The Haida Gwaii Detour

4. Aurora

4. Aurora

Just as Dan promised, Arnie, the bull cook9 and driver for M & B,10 met the plane. Folds of his belly protruded above the belt of his logger’s pants, held aloft by his strained red suspenders. His Captain Ahab beard performed inadequately to hide a fleshy face and neck. Impressions made in our youth stay with us, and Arnie seemed old enough that, as a cabin boy, he might have sailed on the Pequod. He refused to shake Ethan’s hand and made him sit in the back, but he did give Ethan a ride to Sçid Çándl via Queen Charlotte City, where they stopped briefly.

An hour later, they had stopped again on the highway across from the Sanders Ranch (Arnie told him that was where he would stop), which some considered the commercial centre of the Sçid Çándl universe. He pointed to the tree-lined lane across the road and said, “The post office is in there. I gotta go. I don’t want to miss supper.” He left. Ethan stood in the sun shards and shadows cast by the thin stand of storm-weathered beach spruce. He waited until the whining sound of Arnie’s tires on the asphalt vanished. “Yeah, I know you don’t want to lose your spot in the supper line-up, so good luck to you, too, Arnie.”

Ethan paused a minute to inhale deeply; his first steps in Sçid Çándl deserved his reverence. Dan was right, decided Ethan, his arrival felt incomplete, yet his expectations were not wholly unfulfilled.

• • •

Ethan met Aurora almost the moment he arrived in Sçid Çándl, and Fantine and Monk followed in close order, too, but even before he saw Dan or met anyone else, Ethan met Alice.

Both of Ethan’s feet were at last on the ground in Sçid Çándl, but he still did not feel “there.” He was disappointed that barking dogs, probably disturbed by his own arrival, shattered the anticipated tranquillity. He decided the driveway was as potentially deserving of a directional choice as any, so he carried his gear onto the Sanders ranch, aiming to find the post office and ask directions to Dan’s place.

Ethan emerged from the laneway into the open yard, which was protected from the onshore breeze by a stand of immature spruce trees. Walking out of the shade into the light, he felt the brunt of the late sun. Because the yard was protected from the breeze by the trees, the area smelled of salty manure. Several large green barns, two ranch houses, one a two-storey log building and the other a modern, sprawling rancher, and a triple-bay garage surrounded the wide, flat, gravel courtyard. Between the buildings, tall Russell-rail fences kept animals in or out. In the direction of the sun, between the buildings, Ethan saw the river for the first time, where it cut through green pastures bordered by the thick forest. Beyond the fields, a mile off and due west, a bare, grey sand dune rose in a gentle grade until it was the loftiest landmark in sight.

Except for the dogs, the yard was deserted, so Ethan walked to the farthest house with the small, blue and red “Post Office” sign tacked to the side of the building. He hoped the sign, which he felt encouraged public access and in particular his trespass, ensured he would encounter a bored postal worker rather than the business end of a shotgun. Faded suggestions of red paint and white trim still defined the house lines. As he drew closer, he saw it was constructed of a combination of logs and lumber. Fresh white mortar filled the horizontal joins between the logs; the element finished the walls in a silly zebra motif. The roof was steep and covered in shiny tin. The wide, lengthy porch was made of debarked poles, rough-cut, sturdy planks made of logs milled into siding. An extensive, well-kept vegetable garden was in full bloom adjacent to the house. Trees had been cut down, probably to let in the morning sunlight. The log house kennels were beside the garden, where half a dozen frenzied dogs competed to deliver hellfire from inside a chicken wire enclosure.

The inside screen door creaked on its hinges. An older woman looked at Ethan through the fly screens. The dogs quelled their uproar when the woman appeared, but she seemed unmindful of them. Her greeting was perfunctory. “I don’t know you. You’re new here. Sorry, we’re all out of mailboxes.”

“Hi,” said Ethan, his stuffed hockey bag still across his shoulders and his guitar in his other hand. “I am new here. I’m looking for Dan McCormick. Do you know where I can find him?”

