Hit the Ground Running Page 13

  Good—don’t be mad at us, be mad at Dad. I’m kind of feeling that way myself.

  “Upshot: You guys have to sit tight until I get a hold of him. And I have to make certain inquiries. Standard procedure.”

  “What kind of inquiries?” Dee asked.

  “Well,” he said slowly, glancing at Eddie, then back at Dee, “just have to run a check on a few databases.” Missing children, Dee thought, and possibly something for criminals.

  “We’re going to visit my aunt in Rolling Wood, so you probably need her number as well.” Dee stood up, fished the crumpled paper out of her crumpled pocket and slid it across the desk. “Her name is Patricia McPherson. My uncle is Norman McPherson. They own Rolling Wood Greenhouse and Gardens in Rolling Wood, Alberta.”

  She left the paper on the desk, and he made no move to pick it up.

  A double knock and another officer, a younger man with short spiky hair, came in and set the hot chocolate and a couple of granola bars on the desk. “There you go, Wilfred,” he said. He caught Dee’s and Eddie’s eyes and smiled. “Get you kids all sugared up.”

  “Thank you, Kevin,” Crow said, without looking up from his writing.

  He turned to his computer, one hand holding their open passports, thick fingers of the other hand poking at the keyboard. While he typed, Dee planned out exactly how much she would reveal. Sort of the truth. Their first priority, though, had to be to get hold of Auntie Pat. Focus on Auntie Pat. Once they were safely at her place, they could deal with where their dad was, report him missing, start some kind of search. The minutes ticked away on a military-style twenty-four-hour clock above the door: 15:21 hours—3:21 PM. Dee stared at Roscoe the bloodhound. A sad-looking dog, with his drooping eyes, his bunchy, moist jowls. Eddie blew circles into his hot chocolate and took little sips.

  “Databases running,” the border officer said, swiveling away from the computer. “Let’s attempt to contact your father. Name of James Edward Donnelley, correct? Santacino, Arizona. Any reason he’s not accompanying you? Any problems? Domestic issues?” His eyes were big, somehow enlarged by his thick glasses. Dee had the feeling of being under a microscope.

  “No,” said Dee, ignoring Eddie’s quick look over at her. “He travels for his work. Antique dealer. He was away, so we decided to come up to visit our aunt, and Dad said he’d meet us up here.” She looked him right in the eyes as she lied.

  The thick glasses glinted back.

  “Work number?”

  “He mostly works from his home office.” Our junkyard of a living room. And a phone booth down the street.

  “Okay. Home number?”

  “(520) 684-3891.”

  You’ll soon find out that’s been disconnected, but that’s your problem. One of the first things to go when the money dried up.

  “Cell phone?”

  “Doesn’t believe in them.” Which was the truth, although it was also the truth that they cost money. She smiled and looked over at Eddie for confirmation, and he gave a confused, strained smile in return. “What’s today? Saturday? Maybe he’d be in Tucson. Or Yuma. Flea markets and estate sales are big weekend things. He’s mostly on the road.”

  “Then this might take some time.”

  You have no idea.

  The real question, the big one, the one she wanted to ask but couldn’t, was: What happens to us when you can’t find him?

  Officer Crow enlisted Kevin, the officer who had brought the drinks, to “show these kids around.” Translation: get them the hell out of my hair for a while, Dee thought. Dee and Eddie trailed after Kevin through the border services offices while Officer Crow began making the doomed, futile calls to locate their father. Dee let him make them. There was just a chance that her father might have come back. But then, wouldn’t he have called Auntie Pat’s and talked to Jake?

  “Aaand, through there, even more offices,” said Officer Kevin. “Oh, wait, there’s one thing you don’t see every day.” He led them down another beige hallway, past computers, flags, pictures of the queen and the prime minister, more offices, and finally over a glass-covered pedway.

  Straight to a prison cell.

  They have a jail in here? Dee started to panic, her eyes widening.

  “Cool,” breathed Eddie, running in and lying down on the cot.

  Kevin saw the look on Dee’s face and said quickly, “Rarely used, and we’d never, ever, put a kid in there. Strictly for the bad guys.” He smiled.

