Chapter Seven

People who live in Newfoundland outports have a curious ability to ignore the rest of the world. On top of that, nothing seems to come as a shock to them. Nobody seemed to think it unusual that a refugee family from Southeast Asia had found its way by boat to Deep Cove and that they were living with a mother and son from Toronto.

“We’ve seen all kinds of trouble here, Greg,” Harold explained to me. “We don’t give anyone a hard time who wants to be here. Just like you and your mom couldn’t kick out these lost souls.”

All kinds of clothing and food started pouring into the house from the thirty or so families around the cove. After a few days, it felt like we were all part of some big happy family.

Tamara’s father seemed less uptight. I showed him how to split wood for the wood stove. And Tamara’s mother liked to help out with the washing and cooking.

After breakfast one morning, Mom took me for a walk out back to the stream. “This is crazy, you know. These people can’t just stay here.”

“Why not?” I asked. I had spent some time walking in the hills with Tamara. I had even taken her for a sail in the cove, after retrieving my Laser from down the shore. I felt I was just getting to know her.

“They can’t live with us forever.”

“There are a few abandoned houses in Deep Cove. They could settle into one.”

“They don’t have any money, though.”

“That doesn’t seem to be a big deal here,” I said. “There are gardens and there’s fish and berries and extra clothes and wood to heat with and everybody around here seems plenty generous—”

“No,” my mom interrupted. “That’s not it. They are here illegally. We don’t know the whole story. Immigration will find out sooner or later. Things could get very messy.”

“Yeah,” I said. “But we can’t just turn them over. They could get shipped back. I couldn’t let that happen. Besides, they’re a lot like us.”

“How do you mean?”

“I mean they’ve lost something big in their lives, something important. They’re in a new place and cut off from the past. We’re refugees too, Mom. We’re a lot like they are.”

She didn’t say anything. The back door opened and Tamara’s father came out with an axe. We both watched as he set a chunk of wood on the cutting block and smashed it in half with a crack of the axe blade.

In the middle of summer, Newfoundland could be a surprising place. From the tops of the hills you could still see a few icebergs offshore. But it was warm outside and the air was full of the sweet smells of bayberry and wintergreen. I had stopped thinking about pushing myself to the limit sailing at the speed of light. Instead, I found that I was quite content to go hiking up into the hills and to pick raspberries, strawberries and bake apples with a beautiful Asian girl.

I had forgotten about Toronto, about school, about how much it had hurt to lose my father.

At Tamara’s prompting, I took her parents along one morning for a trek to a far-off berry field. Harold had told me about the place. “I promise you, Greg. This is the raspberry mother-lode.” He drew me a map.

Tamara’s parents loved the hike through the craggy countryside. They had picked up a little English and we could all communicate better. We were on a first-name basis now. Her father’s name was Ravi and her mother’s name was Indra.

As we were returning home that day, I felt like I had grown to understand them all much better. And I had come to believe what I had first considered impossible. They had just arrived on this remote coast and settled in. They were doing great and nobody seemed to mind at all.

But as we came to the top of the hill behind the house, the bad news hit us all at the same time.

There was a police car in our driveway. Two cops and a man in a suit were talking to my mother. I swallowed hard and stared at the scene below. I turned around to assure Tamara’s family that they shouldn’t worry, that we would help them see it through. They were already scrambling away down the back side of the hill, stumbling over stones and running for their lives.

I sprinted after them. I grabbed Tamara by the arm, spinning her around.

“You betrayed us,” she said.

“No. I didn’t. I couldn’t. And neither could my mother.”

Her father was tugging at her to continue. “Leave us,” he said to me in English.

“I can’t. Please, stay here. You can come back down when they leave.”

Ravi put his hands on my shoulders. “You go. Find out. Come back to us. Please.”

“You’ll stay here?” I asked him. “Promise?”

“Promise,” he said.