When he spoke the familiar name, the woman took two paces toward Ethan. Each step resonated with the thunk of boot heels on wood. Ethan saw she was lithe, elderly, and vaguely intimidating. She wore a patterned but ordinary long dress and a white, ankle-length apron tied around her waist; her white hair was pulled into a bun just above her neck. “He lives across the meadow, up on the hill. You can’t miss his trailer if you go back to West Road and follow the other road. The craziest house you’ll ever see is where you make your turn.” Her voice was constrained and reminiscent of wet garments being twisted through the squeaky wringer rollers of a hand-cranked washing machine. “If you have any sense at all, you can’t miss it. But he won’t be there now. Dan is either at work or up at the fire.”

“There’s a fire?”

“Is there something wrong with your eyesight?” She pointed across the yard toward the north. “That way, at Monk’s mill. They’ve been at it up there most of the afternoon. They can always use another set of hands at a fire.”

Ethan turned in the direction she indicated and saw the smoke plume for the first time; it had been blocked from his direct line of sight by the curve of the highway and the trees that bordered the courtyard. The cranky postmistress pointed in the other direction. “That way to West.”

She stared at Ethan. He sensed she was testing him, and he was about to be judged by her as either worthy of further notice or not. He felt she struggled to stop each of her responses short of, “you bloody fool.”

“I’ll head on up there, then.” Ethan looked at the blue and red plate above the door. “This is the post office, right?”

Before she closed the porch door, she said, “You can see that’s what the sign says.”

“I don’t need a post office box.”

Later, Ethan was to discover that the name of this creature was Alice.

• • •

Charmed, Ethan dragged himself away from her hospitality. Back at the highway, he hid his bag and guitar behind a clump of bushes beside the highway. He walked north, confident he could hitch a ride to the fire whenever the next vehicle came along. A mile later, he had walked past cleared, fenced fields and two other gravel driveways leading into the north end of ranch, but still no other vehicle heading in either direction had passed him. Across the extensive pastures, more barns and outbuildings were visible from the highway. Farther along, another lane led to a cabin tucked back in the trees on the beach side of the road. Eventually, a young, long-haired and bearded man stopped his rickety pickup truck and gave Ethan a ride the final half mile to the bridge. The friendly driver, dressed in worn denim coveralls with no shirt and wearing gumboots, turned into the downriver access road, so Ethan crossed the bridge on foot and walked on up the hill, then another half mile farther along the highway. The air was thick with the pungent scent of spruce; stunted and sparse, these formed the forest along the southern edge of the Naikoon swamp, as Ethan remembered from the maps he had studied. Finding Monk’s mill was easy; he simply followed the highway toward the diminishing smoke plume.

When Ethan walked into the mill yard, the smell was horrendous until the breeze waned. A fair-haired, agitated man with a red polka-dot scarf tied over his nose and mouth shouted orders at Ethan. “Grab a shovel — we gotta smother the embers. The rest of it can still go. Save the lumber! We gotta save the lumber!” Ethan looked around for a shovel, but there were none to be found. Near several stacks of lumber, two men hosed down the scorched inventory that must have been the collateral damage from the blaze. Mixed in with a smouldering mound of ashes and half-buried in the black grit were the charred remains of a sink, a toilet, several flattened sections of stovepipe, and a tin stove.

“Those coals are still smoking,” yelled the sandy-haired man from across the lumber yard, so the men turned their attention back to the ashes and turned their black hoses to resoak the ashes. The hoses were attached to taps on the back of a rusty yellow truck. At first glance, its faded, baby-blue drum looked like a cement mixer, until Ethan decoded the faded remnants of the peeled letters on the driver’s door, “Smith’s Septic Service.” The breeze shifted direction, and the vile stench overwhelmed Ethan again. He understood why the firefighters wore scarves or their shirt collars pulled up to their eyes.

A young woman appeared from behind the truck. She was gorgeous, blonde, with an hourglass figure barely kept inside her white tank top and tight blue jean coveralls. She wore black gumboots and was giving orders in an authoritative manner. She was the calmest person in the immediate area and the only other person not disguised as a terrorist, so Ethan stepped up to introduce himself and offer to lend a hand.

