Sundown on Top of the World: A Hunter Rayne Highway Mystery (6 page)

After another hour or so on the Alaska Highway, Sorry parked the eighteen wheeler on a side road across from a Petro Canada station in Fort Nelson and they went into a pub for lunch. Hunter had coffee and a Ruben sandwich and Sorry had a coke and a beef dip with extra au jus for dipping plus gravy on his mountain of fries. Fortunately, the heavy meal put Sorry to sleep in the bunk almost immediately after Hunter got behind the wheel. Unfortunately, Sorry began to snore loudly from the sleeper, interfering with the quiet reveries Hunter usually enjoyed during daylight driving.

Reveries and snores both soon faded, eclipsed by what he saw beyond the windshield. The scenery was spectacular on the winding two lane highway – the lanes a little narrow for comfort in places when passing oncoming trucks – as it snaked through the Northern Rockies, along the Tetsa River with forests dressed in a hundred shades of spring green, often backed by snow-dappled mountains, and past Summit Lake at an elevation of over four thousand feet. The road then descended to the shores of Muncho Lake, which on this sunny afternoon was a breathtaking blue, and on into the Liard River Valley through a diverse landscape of forest, meadows, wetlands, sand dunes, hills, and lakes. He slowed the Freightliner as he passed a herd of bison grazing beside the highway.

Sorry must have turned over in his sleep miles before, because the snoring had stopped somewhere around Toad River. “I’d forgotten just how amazing the north can be,” Hunter whispered quietly so as not to wake his co-driver, and he was grateful to El, at least for a while, for sending him in this direction.

The Blue Knight was making that clunking noise consistently by the time they reached the Yukon border so Hunter’s first thought was to find a mechanic in Watson Lake. By then it was late evening and Sorry had woken up hungry as a bear coming out of hibernation. He told Hunter if he didn’t get something to eat right away, he was likely to pass out, so they stopped at a restaurant in a nice log building just as they entered Watson Lake.

“I feel like a beer.” Sorry put his menu down on the table and scanned the room for a waitress.

“Too bad,” said Hunter.

“What do you mean? Why can’t I have a beer?”

“You’re working.”

“Not yet, I’m not. I haven’t had my ten hours off yet.”

“If you’re riding in my truck, you’re working.”

Sorry stroked his big moustache. By the set of his jaw, Hunter could see that the big biker wasn’t ready to give in.

“You realize that’s the sign of an addict, don’t you? At this moment, drinking that one beer is more important to you than making your boss happy and keeping your job.” Hunter cocked an eyebrow at him. “Am I right?”

Sorry closed his eyes and exhaled, his jaw muscles working. Then he dropped his chin and sighed.

“I thought you were my friend, not my boss.”

“I’m your boss, and your friend. If I was just your boss, I wouldn’t care if you had a beer or not.”

A young woman came by and took their orders. They both ordered the special of steak and home fries. Sorry ordered a coke, looking Hunter straight in the eyes as he did so.

“Gimme a break, would you. I lost my job and my wife kicked me out and I’m feeling fuckin’ depressed. Let me indulge myself a little on this trip, okay?” Sorry picked a fork up off the table and began playing with it, drumming it double-time against his palm.

“You hadn’t had a drink for years until that visit to Yreka a few months ago. Just how much good did going back to drinking do you?”

“It’s just a lousy beer, for fuck’s sake.” He threw the fork down on the table with a clatter.

“And Simone’s just a good wife, you big dope.” When Sorry rolled his eyes, Hunter continued. “Thin edge of the wedge, chief. Thin edge of the wedge.”

The waitress appeared with a coffee for Hunter and Sorry’s Coke.

“Thanks, sweetheart,” said Sorry. “That’s just what I needed to save my marriage.”

The girl smiled uncertainly, looking from Sorry to Hunter and back again, then nodded slightly and walked quickly away, Sorry’s booming laugh following behind her.

Forty minutes later they were topping up the fuel tanks at the Petro Canada, making inquiries about a mechanic who might be available in Watson Lake after nine o’clock on a Saturday night.

“I’ll bet dollars to donuts it’s your U-joint,” said the driver of a southbound flatbed who was fueling up at the same time. “Had the same thing happen to my Mack last year. Good luck finding a mechanic here over the weekend. You’ll have better luck in Whitehorse.” As the driver headed back to his cab, he shot back over his shoulder, “I’d take it easy on the speed though, if I were you.”