  “Hey, let me out, let me out! I promise I’ll be a good guy!” Eddie wailed, a big grin on his face as he held the bars and looked out at them.

  “Out, Eddie,” Dee snapped.

  “It was just fun,” Eddie muttered.

  Kevin led them down to a canteen, pointing out amenities along the way. “Lockers, vending machines, and here’s where we eat. Hey, Carrie.” He nodded to another officer walking toward them. She glanced curiously at Dee and Eddie.

  “Kev, you want anything from McDonald’s? I’m hitting the drive-through.”

  “I’m good, but what about you guys? You hungry?”

  “Am I ever!” Eddie said dramatically, making both officers laugh.

  “Thanks,” said Dee. “Maybe a couple of Happy Meals or whatever. With milk.” She fished in her pocket and held out a crumpled twenty.

  “I think we got this one,” the female officer said.

  They sat on plastic chairs around one of the lunch tables, and Kevin flicked on the TV.

  “Any favorites?” he asked, scrolling through the guide. They settled on a National Geographic special about dung beetles in Africa that roll small balls of poop away from the main dung pile by using the stars as guides.

  We could’ve used one of those suckers in the car on the trip up here, thought Dee, remembering the Grand Canyon and her own poor navigational skills. She watched the repellent little insects scrabbling around in the dung. In spite of herself, she was amazed by them, so small and spiky and soulless, relying on the Milky Way to set them straight. Somehow it was calming, even profound. Eddie was enthralled.

  When the food arrived, they were, mercifully, on to another program about antelopes on the African savanna, and they had just finished eating when Officer Crow walked into the cafeteria. The British narrator said in hushed tones that there were lions just over the ridge, so Dee was relieved to be spared the death footage. Run, little antelopes, keep running. She stood up and joined Crow at a table by the door.

  Dee searched his face for clues, but the hard lines gave nothing away. What did you find out, you old robot? How much do you know?

  He lowered his bulk into a protesting plastic chair and scraped it up to the table.

  “So. I have not been able to locate your father. Your home number is not in service.”

  “Yeah, that happens,” mumbled Dee. “Dad probably forgot to pay the bill again.” She shook her head. “Clueless. He’s absolutely clueless.”

  “Put out some feelers in Tucson and Yuma,” he continued as if she hadn’t spoken, “but those will take time. I also had a rather confusing conversation with a young man named Jake at your aunt’s place. Seemed to think I was a ‘cop,’ as he so delicately put it. Your aunt is away. The adults in your family seem to be allergic to cell phones.” Officer Crow straightened a napkin dispenser and aligned the salt and pepper shakers on the table. He looked up suddenly at Dee. “Want to tell me anything else?”

  “Anything else?” Dee repeated in fake bewilderment, buying time. She shook her head. “There’s nothing—”

  He cut her off. “Okay, upshot is this: we are Border Services.” He tapped the table twice with his thick finger at the words, as though the table itself was proof. “We make our best efforts to ascertain things—in this case, try to contact your father and make sure you and your brother, as unaccompanied minors, have some kind of parental permission to leave the US and come to Canada. But,” he continued, “when we are unable to move forward, we are obliged to refer the file to the RCMP.”

&nb
sp; “The RCMP?”

  “Royal Canadian Mounted Police.”

  “The police?” Dee said, her heart pounding. “But we haven’t done anything wrong!”

  Eddie, in the midst of watching the kill, glanced back at Dee over his shoulder. Dee lowered her voice.

  “Since when is it a crime to visit relatives? We have Canadian passports. They know we’re coming. We haven’t done anything.”

  “I got all that,” Officer Crow said impatiently. “That’s not what I’m saying. What I’m saying is that we have to pass your file on to the RCMP until some adult’s in the picture. The rules.” He said the last two words clearly and finally. He straightened his papers. There would be no debate.

  “But what about here? Couldn’t we stay here? Just until we can get hold of Auntie Pat?” Dee loathed the pleading note she heard in her voice. But she was desperate. Here felt relatively safe. The police were a whole other ball game. Police were linked with crime and criminals and jail and courts and children’s services.

