Evacuees by Colin Morton

The order came as schools were letting out. Russ, finishing up his freelance work at home, was unaware of the drama playing out nearby until he received a phone call from his wife, Amy, at her downtown office. Had he heard? An evacuation order had been issued for the south end of the city. A pipeline had burst or been damaged in their neighbourhood. No details yet available, but the clear message was that their home was in danger.

            “Pick up Luke at school and go to Bob and Sheila’s. I’ll call them and meet you there when I finish work.” Russ observed that Luke’s school had already let out for the day and the boy should be on his way home, walking. “No,” Amy said, “I’ve phoned the school. They’re keeping the kids in assembly until parents get there. Go to the school.”

            Outside, Russ looked for a cloud of smoke or a plume of flame but could see only a line of emergency vehicles rushing past him, going into the centre of their new suburb. The scene outside the school reminded Russ of the chaos outside customs at an international airport. Parents talked in worried circles on the sidewalk and stairs. Russ was not permitted past the front door, but had to give Luke’s name, grade and room number (or failing that, his teacher’s name) and wait while his son was called.

            No one waiting outside seemed to know exactly what had happened, or where, or what imminent disaster threatened. Many had opinions or fantasies. A road construction crew had been careless, or else a surge in pressure had blown one of the big pipelines wide open. One spark and the whole area could go up. Russ didn’t know what to believe

            Just as a teacher came out to tell Russ his son could not be found, he noticed Luke standing near the entrance with a group of other nine-year-olds. Seeing his father, the boy slouched over, his backpack hanging from one strap. Solemnly, importantly, he announced that they had better get back home and shut off the pilot light on their furnace. He was convinced their house would go up in flames if they didn’t. His friends had filled him with thoughts of horror and adventure. His excited chatter stopped only when he saw the police barricade preventing them from making their usual turn toward home. The officer who directed them to turn back had no new information. For their own safety, he said, they should find another place to stay tonight.

            Luke fell into an ominous silence as they drove. Russ assured him Bob and Sheila, his uncle and aunt, were waiting for them. Luke had been to their house before. He would be able to play with his cousins Jesse and Joey, the twins. They were nearly his age. The radio news only repeated the evacuation notice, with no new insights, so Russ turned it off. Luke switched it back on; he needed to know everything. His friends had told him pipelines full of deadly fluids flowed right under the neighbourhood, packed with explosive power, and Russ couldn’t deny it. They were the lifeline that kept the city’s economy afloat.

            Lately, in class, Luke had been learning about the Mount St. Helen’s eruption that destroyed everything in its path. Though Russ assured him nothing like that could happen here, the present facts were bad enough. They were refugees from an undefined emergency, dependent on friends and family, for how long they did not know.

            The summer before, Luke had fallen silent this way when on holidays they drove across the debris of the Frank Slide, where a mountain had collapsed and buried a sleeping town many years before. Then, again, he had grown up with his grandma telling stories how her mother and all the women of Springhill ran toward the alarm when their husbands were buried in that coal mine disaster. And just the other day, he’d been reading about nuclear winter. He knew and loved the story of the dinosaurs. What kind of world must he see in front of him, always on the verge of disaster, extinction, disintegration? Russ wanted to reassure him he would be safe but thought, in the circumstances, it might only alarm him more.

            Bob and Sheila expected them, their warm house filled with the aromas of a meal on the stove. Luke made himself at home. The twins took him up to their room to play while the TV news repeated the same alerts: closed roads, safety precautions. Few details about what had actually happened, how bad the situation could get, or when they’d be able to return home. Bob offered Russ a beer.

            While the boys played with their wieners and beans in the kitchen, Amy called. She said her bus had been cancelled indefinitely. No, Russ couldn’t come and pick her up. Roads were blockaded, reserved for emergency vehicles. She could stay with a friend downtown, someone from her office. She would call again and talk to Luke before he went to bed, but for now her friend Laurie was waiting. They shared I-love-yous, as casually as they could manage. Nothing bad was going to happen. They would see each other soon.

            After supper the boys invited Russ upstairs to see what they had constructed. “Go on,” Bob nodded, opening a second beer. “You’ll be amazed.”