Hunter smiled grimly in Sorry’s direction as he settled in behind the wheel again. It was almost two hundred and seventy five miles to Whitehorse with few services in between and it wouldn’t be a great stretch of highway for an eighteen wheeler to break down on.

Sorry was in the passenger seat, poring over a travel guide he’d picked up at the restaurant. “Can we stop at the signpost forest? It’s on the way out of town. It says here that since 1942 people from all over the world have put up tens of thousands of signposts. I want to see if I can find one from Yreka.”

Hunter fired up the big Cummins. It was June, cooling off some but still bright daylight, and the sun wouldn’t set until almost eleven. Whether or not they stopped, they’d be arriving in Whitehorse in the wee small hours of Sunday morning.

“Sure,” he said. “Why the heck not?”

He wondered if the hand-lettered sign that he and his friend Ken had put up in 1972 would still be there. It had said ‘RCMP DEPOT, REGINA - 1475 MILES’.

Goldie waited half an hour past her quitting time but there was no sign of Betty and the truck. She had walked up the long unpaved driveway and was sitting on a log with a view of the road. It was a pleasant enough spot to sit, but she had nothing to read or otherwise occupy her attention, so she kept her eyes focused on the road and her mind on the fact that her grandmother hadn’t yet come to pick her up. “I can’t believe she’d be so vindictive. She’s got to show up soon.”

She couldn’t help worrying that her grandmother’s behavior today was due to something more sinister than just teaching her granddaughter a lesson about being late. Once when Goldie was in the town clinic there’d been an old woman swearing a blue streak at the receptionist and berating her son. The man had apologized to the receptionist, explaining that his mother had Alzheimer’s and sometimes got angry for no reason. Could something like that be happening to Gran? Had the truck broken down or had she just lost track of time?

She heard the crunch of tires on gravel from the direction of the lodge and soon a red Jeep soft-top slid to a stop beside her. “What are you still doing here?” It was Sally’s nephew, Mark. He was wearing a straw cowboy hat, which he pushed back on his head as if to improve his view of her.

“Waiting for my ride. My gran took the truck today.”

“Hop in. I’ll take you home.”

Goldie hesitated briefly, then stood up and brushed bits of bark off the seat of her jeans before climbing into the Jeep. “Sure. Thanks. Just be prepared to stop if I see my ride coming, okay?”

He grinned at her, and she felt as if she had butterflies inside her ribcage. Before he put the Jeep in gear, he pulled his hat down further on his forehead to shade his eyes from the afternoon sun. She noticed how tanned and strong his fingers looked as he changed gears, and she was uncomfortably aware of his hand so close to her knee.

“Where are you going?” she asked, raising her voice to be heard over the crunch of gravel and fluttering of the vinyl rear window.

“You tell me.” He grinned at her again. Again, the butterflies.

“I mean, where were you going before you picked me up?”

“For a drive. There’s not much happening at the lodge, so I thought I’d do some exploring. Want to show me around?”

Goldie looked away. Wouldn’t it be nice to be free enough to just say, ‘Sure’ and spend the entire evening showing him around Eagle? They could go for a walk down by the river, maybe pick up something for a picnic and eat it on the bluff. What if she just did that and didn’t go home?

“My grandmother would worry,” she said.

“About me?”

“No. I mean, if I didn’t show up at home.”

“Well, let’s go tell her where you’ll be.”

Goldie was at a loss for words. Her grandmother had always been strict, and had been so angry about things lately, she tried to imagine how she would react if Goldie showed up with this young man from Outside and told her they were going out for the evening. It seemed like an impossible situation but...

“Well?”

Goldie told him there was no reason why they couldn’t try, if her grandmother didn’t need her for something. She directed him through town and down the road past Eagle Village, pointing out some of the landmarks on the way, although she realized that the beauty of Eagle wasn’t where the roads and houses were. The beauty was the Yukon River, the big sky, the wildlife and the plants and trees in the vast wilderness that surrounded the town. The closer they got to her home, the more she worried about what her grandmother’s reaction would be. She pictured the old woman she’d seen at the clinic, screeching like an angry eagle, hate on her face and in her eyes, and suddenly the old woman had her grandmother’s face.

