My One Square Inch of Alaska (9781101602850) (31 page)

“Will, was there a cougar or not? Did I hit it or not?”

“I—I’m not sure—it was all in a flash…and I was sleeping, and your swerve woke me up…and suddenly you were screaming about a cougar. You said you saw a cougar!”

Suddenly I understood. I was the one…not Will…who’d supposedly seen a cougar. But had I seen it? Or just hallucinated it?

“I’m sorry, Will,” I said. “I think I’m just…too tired. But the fact is, we have a blown tire now, and we can’t just stay here in the middle of the road. Give me the flashlight.”

He handed it to me and I opened the door.

“What are you doing?” Panic edged his voice.

“Changing the tire. So we can go back closer to Whitehorse for the night. Camp there.” Truth be told, I wanted to
keep driving, but now I didn’t trust myself. Not with drifting off, and the snow, and the darkness.

“But what if the cougar—”

“Will,” I said, “I don’t think there is a cougar. And if there is…well, we’ll just sic Trusty on him, OK?”

He calmed down, as if Trusty could take out a cougar.

I checked over our car and didn’t see any dents or blood or fur like there should be if I’d hit a cougar. And then I nervously set to changing the tire, shaking in the cold and snow. And out of fear of how I’d just nearly plunged us to our deaths. And fear that maybe I
had
seen a cougar and not just hallucinated.

Eventually, I swapped the blown tire for our spare—our only spare. I had to smile, thinking,
What would Babs say now?
I was changing a tire again—and not on a rainy day in Ohio, but on a slick, cold night with possible cougars roaming about in the Yukon Territory. She’d say,
Well now you really need some nice young man to come along and rescue you
.

But I didn’t. I just needed some real sleep. And a place in Whitehorse where we could buy another spare.

Finally, I finished the tire change, and then got back in the car. It took me a long time to maneuver the car and camper around on the road so that we were headed back to Whitehorse.

By the time we were nearing the roadhouse, though, I could tell something else was wrong with the car. The engine temperature gauge needle was edging toward “H” and the engine was knocking. I pulled to the side of the road just past the roadhouse.

“I’m going in to see if anyone there can help us,” I said.

“I want to go with you.”

I looked at Will. His face was drawn up in concern. I looked back at the place. It didn’t have a name, just a neon “open” sign flickering in the window next to the door.

“No, you stay here. I’ll just be a few minutes.”

I got out of our car and made my way across the road and parking lot, leaning forward into the bitter wind and snow. I pulled open the tight door and stood shivering for a moment, trying to regain my breath, which the wind had snatched away.

When I did, I looked around, and instantly wished that I hadn’t come in here. A few men sat at tables and at the bar. The bartender stared at me. I swallowed hard and went up to the bar, feeling curious eyes on me. When I got to the bar, I saw that the bartender was actually a short, squat woman, her hair slicked back in a rat-tail-thin ponytail, wearing a flannel shirt and jeans just like the men in the bar.

The woman stared at me, waiting for me to speak. I was trying to think of what to say. Suddenly, explaining that my car was broken down out front and that my only companions were my little brother and a mute dog seemed like a really bad idea. My mouth gaped and closed, and finally the woman said, “Yeah?”

“Um…my husband and I are, ah, traveling on our honeymoon, and he sent me in to, ah, see if we could get some…some sandwiches to go.”

I was startled by rough laughter and glanced to my left. There were three men at a table just behind me. Two of the men were laughing, but one was staring at me. My skin suddenly crawled with a sick, clammy feeling. One of the laughing men said, “Your husband sent you in here? What, he didn’t want to come in for a pint?”

“Shut up, Hector,” the woman snapped. She looked back at me. “Does this look like a drive-in to you?”

I swallowed hard. “No, ma’am.”

“If you and your husband want food, the general store back in Whitehorse might be open for a little longer.”

“OK, thanks, that’s good to know,” I said, backing away from the bar.

Then I turned and hurried back out. I heard the scrape of chair legs on the rough wooden floor, the tread of someone following me to the door, the creeping sensation of being watched. I ran to the car and looked back. I didn’t see anyone in the doorway. In my car, I started it up and turned it back around, keeping my eye on the engine temperature gauge heading quickly again toward “H.”

“Why are we going back this way?” Will said.

