Slow Curve on the Coquihalla Read online

  "How'd it happen? We don't know for sure. Wednesday afternoon, when Randy hadn't called in for almost twenty four hours, we asked the R.C.M.P. to scout the route for his rig. They found it yesterday at the bottom of a ravine on the Coq just south of Merritt."

  "Coke? What you mean, Coke? Coca-Cola?"

  "Not that Coke. Coq for Coquihalla. Co-ka-ha-la," she enunciated slowly. "The highway. How do you think we get your freight across the mountains between Hope and Kamloops? Pack animals?"

  "Oh, oh, oh. Coquihalla. Yes, I know Coquihalla." There were a few seconds of silence. "Very sad. Very, very sad. I know Randy a long time. He a very good man. A good driver. How it happen? No brakes?"

  The man's grief was clearly genuine, maybe he wasn't such an asshole. El softened. "It doesn't look like brakes, 'cause he was on an uphill curve. We don't know how it happened yet. The R.C.M.P. will investigate." Sung's right. Randy was a good driver. There had to be a good reason. "Maybe he swerved to avoid an oncoming car, lost control of his rig. Maybe it was some kind of mechanical failure. Heart attack, even." Randy was in his early fifties, she thought, and kept himself in pretty good shape, but you could never tell. She remembered the initial reason for Sung's call. "The R.C.M.P. may not release the tractor trailer and its freight for a few days. I'm sorry."

  "R.C.M.P.? Oh, oh, oh. I see." There was a long pause. "Freight not a big problem, compared to Randy. We ship again, no problem. I call you when ready in Seattle?"

  "Yes. Okay, Mr. Sung. You call me here." El figured Suzanne didn't need the hassle.

  Victor Sung sighed. "I very sorry about this thing. Randy was a good man."

  Suzanne had just finished feeding the girls their lunch back at home and was wiping tomato sauce soaked alphabet noodles off Veri's high chair when she heard the front door open, and Jolene's excited "Daddy! Daddy!" Next thing she knew, Gary's arms held her close as she sobbed into his chest.

  "Shhhhh, honey. It'll be okay, Suzy. We've still got each other," he said, and for reasons she didn't understand, it irritated her. She looked up at his face, then, and saw pain and sympathy in his eyes, and immediately felt guilty for her irritation. She guessed it was hard to know what to say at a time like this, especially for a man.

  "Daddy? What's wrong?" Jo and Veri both stood looking up at them with worried little faces. "Mommy? Why are you crying?"

  Later, when she'd put the girls down for their nap, she and Gary sat thigh to thigh beside each other on the couch, his arm circling her shoulders, his long hair still damp from the shower, his white cotton shirt smelling freshly of soap and deodorant. He'd gotten them each a beer, and Suzanne could feel the alcohol melting its way through her body after only a few sips.

  "I can't believe it. It just doesn't seem real, you know what I mean? I keep expecting to wake up and find out it's just a nightmare," she said.

  "I know exactly what you mean. I pulled out of the yard in Seattle before your dad's trailer was finished loading on Tuesday – and he waved at me from the loading dock. I thought he wanted to talk to me, so I go to stop the truck ... but then he waved me on." Gary stuck his beer can between his knees to free up his hand to demonstrate the wave. "Like he was saying, no big deal, I'll tell you later. You know? You always think you can talk about it later." His voice dropped to a whisper. "Now I'll never know what he wanted to say. That was the last time I saw him."

  Suzanne pressed her face into his chest.

  "Poor Suzy." Gary hugged her tighter and kissed her hair, before sitting back and taking a long pull on his beer. He sighed, then said, "This ain't gonna be easy, babe."

  What was he trying to say?

  "You're gonna have to make some tough decisions. About the business, you know?"

  She knew it was true, but she didn't want to hear it. "Not today, Gary."

  "It can't run itself, Suzy." He tipped his head back to drain his beer can.

  "I know that." That feeling of irritation was rising again. "But I've forwarded the phones to El Watson in Vancouver, and she said she'd look after the calls whenever I needed to get out of the office until after ... ." She hated to say the word. "After the ... funeral. I'll make up my mind then."

  "Your dad had a lot of years of experience. It's not easy to run a trucking company and make money at it."

