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WAKE UP!

Colin’s eyes popped open just as the Rialta’s tires crunched over the gravel shoulder and onto the grass verge of Highway 3. He jerked the wheel left, then counter steered to keep the careening RV from crossing the centreline and colliding into the glaring headlights of an oncoming vehicle. Its horn blared in protest as it whooshed by.

Stop! Hermes demanded. You’re going to kill us both.

“Can’t stop now,” Colin mumbled. “Just a few more clicks and we’ll be there.”

Where?

“Stemwinder.”

Not if we both end up dead in a ditch first, Hermes fumed.

Should have boondocked at Hope, Colin admitted. He’d scoped out a likely spot in a subdivision at the confluence of the Fraser River and a creek named Alexander. Forest on one side of the street, its understory a broad patch of compacted, perfectly levelled gravel. A house on the other, concealed behind a tall hedge. The Rialta could have been come-and-gone before anyone in the neighbourhood noticed.

Pig-headed, Hermes grumped.

“Look! You’re the dog; I’m the master, okay? Stop your whinging.”

Hermes had a point though, Colin confessed. After their hike up and down the Kettle Valley Railway through the Othello Tunnels and beyond, they’d both been pooped. But they hadn’t reached their destination, Stemwinder Provincial Park. Cynthia always laughed and teased about his ‘route-bound’ sense of adventure—everything researched and mapped; hotels and points of interest designated; no room left for the unexpected.

“Not this trip, though,” Colin vowed. “We’ll be off the beaten path, hon. Honest.”

Opposites attract, he often marvelled. He loved her enthusiasm, her spontaneity, that she’d always be the first to get up and dance at a concert. How she’d drag him off his seat or their blanket and get him to ‘joggle’ his bones and sway his hips in a gangling attempt at complementing her fluidity and grace. How he never felt belittled or embarrassed when she laughed at his imitations, only loved.

And her? She loved him for how much he cared. His were the considered risks of an introvert and thinker. “For you, life is like a game of pick up sticks or Jenga—every move considered, every step analyzed,” she once said, not in a chastising tone, but as an admirer who appreciated his unwavering grasp of reality… and his willingness to let loose and abandon his stepping stones and sense of propriety when she incited.

Oh, how we laughed at ourselves, he sighed. How the centre of our universe was mutual love and adoration…

WATCH OUT!

Hermes’ frantic barking jarred Colin from his revery. Instinctively, he peered into the darkness ahead… There! Something was moving in the gloom, a huddled shape, a shadow in the folds of night. He switched on the Rialta’s high beams.

“HOLY FUCK!”

The shape was human! It was in the middle of his lane, dragging itself across the bridge spanning the Similkameen River. Colin swerved into the oncoming lane just in time, he thought… Just in time! he panted and prayed… Just in time to miss the suicidal maniac, lugging itself down the middle of the road in the dead of night.

He hit the horn—too late—then hit the brakes, pulling over past the concrete barriers that funnelled westbound traffic onto the bridge. His rage had morphed into panic. Other cars would be following. Like it or not, whoever was out there, beetling across the bridge, needed help. Colin punched the button, activating his emergency flashers. At least any approaching vehicles would have some indication of a seriously fucked up situation ahead.

Is this guy dangerous? Hermes cautioned. Hey! Lemme out! he yowled when Colin slammed the driver’s-side door behind him. Even an ankle-biter is better than nothing when you’re approaching an obviously deranged person!

Damn! Colin wished he’d grabbed his flashlight from the cup holder beneath the dash. He fumbled his mobile out of his hip pocket and punched the flashlight icon on its screen. He kept the beam pointed down, onto the pavement, so as not to alarm whoever was out there.

“Are you okay?” he called to the shadowy figure staggering toward him.

Silence… Except for the scraping of boots and the huffing of an exhausted animal, nothing emerged from the engulfing blackness.

“Are you alright?”

“Leave me alone,” a woman’s voice warned–a gruff voice, the kind Colin associated with a hard life.

“Can I help you?”

“Don’t need your ‘help’.

“Sorry, but I almost ran you over. Maybe the next guy who comes along won’t be so lucky.

“Can I give you a ride?”

What? Are you crazy? Hermes yelped. She’s a loon. She’ll murder you and steal the Rialta.

“Ha,” she spat. “More like you’ll wanna ride me than take me any place I want to go.”

Colin pointed the mobile’s light at his face. “Look at me,” he urged. “I’m a retired teacher. I’ve got grandkids for god’s sake. I just want to get you off this road. You’re gonna get killed.”

