The Quality of Silence (13 page)

I know it will be all right now so I close my eyes and go back to sleep.

All Matt had to do was say ‘Will you . . .?’ for her to know the end of the sentence and say ‘Not yet.’ He’d protest that he was simply asking, ‘Will you . . . pass the beer/not make such a racket/look at that beautiful sky up there/stop hogging the duvet/kiss me,’ but the locations gave him away and each time they had a picnic on the beach, or coffee in a bird hide, or looked at a sunset/sunrise/storm/blue skies or skies of any other kind and almost every time they made love, she’d know he’d ask, ‘Will you . . .?’

He wasn’t crushed when she said not yet, or even disappointed. Made resilient by a loving past he didn’t perceive rejection. He thought she wanted to get to know him better first, and fair enough. She should know everything there was to know about the person she was marrying before committing the rest of her life to him; never realising that it was the other way around.

She’d known she wanted to marry him from the time he’d held her face in his hands and said, ‘
I see you
’; she wanted him to look at her face and say that and fully know what he was seeing. But she’d feared that wasn’t possible.

Adeeb pulled into the parking area by the Portakabin cafeteria; Ruby was still asleep. A young trucker had set the cafeteria up this winter, understanding drivers’ need for a dose of company before the long lonely drive north and somewhere friends could swap war tales on the way home to Fairbanks. Adeeb had never stopped on the way home.

He was glad to have a break from driving. In the last five miles, his vision had occasionally blurred. He must be more tired than he realised. He wondered if he should get out, but the cold would make his headache worse; ‘
Brain freeze!
’ his boys yelled, when eating ice cream, clutching their heads. The cold was bad for a headache.

The parking area was occupied by two Soagil Energy trucks carrying pipes, an FBF tanker and three Am-Fuels trucks, with prefab houses. Adeeb guessed the Am-Fuels trucks were headed south towards Fairbanks, because from the looks of the prefabs they’d been in Alaska a while. As he parked, the Am-Fuels drivers got into their trucks and, as Adeeb had predicted, headed home towards Fairbanks.

He said he’d look after Ruby, while Yasmin went to use the toilet and buy food.

Yasmin put on her arctic parka and face mask and mittens before getting out of the truck. Even so, the cold shocked her; it was like plunging into a lake not air. She smelled the cold and then realised that it was an absence of all odours. She wondered if it was because her airways were not functioning properly – she could feel the little hairs in her nose freezing – or if it was that in this degree of cold no molecules could permeate the air.

The cafeteria was warmer, with the tang of coffee and sweat. There were truckers, sitting at two Formica tables, snow from their boots tracked onto the floor. She was aware of their stares as she bought drinks and sandwiches from a shy young man serving. As he packed them into a bag for her, she asked him about Anaktue. Maybe there’d been talk about it here.

‘It was that place on the news, right?’ he said. ‘That Inupiaq village that burned down? Stored their fuel right by their houses.’

A trucker with a hugely fat belly turned from a table towards her. ‘Aint that the place sittin’ on a whole load of shale oil?’

A man at the other table turned so that the two tables were now in one conversation. ‘Heard they were given MacBook Air laptops and that was just to read Soagil’s paperwork.’

‘Heard that too,’ another said. ‘And that they could have had a hundred K. Enough to buy a whole herd of fuckin’ caribou.’

‘But they still wouldn’t allow them to frack?’ Yasmin asked.

‘That’s right,’ one of the men replied.

The shy young man talked to the truckers rather than Yasmin. ‘I met an Inupiaq guy, couple of months back, lived in Anaktue, but he’d bin workin’ at Soagil’s regular wells at Prudhoe? Said he’d be fired if his family didn’t sign.’ He looked around, as if startled he’d said so much.

‘They work at the Prudhoe oil wells to get cash?’ Yasmin asked, wanting to keep the conversation going.

‘Yeah, lot of ’em still doin’ their own huntin’ for food, pretty much self-sufficient some of ’em, but they need to buy snowmobiles and fuel and such. So durin’ the winter that’s what they do.’

‘The Governor said that the fracking companies wouldn’t try to frack Anaktue’s land now,’ Yasmin said. ‘Out of respect to the villagers.’