“Hi, I’m Ethan. The twitchy guy wants me to grab a shovel, but I’ll do what you want. Jesus, what is that stench?”

“You’re who?”

“I’m Dan’s friend, Ethan, up from Vancouver. Do you know Dan?”

“Oh, so you’re that Ethan.” She said it as if he were just revealed as the unproven antihero in a stage murder mystery. She had a delightful, barely audible lisp. Ethan fixated on her mouth. He nodded to confirm his name. She laughed and shook his hand. “Okay, Ethan, so now you’re a mute. I’m Aurora. Dan’s not here — obviously; he’s working today. You can help me with these hoses.” She scanned the dead embers in the sodden mound of blackened ash. “We’re almost done here, anyway.”

Ethan wrinkled his nose.

“That smell is burning s**t. I was on my way home with a full load from Port Nowhere, but they’re still full of s**t up there.” She looked at Ethan, but he shook his head. “It’s a septic service joke. I guess some don’t get it. I stopped here to help Monk, but I had to dump my cargo on the fire before I could refill with water; not your standard retardant.” At that moment the frenzied blond man, Monk, rushed by them, lowering his facemask to shout orders at two men already busy pulling charred lumber from the stack partially scorched by the fire. “Leave that pile alone. I need pictures first.”

Aurora and Ethan turned their attention to Monk for that brief instant. It was often the inept who made the most noise during an emergency, so Ethan turned back to Aurora. “Anyway,” she said, her smile wide, warm, and friendly, “it helped put the fire out. Sçid Çándl doesn’t have a fire truck anymore, so we use the s**t-mobile. I rent the old farmhouse at the bottom of the hill, so you’re goin’ my way. Stick around, and after we finish up here, I can give you a ride. I guess you don’t know where Dan lives?”

“’Turn right at the crazy house’ on West is all I know from the woman at the post office.”

“So you’ve met Alice? You’ll need a ride.” Aurora laughed again, looked up at the sun, and Ethan was struck at how the light fell softly on her face. “It’s about six, so Dan will be home soon.”

Ethan helped Aurora stow the heavier black hoses that stayed with the truck. By this time, he too had his T-shirt pulled up over his nose and mouth. When he did so, Aurora snuck a quick look at him. Monk came back over to the truck.

“Oh, great,” said Aurora under her breath. “Here comes Monk. This should be rich.”

“Thanks, Aurora, for your help today. At least some f*****g hippy arsonist never got my lumber.”

“I’m just thankful no one was hurt.” Aurora’s comment soared unrecorded over Monk’s head as he left to fire orders at one of the last of the other volunteers. Under her breath, Aurora said, “Arsonist? Well, he’s living proof you can transplant a heart with a wallet.” Then, in a normal voice, she said, “Here comes Fantine.”

A slim, pretty woman in her early thirties, Fantine wore an embroidered cotton top under an unbuttoned winter coat, black gumboots, and tight blue jeans. Her hair was dishevelled, and she had been crying. Her shoulders sagged under the weight of the afternoon. Aurora said, “Hey, hon, you’re welcome to stay at my house until you sort things out. But you can’t move in.”

“Hi. Tank you. If I cannot find Josette, I will do dat.”

Monk rejoined them. Fantine took a long glance at Ethan, held her unlit cigarette up to her mouth, then said to Monk, who Ethan later learned was the owner of the A-frame Fantine had rented, “’Ave you got a light?”

Monk left but mumbled under his breath, “You’ve already done enough damage with matches.” Fantine’s comment left Ethan to guess whether she was dumber than two planks, a caustic humourist, or just plain out of touch with the little thing he called reality.

“I ’ave lost ever’ting. I don’t know how dis happened. I was not even at ’ome when the ’ouse caught fire. I was wit’ Dan las’ night.” She burst into a fresh wash of tears.

Aurora was comforting Fantine as a battered, rusty Toyota pickup pulled off the highway. “Oh good,” said Fantine. She disengaged herself from Aurora’s hug. “Josette and Doug are ’ere. I will go wit’ dem, Aurora. See you soon.” Josette and Doug gathered Fantine up, and the three of them stuffed themselves into the tiny front seat and set off down the highway.

