Footprints Read online

  Drumgold says, “Let’s try the barn.”

  Harper sees the padlock securing the doors as soon as they start across the yard. Drumgold mutters, “Shit,” and plunges into the narrow space between the back of the barn and the wall. Harper and Isora, with George scampering behind her, follow. They struggle through long brown grass, bare alder branches and wild raspberry canes until they hear footsteps in the yard.

  They scrunch low in the undergrowth as Diamond Head calls, “I thought you said they were here.”

  Droopy says, “They were.”

  Diamond Head says, “Great. Mr. Anderson’s going to be here in a minute and we’ve got kids running around the grounds.”

  Droopy insists, “They can’t be far away. Maybe the barn...

  ” One of the other guards says, “It’s locked.”

  Diamond Head orders, “Check on the other side.”

  The woman’s voice, no longer on the intercom, calls, “What’s going on?”

  Diamond Head snarls, “Kids. I’m going to rip them apart one by one when I get my hands on them.”

  “I can think of better things to do with that young girl,” says Droopy.

  Harper looks apologetically at Isora. She is close beside Drumgold, and puts her hand on his arm, shaking her head, as he half rises.

  Harper thinks, If they try anything with Isora, Drumgold’ll go berserk.

  Feeling his legs cramping, Harper stretches them out. To his surprise, they go under the barn. He moves his feet around, pressing back the dead grass and undergrowth, and reveals a kind of burrow leading under the building. Isora holds George tightly as he strains towards it, his nose twitching.

  Drumgold whispers, “It’s the entrance to an old den – fox or porcupine.” He maneuvers himself head first, on his stomach, into it. A few seconds later he reappears, mouths, “Follow me,” and slithers back into it.

  Isora looks at Harper.

  He murmurs, “After you,” doubting whether he can fit his bulky frame through the narrow opening.

  She grins. “We’ll pull you through if you get stuck.”

  She releases George, who bounds into the hole. Harper watches enviously as Isora slips into the burrow with one lithe, easy movement. He follows, worming his way warily into the opening. He’s barely got his whole length inside when he comes up against chunks of broken cement. He hears one of Anderson’s men call from the other side of the barn, “No sign of them round here,” and Diamond Head answer triumphantly, “Then they’re behind it.”

  From above him he hears Drumgold whisper urgently, “Get a move on, Harp. Roll over.”

  Harper squirms on to his back and sees Drumgold and Isora above him, peering over the edge of the cement floor, which has crumbled and sunk where the old den has undermined it.

  “Pull the grass and branches and stuff back around the opening behind you,” says Drumgold.

  Harper reaches back and disguises the entrance. He hears footsteps crashing into the undergrowth from both sides. He eases himself upward until Drumgold puts a hand on his shoulder and mouths, “Freeze.”

  The footsteps are alongside them. One of Anderson’s men says, “They’re not here. Maybe they climbed over the wall,” and Diamond Head says, “No way. They’re in the grounds somewhere. You two stay by the shed. We’ll check the other side of the house.” The footsteps move away.

  Harper scrambles up beside Drumgold and Isora. George is straining to return to the burrow and she holds him tight on his leash. They look around. They are behind a rusting freezer, a stack of metal barrels, and two old tractors. They make their way carefully through them and find one side of the barn lined with garden machines – a ride-on mower, a cultivator, a snow blower, an ATV with a small trailer attached – and the other stacked with bales of straw. Cardboard packing cases are strewn around the floor.

  Harper jokes, “Has anyone got a match?”

  Drumgold reaches into his pocket and produces a lighter. He flips it open and holds the flame close to one of the bales.

  Harper starts, “I didn’t really mean–”

  Drumgold says, “Let’s teach Anderson and his men a lesson.”

  They hear a car approaching and Drumgold says, “Talk of the devil. Quick, we can get out when they open the gates for him.”

  He closes the lighter and returns it to his pocket. Harper discovers his pulse is racing. He tries to steady his breathing.