The man with the belly leaned forwards. ‘Yeah right. And tourists come to Alaska for the sunshine.’

A door slammed and Yasmin turned. It was Ruby, in tears, her expression desperate, her parka wasn’t fastened. Ruby ran to her and started pulling her towards the door. Yasmin was aware of truckers coming with them; one of them was doing up Ruby’s parka and pulling up her face mask to protect her from the cold. The only protection she’d been wearing properly was her mittens.

In the cab, Adeeb was hunched over the steering wheel, barely conscious.

Two of the truckers managed to get him out of the cab. Between them they got him inside the cafeteria.

The world had become blurred to Adeeb and wouldn’t come back into focus, and then he’d lost his balance and couldn’t swallow. He’d felt small arms around him, a child’s arms, but his boys were hundreds of miles away. He’d tried to open his mouth but couldn’t speak.

He’d known then why he hated this ice road, truly feared it. Because this was how it ended, a bleak road to dark nothing; that was why he’d yearned for colour.

And then stronger arms were around him and he was being pulled out of the warmth and into the cold. And then it was warmer again. A woman was talking to him. He hoped it was Visha. She was telling him that he was being taken to hospital in Fairbanks, that a driver was taking him. But Fairbanks was the wrong way. And then he remembered the slender, graceful woman and her child and he knew what she would do. He had to warn her about the shrieking winds and the killing cold and tell her that avalanches could bury a truck even as it was moving and that even inside a forty-ton eighteen wheeler a person was nothing more than a poor, bare, forked animal, that it was too dangerous for her and the little girl, but he couldn’t open his mouth to say the words.

He heard her saying that she was putting a cheque into his jacket pocket and if anything happened to the truck she’d make sure it was paid for. Then he felt, or thought he felt, her lips on his forehead as she kissed him.

He thought of his gentle, intelligent, brave mother; his mother of excited bangle-jangling and tenderness and poetry, beaten from her classroom by the Taliban. He’d grown up with a hatred of the Taliban as fierce as his love of poetry; natural for him to become a translator for the American army. But he should have thought about the consequences. They’d had to leave so quickly. Relieved that his mother had died so he didn’t have to leave her. Terrible to be relieved. There were men around him, concern on tough faces, being kind to him; offering him sanctuary after all.

I woke up because Mr Azizi had kind of fallen across me. He was so white and his eyes were closed. I typed on Voice Magic and told him to wake up, but he didn’t hear and I couldn’t make Voice Magic go louder. I tried to talk to him loudly, feeling for the sound vibrations in my throat, like my speech therapist tries to make me, but it didn’t do any good and I don’t know if it was me not being able to mouth-talk loudly or because he just couldn’t hear me. Then I kind of hugged him, trying to get him to sit up, trying to make him better, but I couldn’t. I quickly put on my parka and my mittens, but then I couldn’t zip up my parka. I opened the door, which was really heavy, and then I ran to find Mum.

Two men are carrying Mr Azizi into a truck and another man’s got a blanket and has wrapped it around him. It feels like we’ve been alone for ages, me and Mum and Mr Azizi, and now we aren’t and people you might think would be rough, because they look like that, aren’t one bit.

The truck with Mr Azizi in it is leaving now, going back to Fairbanks. Mum says he’ll be OK once he gets to hospital. She thinks he’s had a small stroke, but he’s getting better. I think she’s right because just before he left he lifted his arm like a little wave, and he couldn’t do that when he was in the truck with me before, so I think he must be getting a bit better.

There’s no lights out here in the car park. It’s so so cold; like an ice rink has wrapped its way all around you in a jumbo ice sheet. Mum told me to wait in the cafeteria, but I want to make sure that Mr Azizi is all right. The lights on the back of the truck with him inside are red and I follow the little red lights till I can’t see them any more and now it’s just dark.

I haven’t thought about Dad.

I’ve been thinking about Mr Azizi, not Dad.

I should have been thinking about Dad too.

