As Chris and Amanda walked back toward his truck, he turned to her. “I win.”
“What are you talking about? He came, he saw, and he left. I win.”
He stopped so abruptly she bumped into him. She jumped back instinctively, then blushed. His eyes crinkled as he gazed down at her.
“Okay, you’re right. No one wins. Besides, we’ve got the wine and steaks in the cooler already. We can have a campfire feast and still live to bet another day.”
The campground was beautiful. Each generous site was tucked away in a private nook surrounded by salt marshes, woodlands, and rocky points. They avoided the ones with the most spectacular ocean views and icy Arctic winds, opting instead for a sheltered clearing with a curtain of balsam fir and a bed of soft needles. Kaylee roamed in delight while they pitched their tents. Just as they were laying out cooking supplies, Kaylee’s ferocious barking announced the arrival of the proprietor on his ATV, bearing a load of firewood.
“Well now,” he said, eying Amanda’s minuscule pup tent. “That’s far too small for the dog. He’ll get claustrophobic in that.”
“Nick of time, Sam,” said Chris. “I was about to chop down one of your trees.”
“Don’t you dare! They take more than a hundred years to grow to that height in this climate.”
Amanda had a brief flash of the magnificent jungles of Africa, overflowing with lush greenery beneath a canopy of trees so tall you couldn’t see their tips. Here on the coast of northern Newfoundland, not a single tree looked taller than thirty feet.
Sam settled himself comfortably on a rock by the fireside and eyed Chris’s steaks wistfully. To Amanda’s surprise, Chris spoke before she could.
“Would you like to join us, Sam?”
He accepted with alacrity and set about lighting the fire while Chris prepared a foil packet of carrots and potatoes. Soon the aroma and sizzle of steak filled the air, and just as Amanda was rummaging in the supplies for the wine, Sam produced a bottle of Scotch.
“My contribution to the party.”
Two hours later, with the steaks a distant memory and a soft darkness falling, they were nearing the bottom of the bottle. Amanda’s eyes were beginning to close, and she was just wondering how to politely send Sam on his way when he suddenly switched the topic back to Phil. They had covered the state of the world, climate change, fishing, tourists, and even the meaning of life in a free-wheeling, increasingly incoherent conversation.
“Now your friend there,” Sam said out of the blue, “he wasn’t happy about the state of the world, either. Pretty much figured we were all going to hell on a freight train. I felt sorry for his boy, to be honest, because all he wanted was to see whales and icebergs, and Jesus, he was some excited about that polar bear. Travelled in on an ice floe, so the boy wanted to go out in a boat the very next day to look for ice floes.”
Amanda’s fatigue evaporated. “Maybe that’s where they went. Are there boat tours around here they could have taken?”
“Are there boats?” Sam laughed. “You been down the harbour in St. Anthony yet? Nothing but boats, darlin’. But your friend didn’t want a boat tour. He was interested in fishing. Deep-sea fishing. He wanted to know what fish were out there and what the regulations were, and if there were any trawlers in port that fished way out in the ocean. There’s no recreational sea fishing for a couple of weeks yet, and it’s late in the season for the commercial fishery. There’s only one trawler in port at the moment, so maybe he was going down to talk to the captain. Maybe he persuaded the captain to take him and the boy aboard for a day or two.”
“Is that allowed?”
The proprietor shrugged. “Who’s gonna know? Lots of stuff happens out there on the high seas with no one around for miles to see. The captain calls the shots, and the crew’s not going to care. They’re just happy to have a job.”
Half an hour later, with some trepidation, Chris and Amanda propped the camp proprietor back on his ATV and aimed him on his way. They stood in the flickering orange light of their campfire, watching his headlights waver down the path until the trees swallowed him up. Soon even the growl of the engine was lost in the murmur of surf.
“If I thought he was going to run into anything more than a moose,” Chris said, “I’d never have let him drive off. He drank more than half that bottle of Scotch!”
She smiled. “We still have our bottle of wine.” She breathed in the musky, salt-washed air of the woods and listened to the night chorus of insects and frogs. In the distance the surf whispered. “Let’s take it to the ocean,” she said.
Chris looked at the stack of dirty dishes by the fire, and then across at her. He shrugged. “We’ll put another log on. No point inviting the bears along to the party, but the fire will keep them away.”
Sparks shot high into the air and the fresh wood snapped as it caught fire. Amanda turned away to fight a sudden frisson of fear. Sometimes she wondered whether she would ever enjoy the warmth and smoky scent of a fire without that shiver of fear. Without the memory of unbearable heat and orange-lit smoke boiling into the night sky.
As if to ground herself, she touched Chris’s arm gently while they walked the short distance to the shore by the glow of his wavering flashlight. The black press of trees opened up to a ground cover of sage and grasses, and the hiss of the ocean grew louder. Soon she could distinguish the white tips of waves dancing on molten silver. There was no moon but the sky was clear and the white rocks glowed in the starlight. All memory and fear slid away.
“Turn off the flashlight,” she whispered. Together they stood on a tongue of scoured rock until shapes began to emerge from the darkness. Black shadows of land, pale strips of rock, a silver wisp of light across the western sky. And the ocean … dancing, undulating, like onyx glittering with stars.
Transfixed, Amanda walked to the water’s edge, sat on the rock, and hugged her knees.
“He was here,” she said. “Still alive. Still asking questions. That’s a good sign, isn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“Do you suppose he’s on a boat out there right now?”
“Maybe.”
“Looking at the same stars, marvelling at the same infinity. Phil used to say the ocean was like the prairie. Home.”
Chris eased himself down at her side and poured her a glass of wine. Together they stared out at the sea. Kaylee ranged over the rocks, entranced by smells. Amanda tilted her head to the sprinkle of stars overhead and breathed in the tangy air. Air free of smoke, sweat, and seared flesh. Free of gunpowder.
“Just think,” she said. “Every one of those tiny pinpoints of light is a huge ball of fire more powerful than our sun. For over a thousand years, sailors have guided their ships by the stars when there were no other clues or guideposts in the endless wilderness of water.” She found the Big Dipper and traced a line from its bowl to a single bright star in the northern sky. She smiled at it.
“Every Girl Guide learns to find her way by the North Star. You will never truly be lost if you can find the North Star.” She sobered as reality stole into her joy. “I hope Phil remembers that.”
She felt Chris’s gaze upon her. Heard his hesitation. “Were you and Phil …?”
“No.” She thought about Phil. His laughing, carefree face, the cowlick at his temple that gave him a rakish air, the stubby fingers that could bandage a child and wield an axe with equal skill. She thought of the way he could wiggle his nose to make the children laugh, pull candies out of their ears, and duck-walk across the room.
“It’s hard to make close friends on the international aid circuit. Everyone is transitory, moving in and out. You share amazing experiences while