Somewhere In-Between (27 page)

While Ian gets ready for the drive into town, Julie feeds the dog. She wants to take Pup along with them today, but Ian has already discounted that idea, pointing out that the dog has become completely independent now that he can come and go through the doggie door into the mudroom. It's true that ever since the weather turned cold, Pup prefers to be outdoors, spending his nights in his kennel on the back porch and coming inside only now and then for a drink of water or a quick visit. “He's a ranch dog, Julie,” Ian insisted before he went up to shower. “It's not fair to drag him into town. He'll be fine out here by himself.” She knows he's right. Still this is the first time they have left him on his own and Julie is nervous about doing so.

The metallic smell of snow rushes in on the crisp winter air the moment she opens the mudroom door. Across the ranch yard Pup and Virgil's dog are wrestling in front of the barn. At the sound of her voice, Pup rolls upright in a billow of snow, and then bolts toward the porch. Left lying with his muzzle on the white ground, Virgil's dog watches him go, then stands up to shake the snow from his coat when his master appears in the barn doorway.

Julie has not encountered Virgil since that day in his cabin, but even from this distance she recognizes the same weariness in his face that was there then. Keeping her eyes on him she leans down to place the dog dish on the porch. She straightens up then backs into the mudroom and closes the door slowly.
He doesn't want to leave the ranch either.
The thought keeps her rooted in front of the door window. Uncaring if he can see her behind the glass, she watches Virgil trudge through the snow on the way back to his cabin with his dog by his side.
He doesn't want to leave anymore than Ian wants him to go,
she thinks as he disappears down the road.
Can I fix this?
She turns away, and heads upstairs, uncertain that she would, even if she could.

While Ian showers, Julie goes into the spare bedroom. The cardboard boxes, which she had chosen last night, wait inside the door. This is her first step in her resolve to try to find a way to put her and Ian's marriage back on track. Without saying anything to him, she has made the decision, as he has always wanted her to, to take the boxes of Darla's clothes in to the Salvation Army. Sorting through them last night, she had been unable to resist opening each box to pull out armfuls of carefully folded clothes and crushing them to her face. Fighting the urge to do so now, she carries them one by one to the mudroom. She leaves the box of dolls behind. Ian is right about the clothes, there is no good reason to save them. But the dolls? She cannot bear to let go of Darla's dolls.

After loading the boxes in the back of the idling Jeep, she waits in the driver's seat. When Ian comes out, loaded down with his briefcase and file boxes she rolls down her window. “I'll drive,” she calls out in answer to his questioning expression at seeing her sitting behind the wheel.

“The roads might be pretty slick today.”

“I'll drive slow,” she promises, buckling on her seatbelt with a decisive click.

Ian hesitates for a moment, but then walks to the back of the car when Julie rolls up her window. Adjusting her rear-view mirror, she keeps her eye on him as he lifts the rear door. He hesitates at the sight of the boxes, their contents written on each in black marker. He loads his own boxes then climbs into the passenger seat, without a word.

Fresh snow crunches beneath the Jeep's tires, as it crawls steadily up the hill, navigating the sharp-cornered switch-backs with ease. Spending so much time in a vehicle when she was selling real estate, Julie has always insisted on the best ‘rubber' money could buy, and now she is grateful for the sure-footed traction of the studded tires. By the time they reach the top road, she is confident that she is once again getting the feel of Cariboo winter driving.

When they turn onto the main highway, she relaxes. Except for drifting skiffs of snow, the road to town stretches before them, a ribbon of black asphalt. She allows the Jeep to pick up speed, stealing a quick glance at Ian, who is already lying back against the headrest, his eyes closed in sleep. Or, she thinks, more likely in pretence of sleep—his way of avoiding the temptation to criticize her driving.

With the hum of the tires the only sound in the car she concentrates on the road. It's not his silence that she minds, it's what lies behind it. She finds herself considering Virgil's muteness. Unlike the silence between her and Ian, filled with blame and grief, anger and resentment, which threatens to explode if broken at the wrong moment, the silences she had shared with Virgil were tranquil, calm, in harmony somehow with the moment. With a start she realizes that she misses those moments. Like the music. She misses the music. Even in the coldest of weather, she still leaves her bedroom window open a crack, but no matter how hard she listens, the voice of a distant violin no longer seeps into her bedroom in the middle of the night.

