Lost in Quebec

Quebec, 1985

It’s just after six and the sun is beating down through the windows of the tan Ford and reflecting off of its dusty hood. The only thing keeping the temperature inside the car tolerable is the windows being down and the wind from the highway rushing in.

Shirley is driving and Eleanor is in the passenger seat, with her bare feet up on the dash. The radio is cranked up loud and they’re singing through the chorus of Never Surrender.

They’re on their way to Nova Scotia from Ontario to visit their older sister, Diane. She’d moved out there after college and had convinced their parents to let Shirley and Eleanor drive out for a couple of weeks. They’re both excited to spend the summer with Diane instead of with their parents.

Shirley reaches for the volume knob and turns it all the way down.

“Hey! I was listening to that!” Eleanor complains.

“I think we’re lost,” Shirley says.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, I think we’re lost.”

“I know what lost means. I mean, why do you think that?”

“Because according to the odometer, we should have seen the sign to get back on the highway thirty miles ago.”

Eleanor just stares at Shirley for a couple of seconds. “Shit,” she finally says, “Well, are you sure?”

“Fuck—yes, Shirley, I’m sure.”

“Well, what are we gonna do?”

“I guess we stop at the next rest stop, call Mom and Dad, and try to get back on track. We’re not gonna tell them we’re lost though. They’ll just freak out.”

* * *

“OK. So I think I know what happened,” Shirley’s saying while they look at the map laid on the hot, dusty hood of the car. They’d already called their parents and told them they were making good time and that they were well on their way, no need to worry.

“We missed a turn and drifted too far North—at least I think that’s what happened—so we have to stay on this road for...” She runs her finger a little way on the map. “Shit. For a while. We might have to camp here. We probably won’t get back on the highway until almost dark and then we’ll need to stop.”

“We can’t camp here. I’m pretty sure that sign says that we can’t drink the water. We don’t have anything to drink.”

They sit in silence for a minute, trying to think of the best plan to get them back on track and looking at the map for other routes.

“Hey!” Eleanor says, “Look here! Instead of trying to figure out a better way forward, what if we double back? There’s a country road a little ways back that gets us closer to the highway. It’d probably shave an hour off our time.”

“That road isn’t named,” Shirley says. “What if it’s just some trail or a big driveway for a farm that’s on here by mistake?”

“Well, it says it travels straight through on the map. I think we should try.”

“OK, genius, but what do we do if it doesn’t work?”

“I guess we try to find a gas station and find somewhere to camp.”

Shirley stares at her for a few seconds, looking for holes in Eleanor’s plan, a little bitter that, as the oldest, she should be the one coming up with the plans. “Fine, we’ll try it your way. But if you’re wrong about this road, I’ll cut your hair in your sleep. You drive.” She folds the map up.

Eleanor smiles and starts for the driver’s side. “If I’m right, you have to give me your pink sweater.”

“Fat chance! Just get us out of here.”

* * *

The tires of the Ford spin uselessly in the ruts, kicking up clouds of dust that drift all around them and in the windows.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” Eleanor says, slamming herself into the seat.

“Well, I hope you’re fucking happy,” Shirley spits.

“It’s not my fault! How was I supposed to know the road would get this rutted?!”

“You should’ve turned back when I said to! ‘Don’t worry, Shirley, it’ll open back up,” she mocks. “We should have just stayed on the road we were on.”

“I was trying to save us some time! At least—”

“Can you turn the fucking engine off? We don’t need to sit here burning gas. Jesus Christ, Eleanor.”

“You don’t have to be such a bitch!”

“I guess this is what I get for listening to a child,” Shirley says, looking directly at Eleanor, waiting for her reaction, meaning to hurt her feelings.

The creases around Eleanor’s mouth deepen and she frowns, her bottom lip sticking out just a little bit. She opens the door and sulks out of the car. Shirley feels a wave of shame wash over her and gets out too.

They’re on a long, hard-packed dirt path that’s cut through the middle of a cornfield, the green stalks much taller than either of them. The sun is getting low but the heat hasn’t receded.

“Eleanor, listen, I’m sorry. That was mean and I shouldn’t have said it. You couldn’t have known,” she says walking around the car. Eleanor won’t look at her. “Eleanor, come on, I’m sorry! Forgive me?”

“I was just trying to help,” Eleanor says without looking.

“I know. We’ll figure it out. I’ll walk to the path for the house on the top of that hill and ask for help. But before I go, do you forgive me?” Shirley leans on the car next to Eleanor.

“If you promise not to call me a child. I’m nineteen and I’ve done just as much planning and driving as you.”