She was less than ten feet away from him. Colin could make out her features in the ambient light of his mobile. Mid-thirties, he guessed. Maybe forty. Pale. Dark eyes. Black hair framing her features beneath her hoodie’s cowl. She might have been beautiful, except her face was contorted into a scowl.

In the distance, approaching a bend in the highway about a hundred yards from the far end of the bridge, the intensifying glow of headlights loomed and the distant growl of a motor. A semi’s motor.

“We have to get off the road now!” Colin yelled, rushing toward her. “We’ll be killed.”

“Leave me alone!” the woman threatened, reaching for a sheath on her hip and pulling out a knife.

The semi rounded the corner and bore down on them, accelerating into the straight. Colin grabbed her arm and drew her to him in a bear hug as he shuffled them to the side of the road. Then he let go of her, stepping back a couple of paces.

“Hide the knife and look calm,” he suggested. “Unless you want this guy to stop, too.”

She switched the knife into her right hand, dropped it to her side, and leaned against the bridge’s railing, imitating his relaxed pose, as if they were having a friendly chat in the middle of nowhere any sane person should be.

“Thank you,” Colin gasped as the semi hurtled past with an angry blast of its airhorn.

“Look, I’m planning on stopping at the Stemwinder campground, about a kilometre up the road, and bunking down for the night. Come with me, please! I’ll sleep on the seats up front; you can take the bunk at the back of the van. No funny business, I promise. In the morning I can give you a lift as far as you want to go. Okay?”

She nodded, still eying him suspiciously.

“I’ll have to introduce you to Hermes. He’s our pet choweenie cross. His bark is worse than his bite, so don’t worry when he greets you.”

She pulled a knife on you, idiot! Hermes howled. And you’re inviting her to sleep in our van? Have you lost your mind?

“Our dog?” the woman queried.

“My wife and mine.”

“So where’s she going to sleep?”

“She’s not with me,” Colin replied.

The woman froze, stared.

“She’s dead,” he explained. “Couple of months ago. Cancer. Pancreatic. Five weeks and she was gone,” he snapped his fingers. “Just like that.”

For a couple of seconds, the woman’s eyes softened, and her shoulders slumped. “Sorry,” she said.

“Me, too,” Colin let the words linger a moment in the dead air between them, then gestured toward the Rialta with a nod.

Why am I doing this? he wondered, trying to conceal his thoughts from Hermes.

She’s armed and possibly dangerous, Hermes objected. She could sneak up behind you and slit your throat before you could even think of calling for help.

Puh-leaze shut the fuck up.

“Hey!” the woman barked, clapping her hands and looking at him as if he were a lost child in a department store. “Where’d you go?”

“Sorry. It’s been a really long day and I’m tuckered. You’re lucky I wasn’t asleep at the wheel when I crossed this bridge… Are you coming?”

“On one condition,” she said, shouldering the bulging backpack she’d placed on the road between them.

Colin bobbed in acknowledgement.

“You sleep in your bed; I’ll take the seats up front.”

Hey! That’s the navigator’s chair! Hermes objected.

“Okay,” Colin agreed.

~~~

To: CynthiaPetersonArtist@gmail.com
Subject: Day 4 on Rialta Road – Stemwinder
From: Call-In-P-Terson@gmail.com

Hello, My Love,

Hope you don’t mind, but someone has taken your and Hermes’ chair in the Rialta. Only for the night, and perhaps for some drive time tomorrow—over the strenuous objections of Hermes.

I’m not quite sure how I should refer to this person. We met in very sudden and unusual circumstances: In the dead of a midnight downpour, on a bridge over the Similkameen River just west of Stemwinder Provincial Park. I almost ran her over.

I can’t introduce you by name, because we haven’t exchanged that information yet. All I know is she’s in her late 30s or early 40s; is hauntingly beautiful in a Goth sort of way; and she’s desperate and afraid, but adopts a tough, brave persona to keep me at bay. I sense she’s in some sort of trouble and wants to be lost-not-found.

Despite all that—her bedraggled looks and keep-your-distance attitude—I like her. A lot. If she were our own… I won’t say the word, refuse to even think it! But I can’t help feeling it, love. Even though I know she’d shove me aside if I dared show so much as an inkling of paternalism, the instinct of a father is still there, between me and her.

Missing you
Always
Love, Colin

Next: The Grand Union Cafe | TOC