Refuge Cove Read online

  Tamara’s family understood without translation. My mother was pointing toward the door. Tamara’s father looked a little hurt. Her mother just hung her head low and sobbed. They were picking up their few bags when Harold cleared his throat. He understood perfectly who these folks were.

  “Now wait a minute,” he said to my mom. “I think we just had a little misunderstanding. Like you kept trying to tell me, I should knock before I come in. Hard to teach an old dog new tricks. It was my mistake. He probably thought I was some kind of prowler.”

  “He thought you were a cop,” I corrected.

  Harold laughed. “I assure you, I’m no cop. In fact, the Mounties still haven’t forgiven me for smuggling a little rum way back when.”

  “Out!” My mother repeated. “You too, Harold. Get out!”

  Harold scratched his head.

  I walked over to Tamara. “Mom, you can’t ask them to leave. I promised they could stay here. For the night at least.”

  “I don’t trust him,” my mother said, pointing to Tamara’s father. “I don’t trust him and that knife.”

  I let go of Tamara’s hand and walked over to her old man. I held out my hand and pointed to the blade. Tamara said something to him. Suddenly he pulled the knife out of the sheath again.

  My lungs stopped working and my heart went on strike. But then he placed the knife gently in my hand. “Sorry,” he said in English. “Sorry.”

  And so we all sat down to dinner, Harold included. We were all nervous and uncomfortable. Harold said it was just about the best fish he’d ever seen a mainlander cook.

  My mother looked at me. “Greg, I wish your father was still around for this.”

  “Me too,” I said.

  Chapter Seven

  People who live in Newfoundland outports have a curious ability to ignore the rest of the world. On top of that, nothing seems to come as a shock to them. Nobody seemed to think it unusual that a refugee family from Southeast Asia had found its way by boat to Deep Cove and that they were living with a mother and son from Toronto.

  “We’ve seen all kinds of trouble here, Greg,” Harold explained to me. “We don’t give anyone a hard time who wants to be here. Just like you and your mom couldn’t kick out these lost souls.”

  All kinds of clothing and food started pouring into the house from the thirty or so families around the cove. After a few days, it felt like we were all part of some big happy family.

  Tamara’s father seemed less uptight. I showed him how to split wood for the wood stove. And Tamara’s mother liked to help out with the washing and cooking.

  After breakfast one morning, Mom took me for a walk out back to the stream. “This is crazy, you know. These people can’t just stay here.”

  “Why not?” I asked. I had spent some time walking in the hills with Tamara. I had even taken her for a sail in the cove, after retrieving my Laser from down the shore. I felt I was just getting to know her.

  “They can’t live with us forever.”

  “There are a few abandoned houses in Deep Cove. They could settle into one.”

  “They don’t have any money, though.”

  “That doesn’t seem to be a big deal here,” I said. “There are gardens and there’s fish and berries and extra clothes and wood to heat with and everybody around here seems plenty generous—”

  “No,” my mom interrupted. “That’s not it. They are here illegally. We don’t know the whole story. Immigration will find out sooner or later. Things could get very messy.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “But we can’t just turn them over. They could get shipped back. I couldn’t let that happen. Besides, they’re a lot like us.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “I mean they’ve lost something big in their lives, something important. They’re in a new place and cut off from the past. We’re refugees too, Mom. We’re a lot like they are.”

  She didn’t say anything. The back door opened and Tamara’s father came out with an axe. We both watched as he set a chunk of wood on the cutting block and smashed it in half with a crack of the axe blade.

  In the middle of summer, Newfoundland could be a surprising place. From the tops of the hills you could still see a few icebergs offshore. But it was warm outside and the air was full of the sweet smells of bayberry and wintergreen. I had stopped thinking about pushing myself to the limit sailing at the speed of light. Instead, I found that I was quite content to go hiking up into the hills and to pick raspberries, strawberries and bake apples with a beautiful Asian girl.

  I had forgotten about Toronto, about school, about how much it had hurt to lose my father.

  At Tamara’s prompting, I took her parents along one morning for a trek to a far-off berry field. Harold had told me about the place. “I promise you, Greg. This is the raspberry mother-lode.” He drew me a map.

  Tamara’s parents loved the hike through the craggy countryside. They had picked up a little English and we could all communicate better. We were on a first-name basis now. Her father’s name was Ravi and her mother’s name was Indra.

  As we were returning home that day, I felt like I had grown to understand them all much better. And I had come to believe what I had first considered impossible. They had just arrived on this remote coast and settled in. They were doing great and nobody seemed to mind at all.

  But as we came to the top of the hill behind the house, the bad news hit us all at the same time.

  There was a police car in our driveway. Two cops and a man in a suit were talking to my mother. I swallowed hard and stared at the scene below. I turned around to assure Tamara’s family that they shouldn’t worry, that we would help them see it through. They were already scrambling away down the back side of the hill, stumbling over stones and running for their lives.

  I sprinted after them. I grabbed Tamara by the arm, spinning her around.

  “You betrayed us,” she said.

  “No. I didn’t. I couldn’t. And neither could my mother.”