“I know, you’re right. I won’t call you a child anymore.” She gives Eleanor a playful elbow and Eleanor smiles a little.

Shirley pushes herself off of the car, “I’m gonna start for the house. It shouldn’t take long. You stay here with the car just in case the farmer comes along.” She starts walking.

“All right, just be careful,” Eleanor says. “And try to hurry. I kind of have to pee.”

“Just go in the corn,” Shirley calls back.

“Fat chance! What would I wipe with?”

“Drip dry!” Shirley yells back before breaking into laughter.

* * *

Shirley

God, I’m filthy, I think as break walk past the last row of corn and into the front yard and driveway of the old farmhouse. What are these people gonna think when some dirty, sweaty, stinky woman shows up at their front door?

A few chickens are pecking around the yard and they scurry as I walk past. I stand at the bottom of the stairs, try to smooth my hair down, and push my sunglasses up onto my head, trying to make myself look presentable.

I walk up the stairs, take a nervous breath, and knock on the door. I can hear footsteps padding across the floor in the house and I step back. An old woman with permed blue hair, cat’s eye glasses, and a brown dress answers the door and the smell of chicken and potatoes wafts out around her. The lines on her face are deep and her mouth is set in what looks like a permanent frown.

“Allô?” she says.

“Bonjour, hello,” I say and then, “parles-tu anglais?” followed by meek smile.

“But of course,” the woman says in a thick accent, “our country has deux language does it no?”

“Yes—Oui,” I say. “My French is not as good as your English, I’m afraid.”

The woman smiles a dentured smile, “It never is. Tell me, what is it that I can do for you mon chérie?”

Now that I’m about to tell a perfect stranger that my car is stuck in the middle of their cornfield, I can feel a sticky ball forming in my throat, and tears are trying to fill my eyes. “I’m really sorry to bug you, but my sister and I took a-a wrong turn onto the road that passes through your cornfield and we kind of got stuck. Do you have a tractor or something that could pull us out?”

Her already stern face becomes very serious. “Why are you driving through our cornfield? It is a road for the tractor.”

“I know, I’m so sorry. We got lost and we’re trying to get back to the highway and your road was on the map so we thought we could drive down it,” I say.

“Very silly for a map to include our little tractor road. Where is it that you are stuck, mon chérie?”

I point toward where I think Eleanor is waiting with the car. “I don’t know how to tell you exactly but the ruts in the road are really, really deep and that’s how we got stuck.”

The woman sighs, “I know the place. I tell my husband that he should fix it but does he listen to his wife?” she says eyeing me through the thick glasses.

I’m not sure if I’m supposed to answer and just give a half-laugh.

“Non, he does not. Men are too proud for their own good and also for the good of their wife. Come in, mon chérie. Let me stir my supper and we will go out to the barn to find my husband. He will pull your car out.” She steps out of the doorway and holds the door with a knobby hand, gnarled from years of hard labour.

“Thank you so much,” I say stepping into the little kitchen. She closes the door behind me and walks around me to where her supper is cooking on an old cook stove.

The kitchen is neat but very old, especially the wooden floor where the heavily trafficked areas are just bare wood. There’s an enormous sink with a cast iron faucet and a small round kitchen table shoved into the corner covered in faded oil cloth with a butter dish and a wire basket filled with eggs.

It is stifling in the little kitchen and I realize how thirsty and sweaty I am. I wonder how she’s not sweating and how she can stand to be in this hot little kitchen in that dress and nylons and heavy leather loafers.

“I’m sorry, but could I trouble you for a glass of water?”

Mon Dieu! Where are my manner? The glass are in that cupboard” she says pointing over her shoulder and stirring something boiling.

“Thank you,” I say as I open the cupboard and grab a green glass. I fill it and gulp the water down as fast as I can, not caring about the little bit dribbling down my chin and onto my shirt. I fill the glass again and gulp all of it down too, guilty that Eleanor doesn’t have anything to drink.

“Glass just by the sink?” I say, turning back to the old woman. There’s something different about her face.

She doesn’t answer me for a second. A strange smile stretches her mouth like her lips suddenly can’t fit over her dentures. “Oui, that is fine. You said you were traveling with your sister?”

“Yes, we’re going to see our older sister. She lives in Nova Scotia.”

“Is your sister pretty like you are, mon chaton?”

“People have said we look alike,” I say. The look on her face makes me feel funny.

“Two pretty girl traveling alone must be careful. It is dangerous out there for two petits chatons.”

