal heads dipping and rising. Occasionally we passed a farmstead with a tidy wood-framed house and rows of tall silver cylinders that I assumed were for grain storage.

After we had driven sixty miles straight north, the pleasant woman’s voice from the global positioning system told us to turn right, toward the east. This road was much narrower, and the pavement was dotted with potholes. I slowed the rented Toyota Corolla, feeling a little apprehensive. Every few hundred yards we crossed a small bridge. The landscape was criss-crossed by creeks and lined with low shrubs and clumps of cattails that emerged from the forest and wound through the yellow fields like bushy green snakes. “Bridget, look at all the water!” She refused to raise her eyes.

At each one-mile point we intersected another crossroad. I finally coaxed Bridget out of her mood by asking her to count them. When she reached twenty, the voice told us to turn left, or north, onto a gravel road.

I had never driven on gravel, so I slowed the car again with a sense of misgiving. We were still eight miles from our destination. A cloud of dust rose behind the car. After the first couple of miles, all signs of human habitation ceased, and the forest walls closed in on both sides. We were driving through a tunnel of trees.

I gripped the steering wheel tightly. This must be how Hansel and Gretel felt, following the trail of bread crumbs through the dark woods. I was relieved to see the odd patch of pasture, where cattle grazed. The familiar sight of a cow was comforting.

The day was getting warmer and to save gasoline I rolled down the windows and turned off the air conditioning. The fresh scent of pine resin flowed through the open windows. There was an intermittent thwacking sound as insects hit the hood and the windshield, leaving disgusting green smears on the glass.

Suddenly Bridget let out a piercing scream. I slammed on the brakes and the car fishtailed on the gravel before coming to a stop. “What is it? What’s the matter?”

Still shrieking, Bridget pointed to a grasshopper that had flown in through the window and was clinging to her sleeve.

“It’s just a silly old bug! Here, let me grab it.” I took a paper napkin off the floor and gingerly picked up the grasshopper, then flung it out the window. I was trying to be brave for her sake, but the insect was hideous, chartreuse in colour and slightly sticky.

I pressed the button to raise the electric windows and started off again, but Bridget’s mood had changed. She continued to look around fearfully, clutching Johnny Wrinkle to her chest.

“Mama, the sun is shining right in my eyes!”

“Well, just shut them for a few minutes. We’re almost there.”

Bridget closed her eyes, scrunching up her face comically. “That doesn’t work! It just turns everything dark orange!”

Before I could answer, the dashboard voice spoke again. “You have reached your destination.” I glanced around but I couldn’t see anything that looked like a farmyard. A rutted trail, thick with grass and weeds, cut through a field of grain on our left and disappeared over a slight rise.

Carefully, I eased the car onto the trail and heard a series of metallic-sounding thumps as the tall weeds struck the undercarriage. I was afraid the car would bottom out or, worse yet, hit a hidden rock. I braked to a halt.

“Come on, Bridget, we’ll have to walk.”

“No! Mama, there’s bugs out there!”

“They won’t hurt you, I promise. Let’s go and find our new house.”

I went around to the passenger door and opened it. Bridget’s little hands clung to the sides of the doorway like the suction-cupped arms of a starfish. “I don’t want to go!”

“You can ride piggyback. The bugs can’t get you up there!”

“No, no, no, no!”

“Bridget, you have to come with me or else stay in the car by yourself.”

Dreading a tantrum, I heard my voice assume its usual wheed­ling tone. I felt the familiar surge of anxiety and reluctance to upset her. Thankfully she allowed herself to be hoisted onto my back, and we set off. She must have gained weight, I thought as I staggered along the grassy ruts.

“Sweetie, don’t choke me, please.”

Even with Bridget squeezing my throat and shrieking every time a grasshopper whirred out of the grass, I admired the overarching sky. It was a deeper shade of blue than in the desert and looked as solid as marble. A chest-high field of emerald grain stood on both sides of the trail. The air was thick with the yeasty scent of ripening wheat. Occasionally an unfamiliar sweet fragrance rose from a cluster of wildflowers.

