Читать книгу Broken Bones - Gina McMurchy-Barber - Страница 8

Chapter Two

By the time Eddy arrived in her old red pickup truck, it was nearly 10:00 a.m. and I’d been ready and waiting on pins and needles for two hours. But when she stepped out of the truck I nearly giggled out loud. She was wearing the same old fisherman’s vest she always wore with its dozen tiny pockets that held everything an archaeologist on the go needed — a plumb bob, a measuring tape, calipers, a dental pick, string, a compass, a miniature flashlight, a small soft-bristled paintbrush, a spare set of reading glasses, a couple of zip-lock bags, a waterproof pen, and her old Swiss Army knife. But what was different about her was the wild and wiry silver hair sneaking out from under her green DON’S EXCAVATING: WE DIG PEOPLE LIKE YOU baseball cap.

I smirked. “Hi, Eddy. Get your hair done?”

She rolled her eyes and sighed. “Oh, you would have to mention it, wouldn’t you? I let Mabel talk me into getting a perm the other day. I was in for my usual cut, and she said, ‘Edwina, just because you go around dressed like a man all the time doesn’t mean you can’t look at least a little feminine.’ ‘What do you suggest?’ I asked her. Well, that was it. She had those rollers and pins out of the drawer and into my hair faster than a camel can spit. Now look at me. I’ve got to go around looking like a frizzy snowball.”

While Eddy spoke I began laughing … until Mom squeezed my shoulder, which was her way of saying, “Put a lid on it, kid.”

“Never mind, Dr. McKay, perms are always like that the first week,” Mom said. “It’ll relax soon and then you’ll be much happier with it.”

“Well, until then this hat stays put!” Eddy gave her cap a tug. “Okay, it’s getting late. I guess we’d better get going, Peggy. We’ll keep in touch, Mrs. Henderson.”

After throwing my suitcase into the wooden box in the back of the truck, I skipped over and gave my mom a bear hug. Then I kissed Uncle Stuart on the cheek. Finally, I turned to Aunt Margaret, who had a slight scowl on her face. “Well, Aunt Margaret, if you really don’t want me to go, I guess I could stay home and do some digging in your backyard instead.”

She gave me a one-sided smile. “Not a chance, Peggy. And don’t plan on bringing any bones home, either.”

Then she drew me in for a hug and kiss, and I couldn’t say for sure, but I think she had tears in her eyes — go figure!

Soon Eddy and I were flying down the highway past Langley, Aldergrove, Chilliwack, and Hope, which was known as the gateway to the Cariboo Gold Rush Trail, the road thousands of hopeful miners took during the late nineteenth century.

“So I guess Golden got its name because it had lots of gold, right?” I said to Eddy.

“Nope. Had nothing to with gold. Do you want to hear the story?”

I nodded.

“Well, first off, I’ll go back a bit. The area’s been home to the Kootenay people for thousands of years. Then the first European to discover the place in 1807 was explorer and geographer David Thompson. With help from the First Nations people, he mapped out the first trade route for the North West Company. Then fifty years later those same people helped James Hector find a route for the new Canadian Pacific Railway through the Rocky Mountains. That’s when the place got its first name — Kicking Horse Plains.”

I was imagining a herd of broncos with their hind legs bucking into the air. “Because there were wild horses roaming the area?”

“No, that’s not why. As the story goes, one morning when the group was getting ready to move out, Hector’s horse kicked him in the head. It must have been a doozy, because he was unconscious for days. In fact, his Kootenay guides thought he was dead and were placing him in his grave when he fortunately regained consciousness.”

“And that’s how the place became known as Kicking Horse Plains,” I finished for her in my storybook voice. “So do I get to count this as a history lesson? Aunt Margaret’s got me keeping a work diary of all the things I learn.” Eddy covered her mouth, but I could tell she was snickering. “It’s not funny, Eddy. I doubt you’d be laughing if you had to keep a running record of every ‘educational opportunity’ that came up. Man, Aunt Margaret is such a —”

“Now be nice, Peggy. She’s just trying to help.”

“Okay, fine. I’ll be nice, but then you have to finish the story about how the town got its name.”