Because all those men in there think I’m heading toward Whitehorse,
I thought.
So I’m going the opposite direction.

“I think we’re better off camping tonight after all. In the morning, we’ll get help in Whitehorse.”

I drove slowly, praying for the gauge to stay below the “H” until I got to the crest of the hill we’d just driven up. We almost made it. I held my breath, gunned the overheated engine to pull us to the top, and then put the car in neutral and took my foot off the accelerator to let us coast down the hill, around the curves, past the place where I’d nearly driven us off the road. I spotted a clearing to the side of the road and slid over to it.

“We’ll be all right here tonight,” I said, praying that I was right. “We’ll just cover up in the camper with everything we have.”

That’s what we did. I pulled all our clothes out of the
suitcases and piled them on top of our blankets in the camper, and we burrowed underneath those, snuggling together, with Trusty—who finally seemed to have overcome his nervousness about the camper—between us. For dinner, we ate crackers under the covers, and I giggled at Will’s silly jokes.

What did the fish say when it swam into a wall?

Dam!

What happened when the goose flew upside down?

It quacked up!

Finally, Will sank into sleep. I lay awake, wide-eyed in the dark, startling at every small sound, wondering if I’d done the right thing by having us spend the night here. What if the snow was so heavy that I couldn’t dig us out in the morning? But our car wouldn’t have made it back into Whitehorse, and the men—and the woman bartender—hadn’t been too friendly. I’d been stupid to go in there at all. It wasn’t like walking into a diner in the middle of the day….

My eyes grew heavy, and as much as I fought staying awake, my body yearned for sleep. I was tempted to take another Dexamyl, just one more, to stay awake for the night and watch over Will, but…

When I woke up, I was outside the camper. I looked around, startled, wondering why I was out, and then I realized I was hunkered down, peeing behind a shrub. I could just make out the shape of our car and camper in the dark. I must have half-woken up and half-sleepwalked out.

I finished my business and started back to the camper, shivering. The snow, thankfully, had stopped, and I guessed there were only a few inches on the ground. If our car was still overheating in the morning, we’d just walk back to Whitehorse, I thought, and—

Suddenly, rough hands grabbed me from behind. I started to scream, but then a hand moved to clamp over my mouth. I bit down, but my teeth just grabbed glove leather. I started flailing and then felt something sharp next to my throat—a knife. I went physically still, my mind scrambling for an idea of how to get away, how to get to Will….

“On your honeymoon, little missy? Don’t scream, or I’ll slice your pretty little throat.”

The hand over my mouth moved to my hair, jerked my neck back. I felt cold lips on my neck, then smelled foul breath as my attacker said, “You aren’t on a honeymoon; you’re by yourself. I’ve been looking in the little window. Just you and some kid.” Another kiss. My stomach roiled and I fought back a retching gag, fearing that if I flinched at all the knife would slice across my throat. “And the kid can’t help you. You’re going to be mine, my…”

My brain turned to Will, away from the nasty things the man was muttering. How long had I been away from the camper? What if he’d already hurt Will? My shock and terror started to tinge with anger. The first thing I had to do was get the man to move the knife from my throat.

“I won’t scream,” I said. My voice was ragged, shaking. “But I can’t go anywhere with you with the knife—” I stopped as he pressed the knife more tightly against my throat, then moved his hand from my hair to my arm, clenching it in a painful grip.

“I will let you turn so I can see you, but one scream and I’ll run this knife through your tender little belly and then do the same to the kid in your camper. Understand?”

That threat means Will must still be all right.
“Yes,” I said.

The man moved the knife from my throat, then scraped
its edge over my coat, over my breast. I swallowed hard, fighting the instinctive impulse to scream. I prayed.
Please God, let this be another hallucination, like the cougar might have been….

But the man’s hand was still on my arm, jerking me around. This was real; all too real. The first edge of sunrise was bringing our spot of the world out of darkness. I could see only the man’s size and shape. He was huge. My stomach roiled again.

I told myself,
You got him to move the knife from your throat. Now get him to let go of your arm.
Then…what? Run to the car? Even if I could get there without him catching me, I wasn’t sure I could get it to start, and he could easily break through the window. Maybe I could break a window, grab a piece of jagged glass to use as my own knife, but I’d need a piece of cloth around my hands. I suddenly realized I didn’t have gloves on, that my hands were numb.

