The Road had been completed, 1,590 miles in eight months and eleven days—an incredible feat for National Defense. When it was over, 10,000 troops had scrapped their mess tents and bulldozers and had moved on. The bone yard of kinked refuse they left behind was a veritable semblance of the war—hostile, rusting and dangerous. Chucked supplies that had been double-ordered; the wastage was huge. Blankets burnt, road equipment driven off precipices, kerosene heaters bulldozed under while prefabricated huts had been set afire. Dawson Creek was now a ghost town of empty barracks and flattened campgrounds. A parts yard for scrap metal. It was the picture of war.
When the road dust settled, Bailey’s legal business picked up steam—bankruptcies, and wills. Prostitutes and thieves now piled into his cramped office. He’d been the one to spot the advantage of owning a lumber camp to feed The Road. Highways always require nearby lumber, and government checks did not bounce. He didn’t have to look farther than the closest trout stream to find backing for such a profitable enterprise. Russell Watson Barclay stood midstream in his waders with a good head on his shoulders and money in his pocket.
Bailey had found his mark.
“He knows me. Tell him Barclay is here. Get on it, please. I’m in a hurry.”
“I do not believe you have an appointment, Mr. Barclay.”
“All hell’s breaking loose at the camp. Bailey and I own it, fifty-fifty.”
“Please have a seat. These others have appointments and you will simply have to wait your turn, Mr. Barclay.” She guessed he might be forty, not quite old enough to be her father. His younger brother, perhaps, and she smiled at the thought. He might even be a naughty uncle.
“Miss…”
“Phyllis.”
“Phyllis, I need Bailey. I need him now, on the double.” He must have been impressed by her hair. Back in Scotland red hair was not exceptional but everyone here in Canada commented on it. But she was done with Aberdeen. Now she needed a new pasture.
“Please have a seat, as I said.” She stopped midsentence because his eyes were a leaf-green color, greener than her own.
“It won’t be long,” she added, suddenly moved to placate him.
“If he cans you for this, for making me wait when, as I said, all hell is breaking loose in camp, the cooks walked out, the men all laid down their tools.” he paused for a reaction and got none.
“As I said, I guarantee you’re going to get fired and that you’re going to need a meal, so I’ll take you out for a steak. Let him know I’m here. Please, Phyllis. Be sweet now.”
Then he added. “If not, I’ll see that you’re fired.”
She was young, twenty-one, and she had not run up against privilege before. Not in this manner, at least. He had turned it into a contest. “Just take a seat, sir,” she said.
“I’m still buying you dinner.” And so he sat down, staring at her, muttering to himself. Eventually, his turn arrived and he strode past her, his back straight. As it turned out, he had been a welterweight champion at Princeton when Dempsey and Tunney were stars. That alone accounted for a great deal.
Both he and Bailey emerged from their conference quite agitated as they passed words between themselves regarding the burgeoning strike. Barclay then called across the now empty waiting room, “What brings you here to Dawson Creek anyway, Phyllis?”
“Asthma,” she replied, leaving off the part about lacking the fare to make it all the way to Vancouver. That and the unpleasantness over an affair with Roger, a married man in Aberdeen. Her past year’s history teacher, in point of fact.
“I’m ready to make good on my promise,” he said, aware that she had not yet been sacked.
“Find a replacement for her,” he advised Bailey well within her hearing. “If you can.”
For dinner, he took her to the only restaurant in town. It had a single sign in the window, so it was called the Help Wanted and it was little more than a truck stop for the lumber trucks. Everyone always needed help. But the cash for slinging hash was low, and what women were there were all prostitutes. A dollar a minute, easy pay for something that wasn’t even work. The men chose between lumberjack and soldier. The women opted for whatever paid quickest.
She noted that it was likely Russell owned the only tailor-made clothes in the entire province.
“This is an unhealthy place for asthmatics,” he observed, pulling a silver flask from the inside pocket of his tweed jacket. She explained that by 1940, asthma was epidemic in the British Isles. Strong men who had never suffered before now became stricken and were summarily declared unfit for the service. If they had the means, they were instructed by their doctors to seek quiet places in which to restore their health.
“Most of the chaps from Aberdeen chose Canada for being English speaking and not a direct target. Pearl Harbor rather changed everyone’s mind about the States.” She thought she sounded intelligent and informed.
“So, Great Britain is now suffering from a sort of massive asthma attack?” he laughed.
“It is a good idea to leave, actually. The children, as well, have all been sent off but more for safety than for health. If anyone has a relative somewhere else, they pile them up with all the young ones.”
“No one could accuse the children of cowardice, certainly not,” he agreed.
“Canada sounded so romantic,” she admitted. “The Mounties, too.” British Columbia reported more men than women in a smoldering world where most men were at one front or another—a promising place to find a suitable man for a young twenty-one-year-old woman. A lassie with red hair, fleeing her mother and intolerant Aberdeen, a place too stiff for a girl with play and ambition.
“Have you been through a winter here?” he asked, signaling to the waitress.
“I arrived only days ago. It’s been only muddy, muddy and cold.”
“Nothing like Scotland. I’ve been grouse shooting there several times in fact.”
“Do you think they will bomb Aberdeen?”
“Probably, if they take London like they did Paris. Are you so afraid of the Jerries that you’d seal yourself off in this godforsaken little lumber town?” He pulled out a pack of Chesterfields and offered her one. She nodded and accepted a cigarette with awkward formality.
“This is as far as I’ve gotten. The trains are full to spilling over. I’ve not made it to the coast. I have a cousin in Santa Barbara but that’s America. She said they’d had an oil refinery bombed by a Jap submarine.” Shoving her emptied water glass forward, she accepted three fingers of Scotch from his flask. Sipping, she tried to think of something intelligent to say but failed. He, on the other hand, seemed to be remembering something from the distant past, maybe connected with Santa Barbara, or America, she could not say. But she knew he was most certainly an American, and a gentleman.
When the waitress slumped over, he ordered both of their dinners without offering Phyllis a choice. “Two sirloins, rare, please,” he stated.
She had not seen decent tweed since she’d left home.
“You want to help the war effort, do you not?” he asked, breaking the silence. She wondered if he was trying to proposition her. Lately, men begged her for sex, saying that they were about to die. One last…Please. Before he was sent to the front, even Roger begged her for relief from his anguish and overwhelming terror of battle. She offered him the solace his wife could not and he said she was an Angel of Mercy and gave her his ration of cigarettes.
It turned out badly and Mum threw her out.
She examined Russell closely.