Crossing Over Page 8

  “Look,” said Mike in a composed and conciliatory tone, “I don’t want to get into a long argument about all of that. It happened and I just wish that cooler heads had prevailed, that’s all.”

  “Uh-huh,” said Elvin, not turning his head to look at Mike.

  They were silent for a while, then Mike said, “Damn! Where are the adults that will show up on the beach to save us from ourselves?”

  “What?” said Elvin, annoyance in his voice.

  “It’s from a famous book, Lord of the Flies?”

  “Never heard of it.”

  They fell silent again as they looked out at the cold whiteness of the forest.

  “I’m gonna have to be gone tomorrow for most of the day,” said Elvin finally. “Could you keep an eye on my wife and kids, and watch no one tries to take our stuff?”

  “Sure.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Not a problem,” said Mike. Despite the now-calm, comradely tone of Elvin’s voice, Mike sensed falseness in it. Neither of them could completely distance themselves from their anger and frustration. Neither of them could trust the other. He decided to test it further. “If you don’t mind my asking,” he said, “where are you going?”

  “Ah, I have some people to meet. Gotta see if I can get something set up for us east of here.”

  Again, the cryptic response. Mike looked out the window. It was partly his fault. If only he hadn’t gotten into politics. “Well,” he said, “if you hear about any possibility of getting across, let me know, will you?”

  Elvin’s response was grudging. “Sure.”

  They came to the ugly sprawl of the border encampment. Hundreds of tar paper and blue tarp shanties had moved further out into the woods on both sides of the highway. There was trash and litter everywhere. The authorities had put out 55-gallon drums for trash, but they had quickly filled up and overflowed; the cold winds had done the rest. The piney scent of wood smoke mingled with the unmistakable odor of feces. Both men found the scene depressing and said nothing as they drove through. Five minutes later they pulled off the road and backed up to Elvin’s rig.

  That night both families cooked a communal dinner over a big cheery fire. Mike and Elvin smoked and talked softly, carefully staying away from the charged arena of politics. Marie and Katy got on well, sharing stories about the beginning of the troubles and their flight, while Elly thrilled in helping and watching over the two little boys.

  The next morning Mike, Marie, and Elly awoke to find that Elvin had not simply gone on some mission, but that the entire family had quietly slipped away in the night. The young couple and their little boys had provided a happy, but brief, respite from their recent trouble, and now their isolation and worry returned. That night Mike put his hand on Marie’s shoulder and she turned away from him. As he lay on his back looking up at the darkness he thought again about his and Elvin’s argument and wished he hadn’t said anything. After what seemed like a long while he slept.

  VII

  Mike walked along the highway in the dark. Marie didn’t like him going out after dark. There were reports of muggings and robberies. But most nights she had little to say to him and read her books sitting up in bed. Afterwards she would go to sleep without a word. The bitter cold had settled in for good and he’d started spending his evenings wandering through the encampment as campers cooked outside and talked, hoping for news in general and information about the availability of supplies and propane. This night he’d heard little he could use.

  He wasn’t far up the road from the camper when he thought he heard something behind him. Before he could turn, someone slammed into him. He landed face-down on the ice-encrusted black top. He couldn’t breathe. His head a swirling rainbow of pain, he became vaguely aware of someone going through his pockets.

  In the blackness a male voice said, “You get paid?”

  Another voice, closer. “Fuck yeah!”

  “What?”

  “Fuckin’ shit pistol, man.”

  One of the men laughed and they ran off.

  Mike slowly pushed himself to his feet. His side ached almost unbearably. His face stung. Warm blood tickled as it ran down his lip. He put his hand into his pocket. They had taken his .38. He limped back to the camper.

