He didn’t wake again until I had made the highway and we were several miles on our way to the Lodge. In fact, I didn’t realize he was awake until I heard an odd snuffling and saw he was sitting slumped forward with his head in his hands. What’s the matter?’ I asked. ‘You all right?’
He nodded slowly.
‘You’re not hurt?’
‘No.’ He sat back, feeling in the pockets of his anorak. It was only then I realized he was crying. He produced a dirty-looking handkerchief and wiped his face. ‘I have to thank you,’ he murmured. And then, after a while, he said, ‘Everything’s gone wrong.’ He seemed to pull himself together. ‘I’ve had a marvellous life — then suddenly…’ Silence again. I didn’t say anything, thinking he was running back over his life, but then he leaned forward and gripped my arm, his mouth trembling. ‘You saw the deeds, did you? That plantation — my father’s trees. You saw what he wrote?’
‘Yes,’ I said, preparing myself for what he would ask next.
‘The mine I could stand. I could live with that. But now… now I wish to God I were dead.’ He gave a sort of laugh, self-mocking. ‘But I couldn’t do it. When it came to the point — well, it was just a sham. I couldn’t do it, not properly.’ His grip on my arm tightened. ‘Do you believe a man’s spirit can come out of his grave to defend something he created when he was alive? Do you believe that?’
‘It’s more a question whether you believe it,’ I answered him, and he nodded.
‘It was only when I had signed that agreement and I went up there and saw them felling — it was only then… Odd, isn’t it?’ He took his hand away. ‘Damn frightening.’ He had his handkerchief to his face then and he was crying again, a soft, gurgling sound.
‘Did Miriam know?’
‘What-the deeds?’
‘That, and about your selling those two hectares.’
‘No. She didn’t know anything. The only people who knew the mine was finished were here, people like Jonny and Kevin — Tony, too.’
‘What about Stone Slide?’
The Gully? Yes, I could have sold the Gully. Or leased the claim. But not for much, and it would have been only a drop in the ocean of what I was beginning to owe.’ And he added, ‘But it’s been a good life. Trouble is, that doesn’t solve the problem of today, let alone the future, and looking back… I never was one for looking back.’ He was silent then, not crying, just deadly silent as dawn broke, the grey slash of the highway between walls of spruce becoming clearer every minute, my headlights fainter.
I thought he was asleep again, his head back against the rear of the seat, his eyes closed. His face looked lined and tired, his mouth beneath the thick flared nostrils a tight gap that bared his teeth in a grimace. He had always looked so young, but he seemed to have aged in the last few months. I knew his age, of course — he was fifty-seven. But now he looked a lot older.
I was thinking about his father then, about that curse he had written into the deeds. Obviously he had seen his son for the sort of man he would grow up to be and had done his best to prevent him taking the easy way out of any financial difficulty. He may even have known the mine would run out of gold in a few years. At least he had anticipated it. And now Tom had done what old Josh Halliday had feared, he had started cutting into High Stand. But I couldn’t see that cutting those trees could be the cause of his wife being seized and South American gunmen hired to keep watch over his movements. But perhaps he had sold the whole lot on a word of mouth deal and then refused to deliver the deeds? Or more likely, far more likely, it concerned Ice Cold, or maybe the Gully — it had to be gold surely.
I was still thinking about that when he suddenly sat up, his eyes wide open. ‘Where are we?’
‘The Haines Road,’ I said.
‘I know, I know — but how far have we come? Have we passed Million Dollar Falls, the campground?’ He shook his head, looking suddenly confused. ‘No, of course, that’s back towards Haines.’ He was leaning forward, watching for the next distance marker. It came up, a white post with the figures on it in black — 172. ‘Thirty kilometres to Lakeside. We’ll stop at Kevin’s for breakfast. You’ve got a cabin there, I take it…? Good. We can have breakfast in your room then.’ And he added, ‘Kevin’s been a good friend to me. I’ll tell him what’s happened. Then afterwards, if you drive as far as Kathleen Lake, I’ll take over for the long haul to Whitehorse. I’ll be okay by then. Right now I don’t feel so good.’ He leaned back, closing his eyes again. ‘It takes me like this sometimes now. Old age creeping on, I guess. I’ll have a little nap … Be all right by the time we get to Lakeside. Wake me — when we get there …’ His voice faded, sleep closing in, leaving me alone with my thoughts and the grey curved hump of the road stretching ahead.
It was 07.37 when we rolled into Lakeside Lodge, a mist on the water and the sun just risen above the black rim of the eastern mountains. I remember the time because, after I had stopped the truck, I just sat there, too tired to move, and there was somebody’s watch on the top of the fascia board straight in front of me. Tom didn’t stir either. He was slumped in his corner fast asleep. We stayed like that for several minutes, my mind trying to assemble things in some semblance of order so that I could get my priorities right.
I could, of course, have packed it in right then, phoned Jean Edmundson and asked her to drive over and fetch me. I suppose the reason it crossed my mind to phone her, rather than try to hitch a ride, was that she represented ordinary Canadian life and her humdrum sanity was just what I needed to counteract the crazy world in which I had suddenly become involved. A local Sussex solicitor specializing in testaments and executor estates, and here I was in the Yukon within an ace of getting myself gunned down by hoodlums from Bogota, stealing trucks… I was looking across at Tom then, his chin sunk on his chest, the heavy nostrils trembling to the sibilant sound of his snores. God! He looked at least ten years older than he was, and I remembered how Miriam had talked about him that Sunday when we had lunched together after I had seen that newspaper story. He didn’t look in the least like a real life Peter Pan now. And remembering her, the animation of her face, the way her eyes had shone as she described the excitement and fascination this man had had for the inexperienced daughter of an archaeologist, I felt a longing and a fear for her … It was so ridiculous, getting excited and full of a passionate desire, sitting there in the cab of a truck by a log-cabin motel on the edge of a lake in the Yukon with her husband snoring beside me. It didn’t make sense. Nothing made sense. Only that I couldn’t go home, not till I knew what had happened to her.
As though my thoughts had somehow communicated themselves to him, he stirred, his eyes slitted against the sun. ‘Where are we?’ ‘At the Lodge.’
He sat up then, very abruptly, his eyes wide open. ‘Breakfast,’ he said, his voice sounding wide awake and full of vigour. ‘Which is your cabin unit?’ I pointed to the last in the line. ‘Okay. You get the key and ask Kevin to come and see us there. Tell him to bring the case I left with him. And order us some breakfast.’ I asked him what he would like and he laughed. ‘Anything, so long as there’s a lot of it — bacon, eggs, sausages, toast, and coffee, plenty of coffee. Jeez, I’m hungry.’
‘Hadn’t you better tell me what this is all about?’ ‘Later,’ he said. ‘Later. We got to get moving.’ We were there at the Lodge for less than an hour, and in that time we had the truck filled with gas, ate a huge breakfast, and Kevin lent us some money. Tom didn’t have to ask for it. Kevin simply assumed he would be short of cash, said there was something around a thousand dollars in the office strong box and if that was any help we were welcome to it. He didn’t ask for any security, not even a chit. He simply went and got it, dumping the wad of notes on the breakfast tray.