“Let her go!” Will stood in front of us, aiming his Red Ryder BB gun—his birthday gift from Daddy—over my head at the man. His hands were shaking.

The man laughed. “Go back to your sweet dreams, son. This doesn’t concern you.”

“Will, I’ll be OK. Go to the camper—”

“No, I’m not letting him hurt you!” I could hear anger in his voice and also that he was crying.

The man laughed, nastier this time. He pressed the knife to my throat. “Go, or I’ll slice her throat before you can pull the trigger, and—”

Suddenly, a beast came howling and running out of the darkness. The man startled, dropped my arm. “What the hell?” he yelled.

The animal ran past me and lunged at the man, snapping and snarling. I stared in disbelief.

The beast was Trusty. The man screamed and tried to hit Trusty away, but the dog sank his teeth into the man’s arm, making him scream in agony. In the bare light, I saw that the man had dropped his knife and was reaching for it, about to stab Trusty. I ran over and picked up the knife, and in so doing, knelt right by Trusty and the man. For a second, I wasn’t sure if Trusty knew who I was, if he was trying to protect me or if he’d just suddenly gone wild and happened to jump the man instead of me. But when the man grabbed for my arm as I picked up the knife, Trusty moved his muzzle right over the man’s face, snapping and barking wildly.

I stepped back, shaking. One bite and Trusty could rip most of the man’s face off. Trusty had known I was in trouble, and to protect me, he had somehow found his voice.

I felt a touch on my arm, jumped, and saw that Will was beside me, staring at Trusty pinning the man to the ground and snarling in his face. Will’s BB gun still shook in his hands.

My hand tightened around the knife. “Tell Trusty to back off him,” I said. “I think we can make him go away now.”

Will looked up at me. His face was tight with fear. “Are you OK?”

Suddenly, I started shaking, but I said, “Yes. I’m fine.”

Will nodded. “All right, then.” He stepped closer to the man and Trusty, and called Trusty’s name.

Trusty stopped snapping and snarling but stayed on top of the man, growling.

“Get him off me, get ’im off!” the man begged.

“Why should I?” Will asked, his voice amazingly steady. “You were hurting my sister.”

“Aw, now, boy, I was just going to have me a little fun—why, your sister sashayed into the roadhouse and—”

“Attack!” Will snapped.

Trusty started snarling and snapping in the man’s face again. I’d never heard Will teach Trusty any such command, but something in his voice cued Trusty that it was all right to start barking again. Strangely, I almost laughed, out of both relief and lingering fear. What if Trusty really did rip the man apart? And if he didn’t, what were we going to do with this man? Now that the light was growing, I could see his truck, parked just across from our car and camper. If we let him go, he could run us down. I wasn’t sure it made sense to try to march him at knifepoint in front of us. If we left him here and took his truck back to town, he could hurt our car and camper before running away.

Maybe, I thought, I could drive and Will could keep him under control with Trusty, but then how would we all fit into the cab? And what about the knife?

I tensed, sensing someone coming up behind me. My hand tightened on the knife.

“Shoot ’im! Shoot the dog!” the man started screaming.

I knew he couldn’t be talking to Will, so I whirled around and saw the woman from the roadhouse just a few feet from me, holding a rifle, aimed right at the man and Trusty.

“If I’m shooting anything, it’s you, you son of a bitch,” she said.

T
he woman had us all get in her car, handed me the rifle to train on the back of the man’s head (which I did with quivering hands, even as Will kept his BB gun out, too), drove us back to the roadhouse, and called for both a police officer (to haul off my attacker) and a tow truck (to haul off our car and camper). Will and I learned that the roadhouse bartender was Molly Donovan. Her father owned the place, but ever since his health had failed and her husband had died, Molly had run it. She and her dad lived in a small house behind the roadhouse.

The man who had attacked me was Charlie Rickman—the only one in the roadhouse who hadn’t laughed in disbelief at my claim that I was traveling with my husband; the one who’d stared after me, making me feel nasty and exposed. That night, he’d stayed until the roadhouse closed in the early hours of the morning. When Molly a little while later had let her own dog out, she’d seen Charlie sitting in his truck in front of the roadhouse. She’d heard him talking about me after I’d left, and knowing Charlie’s reputation, she suspected he was deciding whether to follow me into Whitehorse or go home.