The Athabascan Winds

I gripped the wheel tightly, navigating the old station wagon as quietly as I could away. Sitting sullenly in the passenger seat, my father scanned the hospital roundabout, ensuring no one noticed our early morning flight.

“Keep the headlights off…” he mumbled as I reached for the dial on the signal lever.

My knees quivered as we turned left onto 965 South, forced to overcorrect against the turn as a blast of wind hit us sidelong, cold air seeping in through the seams. I held my frozen fingers in front of the vents as a shiver went through my spine. My poor father must’ve been suffering even more, with only a parka thrown over, his hospital gown, and long johns.

He sat utterly still, his stern face betraying no discomfort. He was a strong man, never breathing a word of his pain to another. In his thirty years in the mining business, he’d done every job a man could do, from laborer to heavy machine operator to mine director, the position he currently held.

In the professional world, he was an indispensable man, head of the Eldorado Mine and de facto mayor of the nearby town of Uranium City, my home. People depend on my father, people who barely even know him come by his house asking for help. He’s a very giving man, at least to strangers. To me, he’s a ghost.

When he married my mother, he’d told her he’d be spending long periods working away from home and expected her to raise the children properly. He had an old-school mindset, seeing the father as a hunter, roaming the economic wilderness for nourishment while the wife cared for the home. And so, he spent the majority of my early childhood working in mines all across Canada, mainly in Northern Saskatchewan and Ontario. Only when I turned eleven did he become a more consistent presence in our lives, moving our family from Regina to the newly blossoming Uranium City so we could be closer to him in his new capacity as foreman. Even then, he was such a workaholic that we barely saw him, even when he was at home.

He grabbed my knee, a sharp pinch interrupting my train of thought. He snarled;

“Stop that quivering with your knee, will ya? It’s driving me crazy!”

I grimaced as I obeyed and steadied my knee; he reached up to the signal lever and spun the headlight dial, turning on the high beams.

“We’re far enough outside of town... no one’s gonna stop us now.”

But I secretly wished someone would.

I had no desire to drive over Lake Athabasca in November. The winter had been unseasonably warm so far, and the lake hadn’t been frozen for more than a month near the crossing at Fond-du-Lac. No one could say for sure if it could support the weight of a vehicle yet.

But father was impossible to mollify. Nevermind that only a month ago, he’d suffered a mild heart attack, that the heart specialist he’d just seen in Regina recommended medical leave of at least three months. He couldn’t stay away from the mine, couldn’t stop his endless toil.

We turned off the highway, following a narrow range road a little way before reaching the ice road entrance, orange wooden barriers blocking the way. I put the car in park, the engine puttering as we sat looking at the shimmering road beyond, wisps of snow carried by the wind scurrying across its surface. My father growled impatiently;

“Well? What are you waiting for? Get those barriers out of the way!”

I took a deep breath,

“Dad...are you sure we should do this? I mean… the Constable said ....”

He snorted, “Nevermind the Constable! I know this country like the back of my eyelids. I know when it’s cold enough to drive. And I say it’s cold enough!”

“But why don’t we just take a plane? It’ll be safer!”

“And what? Am I just supposed to leave my car in Stoney Rapids forever? I have to get it serviced before winter hits with full force! Besides…” a dark look came over his face. “There’s some shit brewing with the company; I don’t know what it is...but I can feel it. The miners...they need me right now...I can’t fail them. Now let’s get going, huh? I’d move em’ myself, but I’m not appropriately dressed.”

I thought of arguing some more but abandoned the idea after a few more moments of wretched silence. Finally, I stepped out of the car.

The wind howled all around, the gusts threatening to knock me over. I grabbed one of the wooden barriers by the middle and hustled it to the side, struggling to keep my footing on the ice. I moved it just enough that our vehicle could pass and then let it down with a thud. The wind whipped in my ear, carrying on it what sounded like voices, screams.

“GO BACK!”

I shuddered and ran back towards the car, flinging the door open and throwing myself into the seat, slamming the door shut behind me. My father hissed;

“You knucklehead! Don’t slam the door!”

“I’m sorry, alright? It’s cold out there.”

He sneered, “That’s no excuse.”

I buckled my seatbelt but hesitated before putting the car in drive. Perhaps it wasn’t too late to convince him? I turned to face him, trying to think of the right thing to say. Before I could open my mouth, my father reached over and put the car in drive, giving me no choice but to guide it through the barriers and onto the road.

He grinned and leaned into his backrest, pulling the side lever to release it all the way.

“Alright, on we go! It’s just a straight shot from here. No traffic!”