She forces herself back to the moment, searching for the right words to start up a conversation with Ian. There was a time when that was never a problem. It seems so long ago, another life, when they used to cherish moments like these, alone in the car. She had always looked forward to long road trips, where without interference from telephones, clients, Ian's or hers, they would talk non-stop. And then when Darla was growing up, for Julie, the only truly enjoyable part of visiting her mother in Vancouver was the chance to spend seven hours in the car with her family. Seven hours filled with conversation, and laughter. And they would sing. How they would sing! Ian, with his beautiful deep tenor voice, loved to croon old Irish ballads. He would break into song the moment conversation lagged in the car. By the time Darla was eight she knew all of the lyrics to the most improbable songs—songs like “Galway Bay” or “Danny Boy,” which she would sing along with her father at the top of her lungs, even affecting his feigned Irish accent. Julie had had her own travelling repertoire of old Joni Mitchell, Judy Collins and Joan Baez songs, songs she had grown up with—one legacy from her mother that she hadn't shunned. Darla's favourite was a Joni Mitchell ballad, “The Circle Game.” Right up to the time she was a teenager she would ask Julie to sing it every time they drove any distance at all. They always thought of it as Darla's song.

Unwittingly Julie finds herself humming it now, mentally singing the lyrics. But when she reaches the verse about
sixteen springs and sixteen summers gone now
, her throat closes up. Beside her Ian stirs. Has he heard? Does he remember, or even think of those times? She glances quickly at him, but he turns away to face the passenger window.

Julie switches on the radio, pressing the search button until she lands on some country and western station whose music holds no memories for her, or Ian. For the next hour she forces herself to listen to the almost comical wailing laments of lost loves, lost homes, spilled whiskey and beer, but nothing about lost children.

On either side of the highway, grey clouds hang heavy over the fields, hillsides and tree tops. Less than a half hour from town snow begins to fall once again, the growing flakes spiralling in a hypnotizing vortex against the windshield.

When the accident happens, like all accidents, it happens without warning. Afterward, Julie will remember it in fragmented slow motion images. The transport truck coming toward them from the opposite direction: the commotion of snow lifting and swirling up from beneath multi-tires; the billowing clouds left in its wake as the loaded semi speeds by; her white-knuckled hands, gripping the steering as they enter the blinding whiteout.

Only later will she question whether the black blur she sees on the highway as she comes out of the swirling snowstorm could truly be a bear at this time of year. But in the moment the fleeting image causes her instinctive reaction. A reaction, which, even as it occurs, she knows is wrong. In that split second of recognizing that there is a living creature in the path of her Jeep, she is unable to prevent her foot from slamming on the brakes, her hands from swerving the wheel. Then the helpless feeling as suddenly the Jeep's tires—the best money can buy—lock and skid sideways across black ice, as easily as sliding through grease. Her mind racing, Julie tries to turn the useless steering wheel in the direction of the skid, but it's too late, out of her control. Careening toward the bank on the other side of the road, she lets go and gives into the inevitable. In the heartbeat the car becomes airborne, and sails into a silent white abyss, the unbidden thought whispers inside Julie's mind.
“Darla, I'm coming.”

Their soundless flight is broken by the grinding screech of impact. Something solid rips through the undercarriage and the windshield shatters at the same moment the airbags explode. Still the vehicle keeps moving, bucking and rolling, smashing against unyielding objects, while the unseen world spins out of control. Then as suddenly as it started it is still, the only sound the whine of the motor. Disoriented, Julie reaches for the ignition key. The deflating airbag blocks her search. She forces it away to find herself staring through the bottom edge of the shattered windshield at a world turned sideways, a world where hundreds of white papers flutter from an upside-down sky.