Goldie shivered and wondered if it was too late to ask Mark to stop the Jeep and let her walk the rest of the way home.

It was only a hundred yards or so off the main road that Mark’s jeep came nose to nose with the old blue Merc. There was no room to pass, so Mark backed the jeep up to the road to let the Merc come ahead, and Goldie found herself face to face with her grandmother. The old woman was leaning out the pickup’s window, peering around Goldie to see who was driving. Goldie held her breath, bracing herself for whatever caustic remark would come out of her grandmother’s mouth.

“Who’s that?” was all she said.

“Gran, I’d like you to meet Mark. He’s Yukon Sally’s cousin’s son.” She turned to Mark. “I heard you call her Aunt Sally.” Goldie felt flustered, worrying about what her grandmother would say to Mark, or more likely, to her, so she kept talking. “But I think she’s your second cousin.” Back to Gran. “Mark is working at the lodge for the summer and when he saw me sitting at the end of the driveway waiting for you, he offered to give me a ride. You know, just in case you got delayed somewhere, or the truck broke down, or …”

The old woman nodded at Mark, said a terse, “Nice to meet you,” then ground the old Merc into reverse, turned around on the road, and headed back down the bumpy dirt driveway toward the cabin.

Her grandmother had been civil, almost polite. Was the worst still in store? Goldie glanced at Mark.

“Why do you look so shocked?” he asked with a little laugh.

She stammered, not sure what to say. “It’s just that my gran – she’s a bit– she can be a little abrupt.”

“You didn’t finish the introduction, you know.” He put the Jeep into gear and began to follow the Merc. “What am I supposed to call her? Goldie’s Granny? Ma’am? What does everybody else call her?”

Goldie had to think a few seconds. They seldom had visitors at the cabin, almost never, in fact, and everyone from Eagle already knew them both, so introductions were rare. “People in town call her Betty mostly, I guess. She’s not real friendly. I’m not sure if–” There was a strange truck. They had come out of the woods into the clearing around the cabin, and Goldie saw her grandmother pull the Merc in beside another old pickup. She was trying to make sense of it when she noticed Mark looking toward the other side of the cabin.

“You never said anything about your grandfather.”

“My grandfather?” Goldie stared open-mouthed at the bearded old man standing at the woodpile. He wiped his forehead with the sleeve of his shirt, then waved cheerfully and started walking in their direction.

“There’s that look again,” said Mark, pointed a finger at Goldie’s face. “You weren’t expecting to see him?”

“Sorry,” was all she could say. “I don’t know who that is.” She slid out of the jeep and walked away, toward her grandmother and the stranger.

“Hello, you must be Goldie,” said the bearded man as she approached. He was quite short, and she saw the smile in his eyes as he stepped forward and extended a hand, still dragging the maul behind him in the other. His voice reminded her of Kris Kringle in that black and white Christmas movie with Maureen O’Hara and young Natalie Wood. “I’m Orville. Your grandmother has been kind enough to let me camp here a few days.”

Goldie looked at her grandmother, who nodded curtly and turned away. “I’ve got to get back to my baking. Is your young friend leaving or not?”

Mark was standing in front of the jeep, his hands in his pockets.

“Do you want him to go, Gran?”

“Why would he stay?”

Goldie licked her lips. “Actually, we talked about me showing him around the area a little. He’s only been in Eagle a couple of days and hasn’t had a chance to explore. I wanted to see you first, make sure you knew so you wouldn’t be worried.”

“Fine,” said Gran. Goldie followed her over to the outdoor kitchen, an area with four peeled logs as corner posts and a slanted tin roof. It housed a long wooden counter, half a 55-gallon drum, split the long way, with a hole in the bottom for a sink, a big wood stove and a brick oven for bread. Besides cooking and baking in all but the coldest weather, they used it for messy jobs like skinning animals, tanning hides and cleaning fish. Next to it there were south-facing drying racks for hanging fish and stretching skins, and another 55-gallon drum that served as a smoker. Under the shelter of the roof there was also a roughly constructed wooden table with plank benches where they frequently ate their meals in nice weather if the mosquitoes weren’t too bad.