            The boys’ colourful contraption sprawled across the bedroom floor. Complete with weighted pulleys and trip wires, it amounted to a Lego Rube Goldberg machine. After a couple of false starts, its parts whirred and rolled to the inevitable end: a colossal smash-up. At the climax, to hoots of boyish laughter, the Lego pilot’s head popped off and rolled up against Russ’s toe.

            Russ declared himself properly amazed, then reminded Luke that school had not been cancelled the next morning and his bedtime was the same as ever. His aunt Sheila had found him pyjamas and a new toothbrush.

            “Will Mom be here soon? Will she tuck me in?”

            Russ had to remind Luke about the closed roads, the city-wide emergency. “She’ll phone and talk to you before bedtime so ... Don’t get too excited.”

            All this was in the dark age before everyone had a cell phone. Amy’s friend Laurie did not answer when Russ called. Luke wouldn’t settle down, waiting for her call, asking in his high-pitched bedtime voice, as if he were still a toddler, when she would call. Lying there on a futon on the floor of his cousins’ room, he must have thought his world gone haywire, with only a light from the hall peeking through the half-open bedroom door.

            Amy phoned at 9:30, hardly late at all. Russ needn’t have worried. Her friend Laurie had no food in her kitchen, Amy said, so they had gone out for supper, but all the open places were full because of the emergency. Service had been slow. As Russ listened, he looked into the boys’ room. After much fuss, Luke had fallen asleep, so Russ didn’t wake him. Everything would look different in the morning.

            Around midnight Luke awoke, crying. Russ heard him from the living room, where he and Bob sat up watching sports. For perhaps the last time, he picked up his long-legged son’s warm, sweaty body and carried put him to bed in the guest room. There would be room in the bed for Russ to lie beside him later. “Where’s Mom,” he murmured, half-asleep. “Is she coming back?”

            “Shh, of course she is. We’ll see her at home.” His breath caught again in a sob. Russ had mentioned home as if he was sure it would still be there in the morning. As if anything could be relied on, any more.

            Russ woke still fully clothed, as if ready at a moment’s notice to evacuate again. The sound of dishes clattering in the kitchen drew him toward it and the smell of coffee. The twins, at the table, played with their bowls and spoons. At the counter, Sheila was helping Luke button up his shirt; the boy had got the two sides mismatched.

            “I gave him some of Joey’s clean underwear,” she told Russ over Luke’s head. “No need to return them, they wear the same size.” Uber-mom Sheila handed Russ a mug from the cupboard behind her, and would have poured coffee for him but he already had his hand on the pot.

            “You know we’re grateful,” Russ began, but Sheila hushed him and pointed to an array of cereal boxes. As he read their labels over coffee, Bob emerged from the bathroom down the hall, freshly shaved and ready to, as he put it, join the race.

            “You’re welcome to stay, of course,” he told Russ, “but it sounds like you’ll be able to go home tonight.”

            The drive to Luke’s school took them almost all the way home, so at Luke’s insistence Russ turned the car left toward home instead of right toward school. A low curse came from him when the yellow police tape came in sight. Two black and white cruisers blocked the road into the suburb. A young cop confirmed that the oil spill had been brought under control. Emergency over, clean-up procedures already begun. In a few hours they would be able to go back to their lives.

            Relieved, Russ turned the car around and headed back toward Luke’s school. But the boy in the seat beside him sat in silence, looking sad and dazed. He had Russ pull up across the street from the school, instead of in the normal drop-off spot, as if he wanted to avoid being seen with his father. Russ felt a sudden urge to hug the boy. But with Luke’s backpack and seatbelt tangled, it was too awkward. Luke squirmed away, out the door. Then, at the last moment, with the car door open and traffic getting impatient behind them, Luke turned back and said, “Mom’s coming back, isn’t she, Dad? Jesse and Joey said ... She’s coming back, isn’t she?"

Colin Morton is a poet and novelist. A recipient of awards for poetry, short fiction and film, he lives in Ottawa, Ontario. His most recent book, Scar Atlas, was published in 2024 by Aeolus House.