Hold Fast (15 page)

Well, old Curtis didn't know a thing about all this. He didn't have a clue about what I'd gone and done. I figured if it was going to be done atall, then only one person was going to do it anyway. So what was the use of telling him beforehand. The only thing he might a done was loused it up.

That knocked him over altogether that did — when I told him we had a car and we was going for a little drive in the morning. He didn't know what to say to that.

Cool or what?

By the time Mrs. McKay's flight had gone it was four-thirty. That was three o'clock in New York, three o'clock in Montreal, and eight o'clock in London, England, according to the clocks on the terminal wall. It would a been all right for us if we was in Montreal or New York. We'd a had an hour and a half more of daylight. But where we was, with it being November and the times gone back the week before, it was already pretty close to getting dark. That put the clamps right there on the idea of making the last part of the trip that first day. I wasn't about to take a chance on going off with the car in the dark. There might be enough trouble with her in the daylight, let alone when it got pitch black.

I didn't mind that so much anyway, as long as the extra few hours didn't fool us up for the next day. I wasn't sure how long it was going to take before the cops everywhere would get a hold of the fact that we was missing and be on the lookout for us.

We'd just have to chance it. We'd spend the night where we was and get an early start in the morning. The
airport building was big enough to get lost into and I knew for a fact that it was open all night. I figured we could stretch out on one of the seats somewhere later on and snooze her off. There was plenty of them there.

That was for later. To kill the next few hours, we decided we'd leave the airport and go out to town — roam around a bit, see what there was to see. We stowed away the knapsacks in the car and took off then and walked the mile or so to the shopping center. We had some shopping to do — not much, some food and camping supplies to pick up for the next few days. Then we bummed around for a while until I figured we'd better get outa sight and go to a movie or something. I had this crazy feeling that if we walked around too much someone might just happen to recognize us. I mean, I was only ever in the place once before in my life. But still, Newfoundland don't have that many people. You never knows when a relative or someone that you met before is going to pop up outa nowhere. Don't kid yourself. I've seen it happen.

By ten o'clock we was back to the airport. We took the knapsacks from the car and brought them into the terminal again. That way we looked at least like we had some right to be there.

The center area in the terminal must be about the biggest waiting room I ever sat down into. It can't be much, say, compared to Montreal or Toronto or something, but it's still pretty big. They got seventy-five of these long padded lounge chairs. I counted them. They're not meant for sleeping on, but I mean you could sleep a darn fine crowd of people there if they was ever stuck for a place to take a nap.

Something else that'll give you an idea of the size of the place is the men's washroom. It's got seven urinals in it. Now, I don't make a job of counting everything around, but when you're standing up there and you got nothing better to do, well then you might as well be at that as at anything. As far as the eye can see — all these places to take a leak.

Now that's what I calls fair-size accommodations. We could a slept in the car, I spose, but it was cold outside and even with the sleeping bags we wouldn't a been very comfortable the way we would a had to be squat up. Anyway, you'd think in a place that size they wouldn't mind a coupla fellows spending the night there. After all, it wasn't as if the place was crowded. Even when the planes was in, there was thousands of room for everybody who wanted to sit down, and loads left over.

But sure enough, just like I should've expected, about one o'clock in the night, between flights when there was hardly a soul around and just as we was settled away comfortable, the darn security guard jams on the brakes right next to us and gives us each a bloody big shake. Just about landed me on the floor. I had a mind to draw off and belt him one.

Now, see, if I'd been someone else, older and all dressed up in a shirt and tie and with three pieces of luggage and a briefcase, he wouldn't a batted an eye. I bet you he wouldn't've.

I told him we was waiting to get on the CN bus in the morning. I had to say something. For sure Curtis wasn't going to deliver a speech to him. I couldn't say we was waiting for a flight cause he would a asked for our tickets.
And see with the CN bus we could a been buying our tickets the next morning. The ticket office wasn't open until then.

So I thought that was a pretty good answer. Only he didn't swallow it so good. Seems like someone might a tried that before.

“What are you doin here all night, when the bus doesn't leave until one o'clock tomorrow?”

So I had to make up this story about how we lived in this place a long ways away that wasn't on the bus line and Gander was the closest place that the bus stopped and we only had this one chance for a ride in and that was last evening with another fellow because Dad was away in the woods and he wasn't there to drive us. We was on our way to St. John's to see our sister.

He still wasn't so sure. But finally, he came out with one of those okay-but-remember lectures and walked off. Wouldn't know but we was trying to wreck the place. Cripes, we spent a coupla bucks in the gift shop there. What more did he want? We was good for business.

By nine o'clock the next day, close to twenty-four hours from the time we left St. Albert, we made it to our temporary hide-out in the woods.

I've been driving a pickup now since I've been ten years old. That's no lie. Where we lived in Marten we had a nice-size section of cleared land out in back of the house where we raised our vegetables. That's mainly where I learned to drive. Back and forth the driveway and up over the hill and around the land. And then too, lots of times when I was with Dad anywhere in the pickup off from the main road, he'd let me take the wheel.
Not all that far now, because you had to be careful of the cops.

Some fathers wouldn't let anybody that age go near a steering wheel. Dad wasn't like that. He said I had to learn sometime and it was all right I got use to it early. As long as I didn't keep on after him all the time to be going places then he didn't mind. It wasn't dangerous because there was no traffic where we used to go. And anyway I knew what I was doing. I took my time. Sunday afternoons mostly, after Dad had his nap, was when we'd be out.

I'll have to admit that a Volkswagen was a bit different from what I was use to. But not a big lot. What I done first was to lodge a couple of coats under my behind until I was a good comfortable distance above the wheel. I hauled on an old beanie over my head that I found in one of the coat pockets and covered half my face with a pair of Mrs. McKay's sunglasses that Curtis dug out from the glove compartment. I turned down the sun visor.