  "Please. Not today, Gary." The comfort she'd drawn from his closeness had evaporated. "Not yet." She stiffened.

  "Okay, babe. I'm sorry." He hugged her again, hugged her with both arms and nuzzled her hair until she relaxed.

  In a low and gentle voice, he said, "Your dad was one special guy, Suzanne. I feel privileged to have known him."

  Suzanne smiled, the corners of her mouth trembling, and the tears started again.

  There were over twelve hundred miles of highway between Winnipeg and Kamloops, where Randy Danyluk had lived, and over two thirds of it was flat. After spending the last three weeks on the road, Hunter started the two day drive without enthusiasm. The green and silver rig Gary had been driving was a late model Western Star like the rest of the Ranverdan tractors. As Hunter got used to the gears and controls, threading his way through the streets of East Kildonan towards the Trans Canada Highway, he marvelled at how Randy had managed to put six such tractors on the road while most drivers he knew struggled to make the payments on one. Like his own tractor, a 1991 tandem axle Freightliner with a 350 horsepower Cummins engine, a navy blue workhorse that El had nicknamed "The Blue Knight". By the time Hunter finished making the payments on what would then be a six-year-old truck eight months from now, El would be prodding him to trade it in. Randy had to have been one smart businessman, and he must have worked like the devil for years.

  The highway dragged itself across the prairie landscape. After a late dinner stop in Virden, near the Manitoba-Saskatchewan border, Hunter dug through a case of tapes he found beside the seat, thinking music might break the monotony of night driving. It was mostly country, or country rock. Clint Black, Ricky Scaggs, Jerry Jeff Walker, Prairie Oyster. He stuck in a John Anderson tape and turned it on as he pulled back onto the highway. The third time it started to repeat, he pushed the eject button and let the drone of road sounds fill the cab.

  With nothing much to distract him, Hunter's thoughts began to follow the oppressive shadowed pathways in his mind that only seemed to take shape, like recurring nightmares, after dark. Most long haul drivers prefer to drive through the night, when the traffic is lighter, but for Hunter, the price exacted by the darkness was too high. As if his usual black musings weren't enough, tonight he was passing Regina.

  Regina, over twenty – no – twenty four years ago next month. The R.C.M.P. training depot. Six months they'd sweated and strained and ached together, he and Ken and the others, polished boots and buttons and shined the buckles on their belts, cleaned rifles and guns and the floor beneath their bunks, drilled and studied and pushed themselves till they thought they would hit the wall.

  "What's your first choice?" Ken had asked. They were lying on their backs, staring at the ceiling, tired limbs draped along narrow, spartan beds. Around them, fellow recruits prepared for lights out, shining boots, writing letters, or exchanging banter. A few were already asleep. "Vancouver?"

  Hunter looked at Ken in disbelief. "Of course not. I've spent my whole life there, why would I want Vancouver?"

  "Where then?" Ken took his arm out from behind his head and scratched his groin through the grey woollen blanket. "Ottawa? Pomp and circumstance?"

  Hunter snorted. "Is that where you want to go?"

  "Hell, no!" He tucked his arm back in behind his head. "Hell, no!" he repeated with a grin.

  "Ever been up north?" Hunter asked.

  "You're not talking about Flin Flon, are you?" He grinned again.

  Hunter shook his head.

  "That's what I thought."

  A few weeks later, the graduating recruits gathered to receive their postings. They were high on the drug of imminent success, charged with an almost uncontrollable energy
and enthusiasm and a sense of comradeship unlike anything they had ever felt before, as if they'd endured a bloody battle together and knew, at last, that they would survive, triumphant.

  "Constable J. Hunter Rayne." The corporal's voice barked into the hushed group. "G Division, Whitehorse Detachment, Whitehorse, Yukon."

  A cautious cheer went up, and Hunter raised both arms in the air in a giddy victory salute.

  A few minutes later it was Ken's turn. "Constable Kenneth A. Marsh."

  Ken's nostrils flared and he held his breath.

  "G Division, Whitehorse Detachment, Whitehorse, Yukon."

  "Yeeee-HA!" Ken punched the air with his fist, his body lifting off the chair with the force of it, and leaned forward to give the recruit seated in front of him a resounding kiss on the top of his head. Hunter bit his lip to keep from laughing.