Soon after Fantine left, Aurora and Ethan secured the last truck hoses and were about to leave the rest of the crew to mop up. Monk came back over to the s**t-mobile. It was to be expected that Monk’s tragedy would affect him, but he said to Aurora, “Thank God for fire insurance. I had no idea how I was going to get rid of her ... At least she’s gone now, and forever.” Before he walked away, he said, “Who knows, but the kind of company she keeps ... Well, who knows how crazy they are and how mad she made some guy. She’s screwing half the island. I’m sure one of her jilted boyfriends burned her out. Mark my words, the cops will prove it was arson.” Monk seemed confident he would benefit financially from the fire. Perhaps he would even fudge the numbers in the inventory report and exaggerate the value of the A-frame, but he made it clear he held Fantine responsible.

“Hop in,” said Aurora to Ethan. “We’re out of here.”

In the cab, Ethan said, “If he keeps pushing that arson thing, the insurance money will never get here until they find the arsonist. I wonder if he knows that?”

Aurora looked at Ethan and popped her eyebrows at him. “We live in hope.” She started the truck. As she drove them away from the mill, Aurora had to raise her voice over the engine noise. “Fantine will be okay with Doug and Josette, but that doesn’t let Monk off the hook for being an asshole.” She glided the stick shift upward through the gears, timing the depression and release of the clutch pedal with unconscious ease. “At least my s**t-tank is empty. Where’s your stuff?”

They stopped by the side of the road at the ranch. Ethan retrieved his gear from the brush where he had hidden it, thankful for the ride. His heavy bag was weighed down even more with the addition of two cases of beer he’d bought when Arnie had detoured through Queen Charlotte City. “I have a dozen beers in here if you want to stop for a couple? I’ll put them on ice at the trailer.”

Aurora looked at Ethan, a Mona Lisa smile on her face. “I don’t go in that trailer. And as far as ice goes, if you didn’t bring it, you won’t find it.”

Aurora became Ethan’s tour guide. “These cleared fields are almost all Sanders land. There is one son and a daughter who left the islands two years ago, but three sons stayed here. They raise beef. No one likes Monk, but his daughters are nice. You haven’t seen Dan’s trailer yet, right?”

“Nope.” It was hot in the cab of the truck, so Ethan rolled his window down.

“Play your cards right, maybe you can squeeze in with Cathy, Monk’s daughter. I don’t think she has ever had a boyfriend. There’s plenty of her to love.”

Pawning me off already, thought Ethan, and on a fat virgin, too. That’s never a good sign. “From what I already know about Monk, I’m sure I’d never be into that family.”

“That’s wise. Bigfoot and Scarlett live across from the ranch and down the highway a bit, closer to the river. Below the bridge, past me, is McDobber — he’s just a harmless, sleazy drunk — and then Jade, and Nell and Richard. Across the river, way up the coast, is the Gray house. Sappho and Suzy live there.” They turned off the highway; the gravel cap on West Road crunched under their tires. “A bunch of crazy loggers lease this trailer.” Ethan dubbed the double-wide white logger’s trailer at the corner property the “Moby d**k,” which made Aurora laugh. They banged over a hundred more yards of potholes, a slight rise in the road, and then Aurora pointed to a roughed-in driveway. “That’s where Acres plans to move his house from Lawn Hill. Across the road is Anna’s house, behind the seashell fence. She’s a sweetheart. Behind Anna is Kim’s house.” They turned onto Field Road and stopped.

Ethan said, “That house doesn’t look so crazy.” The small, yellow-sided bungalow was behind a driftwood fence adorned with netting and a collection of colourful glass net flotation balls, a treasure trove forming a beachcombers delight. A lush green garden dominated most of the yard.

“Crazy is in the eyes of the beholder, isn’t it?”

“That’s my hope ...” Aurora laughed again.

“Hey, I’d like to say hello to Acres,” said Ethan. “I know him from Vancouver. We logged in the same Thompson Sound camp. He’s a wicked-good chess player.”

“He’s in Peel Inlet, on the West Coast. They’ve only been gone two weeks. Élise is there with the kids.”