When we crested the rise, I saw a stand of trees that formed a rough rectangle, floating like a dark-green island in a lighter-green sea, backed by a solid wall of forest to the north. I quickened my steps toward a rough opening in the rectangle.

We came around the corner, and I stopped abruptly at the first sight of the house.

The three-storey building was shaped like an enormous shoebox standing on one end. If it weren’t so tall, it might have been hidden behind the surrounding mass of overgrown shrubs. The peeling, cream-coloured horizontal clapboards on the lower half were barely visible. On the upper half, the walls were covered with dark-red shingles faded to a deep rose, the same colour as the brick chimney that climbed up one side.

Topping the massive house was a squat, pyramid-shaped roof. This was broken by small dormer windows facing into the yard, if you could call it a yard. Every window was boarded over with scrap lumber, making the house look like a blind man behind dark glasses, his mighty shoulders stubbornly hunched.

It was so much worse than I had imagined.

I realized now that I had envisioned a quaint Arts and Crafts bungalow, like the historic homes in Phoenix. Or perhaps a charming farmhouse like the ones in movies, with rocking chairs on a wraparound verandah. Well, this house had a verandah, all right, except that I could barely see it through the dense bushes.

“Are we going to live here?” Even Bridget was incredulous.

I kept my voice cheerful. “Let’s go inside and take a look.”

I struggled toward the front door through branches that clawed at my face, climbed the six creaking wooden steps to the verandah, and lowered Bridget to her feet. As I pulled the key from my pocket, I saw a lucky horseshoe hanging over the panelled front door. The heavy door opened smoothly, and we stepped inside. Bridget clung to my hand, whining and dragging on me with her full weight.

We found ourselves in a large vestibule. The daylight from the open door behind us illuminated the first few steps of a staircase leading upward to the right. On the left, an open doorway revealed the living room, and I felt relief that the house was furnished. I was afraid my great-aunt might have taken everything with her when she moved. I sniffed. The odour wasn’t unpleasant: a combination of wood and fabric and dust. There was a faint scent of woodsmoke, and even something fragrant. Lavender?

I stepped into the living room and pulled aside one of the sheets on the lumpy shape nearest to us, revealing a brown velvet couch.

“Mama, it’s too dark in here!”

I pulled a flashlight from my pocket, thankful that Edna had suggested it. Oddly, she had seemed to know where we were going. I shone it onto the hardwood floor. Over the sound of Bridget’s complaints, I walked to the end of the hall and opened the door.

The kitchen was pretty bad. My beam of light fell onto a large wooden table covered with a piece of oilcloth. A porcelain farmhouse sink stood in one corner, with a green metal hand pump. Along one wall were floor-to-ceiling fir cabinets, stained the same rich brown colour as the rest of the woodwork, darkened with a layer of dirt and grease. An old-fashioned cook stove stood against the wall, and beside it a rocking chair. My flashlight picked out a fly-spotted calendar bearing a photograph of three cocker spaniel pups. The date read August 1990.

Everything was so dirty! I swallowed hard, resisting the urge to shudder. For a minute I wanted to turn around and go straight back to town, back to the airport, back to Arizona.

“Mama, you’re hurting me!”

“Sorry, sweetie.” I released my grip on her little hand. “Let’s look upstairs.”

“Mama, let’s go. I don’t like it here.” I shone the flashlight toward her, anticipating another tantrum. Her little face was screwed up with anxiety.

“Just one quick peek, then we can go back to the car.”

I led the way down the hall and toward the stairs. We began to climb, following the flashlight beam up eight wide treads. When we got to the landing where the stairs turned again to rise into total blackness, Bridget pulled her hand away. “I don’t want to go up there!”

“All right.” I spoke in my most soothing voice. “Stand right here for a minute while I look upstairs.”

I left her standing in a narrow shaft of sunlight shining from a crack between two boards nailed across the landing window. I hurried up another eight steps and found myself in the upstairs hallway.