Dad more because Mr Azizi will be all right now, he’s going to hospital and he’s in a nice warm cab and people have put a woolly blanket around him, but Dad might not have anyone with him. And I don’t know if he has a blanket. And we have to get to him. But how are we going to do that without Mr Azizi?

The other drivers and Mum and me go into the cafeteria place to warm up and I’m waiting for Mum to ask someone to take us to Dad. I stand so I can watch her lips. She tells them that we are waiting for our tour party to get to the Arctic Circle.

But why’s she said that? One of them looks like he doesn’t believe her, he’s asking her something, and then she says something back and he looks like he believes her now.

The truck drivers leave and I run out after them into the cold, because one of them has to take us to Dad.

Mum is coming after me. She holds on to me, stopping me going any further.

With her arms around Ruby, Yasmin watched a truck, driven by the man with the huge belly, pull out of the parking area and back onto the road heading south. Other drivers were turning on their lights before leaving. They’d told her that they were all heading home. She had to somehow go on to Matt, but should she ask one of these drivers returning to Fairbanks to take Ruby with him? Rhetorical questions answered as a loop in her mind because how could she put Ruby in the care of a strange man? When Ruby couldn’t ask anyone for help? Couldn’t phone her mother if she needed to? When Yasmin couldn’t talk to Ruby and check she was safe? She had to keep Ruby with her.

* * *

All the trucks are driving away now; pairs and pairs of little red lights, all going back the way we’ve just come. So that’s why Mum didn’t ask them to take us to Dad. There’s just Mr Azizi’s truck left. It feels even colder now that all their lights have gone. The man in the cafeteria has just stayed there and we’re alone out here.

Mum goes up the steps to Mr Azizi’s cab and holds out her hand to help me up. His cab isn’t locked or anything so Mum gets inside and I do too, and we shut the door. Mr Azizi’s left the keys and she takes off her mittens and turns the engine on. Warm air puffs at our faces.

I take off my big mittens too so I can type. My laptop is open on Voice Magic
,
from when I was trying to get Mr Azizi to wake up.

‘How are we going to get to Dad?’

Mum is sitting in Mr Azizi’s seat and she’s pulling at a lever and her seat shoots forwards.

‘I am going to drive us,’ Mum says.

I think she must be joking, but now she’s turning on the headlights.

At home she drives a Toyota Auris, which is quite small and there’s only just room for the supermarket shop, and now she says she’ll drive this DREADNAUTUS MEGATRON truck with a whole house.

It’s so different from how she usually is. Normal Mum is a bit pernickety about things, like my uniform being ironed and getting my homework done on time and keeping everything tidy.

There’s something on her face that I’ve never seen before, like she’s not just Mum any more.

She’s moving the gear stick and I laugh because we’re going to find Dad, right now!

Maybe we can drive all the way to Anaktue and Dad will see Mum driving and he’ll think she’s amazing! The Superb Mum!

‘Dad will never ever believe this,’ I say, with my face doing a ! expression because you can’t do expressions on Voice Magic.

‘Will Mr Azizi mind we took his truck?’ I ask.

‘I think he’ll understand,’ Mum says.

She checked Ruby’s seat belt was done up then put her foot down on the pedal, a stretch even with the seat as far forward as it would go. She drove out of the parking area and onto the Dalton, going north.

This was a road. It was just over three hundred miles to Deadhorse. And she could do this. She was in a specially adapted truck with heated fuel and alcohol in the pressurised air to the brakes and special filters and she understood the mechanics of driving it. She knew that Adeeb had filled up in Fairbanks with enough diesel to reach Deadhorse. They didn’t have a phone, Adeeb had his sat-phone with him, but they did still have his satellite receiver so Ruby’s laptop connected to the internet and they had the CB radio.

The cafeteria owner was the only person who might have seen her take the truck and she was pretty sure he hadn’t been looking out of his window at the parking area, not when he didn’t even come out to watch the drama with Adeeb
.
Adeeb owned the rig himself, so there wasn’t a transportation company who’d want to know where it was. Maybe she could even get the prefab load to its destination at Deadhorse before the people who owned it realised she had inadvertently taken it when she took the truck; if you could inadvertently take a whole prefabricated house, which she now knew that you could.