ALASKA HIGHWAY TWO-STEP
ALASKA HIGHWAY TWO-STEP
CAROLINE WOODWARD
Copyright © 1993 and 2017 Caroline Woodward
1 2 3 4 5 — 21 20 19 18 17
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without prior permission of the publisher or, in the case of photocopying or other reprographic copying, a licence from Access Copyright, www.accesscopyright.ca, 1-800-893-5777, [email protected].
Lost Moose is an imprint of Harbour Publishing Co. Ltd.
P.O. Box 219, Madeira Park, BC, V0N 2H0
Front cover: Madam Lubouska, dancer, National American Ballet, 1925 from Library of Congress LC-F8- 36237 [P&P]; flowers by lavendertime, Thinkstock; VW dashboard by Uko_Jesita, Thinkstock. Front and back cover: Alaska road by Kevin Russ, Stocksy
Cover design by Anna Comfort O’Keeffe
Text design by Brianna Cerkiewicz
Printed and bound in Canada
Printed on FSC-certified, chlorine-free paper
Excerpts from earlier versions of this novel have appeared in Dance Connection and The Kootenay Review, and in the short fiction collection Disturbing the Peace (Polestar, 1990) by Caroline Woodward.
Harbour Publishing acknowledges the support of the Canada Council for the Arts, which last year invested $153 million to bring the arts to Canadians throughout the country. We also gratefully acknowledge financial support from the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund and from the Province of British Columbia through the BC Arts Council and the Book Publishing Tax Credit.
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Woodward, Caroline, 1952-, author
Alaska highway two-step / Caroline Woodward.
Previously published: Vancouver: Polestar Book Publishers, 1993.
Issued in print and electronic formats.
ISBN 978-1-55017-801-2 (softcover).--ISBN 978-1-55017-802-9 (HTML)
I. Title.
PS8595.O657A79 2017 C813’.54 C2016-907686-5
C2016-907687-3
For Yolanda Van Dyck, painter, and Michael Parker, composer.
There was never a place for her in the ranks of the terrible, slow army of the cautious. She ran ahead, where there were n o paths.
—Dorothy Parker on Isadora Duncan
A myth is a dream that many have come t o tell.
—Amazonian saying
Author’s Note
In this novel, I have incorporated the true story of the Aberfan disaster and a number of accounts by people who had precognitive knowledge of the slide. There is, or was, a British Premonitions Bureau but there is not, to the best of my knowledge, a Canadian or American counterpart. The character of Sadie Brown the dog is as true to life as I can depict. There are also actual, living or dead, dancers named in this novel: Isadora Duncan, Ruth St. Denis, Ted Shawn, Maud Allan, the Royal Winnipeg Ballet, and Judith Marcuse. However, all characters and events and places created in this novel are entirely fictitious or, as in the case of the above-mentioned dancers, used fictitiously.
Acknowledgements
I am very grateful for the Leighton Colony at The Banff Centre, the excellent Banff Library and librarians, and especially Carol Holmes, Jeff Stewart, Fred Truck, and Debbie Rosen for their moral and technical support when my computer crashed repeatedly. I’d also like to thank Verity Purdy and Alanna Matthew, dancers and writers both, for “Ginger” inspiration, Sheila Candy for her Willow Point cottage, Jennie Ash for her roses, Sylvia Dorling, Barb Cruikshank, Linda Cutting, Chris Majka, Joan Webb, Sheilagh Phillips, Meaghan Baxter, Margot Vanderham, Kalene Louise, Rita Moir, and Paulette Jiles for helpful readings, advice, and lively friendship, Mi Woodward for her superb Whitehorse hospitality, Donna MacDonald for her perceptive and encouraging initial editing of this manuscript, Suzanne Bastedo for her careful and caring final edit, Julian Ross and Michelle Benjamin for believing in Mercy’s journey, and Kate Walker and Lost Moose for reviving the long-lost travels of Mercy Brown and her canine side-kick! Celestial and actual milk bones to Sadie Brown, Izzy, Beano, Connor, Annie, Skulker, Gator, Pada, Brody, Jessie, Marley, Sam, Taffy, and Harpo for being their doggy selves. And last, but never least, my most grateful thanks to Seamus and Jeff for being patient housemates during a novel.
One
Norman Szabo says the mind is the most temperamental computer ever designed and we don’t know the half of it. More like the one one-hundredth of it. Even the tiniest details can add up to the code-breaker. Accumulate the evidence. Be patient. Factor the variables. Analyze the patterns.
But that’s his job, not mine. I step into my gumboots, turning them upside down and shaking them first. No spiders, centipedes or moths. Good. I grab the corn broom beside the porch door in one hand and pick up my compost pail in the other.
“Sadie Brown! Sa-a-a-die-e-e!” I bellow melodiously, and wait for the croupy panting and clicking toenails. Here she is, bounding up from the beach, stinking of skunk at ten paces, doggy grin on her chops.
“Right this way, please. Snake alert,” I sing out as I clump down the steps to the lower gardens and the compost bin. I stop to usher her past me, encouraging her to scratch and snuffle thoroughly along the path, the better to flush out a pair of greyish garter snakes who’ve been hanging around the bin. They’ve taken me by surprise twice now, looking at first glance like long dead sticks, and being so much bigger than the little green and yellow snakes. Even those give me a start and they’re rather beautiful and completely harmless. I know these dull ones are harmless too, but they have no other redeeming features. Well, okay, they eat mosquitoes and bugs that might get to the garden. True enough. But I’m afraid of them and put off going to the compost bin until my household pail begins to overflow with eggshells and coffee grounds.
Sadie turns around at the bin and waits for me. I dump the accumulation of two days’ worth of reasonably healthy living except for the burnt rhubarb cobbler. I whip about smartly to get back to the cottage. No sign of the over-sized compost diners today. Good. Freudian clap-trap notwithstanding, snakes give my heart a quick aerobic workout.
The gardens need some work soon but I can’t get at it today, not with this hot springs article due by four o’clock. The daffodils bob in the small, chilly breezes coming in off the lake. The massed plantings of grape hyacinths look glorious next to the two-tone yellows of the daffy, my early red tulips and the ancient border of purple heather. The blue spruce trees on either side of the long lane leading up to the highway have bright green new needles on the tips of their dark branches. Best of all, the long line of fifty-year-old rhododendrons