  They squeeze back through the hole in the floor and make their way along the rear of the barn until they can see into the yard. Diamond Head is opening a compartment in the far gate post. Droopy stands nearby. There’s no sign of the other two security guards. A long black car, licence plate AA1, pulls up at the gate. Diamond Head taps at a console and the gates swing silently open. The car noses forward and stops.

  Diamond Head says, “Good afternoon, Mr. Anderson.”

  A man’s voice says from the car, “Why are you standing around like this?”

  “We’re opening the gates for you, sir,” says Diamond Head.

  “I can open the gates for myself. What’s going on?”

  “There were some intruders,” says Diamond Head. “We chased them off.”

  Harper eyes the open space between their hiding place and the gates and murmurs, “How are we going to get out?”

  Drumgold whispers, “Run like hell.”

  Anderson is still questioning Diamond Head, who is leaning down to the passenger window to talk. “Your eye’s a mess and you look flushed. Did the intruders cause trouble?”

  Diamond Head bridles. “They might have. If we hadn’t taken care of them.”

  Drumgold, keeping low, takes off for the gates. Isora, with George in her arms, follows in the same crouching run. Harper rocks on his toes, preparing to launch himself.

  “Who were these intruders?” Anderson asks.

  “They were thugs,” says Diamond Head. “I’ve never seen them before.”

  “Would you recognize them if you saw them again?”

  “You bet I’d recognize them.”

  “Did they look anything like the kids running across the yard behind my car now?”

  Diamond Head looks up.

  Harper is halfway between the barn and the gates.

  Droopy shouts, “There!” and runs towards the back of the car to cut off Harper’s escape. Diamond Head runs around the front. Drumgold and Isora, already through the gates and across the road, hesitate, watching.

  Droopy holds his arms wide to intercept Harper. Diamond Head snarls from behind him, “Gotcha.” Harper charges at Droopy. His shoulder catches him in the chest, sending him staggering backwards. Harper barrels across the Old Beach Road to where Drumgold and Isora wait. They jump the ditch beside the road and plunge into the woods.

  3

  They force their way through thick, young, softwood growth and wiry alders until they come to a deer trail, where they pause, listening. There is no sound of pursuit.

  Drumgold laughs and whispers, “You were like a frigging wild rhino, Harp, the way you charged into poor old Droopy. He won’t be able to breathe for a week.”

  “I hope I didn’t hurt him,” says Harper.

  Drumgold laughs again. “Why not?”

  He sets off jogging on the deer trail, Isora and Harper following, Harper reflecting on how Drumgold has led him into, and out of, yet another escapade. It’s been the pattern since their first year at high school, when the older kids relentlessly mocked Harper’s lanky awkwardness. Harper met their teasing with smiling attempts at ingratiation, but Drumgold couldn’t stand it, and became his protector. Although he was small and slight compared with the older students, there was something about him they feared. Harper thinks it’s the same aspect of Drumgold that disturbs him sometimes; something to do with seeming on the edge of losing control, so that, if provoked, his retaliation would easily slip beyond any bounds of convention.

  Harper, still struggling for breath, gasps, “D’you know where we are?”

>   “Not far from the old logging road,” Drumgold calls over his shoulder.

  “So do we still have to run?”

  Drumgold stops and turns, grinning. “Sorry, Harp.”

  They find the logging road, and two kilometres farther on emerge from the woods on to Back River’s Main Street.

  Isora says, “I’ll leave George at Dexter’s.”

  They turn in to the trailer park.

  “Dex should pay you for all the times you look after his dog,” says Drumgold.

  “I don’t mind doing it,” says Isora. “He’s a nice guy, and he helps me with homework. He as good as wrote that essay I got an A for, the one about the Metis rebellion.”

  “Where’s he gone this time, anyway?” says Harper.

  “Visiting his mom again. She’s still sick.”

  “She seems to be sick all the time.”

  They turn in between two trailers.

  Isora says, “You look sick yourself, Harp. Your face is bright red. Why don’t you go in and get yourself some water while I deal with George?” Harper hesitates on the step of Isora’s trailer and she adds, “Dad’s at work.”