  Marie nursed Mike as best she could. The slightest movement unleashed excruciating pain in his side. Marie and he agreed that he probably had a broken rib, but there was no chance of getting a doctor to look at him. Marie did her best to tape his side tightly. He didn’t bother telling her that his revolver had been stolen. She wouldn’t care about it anyway. At least the little money he carried had been in his shoe. When Elly saw him the next morning she burst into tears. It took a month for the scar on his lip and his black eyes to heal and fade away.

  Pale bluish daylight half-lit the interior of the camper as Mike sketched out his idea for a heating system. Some days it was stinging cold and they’d taken to wearing their coats and hats inside the camper. The propane was just about gone. Marie sat above in their bed, reading. She hardly had anything to say anymore, evidently completely taken over by her disappointment and depression. Elly sensed their unease and was uncharacteristically quiet. She sat on her bed listening to an old Disney CD. Mike looked up at Marie, then down at the sketch before him. He had no training in engineering or mechanics and he knew it was unlikely that he would find the materials and tools needed to craft such a device, but the planning and sketching took his mind off their plight. His current scheme involved running the hot gases from the truck’s exhaust pipe through a half dozen aluminum or copper tubes with radiating fins welded on. He took another look up at Marie and caught her eye.

  “You want to take a walk… the three of us?”

  Elly blinked at the sound of his voice. She coughed, but she did not look over at them.

  “No, that’s okay,” said Marie. Marie too had come down with a cold. “I think I’ll take a nap.”

  Mike felt annoyed but kept the anger out of his voice. “Okay. I’m going out to gather firewood. I’ll be back in an hour or so.”

  Marie said nothing in response.

  Mike walked into the woods. He’d started staying away from the other camp sites as much as possible for fear that one of Julien’s acquaintances might recognize him. So far, he had heard nothing and assumed the Frenchman’s helper had kept the money and gone off somewhere. Falling asleep at night was difficult. Given the cold, Mike’s instinct was to move closer to Marie, but she used the excuse of her cold to keep a distance from him.

  Mike searched beneath the grey skeletal trees and dark green firs for firewood. He turned to look back at the camper, visible in the distance. All he had, all he cared about, was back there. If not for that he’d head deep into the forest until he dropped.

  He walked on, bending to pick up hefty branches here and there, occasionally muttering aloud as he prayed in his head. He was tortured by memories of better times—meals, family get-togethers, movies watched together on the couch, trips to the park with Marie and Elly. He found himself in Gunder’s Supermarket. The overhead lights, the colored signs, were vivid, the aisles full of meats, produce, dozens of varieties of pastas and noodles, sauces, soups, rotisserie chickens, wines, beer, cakes, pies… “Fuck!” he muttered.

  He heard a footstep and turned. A man and woman foraging nearby had heard him. They turned and disappeared behind some fir trees, their footsteps crunching away.

  “I won’t let them have her!” he muttered at their retreating backs. He continued searching for firewood, seeing Christ on his cross as he reached up to tear a large, rotting limb from a tree. And if they couldn’t get out of here when their money ran out completely, well, he still had agency. There was one last thing he could do.

  “What the fuck am I supposed to do,” he muttered angrily to that other, more sane, part of his mind. “There ain’t any other fucking way.”<
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  More weeks passed. The encampment grew and their money reserves shrank. One night as Mike lay wide awake, looking up at the ceiling of the camper, Marie’s voice came out of the blackness. “So, how long are we going to sit in this awful place and do nothing?”

  Mike felt a faint hope. If they could resume talking and regain some of the trust they’d had, maybe they could all get through this. “I don’t know,” he said. “There are rumors that the Canadian government is gonna let a whole bunch of people in at once. Supposedly some UN observers already came through here. But, like I said, they’re just rumors. And there’s always talk in the encampment about people sneaking refugees across, but uh… that ain’t an option for us anymore.”

  “Well we have to do something. We can’t just sit in this camper and freeze to death.”

  Mike’s hope came unmoored and started drifting away. “Of course not, Marie, for God’s sake. But we can’t do anything rash like before. We have to wait.”