He only lay back only a few moments before his breathing became long, and he began to snore. I let my mind wander as I stared out across the big black yonder, the road before me seeming to materialize out of thin air every two hundred feet, the howling wind absorbing even the sound of the engine.

I concentrated on the vanishing point, ever approaching but never arriving.

Tomorrow always comes, but not for everyone.

Death is so strange; one minute you’re here, and the next you’re gone. I remembered my grandmother, the day she died, she was as happy and vibrant as ever, playing Canasta and joking with the whole family. And then, when I went to wake her up the following day, she was cold, absolutely still. That was the thing that frightened me most.

How could she be so still?

My father didn’t see her on the day he died; he didn’t even attend her funeral. Sure he paid top dollar for her headstone and oak casket. But he never saw her interred, never paid his final respects, never even shed a tear for the death of his own mother.

I gripped the steering wheel tighter, quietly working myself into a fury until I was so angry at my father that I wanted to lean over and smack him even as he slept.

At that moment, the ice gave out, cracking under the back wheel of the station wagon, the impact sending me flying forward into the rotation. My father unbuckled his seat belt and opened the passenger door quickly; before it became submerged, the front wheels remained balanced atop the ice as the back wheels sank.

I leaned forward in a daze, still scrambled from the crash. It was then that the airbags deployed, the top of my head receiving the blow and sending the shock straight into my spine, after which everything went black.

*****

I awoke under a blanket of pines, three layers of freshly snapped branches insulating me from a pocket of snow. I found myself huddled inside. The half igloo was quite cozy, and despite lingering pain in my head, I felt happy.

I surveyed my surroundings, finding myself in the lee of a big hill, guarded against the howling wind by evergreens all around. The great white expanse of Lake Athabasca was just beyond, the ice road we’d been traveling cutting across it like a thread.

I began to feel light-headed and fell back asleep. A few hours later, the soft crunching of footsteps in the snow awoke me. It was close to dark, and I could only barely make out the figure that approached it through an armful of kindling against the ground, the loud clattering causing me to snap my head up.

“Good! You’re awake!” It was my father’s voice, but the gathering darkness prevented me from seeing him.

I shrugged, “I guess I blacked out. How long was I asleep?”

He crouched down and began to arrange the wood into a teepee, using an already blackened spot on the snow.

“You’ve been asleep on and off for two days... mostly mumbling, groaning.”

“Two days? But then...why hasn’t anyone rescued us? Haven’t they realized we’re missing?”

He stuffed some birch bark into the center of his teepee and produced a piece of flint from his jacket pocket, scraping it with his hunting knife to produce sparks. In a few minutes, he had the fire burning steadily, just in time, as darkness swallowed the land altogether. The orange glow of the firelight illumined his face oddly as he sat down beside it. The features were my father’s, but the expression was uncanny. He seemed pleased to be out here as if it was a camping trip.

“They’re looking for us, sure, but they won’t find us.”

I shivered, “Why not?”

“Because we don’t want to be found!”

A deafening howl whirled through the trees; my teeth chattered even though I felt quite warm.

“Wha...What do you mean? I want to be found! We’re gonna die out here!”

He smiled wider and shook his head;

“Have no fear, little one; you will not die; the forest will provide, as it has for countless creatures downwards through the eons. It is bountiful if you know where to look!”

I shook my head in confusion. Since when did father speak like this? He wasn’t a natural philosopher; he was a digger! He didn’t care for problems you couldn’t solve with heavy machinery.

“How do I know you’re really my father?”

He frowned, the gesture exaggerated and unconvincing.

“But son… it’s me! Papa! That airbag must’ve scrambled your brain. You don’t recognize me anymore!”

“What’s my name?”

The figure sat utterly still, the mere fact that it had to pause before answering, giving the game away. What was this thing? The wind howled, snapping a tree in the distance and whipping the flames higher. The imposter rose to its feet and cracked its uncanny smile, no longer pretending to be my father, even though it still wore his skin.

“What are names anyways? We do not use them.”

The imposter gestured towards the trees, indicating the we.

I answered as well as I could this insane question.

“Well...names are for telling who's who, so we can differentiate each other.”

The Imposter cocked its head to one side like a dog,

“Huh...differentiate...why would you need to do that?”

“Well… so we can organize people… you know, tell one person to go here and do this thing and tell another person to go there and do that thing.”

It perked its head up,

“Ahh! I see how that would be useful… yes… names… very interesting…”

“So...um… what are you anyways? Why do you look like my father?”