  Harper takes the key from under the step and the boys enter while Isora skips across to the neighbouring trailer. Harper is drinking from the tap when she returns a few minutes later. He looks nervously through the window and says, “Your dad’s not going to be happy if he finds you here when you should be at school.”

  “He won’t mind.”

  “What he means is he doesn’t want your dad to find you at home and us here too. Right, Harp?” says Drumgold.

  Harper shrugs. “Something like that.”

  Isora grins. “Like...a threesome.”

  Harper blushes.

  Drumgold says, “Let’s go over to Al’s.”

  They walk back through the trailer park and saunter down Main Street, where a cabbagy miasma hangs in the damp air.

  Isora wrinkles her nose. “The mill stinks today.”

  “At least it’s going. Sort of,” says Drumgold.

  “I like the mill smell,” says Harper.

  Isora shakes her head. “You’re so weird, Harp.”

  The driver of a delivery van is stacking boxes on a dolly outside the Main Street Convenience. On the opposite side of the road, a lady leaves the drugstore, climbs into a car and drives slowly away, leaving only two other cars parked on the road. The van driver wheels his load into the store. At the far end of the street, a security guard is pacing in front of the post office.

  “Main Street’s busy today,” Harper comments.

  They pause at Joan’s Thrift Store while Isora inspects the clothes on display. A young woman slumped at the counter behind the window looks up and waves languidly before resting her head back on her arms. They stroll on, past the dentist’s office, where a sign regrets the forthcoming closure of the Back River practice but promises a free toothbrush to patients who transfer to the surgery in Saint-Leonard. They pass two boarded up buildings that a few weeks earlier were the Christian Bookstore and the Main Street Deli. Both have signs pasted on them: No Liquefied Natural Gas Terminal in Passamaquoddy Bay, and Stop LNG, and Supertankers in our bay? No way!

  They come to Al’s-To-Go Lunch Counter and Grill, and stop. Drumgold pushes open the door, which jangles harshly, and holds it for Isora, who is gazing along the street. He says, “Is?”

  “Hmmm?”

  “What are you thinking about?”

  “I’m thinking how just a few months ago Main Street was still quite busy, and now it’s mostly just the drugstore and the convenience store and the thrift store and Al’s.”

  “You can thank Anderson for that,” says Drumgold. “Letting the mill go down the toilet while he takes his goddamn time making up his mind whether he’s going to buy it.”

  “And all the time the price goes down,” Isora adds.

  “Exactly,” says Drumgold.

  “The tourist office might open for the summer,” says Harper brightly.

  “Yeah...and it might not,” says Drumgold. “What would tourists come to Back River for? There’s nothing to see or do here.”

  “Who cares about tourists?” says Harper. “We like it here.” He looks at his friends – Drumgold, slouching by the door with his hands in his pockets, Isora still gazing down the street – and adds, “Well...I do.”

  “You and my mom,” says Isora. “It’s, like, all she knows. All her – you know – memories and stuff are here.”

  From the dark interior of the café a voice calls, “I suppose you kids want me to serve you out there.”

  Isora, slipping between the boys, says, “Sorry, Al. I was looking at the empty buildings.”

  Al has short black hair cut in a pageboy bob that Harper always thinks would suit a little girl better than an old woman. The flabby skin under her jutting jaw wobbles as she talks. “Yeah, well, get used to it. There’ll be a few more when the mill shuts down completely. And one of them will be right here.”

  Harper says, “You mean...right here, at the café?”

  Al, who wears a baggy green sweater and black sweatpants that balloon around her thighs, nods. “I’m closing in a month or two.”

  “You can’t close,” says Harper. “Al’s has been here forever. My dad used to come here when he was a kid.”

  “And I used to serve him when I was a kid. Your grandpa used to come in before that, you know, and my dad used to serve him. But now...well, you’re about my best customers. And while I’m always happy to see you – really, I am – you don’t bring in enough for me to live on. P’raps I should never have taken the old place on, ’cept it seemed the thing to do when Pa passed away, to make it a third generation of Al’s running the show, even if this Al is really Alice and some people think I’m strange being called Al.”