“All you need is a white scarf and you'll be ready to fly,” Curtis said.

Well, you knows he didn't come up with it. I felt like giving him a good bang. Me trying to be serious and him fooling around like that. He was supposed to be keeping a lookout and telling me what was going on around the parking lot.

It took me a while to get her around the pile of cars that was there and then onto the road. Longer than I figured. There was a few little extra stops and starts I hadn't counted on. But once I made it out and got to the
straight stretches and had a chance to get use to the way she handled, then there wasn't much to it atall. It was all a matter of being careful, of taking it slow and easy.

It was so early in the morning when we started that there was hardly any traffic on the go. That was one good thing. Our biggest problem was getting gas. I knew the tank didn't have enough in it to get us there and back. And we certainly couldn't take the risk of driving her to empty. We turned in real quick to a self-serve place and gassed her up fast is what we done. I stayed aboard the car and made out I was fixing something under the dash. The girl inside never got all that much of a look at me. Curtis went out to the pumps and put in three dollars worth and paid the girl and came running back out just as I popped my head up.

“Flatten her!” he said.

Now that's how much he knew about it. Good thing I was the one driving. I played it cool and drove out quietly. I don't figure she caught on.

With that problem behind us, our other headache was coming up against the cops. That was the main reason for leaving so early. There was less chance of meeting them. We was lucky too that the fifty miles we had to go didn't take us through either community. It was all woods but for three or four gas stations.

Anyway, we made it, like I said. And we didn't see not one cop car along the way. I drove about forty-five most of the time, about seventy if you wants to talk kilometers. She had a fair bit of power, I spose, but I mean I had to keep my head and play it safe. I couldn't mat her my first time driving on the highway and all. I had to be sensible
about it. Wreck the car and then what kinda shit would we a been in.

It was just a few minutes before nine when we hauled into our destination — the overflow campground in the National Park. Even before we left the house, when I was trying to come up with a good place to hide out for a few days, this campground popped right into my mind. I was there with the family two summers before when we went on a week's camping trip. I remembered it because it had shelters and running water and indoor toilets and electricity and all that stuff, which made living there not the least bit like camping.

The running water and the power might be cut off but I knew the shelters had to be still there and that was what we needed — a place to give us some shelter from the weather. If worse came to worse we still had the car to fall back on. Although I tell you the idea of being cramped up for fourteen hours a day like two sardines wasn't much to look forward to.

The plan now was to spend a few days in the park and then skin out to Marten after that, once we'd proved to those guys that we could get along good enough without them. When the time came and we decided we was ready to leave, we'd drive back to the airport with the car, then thumb the hundred miles home to Marten.

We drove down the branch road from the highway and then turned up the road with the arrow for the campground. The building for checking in campers and the parking lot both was hard to see from the main road. They was hidden in behind some trees. Perfect.

There was a chain across the road to the campsites with a sign saying CLOSED/FERME. Not so perfect.

But then again, it meant for sure nobody was going into the place. The sign in the window of the building said CAMPGROUND CLOSED, PROCEED TO WINTER CAMPING AREA 12 MILES EAST.

So what if we couldn't drive up to it. I parked the car there by the building. That was good enough, nobody would ever see it from the main road. We got out, jumped over the chain, and ran off up the road to get a first-hand look at the whole thing. We came running in on what looked to me like a place that hadn't seen a trace of human life in weeks. Maybe months. There was all kinds of signs up like I remembered them, saying sites 26 to 38 that way, 52 to 59 another way, where to go to use the can, the forest-fire index is low, that way for the playground, drive with caution. All that. Like I said, no more like camping out in the woods now than camping in the middle of Yonge Street in Toronto. But for what I was after this time, it was just the thing.

I spose if we had scouted around the whole place we would a come across probably two hundred of these sites, each of them with a picnic table, a fireplace, and some kind of level spot to pitch a tent or haul in a camper trailer.

We took a quick look at the cooking shelters and the washrooms. It never came into my mind before about the washrooms for a place to sleep. Two of them was locked up, but number three — that one was open. We could a made do with the cooking shelters. They had a roof, a floor and full walls up three sides. But now then, the
washroom was a regular Holiday Inn. Once you was inside, not a bit of weather could get at you, not if it was buried in ten foot of snow.

Okay, so a can might seem a pretty lousy place to use for sleeping, but I'm telling you, with this place we'd have solid comfort. And anyway it wasn't actually the washroom part we was going to sleep in, it was the janitor's storeroom that joined up the men's can to the women's on the other side.

That put us on easy street. A place off by ourselves away from everybody. Lots of room. All kinds of shelter — from rain, snow, hail, sleet, whatever you mind to name. No running water now. That was shut off for the winter. We'd have to make do with water from a pond or spring. Just terrible idn't it what you got to put up with when you're camping? I mean no electricity and no TV either! Can't see how we'd ever survive!

And grub? Well, we had a few things brought with us. Enough to keep off starvation. But mostly I was counting on the coil of wire I had in my pocket to do the trick. In a place like that there had to be thousands of rabbits, and maybe some partridge. No hunting in the national parks — that was the law, of course. Ah, but the federal government would never miss a coupla rabbits, I thought. They'd only die off anyway in a few years. And what use would they be to anybody then. Besides, I was sure the government didn't want to see us go hungry.

So we was all set, all fixed away nice. I felt pretty darn happy about how things had worked out. We could count ourselves awful lucky. And Curtis, what did he think
about it all? My son, once he knew he had a bit of security as far as a half-decent place to sleep was concerned, that was it then, he didn't give a darn.