“We’ll be Ok. We keep a baseball bat in the backseat and we call our parents every night around supper time.”

“Very smart,” she says with that same strange smile. “You and your sister must be hungry and dinner will be ready very soon. Perhaps after my husband gets your car out, you two would like to stay and eat. I would hate to send two petits chatons away with empty tummy—”

“Oh my, that’s so kind of you to offer but we couldn’t impose—”

There’s a metal crash outside toward the barn that makes me jump and gasp. I whirl to look out the window and it takes me a second to register what I’m seeing.

The crash was a door being thrown open at the barn. Running toward the house, bloody, dirty, and barely covered in tattered clothes is a young woman. Her hair is matted and her eyes are as wide as they can go. She reminds me of a rabbit our dog chased around our backyard.

In the same second that I figure out what’s happening, an old, balding man in coveralls emerges from the same doorway the woman came from with a gun on his shoulder.

There’s a flash out of the gun and the BANG!!! reaches our ears just as the woman drops like a brick and skids in the dust.

“OH MY GOD! HE SHO—” I try to scream, but it’s cut short when something crashes in between my shoulder blades, sending an explosion of pain through my ribs and up my spine into my neck. I fall, hitting my head on the counter, making a shower of stars ripple across my vision, to the kitchen floor just as fast and hard as the woman outside did and the wind is gone from my lungs.

I roll onto my back and my eyes must look like the woman’s and rabbit’s. The old woman is standing over me, trying to catch her breath, holding a heavy pan.

She sets the pan down, steps over me, opens a drawer, grabs something, and then slams it closed.

I can feel my breath coming back and I try to get to my feet. She turns and throws a feeble kick at me, leaning against the counter. It crashes into my stomach and it’s enough to stop me from getting my wind back. I fall onto my hands and knees and I can feel my head getting light and the heavy blood in my hair.

She reaches into the sink and grabs something else before stepping back over me. She leans down with a groan and her knees and ankles crack.

She pulls my head up by my hair hard and, even though I can’t breathe, the jerk makes me yelp. She slams my head down onto the dusty floor and the stars flash again, this time lingering.

My head is swimming and I can feel her taping my hands behind my back and my ankles together. She’s surprisingly strong, but she’s still old and breathing heavily. I try to squirm and resist but it’s getting hard to think.

Then she’s by my face and she yanks my head up again, but this time I don’t yelp. She shoves a soapy, mildewy dishcloth deep into my mouth and my entire body heaves as I gag against it. She spins a few rounds of duct tape around my head, taping the cloth in place and pulling my hair.

She pulls herself up using the counter and rolls me over onto my back with her foot. Her glasses are askew and she’s sweating and breathing heavily. I notice a streak of my blood on the inside of her wrinkly arm

“I’m sorry, mon petit chaton,” she says in between gasps, “that you had to see that, and I’m afraid you and your sister will be staying, but not for supper.”

I can feel tears running down the sides of my face in into my hair and ears and it’s hard to breathe and my back and head are throbbing with pain.

My vision is starting to go fuzzy as she steps over me and walks to the door, which she throws open hard. I fight the darkness that’s shrinking my vision even though it’s no use. She starts yelling something in French that I can’t make out because of the growing ringing in my ears, and...

* * *

Eleanor

I’m sitting on the hood of the car and twisting and bouncing my legs because I have to pee so bad. God, I wish she’d left me her watch so I could know how long she’s been gone. It’s been so fucking long, I think. I don’t know how I can be so thirsty and have to pee so bad at the same time.

I almost lose control and I have to squeeze my legs as tight as I can. “I can’t, I can’t, I can’t!” I say as I jump off the hood of the car and run into the corn. I get my shorts down as fast as I can and try to squat and lean against one of the stalks of corn but it’s not strong enough to hold me up.

“FUCK!” I yell as I force myself back up. I’m so desperate that I kick my shoes and shorts off and half run, half dive through the corn, managing to grab a couple of the leaves on the way out.

I make it to the car and squat against the back door, sighing in relief, thankful that I don’t have to worry about peeing on my shorts.

I finish and realize how weird it is that I’m leaning against our car with no shorts on in the middle of a cornfield.

I stand up and realize that I can hear the distant rumble of a tractor. “OH FUCK!” I say as I sprint back into the corn to look for my shorts and shoes. The last thing I need is for some dirty old farmer to come over the hill and see my bare ass.

Dressed, I step out of the corn and see an ancient blue tractor bumping slowly down the trail. He sees me and waves and I wave back, hoping Shirley thought to tell him to bring me something to drink because I’m so thirsty.