Page 20 of The Last Stars in the Sky
A mile passes, and then another, shuttered summer cottages glimpsed between the trees, the occasional glint of sunlight on the StLawrence River. He is so close now, so very close, and still nothing. No one.
Then, just after he rounds a curve, he sees a police car pull out from a hidden road, lights flashing blue but no siren. His stomach drops and then clenches, and he feels sweat bead coldly on his forehead. He pulls over, gravel crunching beneath the tires, the exhalation of exhaust the sound of defeat.
The police officer is fiftyish, graying, with a paunch and a grim expression. His hand rests on his holster as Daniel rolls down the window.
“You know it’s illegal to be traveling right now?” the policeman asks, not aggressively.
Daniel takes a deep breath. “My son is at college in New York state,” he says. “I have to go get him.”
“The border is closed.” The policeman’s voice is, surprisingly, gentle, even regretful. “No one is able to cross. No one. You need to go home.”
Daniel turns to squint up at him; the glare of the sun is creating a halo around the officer’s head, making it hard to gauge his expression. “Please,” he says, because he has no other words.
The policeman hesitates. He glances up ahead at the road, as if looking for something, then back to Daniel. “Look,” he says, leaning in and lowering his voice, although there is no one, no one at all, who might hear. “There’s a guy in Rockport who is taking people over on his boat. It’s by the boat works, on Front Street.” He steps away from the car. “You heard what I said about going home.” Then he walks back to his car while Daniel lets out a shaky, shuddering breath, lowering his headand closing his eyes for a brief moment, in something almost like prayer.
When he checks the map, he sees that Rockport is just a couple more miles down the parkway. The policeman has driven on, and the road is empty again. Slowly, Daniel pulls out on and keeps driving.
He finds the boat works in Rockport, a touristy town right on the river that, like everything else, is silent and empty, everything shuttered. He drives on, realizing he will need to hide his car somewhere. All the stuff he brought—the food, the water, the gas—he will have to leave, and he doesn’t want it to be stolen. God willing, with the help of a miracle or maybe several, he will return to use it—with Sam.
A mile or two on the other side of the town, he finds an old, abandoned barn, weathered sides mostly intact but with its roof falling in; there are dozens like it up and down this part of Ontario, forgotten farms, abandoned generations ago thanks to the stony ground. Now the ground is frozen, and the car makes no tracks as he drives right into the barn. He has to get out and shift some fallen planks and logs, sweating with effort in the freezing cold, before he can park the car fully inside. There is no way to disguise it, so he will have to hope for the best, that no one will venture into this ruin.
He takes out a rucksack, packs it with as much water and food as he can reasonably carry, a flashlight, a pocketknife, a first aid kit. He straps a sleeping bag onto the bottom, and puts on his coat, hat, scarf, gloves. He slings the rifle over his shoulder. He feels weirdly ridiculous, yet also grimly intent.
As he clicks his key fob to lock the car, the electric beep and flash of lights seems already a relic of a bygone age. He steps outside, glancing around, but there is no one in sight—not a human, not a house, not a car, just fields, sky, and road. It is three o’clock in the afternoon and dusk is drawing in, thecolor being leached from the sky, and there is a deeper chill to the already icy air. He starts walking down the road, the crunch of his boots on the gravel sounding unnaturally loud in the stillness.
Half an hour later, he comes to the boat works, with its deep-water marina; there is a ferry boat, red and white, withRockport River Cruisespainted on the side, but no other boats at the dock this time of year. He walks past the main building to a house around back that’s as shuttered as everything else. He wishes the policeman had given him a bit more detail, but he has to go with what he has. He knocks on the door. There is, unsurprisingly, no answer.
Daniel waits because, just as with every other aspect of this surreal journey, there doesn’t seem to be another option. It is coming onto dusk properly now; the river is already lost in shadow. He shivers in the cold, even though sweat is prickling between his shoulder blades, trickling down his back. Five minutes pass, each one endless. He knocks again.
“Please,” he says, raising his voice a little. “I’m here to ask for help, to cross.”
The minutes tick by. It is now almost four o’clock, and almost dark. His feet are numb, his face too. Should he give up? Go back to the car? If he returns to the cottage now, after less than a day, Alex will never forgive him. He will never forgive himself.
He knocks again.
The door opens.
Daniel instinctively takes a step back as he glimpses the man standing behind the screen door, his expression, behind a bushy, graying beard, inscrutable. He wears a grimy baseball cap pulled down low over his forehead, and his face is seamed with wrinkles. He smells of smoke and oil, like a chainsaw. His mouth, beneath the beard, is a hard, uncompromising line. He is, Daniel thinks, almost a parody of a redneck woodsman, likea northern version ofDuck Dynasty, but then Daniel realizes he must look like a parody too; he is, after all, wearing a fleece vest and a button-down shirt underneath his coat, his old Rolex strapped to one wrist.
“I need to cross the river,” he says. The man has not yet spoken. “Someone told me you take people across.”
The man scratches his cheek, almost absently. He seems relaxed, and yet Daniel is under no illusions. He might be the one with a rifle slung over his shoulder, but he suspects this man could gut him like a fish before he managed so much as to put his finger on the trigger.
“What have you got?” the man asks. His voice is a rubbly sort of smoker’s voice, with an Ontario twang.
“I have some money.”
“How much?”
Daniel hesitates, knowing he will have to negotiate, and that he is decidedly at a disadvantage. “Three hundred dollars,” he says at last. One hundred seemed paltry, but in any case, the man remains unimpressed.
“What else?”
“You mean besides money?”
The man nods.
Daniel thinks. He has only packed essentials, nothing he is willing to give up. He doesn’t want to give away the location of the car, or the other supplies he has. “What do you want?” he finally asks, and he hears the wavery edge of desperation in his voice.