  “Wait? Why don’t you go back and talk to Raza?”

  “That wouldn’t do us any good.”

  “Really? Maybe we could make him some kind of deal, give him the rest of the money and the camper.”

  “He doesn’t want the camper.”

  “How do you know that?”

  Mike couldn’t keep the anger out of his voice. “Damn it, Marie …”

  “Not so loud,” she said.

  He looked over at Elly’s sleeping form. He pictured Raza’s oily face and blurted out, “Do you know what he wanted?”

  “What? You said he doubled the price.”

  “No. I lied to you. He wanted something else.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Her,” Mike said in Marie’s direction, “he wanted Elly.”

  “What?”

  Mike saw she still wouldn’t let the thought in. “Look, Marie, the world has damn near completely unraveled.” He moved closer to her. “It’s turned to shit. I can’t help it if you won’t face reality, okay? But I’m going to do what I have to do. I’m not going to let him or someone else end up passing her around.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Just what I said, damn it. Without us to protect her, how long do you think she’d last in this new … situation? Look, I’m sorry, but this is the way it is.”

  Marie turned away from him, saying nothing.

  Mike woke at dawn. He got out of the sleeping rack and put his coat on. Marie raised her head to look at him.

  “I’m going to see if I can find somebody to take me to the barn store,” he said. “I want to hunt for something to make a stove out of.”

  Marie lay her head back down. “Do what you want. I don’t care.”

  Mike left, stung by her reply. At the barn hardware, he saw a table heaped high with flexible metal tubing. Nearby were packaged rolls of heat-resistant tape. The thought came to him again and he mentally slapped it away, muttering aloud, “No, don’t go there.”

  Mike and Marie continued to drift further apart. The days grew short and the weather alternated between snow and freezing rain. Despite his angry estrangement from Marie, he worried about her and Elly even more. They both had been taken over by the cold and were miserable, coughing frequently. Rumors came through the encampment about distant battles and international intrigue over the border and the refugee situation. Mike busied himself a couple hours a day going further and further into the woods to gather branches for firewood. He managed to fashion a crude stove, but despite his best efforts, it leaked smoke into the camper and they could only run it for twenty minutes or so before it began to bother them.

  Mike and Marie spoke about mundane matters, but she still seemed to harbor resentment toward him. He couldn’t help dwelling on it, forever wondering if there was anything he could do to bring her out of it. Short of getting them all safely across the border and into a more livable situation, he couldn’t come up with anything. If he could heat the camper, however, it would alleviate Marie’s and Elly’s discomfort. But there was no propane to be had anywhere. Raza must have been right about the refineries having been blown up. Fortunately a gasoline truck came through the encampment on a weekly basis, selling gas by the gallon. He queued with the others with his red, plastic five-gallon can in hand.

  Mike sat in the cab of the truck, the engine running, “to charge the batteries,” he’d tell Marie. But he enjoyed listening to the radio, and guiltily luxuriated in the heat. The big V-6 wasted a lot of heat. If only he could get the right materials, he might be able to capture it and route it into and through the camper. That would improve their lives greatly. But there was always the danger of carbon monoxide poisoning. Hardly a week went by without a report of someone in the encampment dying that way. Some said it was accidental, others suicide. But all seemed to agree—going unconscious and drifting off—it didn’t seem like such a bad way to go. They’d even coined a name for it—camper-cide.

  Mike looked out at the trees and the other campers. He pounded his fist on the dash, cracking the vinyl padding. “God! Please. I fucking give up. I can’t fix this. Only you can!” Teeth clenched, face pinched, he felt like a child pleading to his father, on the verge of tears. The truck’s engine ticked steadily, the heater’s blower whirred monotonously. Slowly his anger and frustration subsided and he found himself feeling foolish and weak. What if Marie were to come out of the camper and see him like this, or Elly? He turned off the engine and walked out into the woods.