My flashlight beam picked out five closed doors, two on each side of the hall and one at the end, all made of the same panelled wood with matching crystal doorknobs set into filigreed brass plates.

Bridget continued to whimper while I stepped across the hall and opened the first door. There was nothing in this room but a wrought-iron metal bedstead painted cornflower blue, the mattress covered with a sheet, and beside it a small wooden table bearing a candlestick and a half-melted candle. A candle!

The next door opened on a closet, stacked with neatly folded towels and bedding.

The third door revealed another narrow staircase leading upward into darkness. I closed it and opened the fourth door. This must be the bathroom, I thought. An oval-shaped metal tub stood in one corner, and a washstand with a flowered bowl and pitcher in the opposite corner. Over this hung a mirror covered with black spots.

I fought a wave of choking disappointment. The house was clearly uninhabitable.

Bridget had stopped whining, so I walked to the far end of the hall and opened the fifth and final door, shining my flashlight into the corners. This room was large, twice the size of the others. A brass bed stood against the back wall, facing four boarded-over windows across the front. A pencil-thin ray of light revealed a crack where the boards didn’t quite meet. I tiptoed across the dusty floor and peered through it.

Bathed in brilliant sunshine, a panoramic view of green fields marbled with streaks of darker-green forest stretched away to a distant line of purple hills. Not far from the house was a creek, the blue water rippling through the thick grass and silvery shrubs along its banks.

I must be facing south. I suddenly remembered the map I had studied on my computer screen. This was my land! Or would be, if we could possibly survive in this filthy monstrosity of a house for the next year.

An unfamiliar sound interrupted my thoughts. Bridget. I whirled and took a quick step toward the door, thinking that she had started to cry. Then I realized with a shock that she was laughing, that deep belly laugh that came so rarely. I rushed down the hall and shone my flashlight onto the landing below.

Bridget stood with her arms outstretched, covered with bits of colour. The sun was shining through the crack at just the right angle, striking the stained glass window over the landing, creating a shower of rainbows that sprinkled her face and arms.

“Mama, look! It’s raining rainbows!”

“Oh, how pretty, Bridget! I wish you could see yourself!”

She laughed again, and tears sprang to my eyes. It had been so long since I had heard her laugh. I had forgotten how adorable she looked when her little face was grinning, her perfect baby teeth revealed in two pearly rows.

I vaulted down the stairs to the landing and held out my own arms beneath the sunlight. The colours tumbled onto me like a waterfall of tiny jewels.

“Mama, your hands have polka dots!”

I bent over so that a shaft of green light fell on my nose, and she laughed again while she held out her hand as if she were wearing a ruby ring. We exclaimed together, twisting this way and that. After a few minutes, the sun shifted and the rainbows twinkled away. But all at once the house seemed less unwelcoming.

I could scarcely believe Bridget’s next words. “Mama, can we please, please, please stay here? In the rainbow house?”

“I don’t know yet, darling. Maybe.”

We went outside and made our way around to the back of the house. The golden sunshine poured down on our shoulders like molten rain. A heavenly host of birds sang in harmony from the treetops. A gigantic black and orange monarch butterfly flitted past.

Standing in the long grass, I ran my eyes over the house.

The black asphalt shingles on the roof looked intact. There were only a few bricks missing from the chimney. Since the windows were boarded over, I hoped that none of the panes were broken. But what did I know? I needed to find someone who could do a proper assessment and tell me whether we could actually live in this place, and the sooner the better.

I hoisted Bridget onto my back and hurried to the car. We sang “Somewhere Over the Rainbow.” Obviously, Bridget had forgotten about the grasshoppers.

I was quiet on the drive back to town, mulling over everything we had seen. Bridget, on the other hand, chattered happily like the squirrel we had heard in the big poplars at the edge of the yard.

When we came into the hotel, I went straight to Edna behind the front desk. “Is there a building inspector in town?”

“No, ma’am. Somebody from the city comes around whenever a new house goes up in Juniper. But you can ask Old Joe Daley. He knows pretty much everything there is to know about house construction.”