  Officer Crow had started shaking his head slowly and mechanically before she’d even finished the question.

  I’m really starting to hate you, you frigging robot, Dee thought.

  “We have no facilities for—”

  “We don’t need facilities. This room is good.”

  He was still shaking his ugly head.

  “The rules very clearly—”

  Dee cut him off. “Fine, whatever.” Asshole. Rules, rules, rules. She stood up. “When do we go?”

  “Officer Burnham should be here in about”—he looked at the watch denting his wrist—“thirty or forty minutes. The detachment is in Lethbridge, about an hour away, but he was on the road when I talked to him.” He gathered his papers and stood, neatly pushing his chair back, pushing his glasses up. “I’m sure he’ll get to the bottom of this.”

  What you don’t understand, you miserable old jerk, is that there is no bottom of this. There is just a mucky, messy middle, and we’re caught in it.

  Dee turned away from him and walked back to Eddie, Kevin and the African antelopes, both the ones that lay dying and the ones that had gotten away.

  A short time later there was a burst of laughter from the hallway and loud voices, and a group of men came into the cafeteria. Two border services officers with the same uniform as Kevin, and another officer in a different uniform. This tall balding man with the red face, trim mustache and bow legs must be Officer Burnham from the RCMP. He was finishing a story, the other two looking at him, their faces laughing and expectant.

  “…so I say, very calmly, ‘Mister, assisting a muskrat isn’t a crime.’ ” Laughter. “So we got out some ball gloves from my trunk and shooed the little bugger back into the river.” He bent over, eyes and hands wide, as if he was corralling the imaginary rodent.

  One of the border services guys turned and called, “Hey, Kev, Gord’s here. Obviously.”

  “Hi, Gord. Good to see you.”

  “Kevin, nice to see your smiling face again!” He looked past Kevin at Dee’s and Eddie’s wary faces. “Introduce the old man to your young friends here, will you?”

  “You bet. Dee and Eddie Donnelley, this is Officer Gord Burnham.”

  “Gord. Just Gord,” he said.

  No, no. Let’s not play those games. You’re a cop. You’re not “just Gord,” however much you think that’ll make us feel less stressed. You’re not our friend.

  “Hello, Dee. Hiya, Eddie.” Their hands were each engulfed in Gord’s big dry hand. He glanced at the McDonald’s garbage still littering the table. “Glad to see they did the decent thing and fed you. Kev, you’re smarter than you look! Okay, kids, I have to talk to Wilfred for two minutes. Then I’ll be back, okay?”

  “Eddie,” Dee whispered, “you should use the bathroom now if you have to. We’re driving to another town with Officer Burnham soon.”

  “In a cop car, I hope! Maybe even with the siren? I gotta ask him about that muskrat. He seems nice, hey?” Eddie said, slipping off the couch.

  “Sure.” She didn’t know. All the laughing and joking didn’t fool her—this was a man who could send them straight back to Santacino. But good guy or not, they were going with him. There was no choice. At least we’ll physically be in Canada. Actually in the country, not just teetering in limbo on the border.

  Gord came back with a sheaf of papers in his hand and sat down across from Dee.

  “So, Dee, just want to make sure you know that even though I’m—” he looked around “—a cop,” he whispered, “you’re not in any trouble. You and Eddie are just not fitting into the usual boxes we put people in. Wilfred told you that, probably in his tactless, finicky way. So we have to check things out.”

  Dee nodded.

  Eddie wandered back from the bathroom.

  “Hey, Eddie, got to tell you something,” Gord said.

  “What?” Eddie whispered, sidling up to him.

  “I have permission, not given to just anyone, let me tell you, for you to run a few laps of these hallways before we take off. Blow off some steam. If you want to, of course.”

  Eddie was already kicking off his boots. He handed his watch to Dee so she could time him. Dee and Gord stood and watched as Eddie flew down the corridors.

  “Time check?” he panted as he passed Dee.

  “Thirty-one seconds.”