“Élise? What happened to Kyara? Acres has kids?”

“That’s all old news. Acres and Kyara split up in the last Sçid Çándl shuffle; she’s long gone from Sçid Çándl. One kid is Élise’s, the boy, and they have a new baby girl together. You go farther that way,” Aurora pointed due west toward a dark hollow at the end of West Road, “and you pass Jerry and Gorni’s house. I don’t see them much more than to suck their s**t. Oops, sorry, I should have said ‘pump their tank.’” She laughed. “I have a great job.”

Ethan was already enamoured with Aurora’s easy, quick-draw playfulness. She put the truck in gear again, and they began to move. “There’s Shilo. She must be up from Charlotte, visiting Kim.” Aurora honked the horn, and the long-haired woman waved back. She looked like Mama Cass poking her head out of a small yurt. She had a wide, friendly smile.

“Who lives there?” Ethan pointed to a small shack behind Anna’s house. Three young children in grimy underwear played with plastic toys in the dirt in front of their tiny shack. All three waved at Aurora. Two hounds were sprawled out in the dirt, both oblivious.

“That’s Errol and Sarah’s house. They’re leaving the islands soon. She’s a bluegrass singer, and they both play. You’ll meet them.” She eyed Ethan’s guitar. “Sarah’s really good. Maybe you can play together.”

Ethan considered a comment about mini-Appalachia but said, “I’m not very good.”

“That’s not what Dan said.”

“He has a tin ear.”

They drove past more driveways leading to houses partially or totally hidden by trees, but Aurora left unnamed the people who lived there. They evidently held no interest for her. From behind Kim’s property, the sand dune rose steadily on their left, but much of it was logged off, sadly, and only stump farms remained, another diminished Forest of Fangorn.11 She stopped at the last driveway on Field Road, at the bottom of a sandy driveway. She nodded toward the blue trailer just visible at the top of the dune. “Your new home. Good luck.”

“How do you mean that?” She engaged his eyes and flicked her eyebrows once. “No,” said Ethan. “I mean really, why do you say that?”

“Do you fish?”

“Yeah, I guess.”

“That’s why I said that.” She didn’t mean that at all. “I can’t drive up Dan’s driveway. I’ll turn around down at the campground. You’re on your own from here. Nice to meet you, Ethan from Vancouver ... Dan will be along any time now. I’m sure I’ll see you around.” She laughed again.

“Thanks for the tour.”

“You’ll do fine, soon as you scrub that city off and let some country stick to you.”

Ethan climbed out of the truck and dragged his gear up Dan’s narrow, sandy driveway. Aurora drove ahead fifty yards to turn around in the shaded glen at the sharp bend in the river. A light breeze and the low evening sun caused the cottonwood leaves to flicker, as if a million hands were waving goodbye to Aurora and greetings to Ethan. She honked the horn twice before she drove away. “And loud indeed was the silence, Miss Aurora, you employed to describe Dan’s other neighbours.” In return for his observation, he received only another of her enigmatic smiles and the twiddling fingers on her waving hand.

Ethan scanned the view that unfolded around him, his excitement proof that he had made the right choice. A wide expanse of green pastures unfurled at his feet. Beyond the fields, the benign, blue hues of Hecate Strait reached to the bluer hues of mountains on the horizon. Seven years before, Ethan had travelled Hecate’s entire length along the inside passage. The owner of a small fishing boat and a yacht hired Ethan to help him sail both boats from Prince Rupert, just ninety air miles northeast of Sçid Çándl, to Comox. Across the serene strait were mostly unassailable granite cliffs, infinite forests, and close enough to infinite wilderness. All it took was a single look at the far mountain ranges to stir Ethan’s heart and his curiosity to know the unknown; he had always yearned to go into the wilderness. Here, too, he had discovered a new world introduced by the intriguing Aurora, a complement of beauty and harmony in Nature. Ethan was where he wanted to be.

On top of the dune, Ethan knew Aurora was right: there was no ice at Dan’s trailer. Ethan stood dumbstruck and wondered what manner of explosion had caused such a wreckage.