The Survival Game (12 page)

Natalie Agnew stooped to pick up a discarded pop can. The empty was frosty cold with dew. There was another one down by the water's edge. She slid down the bank to recover it and then squatted there to watch the river.

The Skat was far from picturesque. Not brown, really, she thought, but rust-coloured, like so much else about this part of the world: the rocks, the cars and pick-ups. From this angle she could see where the sunlight filtered down through the ties on the railway bridge overhead, laying bands of gold on the river. Like a xylophone, she thought.

She and David had driven up to Pharaoh from Presqueville early that morning. He was a social planner, a consultant to the native council at the Leather Belt Reservation. He had a meeting and she had come along for the ride to see the fall colours, to get out of Presqueville, to be with him. But there wasn't really much in the way of fall colour – no maples, at least. She got that hungry feeling for the Eastern Townships where she had grown up. She could almost taste the maple syrup.

She had walked through what there was of Pharaoh and was now at the end of the road that served the town as main street, though she had seen no sign to suggest it had a name. David had said, “It would take some inspiration to actually name a street.” David wasn't keen on Pharaoh.

“Yes, but somebody named the place Pharaoh,” she had said. “And that took a
lot
of imagination.”

The road ended abruptly, petered out to a sandy path, then bush and litter. She was thinking of going back to the car to see if there was a garbage bag in the trunk. She thought of David laughing at her – Natalie the garbage crusader. That convinced her it was worth the walk. It was good to hear his big healthy laugh. But she would wait a minute, sit on a rock and watch the xylophone shifting tunelessly with every breeze.

It was Saturday. She would take the time to enjoy watching the dew melt as the October sun rose out of the bush. She wasn't from these parts. She kept calling it the forest, but bit by bit the locals were convincing her that it was nothing so lofty. It was bush, plain and simple.

She would sit and count what passed before her eyes down the Skat: an oak leaf redder even than the river, a spray of yellow poplar. Sure there were fall colours; you just had to look.

Pharaoh. Burl Crow came from here. She stood and looked back down the road as if thinking of him might make him materialize. The road was still empty.

The first day of term, Sherri Kelso had come up to her with
The Red Fairy Book
. She had found it tucked into the back of her desk. Somehow Natalie hadn't been surprised. Boys that age were hard critters to figure out. Leaving her present behind could mean anything, or nothing at all.

But she was a little sad, when she thought about it, that Burl hadn't dropped around to visit. Mind you, how would he? He was a long way from Presqueville, and the bus from the high school in Vaillancourt probably took all of what was left of after-school. It had been unreasonable to expect to see him again.

She turned her mind to Burl. He was intelligent, imaginative, but he held it in check. Not slyly, like an ace up the sleeve. More like he was carrying an egg through the playground at recess, never knowing where the next jolt might come from. She had noticed angry bruises on him. And a hunger in his eyes.

He was full of promise, she thought. Absently Natalie made a circle out of stones on the riverbank. Full of promise. What a strange expression. As if life was a lie on the outside, but there was some other truth within. Was that Burl Crow?

She plopped a pebble in the water, watched her golden xylophone break into pieces.

She thought of Burl at Vaillancourt. How far some country kids had to go to get an education. No wonder so many of them gave up. It didn't seem fair. But what was? She wondered which teachers had got Burl. She hoped someone would be able to chivvy him along without scaring him.

She got to her feet, dusted off her hands. She had an idea. Why should she have expected Burl to reach her? She would reach him.

Yes. She would phone the high school and see how Burl was doing. First thing Monday.

It was forty kilometres as the crow flies from Pharaoh to the town of Intervalle, where the Skat emptied through a series of rapids into Bearberry Lake. Burl took to walking up to the rapids on his time off, to squat by the rushing waters. As he hunkered down on the cold rock, his senses filling up with the noise and sulphurous smell, there was a quiet place inside him he could escape to.

He didn't get much time off, but then he didn't really want it. He wanted money. Bea had hired him on part-time at Skookum. He was getting minimum wage, and he knew what he was going to do with every penny.