“I use your father’s corpus, yes. But my true aspect is not one thing; I contain many things. This lake here, which you call ‘Athabasca,’ is my home, as she also finds her home in me. It is on her behalf that I speak to you.”

So what does that mean? Is he some kind of ghost? Did he kill my father?

“What...was it you wanted to speak to me about?”

“Well…just to say… we’re sorry. We never intended any harm to come to you, but it was impossible to stop you any other way.”

“You caused the crash?”

The imposter nodded before stating simply,

“We could not allow your father to reach your home. We tried to stop him peacefully, but he would not.” The imposter gestured towards itself. “And so it came to this.”

I looked at it warily,

“So...what’s gonna happen to me?”

“You're free to go! My lady will watch over you on your journey home, she feels she must take care of you after the ordeal you just endured.”

“And what about my father?”

The imposter look became solemn, only half visible by the dying firelight.

“Your father must stay here...with us…”

And then, without another word, The imposter stalked off into the darkness. And I realized that I would never see my father again.

*****

The wind died the next morning. The silence of the forest was so thick that even the crunch of my footsteps in the snow seemed to register as a seismic event.I lay around the camp another day, before finally, hunger forced me to move, my shaky legs carrying me slowly through the trees. Not that I expected to find anything, I was merely sick of laying around, waiting for death.

I picked a random path through the trees, looking for nothing in particular. Before long, I stumbled upon a rabbit, freshly dead of natural causes. I sank to my knees joyously and skinned it right then and there with my father’s knife, eating it raw.

From then on, my path was littered with other such windfalls, an empty cave to sleep in, a dead black bear with its pelt intact that I fashioned into a cloak. Nuts and berries stashed by squirrels mysteriously ripped out of the ground and scattered across my path. Life became so easy in the wilderness that I forgot how I’d ended up there or where I was supposed to go. The days passed on and on, blurring, as winter thawed into spring.

Wasn’t I supposed to go somewhere? Fond-du-Lac?

My mind was clouded, but my legs carried me onward. They seemed to know where to go. Winding a circuitous path through the trees until we reached the banks of the massive lake and followed it towards civilization.

We crossed the lake at its narrowest, moving without hesitation, even though the bright turquoise pools of water forming atop the ice indicated it was too late in the season to cross.

The town of Fond-du-Lac was visible on the far bank, the evening sun beaming through its modest buildings. People waved at me from the shore, calling at me to get off the ice.

But I continued my progress in a daze, unconcerned by the consequences.

People crowded around as I stepped onto dry land once more, asking who I was and what I was doing out there, inspecting my black bear cloak with incredulity. They hauled me up to their church, Our Lady of Sorrows, and sat me down in one of the pews. Before long, a priest came, offering me a cup of hot tea.

“Here, son...why don’t you tell me what happened?”

I tried to take a sip, but the tea was too hot, and it burned my lips.

“There was a crash…in the ice...”

The priest lit up at this, “Wait...are you Gus Meyer’s kid? Gus Jr?”

“I go by Gustav.”

The priest braced himself between the pews,

“All this time, and you're still alive! My god! We all thought you were dead!”

“Dead?”

“Sure! They found your father’s body; God rest him. But there was no sign of you! They found some footsteps leading away from the camp I hear, but it became impossible to track after a fresh snowfall.”

The sheer weight of time hit me. How long have I been out there? Mother! She probably thinks I’m dead too! She’ll never recover from that! She has to know I’m okay!

I shot up from the pew and turned to leave, pulling my bearskin cloak over my shoulders.

“Excuse me, padre, but I have to go!”

“Go? Go where?”

“To Uranium City! My mother needs to know I’m alright!”

He shook his head sullenly;

“Your mother isn’t in Uranium anymore son, nobody is, the way I hear it. Everybody pulled up stakes after the mine closed. We saw them driving in huge caravans over the ice road, the whole town leaving all at once; how about that, huh?”

I shuddered. Is that why the lake wanted father dead? To stop him from saving the mine? The priest put his arms around my shoulders, guiding me back to the pew;

“Come, rest my son; you must be exhausted! My god, it’s a miracle you’ve survived!”

I shook him off and rubbed my arms nervously, shivering even underneath all my layers.

“It is a miracle...but it wasn’t your god who performed it, padre!”

This startled priest, raising his hackles.

“Oh yeah? Well, what was it that preserved you all these months in the wilderness, then?”

I grinned, trying to mimic The imposter’s uncanny smile.

“Not ‘what’ but ‘where’ padre. Athabasca sustains me, just as surely as it killed my father. A strict god, but fair.”