“Well, the first settlement appeared around 1882 as the CPR was being built. The area became the base camp for the workers and survey crew. They called it The Cache, which means ‘storage place.’ The Cache crew had some friendly rivalry going on with another railway crew to the east who named their camp Silver City. Not to be outdone, the residents of The Cache renamed the place Golden City. That was a pretty fancy name for a town of tents and crude shacks, which I guess is why they eventually dropped the word city.” Eddy rolled her eyes and whistled. “But there sure wasn’t much golden about the place at the start. It was a rough little town, notorious for violence and crime. They had robberies, rum-running, bar brawls, lots of gunplay that ended badly, and even murder.”

As we sped along the highway, we soon left behind the familiar scene of tall cedars, maples turning orange and red, and the still-warm air of late September by the coast. Instead there were rocky slopes dotted with scruffy little pines and sagebrush, and a definite crispy coolness in the air. I could feel we were gaining altitude by the way my ears plugged up. And other clues that we were getting higher were all the warning signs we passed that said things like CHAIN-UP AREA AHEAD and BRIDGES MAY BE ICY. I was peering down one steep, rocky bank to the churning Coquihalla River below when we zipped passed a warning sign that read: AVALANCHE AREA — DO NOT STOP. My stomach lurched, and I decided I’d better stop looking down if I wanted to keep my breakfast.

When we turned a sharp bend in the highway, a loud honking came from behind us. Eddy accidently veered toward the steep embankment.

“Eddy, watch out!” I screeched. She managed to pull the truck back just as a silver car zipped past full of teenagers.

“Drive the speed limit or get off the road, you old bat!” a passenger yelled out as they raced by.

“Learn to drive!” shouted another.

At that moment I felt like a thermometer with the red-hot mercury quickly rising. It was guys like him that made things tough for all teenagers. “Idiots!” I cursed. I waited for Eddy to agree, but she held her steady gaze on the road. A short while later we pulled into Sparrow’s Gas Station.

“It’s time we stretched our legs, Peggy. I’ll fill the gas tank while you wash the windows.”

I picked up the squeegee to start scrubbing at the splattered insects stuck to the windshield. Out of the corner of my eye I caught a glimpse of the same silver sports car parked in front of the store. The driver and his friends were standing beside it drinking Slurpees. Eddy saw them, too, and walked over. I thought, Good. Eddy’s going to blast them.

“Hi there, boys. That car sure is something.”

The blond driver eyed her up and down carefully. He looked as if he was thinking the same thing I was. “Yeah, 1975 Gran Torino.”

“You don’t say? Well, I just need to tell you that …”

Here it comes, I thought. She’s going to let them have it.

“It’s a beautiful car, and I’m pretty sure if my grandson were here he’d be begging for a ride.”

What! She wasn’t blasting the kid at all — just complimenting him.

The boy’s eyes softened, and he smiled. “You know, it’s the same car they drove in the Starsky and Hutch TV show. Except, of course, it’s not the same colour.” He was gushing with pride now.

“That’s impressive. It’s the kind of car you’ll want to keep forever.”

The boy nodded.

“C’mon, Nathan,” said the kid riding shotgun. I gotta get home.”

The blond boy turned to Eddy. “Well, see ya.”

“Right, see you,” Eddy said. “And drive carefully, Nathan. You don’t want anything to happen to that car of yours.” Eddy turned and went inside to pay for her gas.

The boy waved and said something like “Have a nice day, ma’am.”

“Eddy, that’s the kid who almost pushed us off the road,” I said when she got into the car. “Why didn’t you tell him off?”

“I could’ve done that. And then he’d just have given some smart-aleck response and tore off full of emotion. That would only have made matters worse, Peggy. I wanted to diffuse the situation. I want those boys to get home safely.”

“Well, they’re jerks, if you ask me.”

“Might look like that. But I’ll bet when they get home for dinner tonight they’ll kiss their mothers, wash up the dishes afterward, and then go up to their rooms with their little league baseball trophies and stamp collections and do homework.”

Eddy and I drove on through tunnels and along steep river embankments and passed fields covered in alfalfa. We also went through lots of little towns in less time than it took to blink an eye. But tiny as they were, every one of them had a little cemetery enclosed by a white picket fence.