  Late one afternoon Mike sat inside the camper, reading at the table. Marie lay up in their sleeping rack listening to music through her headphones. Elly had been reading one of her Disney books and now slept.

  “Her cold isn’t getting any better,” Marie said out of the blue.

  Mike looked up. She had taken her earphones off.

  “I know,” he said, at a loss for anything further to say. He had no hope, nothing to offer her. They looked at each other and this time she didn’t look away. Her eyes filled with tears.

  “Maybe we should just pull up stakes and hit the road,” he said, “throw the dice one more time. Go south, east, whatever, and see where we land.”

  She shook her head as tears spilled down her face. “No. You know we can’t do that.” She sobbed softly. “What are we going to do, Honey?”

  He climbed up beside her and held her. They pulled the quilt up over themselves and made love slowly. Afterward Marie slept. As he lay on his back and looked up at the ceiling, he again thought of his scheme. If he could just meter a tenth of the exhaust coming out of the Ford’s engine, into the camper, maybe that would be enough to warm it up and help Marie and Elly sleep. But if carbon monoxide got in, well, it would be the end of all worry and pain. In the anemic light of the camper, a part of him didn’t have a problem with that. He knew such thoughts were despicable, even evil, but they kept coming back.

  VIII

  Marie cried softly in the dimness of the camper. She’d had a dream, so real she’d broken out in tears when dawning consciousness tore her away. Most of the details faded quickly, but the warm house, a table set with good, hot food, and the absence of fear, lingered.

  She turned her head. Mike had gone out. She heard a noise outside—someone nailing boards together. She raised her head to look down at Elly. She lay under a mound of blankets and coats, still sleeping, something she did a lot of now. Her beautiful, little girl, grown up, but still her little girl. A car drove slowly by outside, then the usual cold quiet settled back down. Marie couldn’t believe they were still stuck here. Mike had lost hope, it seemed. He kept moving, but he and they went nowhere. There had to be something they could do.

  She sat up and pulled the covers off. “Elly, wake up!”

  Elly stirred slightly, but said nothing.

  “Elly,” Marie said sharply. “Get up.”

  One of the coats slid
off Elly and onto the floor of the camper as she sat up, blinking her eyes in the dim light. “What?” she said in annoyance.

  “We’re going out.”

  “Where?”

  “We’ll go up to the used clothing lady, and then I want to go talk to Mister Raza about something.”

  “Okay. Could we try and find some honey or sugar, and nuts too? Maybe we could make a cake like Carlene did.”

  “Yeah. We’ll see. Get dressed. We’ll have something to eat when we get back.”

  Later Marie and Elly wandered through the tables of dented and rusted canned goods, assorted chipped plates, cups, flatware, can openers, pots, pans, moldy paperbacks, CDs. Occasionally they ducked under clotheslines hung with shirts, pants, bras and socks. A block away the steel and glass of the Canadian Border Station took distinct, gleaming shape in the morning sunlight.

  Marie turned to see where Elly had gone. It was time to go up and talk to Raza. About ten feet away, a young man had his back to her as he talked with an older woman who held out a folded-up coat to him. There was something familiar about his build and bearing. He turned slightly, not seeing her, and there was no doubt in her mind.

  Marie felt someone tugging her arm. It was Elly.

  “Mom, it’s him!”

  IX

  Mike walked back through the encampment with a sack full of things he’d gotten at the barn hardware—heat-resistant tape, copper tubing, an antique soldering iron. He’d hitched a ride over and back. He was at the end of his rope. They were down to less than three hundred dollars and with the increasing food and fuel prices that would only last them another week or two. Then what? What would happen to Marie and Elly if someone shot him like they did the man four spots down the line the other night? What would happen to him and Marie if Elly’s cough got into her lungs? Marie wouldn’t survive it. And what would happen to Elly if they were no longer around to take care of and protect her? He had thought of nothing else for weeks. The weight of the tubing and material in his sack gave him some comfort. He still had agency.