  Boots clattering down the wooden stairway of the meeting hall, Ken caught up to Hunter on the way out. He knocked off Hunter's hat, then wrapped his arms around Hunter's chest in a ferocious bear hug. "Watch out, Mad Trapper! Stand by, Lost Patrol! Here come Constable Rayne and Constable Marsh, blood brothers and spiritual descendants of Samuel Steele, set to tame the lawless Yukon!"

  Hunter pushed him away, growling. "Lawless, like hell! Dammit, Ken! There's probably been more Mounties per capita in the Yukon than anywhere else in the goddamn country!" He surreptitiously wiped his eyes with his sleeve as he reached down to retrieve his hat. Damned if he didn't love the silly fool like a real brother.

  Now Ken was dead. And Randy was dead. Thinking of Randy, the doting father, set Hunter on that other inexorable train of thought that led to his own daughters, who lived with Christine, his ex-wife. It seemed to Hunter that he had been waiting all his life for the time when he could finally hunker down and talk to his girls, when they'd be old enough to really talk, to articulate their deep down hopes and dreams. He'd always believed that as they got older, he would get closer to them. Instead they were growing farther and farther apart. Like he and Ken had.

  Hunter clenched and unclenched his jaws, grinding his back teeth. Regrets. They lay like a heavy black tarpaulin, stretched across his heart. If only he and Ken had ... If only he and Chris ... Damn! He caught himself edging up over sixty five miles an hour, eased up on the accelerator, and set the cruise control.

  He spent what was left of Friday night in a pullout between Regina and Moose Jaw in the sleeper of the truck, tossing and turning between memories of the Depot and thoughts of his daughters, and finally falling asleep surrounded by the stale, tobacco stained odor of the last occupant's sweat.

  CHAPTER 3

  – – – – THREE

  Elspeth Watson couldn't get the office door unlocked fast enough, teased to distraction as she was by the smell of the hash browns and Egg McMuffin in the warm bag that rustled against her belly. El loved her work. She loved her unadorned and utilitarian office, its smudged walls and scarred grey tile floor, the cold concrete and chain pulley doors of her warehouse. She loved the smell of propane forklifts and big diesels and wet cardboard and sweating men that went along with it. But she took particular pleasure in Saturday mornings, with their slower pace and the hot breakfast she was permitted the leisure to indulge herself in.

  At the end of May, the sun was well above the neighboring buildings by seven o'clock when she lowered her ample rump into the captain's chair. She watched the dust motes swirl above the customer service counter as she settled in to eat her breakfast and drink an enormous mugful of coffee. The phone rang before she'd had a chance to cancel the call forwarding, which meant she had to pick it up before the fourth ring. Her mouth was still full.

  "Watson!"

  "El? It's Suzanne."

  Poor kid. "Mornin', Suzy." El swallowed. "How're you doing?" She grabbed the coffee to wash the lump of muffin and sausage down her throat, but it was too hot to take more than a small sip.

  "I just wanted to let you know that I'm in the office today. I've switched the phones back."

  "Uh ... well ... okay, then. I've got a few things in the works, Suzy... uh ... I'm expecting some calls on your line about ... " Oh, damn! The kid won't know what's going on! "Are you sure you want the calls coming to you? There's some stuff ... "

  "That's okay, El. If I have any problems, I'll give you a call."

  The kid sounded pretty together, but the drivers were used to dealing with Randy, a veteran, like herself, who knew every side of the business – more than just an office clerk. "Sure." El could feel the first faint smoldering of heartburn.

  "Feel free to take some more time off, Suzy. It must be awfully hard for you, especially with those little tykes to look after."

  "Thanks, El. The kids are used to coming here, and being here makes me feel closer to Dad. It's better than sitting at home and stewing about it, you know? Dad and I learned that after Mom died, remember?"

  El remembered. Randy had barely taken any time off work when his wife died. Suzanne had already moved back to Kamloops and taken over her mother's work in the office by then. Cancer. The last couple of months Ronnie had hardly gotten out of bed. Ranverdan was a real family company. Ranverdan – after Randy and Veronica Danyluk.

  "It isn't fair that you've lost your mom and your dad, both, in such a short period of time," El said gently. Hell! Randy's death just wasn't fair to anybody, herself included! "He was a very special man, your father. A lot of us are going to miss him."