Her trembling fingers locate the ignition key on the steering wheel and turn off the motor. In the ensuing silence, she feels the wind and snow swirling inside the Jeep. Only then does it dawn on her that the vehicle has landed on its side with the tailgate door thrown wide open, and that the sheets of paper fluttering down are Ian's files.

Ian?

With great effort she turns her head to the right, her jaw and face aching from the impact of the exploding airbag.

“Ian,” she cries, feeling panic for the first time. “Ian, are you okay?”

The slack passenger airbag moves, and Ian's face appears above her. “Yeah, you?”

“I think so.” She looks around. “We've got to crawl out the back,” she says. “I'll need to go first, so you'll have room.”

It takes a few moments to unfasten her seatbelt. Twisting and turning carefully, she squeezes herself out from under the steering wheel. She crawls over the seats toward the rear of the vehicle, feeling the Jeep rocking precariously as she does.

In the front, Ian suddenly drops from his seatbelt restraint. “Careful,” Julie hollers back to him as she rolls out onto the ground, “the Jeep's not stable.” As Ian pulls himself toward the rear of the vehicle there is a warning screech of metal and Julie screams in horror as the vehicle teeters and then rolls slowly from its precarious perch. As it flips over, Ian is tossed out like a rag doll, slamming onto the ground below, a moment before the Jeep lands on its roof in the same spot.

Razor sharp rocks beneath the snow rip through Julie's clothes, cutting her hands and tearing skin as she scrambles down into the ravine. At the bottom she pulls her way around the Jeep, her heart pounding in her throat. Relief floods through her at the sight of Ian lying face up, as if waiting for her, on the other side of the car. His glasses are nowhere to be seen and his right leg is bent up against his chest while the left, from the thigh down is lodged under the Jeep's roof. Still, he attempts a grin when she drops down beside him. “Well this is bloody stupid,” he says. “My leg's stuck. I think it might be broken.”

Julie chokes back a nervous sob. A broken leg. They can handle that. It could have been so much worse. Looking up at the path of destruction on the steep hillside she thinks it's a wonder that they're here at all.

“Can you move?” she asks.

Ian struggles to pull his leg out from beneath the Jeep, the pain blanching his face. “No. It's pinned.”

She puts her arms under his shoulder and, bracing her legs against the metal, tries to slide him back, but it's useless. She stands up and pushes against the vehicle, but it won't budge.

From the highway above comes the sound of a vehicle approaching in the distance. But as Julie listens anxiously, it speeds by without slowing down. She is suddenly aware of the seriousness of the situation. No one can see them down here. They're going to have to get themselves out. They're damn lucky if they come through this with nothing more than a broken leg.

“I'm going to try digging your leg out,” she says, and goes around to the back of the Jeep. She has to scrunch down to look inside. Empty. Everything that was once stored there for emergency, the shovel, first aid kit, jumper cables, must all have been thrown out, along with the boxes. She scans the churned-up path the Jeep took to its final resting point, frantically searching for any sign of the shovel, only to see, scattered across the hillside, hanging from tree branches, and lying on the snow like laundry waiting for the sun, jeans, t-shirts, sweaters—Darla's clothes.

She shakes away the image, she can't think about that right now. At the sound of another vehicle on the highway above, she glances up in hope. So near, and yet so far. The engine roar increases then turns into a distant drone heading toward town. Julie rushes back to Ian, drops down on her knees and starts clawing through the snow beneath his leg with her bare hands. Her fingernails rip as they scrape against dirt and rocks. The ground is too hard. She knows it's futile, but can't give up.

“Julie, stop.” Grabbing at her hands, Ian tries to sit up. He slumps back, the colour drained from his face. “You're going to have to go up and flag someone down.”

God, how can she leave him down here alone? she wonders, but answers, “Okay.” She removes her jacket and spreads it on top of him.

“Don't,” he says, “You keep it on.”

“I'll be warm enough, climbing up that damn bank,” she says, “while you just get to lie here and relax.” Ian's attempted smile turns into a grimace. Reluctant to leave him, but fully aware of the threat of shock, or hypothermia, Julie leans down and kisses his forehead. “Like the man said, ‘I'll be back.'”