Bea had seen him work up at the cabin that last day at Ghost Lake. She had noticed how tidy the camp was, inside and out. He was quick, steady on the ladder, fussy. Once the shutters were on he had gone around tightening the fasteners with an improvised screwdriver. And when they were ready to leave, he had gone back to the cabin for one last check. She liked that. She told him so when she offered him the work. He wasn't in a position to say no. He had nowhere to go and no money. He had told Bea he was sixteen. He didn't think she believed him, but she didn't question it. He was paid under the table. There was no record of him working for Skookum. That suited his needs. It suited Bea's needs, too.

Duck-hunting season was in full swing and there was lots of work around. Skookum was flying hunting parties from all over the province and the northern states into the bush. The company ran two planes and a helicopter. Bea leased six campsites on lakes throughout the Sudbury district. This time of the year she kept them filled pretty well weekly.

Burl helped load up. Everything had to be weighed: the packs and guns and cases of beer. There was a shack Bea called Pearson International North. It was head office, departure lounge and staff room combined. Burl kept it tidy and served passengers coffee. He raked the scrap of lawn out front and ran errands. Bea kept him busy.

Skookum Airways was situated on a peninsula curving out like an apostrophe linking Intervalle Bay to the greater body of Bearberry Lake. There were no airstrips. The Beaver and the twin-engine Beechcraft took off from the lake; the chopper from a fenced helipad paved with asphalt, buckled by frost. Weeds grew through the cracks. There was a gravel parking lot, a Quonset hut machine shop and, a short way off through the trees at the curling tip of the apostrophe, Bea's white clapboard bungalow.

The chopper pilot was called Harvey. Burl never learned his last name, hardly ever saw him. It was his twin-rotor Sikorsky that had carried the Maestro's grand piano into Ghost Lake.

A man named Palmateer owned and flew the Beechcraft. Burl never learned his
first
name. There were two other boys, Barry and Dieter. They were older than Burl – he wasn't sure how much. Dieter was training to fly. Harvey drove Dieter in every morning from town. Barry had some kind of mental problem. He shared the little house with Bea and Palmateer. Burl couldn't figure out if the three of them were related – if Bea and Palmateer were married, maybe; if Barry was their son. They didn't act like a family, but then Burl didn't have much experience with how families worked.

Dieter tended to be snooty with Barry. He teased him and invited Burl to join in on the fun. When Burl didn't, Dieter started being snooty with him as well and bossy, too, but not when Palmateer was around. Dieter was getting his licence and then he was “outahere”. He said that so much the phrase had fused into one word.

Burl saw more of Palmateer than of Bea. When he wasn't flying, Palmateer was always around the yard, either in the shop fixing something or in the office having a coffee. When Bea wasn't flying, she was often away, dressed up in heels and a suit, what Barry called her spook 'em clothes.

Palmateer and Harvey owned their own aircraft, but there was no question who ran Skookum Airways. It was Bea's operation. She was the one who made the business decisions, the glue that held the place together.

Burl slept in Pearson North. There was a couch there and, in the staff room, a hot plate, fridge and sink. He tagged along shopping with Palmateer and Barry and bought his own food and stuff in town.

Living in the office, he had to be up early and tidy everything away. The couch sat under a stuffed moose head wearing a World War I air-ace helmet and goggles. Someone had draped the antlers with tinsel at a Christmas party sometime, and the decoration had become a fixture. There were maps and regulations on the walls and cartoons and bits and pieces of happy-customer memorabilia that made the place look cosy or a mess, depending on your point of view. To Burl it was a mess. He cleaned it up the best he could.

The couch was old and lumpy. Burl didn't sleep well. The porch light was always on, and there was a yard light as well. The road that led to Intervalle passed nearby and, as small as the town was, there seemed to be traffic at the oddest hours. Burl wasn't used to the noise. But worse than that was the fact of the road itself. He was reconnected with civilization. The Intervalle Road led out to Highway 17, the Trans-Canada, and fifty klicks west was the turn-off to Presqueville, from which a long dirt road led straight to Cal. Burl truly doubted that the Turd-mobile could get this far, but often he woke up sweating to the sound of a sputtering muffler and ran to the window expecting to see a '63 Plymouth rolling into the yard. Then he would return to his bed and lie there feeling every lump the ancient couch had to offer.