  “We think you’re a lovely Al,” says Isora.

  “Thank you, honey pie. And I think you’re lovely customers.” Al sighs, then says briskly, “I suppose you want your tea, like usual?”

  Isora nods. “Please.”

  Al talks over her shoulder as she busies herself behind the counter. “Two years ago I hit sixty–”

  “We had a party for you,” Isora puts in.

  Al pauses in her work and turns, smiling. “So you did, bless you.”

  They’d sneaked down at night and hung a banner across the front of the café: Guess Who’s A Sexy Sixty. Then they skipped school in the afternoon so they could take in a cake that Isora made.

  Al repeats, shaking her head, “So you did.” Harper is afraid she’s going to cry, but she goes on, as she places their tea on the counter, “Well, here I am not getting any younger and nearing sixty-three now, and I think it’s time for me to sell up and take things easy.”

  “Will someone buy the café?” Harper asks.

  Al looks at him sadly. “Who’s going to buy anything here, dear, business or home or whatever? Back River’s a dying town.”

  Harper protests, “It’s not dying.”

  “No? With the mill closing?”

  “That’s just rumours.”

  “What does your dad say? He’s on the union executive, isn’t he?”

  “He says Mr. Anderson’s probably going to buy it and keep it going, but it’s a tough decision for him because the market’s down right now.”

  Drumgold scoffs, “Friggin’ Anderson. What does he care about Back River? As long as he’s got his fancy cottage and his beach – our beach – he doesn’t give a shit about the Back River mill.”

  “He needs the mill to make a living,” Harper points out.

  “He needs the mill about as much as I need another couple of pounds round my middle,” says Al. “He’s got Eastern Oil to keep him rich. The mill’s small potatoes to him. It’ll be like a hobby if he does buy it. It’ll be some kind of tax dodge, or to get him a few government grants. Then, bye-bye mill and bye-bye Back River. He’ll close it after a few months, you’ll see. Best thing I can hope for with the café is
for someone to do me a favour and blow it up. Like someone tried to do to Eastern Oil today.”

  Harper’s head jerks upwards from his cup. “Wha..?”

  Drumgold and Isora are staring at Al, who says, “They found a bomb at Eastern Oil. Don’t you kids ever listen to the news? When I was at school we used to go over the news in current affairs every day and we had a test on it at the end of every week and if we didn’t pass we got–”

  Drumgold interrupts. “The bomb...”

  “Right,” says Al. “They didn’t say a bomb, they said a powerful incendiary device, but what they mean is a bomb. What else would it be? Security guards found it in an elevator at Eastern Oil in Saint-Leonard.”

  “Why would someone want to blow up Eastern Oil?” Harper wonders.

  “Because Eastern Oil is going to build the liquefied natural gas terminal just up the coast from here, dummy,” says Drumgold. “I guess someone’s decided the signs you see all over saying ‘Stop LNG’ aren’t going to do the job.”

  The door jangles open, revealing a thick-set man in a checked woolen jacket, hair the colour of muddy sand hanging lankly over his ears and to his eyes.

  Al calls, “Come on in, Ed.”

  Ed shuffles to the counter, his eyes on the floor, and stands beside Isora.

  She says, “Hi, Ed.”

  His eyes flicker briefly upwards in her direction as he mumbles, “Hi,” followed carefully by, “Is-ora.”

  He’s agitated, snuffling and snorting, and looking back at the door as if expecting someone to follow him in.

  Al puts coffee in front of him and says, “What’s up, Ed? You haven’t got the voices, have you? Did you take your medication this morning?”

  “Him,” says Ed, gesturing behind him.

  Al looks at the door. “There’s no-one there, Ed.”

  Ed repeats, “Him,” putting one hand to his forehead like a salute and holding the other straight down his leg.

  “The security guard,” says Isora, recognizing the pantomime of peaked cap and night-stick.

  “Do you mean the security guard at the post office?” asks Al. Ed nods.

  “What about him? Is he bothering you?”