  Her father was tugging at her to continue. “Leave us,” he said to me in English.

  “I can’t. Please, stay here. You can come back down when they leave.”

  Ravi put his hands on my shoulders. “You go. Find out. Come back to us. Please.”

  “You’ll stay here?” I asked him. “Promise?”

  “Promise,” he said.

  Chapter Eight

  I waited until the cops got back into their car and drove off. Then I skidded down the steep slope and went inside.

  My mom was sitting on the sofa wringing her hands.

  “They were looking for Tamara’s family, weren’t they?”

  “Yes,” she said, not wanting to look at me.

  “Well, what did you tell them?”

  “I’m not a very convincing liar,” she said. “I told them I had never seen any refugees. I don’t know if they believed me. Where are they?”

  “Up in the fields near the bog. I think they’re scared again.”

  “So am I,” she said. “I don’t think we can keep this up. That man was from immigration. He’s suspicious. We don’t know what we’ve gotten ourselves into.”

  “But Tamara and her parents are happy here. They are good people. You can see that yourself.”

  “I know. But we can’t hide them from the rest of the world forever.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I’m a bad liar. And I don’t like having to lie. And what about us? If we’re not careful, we might end up in jail. I should have told the truth. Maybe it would all be very simple. We have no reason to believe they will be made to leave the country.”

  “I sort of thought that from the begining. But how are we going to convince Ravi of that?”

  “And if we make contact with Immigration, they’ll know I already lied and will be wondering why we were trying to cover up for the refugees. We have a problem.”

  I thought of Tamara and her folks. “I’m going to go up and tell them it’s okay to come down
now.”

  “Suppose my acting was so bad that the Mounties are nearby watching?”

  “We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.” I was thinking just then how much Tamara meant to me. She was unlike any girl I’d ever met in Toronto. She was brave and smart and had those eyes that could see right into me—the real me.

  I found the three of them sitting on the top of a bare rock, staring into the sunset.

  “We’re not going back down with you,” Tamara said.

  “But they’re gone. My mother told them nothing.”

  “Yes,” Ravi said. “But for us … danger. You … not understand.”

  “Yes, I do understand,” I said.

  “We stay,” Ravi said and pointed to the spot on which he was sitting.

  “Tamara, tell him. This is not necessary.”

  Tamara looked at me with those big dark eyes. She led me to a ledge and made me sit down with her. We were above a sheer wall of granite that dropped off a hundred feet to the sea. The sun was setting and the world had a warm reddish glow. Gulls swooped below us along the cliffs. This strange feeling came over me. It was the most mixed-up thing that I ever felt. Sitting down with Tamara, I felt like this was the most perfect moment of my life—her, this beautiful place, the huge impossible expanse of the darkening sea beneath us. I wanted it all to stay like this forever.

  But then in the backwash of this feeling was something else—it was like a dream about to shatter.

  “You go home,” she said to me. “We will stay up here for tonight and see what tomorrow brings. My father will not let us go down.”

  I was afraid I was about to lose her. “You’ve trusted me and I haven’t let you down, have I?”

  “No. But we must be very careful.”

  “You’ll be okay, I promise. No one called the police. They were just checking up on people. Nothing’s wrong.”

  “We’ve told you very little about us,” Tamara said, her voice changing. “Now I will tell you something.”

  I looked down at the gulls swirling in the mist that was now rising from the sea.

  “My father was a soldier,” Tamara began. “He fought as he was instructed. He burned forests and farmers’ fields as he was told. He killed other men. He followed orders very well.”

  A shudder went through me. “Who was he fighting for? Why?”

  “This will sound strange, but that is not important now. He did not want to do these things. He had been away for one year. We had not seen him at all. Then one day he came home. I did not recognize him. He looked sick. I thought he might die. He had simply stopped being a soldier. My father said he could not kill anyone any more, no matter how many orders they gave him.”

  “He was a deserter,” I said. “That must have taken a lot of courage.”

  “Yes. But he had no choice. He could do it no longer. He was very sick and could not think well. A week went by and then one night more soldiers came into our house. They dragged my father out. They took him away and threatened to kill my mother and me if we did not get out of the house. When we went outside, they threw gasoline on our house and burned it to the ground.

  “We lived in my grandmother’s house, not knowing anything about my father until he appeared one night like a ghost—starved, crazy. My grandfather found us a ship to take us out of the country and gave us money.

  “Many weeks later, we are here and you find us. We are very far from our home but we must be very careful. My father would kill himself before being sent back. I cannot let that happen.”

  I felt swallowed up by all the sorrow of their lives. I thought about all the happy, carefree days of my own, sailing around Lake Ontario, while Tamara and her family suffered. It almost didn’t seem possible. It didn’t seem fair. And then my feelings for my own father came back.

  “When my father died,” I told her, “I wondered why there wasn’t anything I could do to stop it. I would have done anything to help him, to keep him alive. So I think I understand.”

  Tamara put her arm around my neck. I leaned over and kissed her for the first time. I felt like one of those gulls below me along the cliffs, just floating through the misty evening sky.