Soon the droning of the pavement and the gentle jostling of the truck lulled me to sleep. I dozed on and off for hours, dreaming about horseshoes wedged inside skulls, scruffy miners duking it out, and oddly enough, plums and stinky diapers. But the dream that woke me up with the boiling mercury again was the one in which a silver Gran Torino spun its wheels across burials in Golden’s cemetery.

“Eddy, I heard it was a teenager who was caught vandalizing historic sites and digging up graves in Golden. That’s gotta rile you up, right?” Who wouldn’t agree the kid was some kind of low-life who lived under a rock?

“The world is made up of billions of people who all have different personalities, experiences, and opinions, Peggy. And I suppose there’s got to be just as many reasons why some are driven to destructive behaviour.”

“C’mon, Eddy, what kind of an answer is that? Admit it. Anyone who goes around pushing over tombstones, or writing on monuments, or busting open a casket to steal someone’s valuables has got to be worse than rotting sewage, right?”

“You have such a colourful way of putting things, Peggy. But actually I don’t look at it that way. When you’ve been around as long as I have, you realize that not everyone who does a bad thing is a bad person. Now I agree there needs to be a consequence for those who vandalize sites or break the law in any way, but I tend to want to punish the act or the behaviour and not the person.”

“Oh, please! That’s such a grown-up response. Don’t you ever want to take a person like that and pull out all their nose hairs?”

Eddy laughed. “Well, Peggy, like I said, things are never as cut and dried as they seem. For example, take the man who steals to feed his starving children.”

“Eddy, we were talking about people who vandalize sites and stuff.”

“Yes, well, when it comes to the individual responsible for vandalizing the old Pioneer Cemetery in Golden, I’m going to reserve my opinion until I know more about the whole matter.” Eddy laughed when I shook my head. “You know, this isn’t the first time that cemetery was vandalized.”

That made me sit up. “Yeah, I kind of remember now that Aunt Norma wrote something about that, but I don’t know the whole story.”

“Right, well, a long time ago the town’s only homeless guy, old Billy Pearson, got thirsty one day — and not for milk, if you know what I mean. Billy didn’t have any money, but it so happened he was one of the few people who knew about the abandoned Pioneer Cemetery. He found one of the graves and dug down until he came to the casket, smashed in the top, and removed the skull. Then he took it to the pub, set it on the bar, and asked, ‘Will this get me a beer or two?’ Well, the bartender gave him a beer just to keep him busy until he could get the RCMP to come.”

“Did they put Billy in jail or fine him?”

“Aw, no … Billy was a simple-minded old fellow, a real character. He was the kind of guy everyone in a small town looked out for. He was charged with a misdemeanour and made to promise he’d never do it again, that’s all.”

I had to scratch my head at that one. I mean, where I came from, digging up someone’s grave was a crime.

“Unfortunately, a while later, some teens found the old cemetery, too, and made a real mess of things. The town decided they’d better get some help, so a crew of archaeologists came and excavated a large portion of the cemetery.”

I was in the middle of figuring out what I wanted to say to those subhuman teenagers when Eddy let out a yell that made me nearly jump out the window.

“Yahoo! It’s the Last Spike!”

I stared at her and wondered if her tightly wound hair had cut off the circulation to her brain.

“Sorry if I startled you. It’s just that we’re coming up to one of the neatest little pieces of Canadian history. I’ll show you.”

We pulled off the highway and entered a parking lot with a sign that read: WELCOME TO LAST SPIKE PROVINCIAL PARK, CRAIGELLACHIE, B.C. For the next twenty minutes Eddy told me the history of the building of the railway across Canada.

“It was an amazing accomplishment,” she explained. “It took thousands of labourers to build it — men who came from Italy, England, Ireland, United States, and China. Unfortunately, a lot of people suffered because of the railway, too. The Chinese were exploited and paid only half of what the Europeans got. The First Nations were forced to give up land. And the thousands of men who lost their lives or limbs were never compensated for their sacrifices.”

