ROBERT’S PASS

“Look at the mountains.” 

This started somewhere around Banff. Come on boys, look at the mountains. Get your noses out of those comic books and take a look at the beautiful mountains. 

This was my father, Robert, the second one. When he was in a good mood he called them moun-TANES. He’d say it in a sort of hillbilly drawl straight out of the Appalachians, only this was Alberta. 

“Whooowheee, jes look at them moun-TANES! Mighty big moun- TANES.” 

Saying this with that accent made him happy. He loved those mountains. Many prairie people feared them. We knew some who’d freeze with a kind of claustrophobia trying to drive through the peaks of the Rockies. Uncle Richard, a Saskatchewan farmer heralded for his great physical strength, a man who my brother Billy revered for being able to lead a bull without the use of a nose ring, became a lesser man in the mountains.

“Everything just loomed up around me,” he said, “closed in on me, I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t go on.”

And so Uncle Richard cut short his driving holiday and went home. 

 This story disgusted my father. The annual drive through the mountains to our summer holiday in the Okanagan valley was the high point of his year.  Hitching the rented trailer behind our Pontiac seemed to buoy the entire family, but it was those soaring blue jagged peaks that lifted Robert highest. He loved the mountains, he told you he loved them, and you had no choice but to love them along with him. 

But I didn’t need his help. I loved them in my own way. I sat on the back seat of our car directly behind my father at the steering wheel — the seat where my first mother years before would sit to avoid seeing the speedometer — and I dreamed of living on the tops of those peaks. I thought of Goat Man, the legendary nineteenth-century figure the Stoney people claimed still terrorized Morley Flats. Was the half-man half-mountain goat lurking out there in the dark forests clinging to the sides of the valley? I imagined him picking his way across the scree on spindly hoofed legs. 

Such fantasies were the stuff of comic books. And comic books were my one indispensable travel companion. They brought relief from the tedium of long drives, a tedium even the most spectacular scenery could not forestall. 

“Look at the mountains.” 

I picked up the latest Superman from the stack wedged between my brother and me. Billy was already involved with Archie, Betty and Veronica. I could sense my father’s eyes watching us in the rear-view mirror. He hated comic books. They’d been the target of many sermons delivered from his bully pulpit in the front seat. 

“Come on guys, put the books down and look at the mountains.” 

He no longer said mount-TANES, just mountains. A barometer of his mercurial mood shifts. 

My mother looked at him from her post in the front passenger seat. 

“Why don’t you leave them alone,” my mother said. 

“This has nothing to do with you,” he said. “We take this special trip once a year in the most beautiful country in the world. How many kids get this opportunity? I never had that chance when I was their age. They can read comic books any time at home.” 

With our father distracted now we could afford to ignore him for a few miles more. The books pulled us in. The mountains passed. I looked up and saw the eyes in the mirror. 

“Look at the mountains.” An urgent mantra now. 

“Keep your eyes on the road,” my mother said, one hand wringing the other. 

We reached the Continental Divide, the high point of North America that influences rivers to flow either west to the Pacific or east to Hudson Bay. Billy and I put the books down. We knew our limits. You could flout Robert Neary only so far. 

Our car was pitched into darkness. Reading was impossible. We had entered one of the many snow sheds built into the cliff faces that protected the road from rock slides and avalanches. There was nothing to look at in this gloom. Not Batman, not Mount Robson. 

Then we were reborn in a burst of light and I would feign interest in the mountains on the other side of the canyon. My mother rolled down her window and the smell of pine resin filled the car. Rushing air buffeted the Pontiac’s cabin causing the pages of a comic book to flutter. Snap went the eyes into the mirror. Only us sightseers back here, I thought. 

The miles piled on top of each other. I leaned my head out the window and felt the wind play with my hair. I turned to let the force of it fill my ear. 

“Be careful the wind doesn’t blow your glasses off,” my father said. 

In the Rogers Pass I felt it was safe to choose another comic book from the pile. Then the big arm came with surprising speed. A ham hand groped blindly and came up clutching thirty or more comic books. And then they were gone, out the window in an explosion of wind and paper. I could see in the driver’s outside mirror the books flapping and writhing on the highway like struck chickens. All the books gone save for the Richie Rich in Billy’s tight little hands. 

“Look at the mountains!” 

I was left with no choice but to stare at my knees and listen to the air swirling through the overheated car. 

“Why don’t we stop and take a rest,” my mother said. “We can have some lunch.” 

After a time we pulled into a roadside camp site and parked in the shade of towering evergreens. We got out of the car, no one saying anything. Father was doing something with the hitch at the back of the car and mother went into the trailer and began to make lunch. 

“How does everyone feel about potato salad,” she said. Usually we never got a choice.

“Fine,” I said.

Billy and I stood around the charred remains of a fire pit pushing the ash with the toes of our sneakers. Beyond the pit was an opening in the forest and a path receding into the leafy coolness. 

“Let’s explore,” I said. 

Billy picked up a stick. We walked down the path about fifty yards, by now out of sight of the car and trailer. It was dark in there, a world of moss and rotting logs. On the side of the path we found a banana slug trailing a smear of clear slime. Billy rolled it over with his stick. Decaying leaves stuck to its back. We stared at it for minutes. 

“I have an idea,” I said.

“What?”

“Let’s pretend we’re being attacked.”

“What do you mean, by what?”

“A bear.”

“How?”

“I’ll growl and roar like a bear and you scream as if you’re being torn apart. It’ll scare them.”

I looked back in the direction of the car and trailer.

“Ok,” Billy said. “Is that a good idea?”

“Sure it’s a good idea. Don’t start screaming right away. I’ll do a low growl at first and then get louder and then you start in as if you’re fighting for your life.” 

Billy seemed a little scared.

“Ok,” he said.

“I might wrestle you a bit to make it seem more real, like there’s a real struggle. Just go along with it.”

I cleared my throat trying to find my best bear voice. And the growling began. This played out with furious realism. Billy found just the right note of terror. 

“Oh no! Help me!” 

His soprano lifted through the trees. The attack raged on for about half a minute. It was only when the heavy footsteps on the forest path were close did I realize someone, still unseen, was running towards us. 

“Hey! Hey!” came a voice that sounded more like a bear than human. 

It was Robert. He came running out of the bush, waving his arms, panting heavily. He was upon us in an instant with tears in his eyes. I flinched, yet the expected blow never came. Robert froze before Billy and me, his face a mask of confusion. He cried without sound.

What had he thought as he came rumbling towards this danger? Would he have defended his sons? Or did he feel duped? 

Billy felt the need to explain. “We faked it, Dad. There’s no bear.” 

Our father stepped back from us. He seemed as tall as the jack pines around him. 

No one said anything for a long time. He turned and moved along the path and Billy and I followed.