  Tamara convinced me they would be okay for one night alone in the wilderness. They would not let me stay with them, but I did make one more trip to the house and back to bring them food, a tent and warm clothing.

  At home in my own bed, I had a hard time sleeping. Tamara’s story kept me awake for a long time. I kept wondering if I had done enough to help this family that seemed so strange yet so familiar.

  Chapter Nine

  I woke not long after dawn with an awful feeling in the pit of my stomach. My first thought was that something had happened to my mother, that someone had taken her away. But it was just a fragment of a nightmare I was having. When I looked in her room, she was still asleep.

  I threw on a coat and ran out the door. It was a gray, damp morning and the sky seemed full of ghosts as I climbed the slippery path back to where Tamara’s family had spent the night. As I got higher up, I broke clear of the fog bank that was hugging the cove and I could see the morning sun break through the clouds higher up … a good omen.

  But it was not enough. When I reached the place where I had left Tamara’s family, they were gone. I frantically raced about, looking for some sign of the direction in which they might have gone, but there was nothing.

  A terrifying sense of loss swept over me, a feeling of powerlessness and defeat. I’d like to say I was worried about Tamara’s family, that I was feeling bad for them, but it wasn’t that at all. I was feeling sorry for myself. I was thinking that I had lost Tamara for good.

  There wasn’t a clue as to which way to go so I scrambled back down the hillside, slipping, bruising myself on the rocks along the way.

  The fog had begun to clear a bit in the cove. From the hill, I saw a car pull up in front of the house. It was white with a light bar on top. The Mounties were back. My mother was right; she was a lousy liar.

  I wanted to scream at them—it was all their fault. Why couldn’t they just leave people alone?

  My feet finally found the gravel drive that led to our house. A cop was standing by the car. He gave me a curious look. But before I could get out a single insult, I was face to face with my mother.

  “Greg,” she said to me. “Something’s come up. Something about some foreigners in a lifeboat.” Her acting was bad, real bad. “There’s probably some misunderstanding, but this officer says I have to go into St. John’s with him. They just want to ask me a few questions.”

  I looked at the hulking Mountie. He had a gun on and a face like I’d seen on some bad guy in an Arnold Schwarzenegger movie. “You can’t do that,” I said. That fear of losing my mother crept back into my skull.

  “It’s just standard procedure,” he said in a voice cold as steel. He held up a piece of paper. “This court document says we can do this.”

  Things began to blur before my eyes.

  “It’s okay,” my mom said, now sounding a little more like herself. “I’m sure it’s all a misunderstanding. I’ll be home later today.”

  The cop walked towards his car and waited for my mom to say goodbye to me.

  She gave me a hug and whispered in my ear, “Tell our friends that whatever happens, we’ll help them. We won’t let them go back. I promise.” And then she gently pushed me away and walked to the police car.

  I froze on the spot. I couldn’t tell her right then that Tamara’s family was gone. She’d react and then the Mountie would know they were around here somewhere. I watched as the car backed up and drove off. At that moment, I had the feeling that Tamara’s father was right. The authorities couldn’t be trusted. And it was my fault that my mother was in trouble.

  I walked down towards the wharf looking for a friend, looking for Harold. He found me first. He poked his head out from one of the fishing shacks.

  “Greggie, saw that Mountie up at your house. You should have sent hi
m down here. Looks like somebody stole old Calvin’s dory—oars and all. Not something that usually happens around here. Must’ve been a tourist. Hard to figure.”

  I could tell that he thought it was a big joke and that one of the local kids had probably just taken it as a prank. But I knew better.

  “When was it taken?”

  “Could have been any time last night. Calvin came down to go fishing this morning and nearly fell straight in the drink when he tried to climb into a boat that wasn’t there,” Harold said. Then his brow wrinkled. “Why?”

  “Ravi, Tamara and Indra are gone. They saw the Mounties yesterday. They’re scared. Ravi thinks they’ll get sent back.” I looked out through the channel to the open sea. There were whitecaps out there from a strong easterly breeze coming up. “They’re out there somewhere. Even if I could find them, I don’t know if I could convince them to come back.”

  I looked at my little Laser tied to the dock. I let out a sigh. “Well, I guess I better try.” I jumped down into the boat and began to undo the rope that kept the sail tightly furled around the mast.

  Harold sat and scratched his jaw for a few seconds, then walked over to me. He scrunched down on his haunches to be at eye level. “Not gonna be a good day for sailing, mate,” he told me.

  “What do you mean?” I asked, lifting the boom into place.

  “Look out there. Winds will be up to fifty miles an hour before noon. Big nor’easter. Mean as she gets. Not fit for man nor beast.”

  “Ravi doesn’t know the sea. They’ll drown out there.” I began to tighten the sail. I dropped the centerboard. “Wanna undo that line back there?” I asked Harold.

  Harold just looked at me and held onto the side of the boat. “I’m not gonna let you leave this wharf.”

  “The hell you’re not!” I shouted at him. I was just waiting to get good and angry with somebody. Harold was it. I kicked at his hand. He pulled his arm back and shook his fingers where my boot had connected.

  He remained cool. “Let’s call the Coast Guard. Maybe they can send a ship by.”