I remembered seeing a picture in social studies of the day they hammered in the Last Spike and completed Canada’s first cross-country railway — the Canadian Pacific. What I never understood was why they let some old guy named Donald A. Smith be the one to go down in history by driving in that Last Spike, especially when it took tens of thousands of men fifteen years to build the railway.

We stayed at Last Spike Park until we finished off our sandwiches and apple slices. Then we were back on the road again. It wasn’t long before the light began to fade. As it got darker, stars appeared. At first there were just a few, but soon there were thousands … maybe millions of them. The only time I’d seen anything remotely like it was at the Vancouver Planetarium where Harold, the big star projector, lit up the domed ceiling to make it look like a night sky. When you lived in the city, you only got to see the brightest stars, those few still visible despite the harsh light pollution coming from office towers, street lamps, and the orangey glow of greenhouses growing tomatoes in the winter. But no matter how many stars were in the night sky it always made me feel mushy knowing they were the same ones my ancestors had looked at, or the early pioneers before them, and even farther back, the first people who walked this land. It gave me a buzz to think how we’d all followed those same stars, wishing on them, sleeping under them. I scooched down in my seat and rested my head against the window so I could peer up at that night sky as we peeled down that black highway.

It must have been at least midnight when we finally pulled into Golden. By then my butt was numb and my eyes were blurry. Eddy found Aunt Norma’s house pretty easily, probably because it was right next to the police station. When I got to the front door, there weren’t any lights on, only a note. I pulled it down and read it by the truck headlights.

Hi, kiddo,

Welcome to Golden. I’m over at the newspaper office working on some last-minute news for the Saturday paper. I shouldn’t be too long. Just come in and make yourself at home. We’ll get caught up when I get back.

Love,

Aunt Norma

P.S. The door isn’t locked — never is! In fact, the only places that get locked around here are the bank and the jail.

I turned the knob and pushed the squeaky door open, but nearly jumped off the landing when something sleek and black bolted out and skimmed past my leg. “Licorice! You startled me.” I was pretty sure my aunt’s cat didn’t give two hoots about how I felt, though he did stop to give me a second glance before darting into the night.

My hand fumbled around the wall, searching for the light switch. When I finally flicked it on, I looked over the room and wasn’t sure where I should step or put my backpack. Unlike Aunt Margaret’s house, which was so clean and orderly you were afraid to sit down, Aunt Norma’s place was a disaster. Mugs and newspapers were all over the coffee table, and balled-up socks, more newspapers, a cribbage board, and a box of crackers occupied the sofa. I glanced into the kitchen where dishes were piled by the sink. And there was no way to miss the musky smell that must have been cat poop mixed with kitty litter.

“I feel at home already,” I pronounced, smiling.

Eddy raised her eyebrows and grinned back. “Yeah, me, too! Are you okay being here alone until your aunt gets home?”

I nodded.

“Okay, well, then I think I’m going to get on over to Mary’s Motel. I’m feeling like a zombie. I’ll give you a call in the morning — make that late morning!”

I watched her drive off and closed the door.

The first thing was to make a place to sit down. I moved some of the stuff off the sofa and put it on top of all the other things on the coffee table. I thought maybe I’d watch some TV until Aunt Norma came home, but after hunting around for it I finally figured out that there wasn’t one. Instead the rooms were filled with neat stacks of books. They were heaped in the corner and on top of the dining room table, and along one entire wall shelves were crammed with them. The other thing I noticed was all the yellow Post-it Notes stuck randomly everywhere. I read some: “Check out what make of vehicle Brenner drives.” “Council meeting Friday — bring camera.” “Shopping list — cat food, dish soap, frozen corn, maple syrup.” “Peggy coming Friday — get milk.” She had weird quotes, too, like: “‘There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so’ — Shakespeare.”

With no TV to watch and much too tired to read, I curled up at one end of the sofa next to some old newspapers, a cereal bowl, and a brush full of matted black cat hair. I didn’t know how long I sat there waiting for Aunt Norma, but sometime later I woke and found myself stretched out on the sofa with a pillow under my head, a blanket spread over me, and all the lights out. Sleepily, I turned over and mumbled, “Night, Aunt Norma.”

Out of the dark came another tired voice from the next room. “Night, Pegs. See you in the morning.”