  That would feel so good. Just to forget everything and to run and run and run. To feel nothing but your bare feet pounding the commercial carpet, rounding the corners, burning off the stress and worry. Sucks being sixteen. At sixteen you don’t run down hallways unless you know for a fact that the building is completely, totally empty. Or unless you’re Theresa. She had a vivid mental image of Theresa laughing and racing after Eddie, her short arms and legs pumping.

  Eddie finished his final lap, and soon Dee and Eddie were in the backseat of the cruiser (“not because you have to sit there, obviously,” Gord said, “but because only Dee could legally sit up front, and it’s probably nicer to sit together”). They pulled away from the border services building. The I-15 ended at the border, and they were no longer on an interstate but on a smaller, lower-numbered highway.

  Not quite the way I imagined we would enter Canada, thought Dee, looking out the police car window.

  “Welcome to Alberta. Wild Rose Country,” Eddie read out loud. “Look, a yellow field. A purely yellow field! Are those wild roses? Are roses yellow? Wonder what they’re growing that’s so yellow.”

  “That would be canola, Eddie. For cooking oil,” Gord said.

  As they climbed a hill, Dee looked back over her shoulder. The highway was just one long road, stretching all the way into the horizon, across half a continent, into the southern states. The border station and the signs around the border were the only indications that there was a new country at all—the same landscape stretched in all directions, as far as she could see.

  If you took down all the signs, Dee thought, we wouldn’t know what was Utah, what was Montana or when the USA turned into Canada. It’s just one big chunk of land that we’ve carved up.

  It reminded her of sharing a backseat with Eddie on their early, spontaneous, stressful road trips with Dad, the ones before she could sit up front. “Here’s the line, Eddie,” she’d say, running the side of her hand back and forth down the middle of the seat. “No, here’s the line,” Eddie would counter, moving it an inch toward her, creating a line of small crescent-shaped indentations with his fingernail. Their father, lost in thought, hadn’t appeared to notice their bickering. But next road trip they got in the car and a thick line of duct tape bisected the backseat, exactly equally. On it was Sharpied The Divine Line.

  “I thought The Dividing Line would be kind of boringly overly descriptive,” he had explained.

  The Divine Line lasted a few summers, then curled up in the heat and was gradually peeled and picked off, leaving behind a long, permanently sticky trail on the beige vinyl that darkened with lint and dirt and hair. A
mess, like everything else.

  Dee turned to look out the front windshield. I’m tired of looking back. I’m tired of remembering and trying to figure it all out. Look forward. Look forward to Canada.

  Officer Burnham seemed genuinely interested in their trip up from Arizona, piecing together a fairly accurate picture from Eddie’s chatter and Dee’s guarded responses. When Eddie told him about refusing a lift from the man in the car when they broke down, Gord boomed, “Good for you! Yep, trust your gut. We got those instincts for a reason. Like animals, right? If you guys thought he was a bad guy, he probably was a bad guy. Or at least not a good guy. Not for sure, but probably.”

  The radio crackled, and Eddie looked at Dee in thrilled anticipation. Gord listened attentively for a second.

  “Nah, somebody else’s problem,” he murmured.

  They entered Lethbridge, passing the longest trestle bridge in the world (“Really? In the world?” Eddie stored up this fact, looking at the town with new respect). The highway wound down through a velvety, ridged series of hills that Gord called coulees, then climbed again into civilization.

  “I’m going to roll down those hills someday,” Eddie said, pointing out the window. “Roll right down to the bottom on that soft green grass.” Dee smiled. She remembered feeling like that once. Now she knew the up-close realities of razor-sharp scrub grass and hidden rocks.

  At the RCMP detachment, Gord introduced them to the people at the reception desk, and Dee and Eddie followed his bow-legged figure down a hall to his office.

  “Have a seat, guys.” Gord motioned to a few chairs grouped around a coffee table, slapped his papers on his desk and sighed, running a hand through his thinning hair. It was a comfortable office, filled with books and framed photos. Gord in a ceremonial uniform, standing with other Gord-like officers. Gord with a horse. Family groupings of Gord with children and grandchildren.

  A younger officer walked past the door, looking in curiously.

  “See you tomorrow, Gord.”