The first snowfall came and went. It wouldn't come for keeps for another month or so, but there would not likely be another warm spell. The second day Burl was there, Bea sent him off to Bélanger's in Intervalle for some winter gear. She advanced him enough pay to buy some clothes. He bought a duffel bag to carry it all in. She made him buy a toothbrush and hairbrush as well. He had to look his best.

Burl lay his head on his hands. He had been there over a week and he had no idea what he was going to do. Deer-hunting season in the Sudbury district would be coming up late in October this year, and there was going to be a big harvest. That meant lots of hunters and lots of work. And then in November it would be moose season. He could probably stay right through to Christmas. And then…

Burl clambered out of bed and found his duffel bag. From one of the pockets he drew the only thing he had taken from the cabin, the letter to Nathaniel Gow – “Nog” – from Reggie Corngold. He returned to his makeshift bed and read it again. He lay there with the letter in his hands. Fell asleep like that.

On a blustery Thursday, his third week there, a party of four bowhunters arrived at the airport, having killed a couple of hours at the local bar waiting for their flight.

“Killed a few too many brain cells while they were at it,” said Palmateer as he loaded the Beechcraft.

The hunters were dressed head to foot in camouflage, as if the hunt was already on. They were after bear. There was snow in the air, and they kept themselves warm by teasing Barry. They poked him a couple of times. “Hope we bag one this size,” said one of them.

“Try your fawn bleat on him, Blake,” said another. Blake made a whimpery little sound into Barry's ear as the boy loaded stuff on the weigh scales. The men roared with laughter and slapped their legs. Barry carried the stuff on down to the water's edge where the plane was tethered. He just shut himself off when that kind of thing happened. Burl had seen him do it before. Burl, on the other hand, was writhing inside. He couldn't stand to even look at the hunters.

“Now that fawn bleat usually attracts your smarter bears,” said one of the men. “Better try something simple.”

“How about I piss around the bait like a raccoon,” said Blake, making as if to undo his fly. The hunters found this hilarious.

“You get a raccoon pissing around your bait and you're gonna get bear big-time.”

Burl was hauling a heavy box down to the plane. Palmateer must have seen the anger in his face. He spoke right up close to Burl.

“Picture this,” he said. “Tonight while Barry is sleeping in his comfortable bed, those idiots are gonna be perched in a tree above a big trap smeared with smelly fish, freezing their useless butts off. So who's the stupid one, eh?”

Burl exploded in laughter. The hunters stopped talking. Turned to look.

“What's so friggin' funny, brown-face?”

One of the men sauntered down towards the loading dock, one called Gord. He stood in Burl's path. Head down, not wanting trouble, Burl made to pass him by. Gord stepped in front of him again. Burl looked up; he had no choice. Gord's sour and scornful expression changed. Burl could see him searching for something to say in his drunken brain, but before he could speak, Palmateer was out of the plane.

“Look, you fellahs,” he said. “You keep holding up my boys, and the lake'll freeze over before we get you out to Onaping.”

He said it mildly but with an authority that was hard to deny. Gord backed off with a big grovelling kind of bow, which started his friends up again. The four of them moved off a few paces to light up another smoke. Blake found a can of beer in his pocket, cracked it open.

Palmateer sent Burl back to the shack for some more barf bags. “Maybe some bear'll get lucky,” he said, winking.

But the confrontation had startled Burl, started him to shaking. He slipped on an icy patch and almost fell. Barry caught him.

“Don't let 'em ride you,” said Barry.

It wasn't that. Burl had recognized Gord. Gord was one of his father's cronies. And he was pretty sure Gord had recognized him. When he returned from the shack, he dared to look over at the four men. Through a haze of cigarette smoke and frozen breath, Gord was looking his way.

There was a map in the office behind the counter. A series of maps of northern Ontario, all joined together. There were circles drawn on it radiating out from Skookum Airways. Each line represented a new price zone. Burl had looked at the map often since he arrived. Ghost Lake was there. It wasn't named, but he knew the shape of it.