  "How could it have happened?" El could tell that Suzanne had started crying, her voice turned wet and nasal. "Dad of all people! He was such a good driver, everybody said so."

  "I know, Suzy, he was. He was the best."

  "Then how, El? What could have happened? Why him?"

  "I'm sure they'll find out. I'm sure it was something beyond your dad's control. These things happen."

  "Like what? What things happen? I always worry about Dad and Gary in the winter, when the drivers talk about the ice and snow on the Coquihalla, but why now?"

  El fidgeted with the phone cord. "An oncoming car, maybe. Your dad was a good driver, but there were other people on the road that night, and there's always some jerk driving too fast, or driving drunk, or falling asleep at the wheel. Fate doesn't play favorites," El continued. "Then there's always the chance he might've had a heart attack. It doesn't seem right, but I've seen it happen to younger men than him."

  Suzanne said nothing, but El could hear her breathing through her nose with a soft snuffle.

  "Are you sure you're ready to take the phones back? I've got things under control."

  "Yes. Yes, I need to." And more softly, "Dad would want me to."

  After she hung up, El took another bite of breakfast, but the spell was broken. She swallowed it in a hurry and grabbed the receiver again. Why wait for the drivers to phone her?

  At about ten o'clock, her phone rang for the umpteenth time and El bustled in from the warehouse to grab it somewhere around the seventh ring. It was Hunter Rayne, calling collect from a payphone in a restaurant near Swift Current.

  "Hey, Hunter." She was only slightly out of breath as she settled into her chair. "How's it going?"

  "Just tickety boo," he said. "I'm right on schedule, should be arriving in Kamloops sometime Sunday afternoon. Got a flight home booked for me?"

  The guy almost always sounded this cheerful. Sometimes it was downright irritating. "I'll have Gary meet you at the Ranverdan yard. You can drop the rig there. Listen, about your trip back to Vancouver, I had a great idea ... "

  "Hold on, El. Let me just remind you that I'm due for a couple of days of R and R."

  "That's precisely what I've got in mind, sweet cheeks. I figured you could take a couple of days off, rest up a little, do some golfing, maybe a little fishing ... uh ... you still there, Hunter?"

  "Yes, El," he said, slow and clipped. Ouch! He was already suspicious. It was scary, the way he could read her like a book, even over the telephone.

  "Well, it's like this. Ranverdan's one of
my biggest operators and I can't afford to see them screwed up. Things could be a little shaky for a while, until Suzanne either sells the business or gets a partner to help her run things properly. Uh ... since it's in your best interests as one of my drivers to see my operation prosper ... maybe ... I just figured ... "

  "Yes?" He obviously wasn't going to make it easy for her.

  "It's this way, Hunter. Suzanne's really shook up about her dad's death ... as she should be, of course ... and she's torturing herself about how it happened ... and I thought perhaps with your connections ..." Surely he still had friends in the Kamloops R.C.M.P. "Maybe you could make a few phone calls, you know, pull a few strings ... get a little inside information about the accident before the inquest. The sooner she comes to terms with it, the better, don't you think?"

  Silence.

  El pressed her lips shut and raised her eyebrows, watched two crows sparring with each other on the rail of the chain link fence across the yard. She cleared her throat.

  "Hunter?"

  "Sure. I'll make the calls as soon as I get home." El rolled her eyes. The fox!

  "It would do her a lot of good – a lot of good, Hunter – to talk to you in person about it. You're so good at that kind of stuff, you know, fatherly advice. And I'll be driving up on Wednesday morning for the funeral, you and me can ride back together, okay?"

  "I'm not staying for the funeral. El ... "

  Shit! Sounded like he was losing patience. Before he could finish his sentence, she added, "Suzanne says you can use Randy's truck, his boat, his golf clubs. You can stay at his place in Kamloops, and haven't you been talking about visiting friends on the Shuswap? That's only an hour or so drive away, isn't it? Please don't say no, Hunter, not until you've thought it over. Call me from Kamloops, okay? Call me after you've met Suzanne. If you still want to come home, I'll buy you a ticket on the first flight out, I promise."

  She could hear him let out his breath in a big rush of air. He sighed again, then said, his voice like granite, "Remember what you just said, El. I'll call you from Kamloops."