“Nothing to do?” I asked him.

He said there was never anything to do in Brownsville. The reason, he said, that he knew we were not from there is because, in Brownsville there are so few people that everyone knows each other, their families, and personal affairs, so when strangers roam into town they don’t go unnoticed.

I’m not sure why, but I think I even told him my father came from Halifax, Nova Scotia. We exchanged salutations and they continued their midnight cruise.

Minutes later they drove by again. We had started back for the tracks when from behind one of the small semi-suburban houses a tall young man in a blue ski toque lumbered towards us. He wanted smokes, but didn’t seem disappointed when we told him that we did not smoke. Then he asked if we had seen a cop car go by. We had gotten heavily into conversation and given him our story when he pointed out that as soon as the state troopers found us we would be in trouble. We would need to have a good story. Just then a police car pulled up. The stout police officer came toward us. He asked for identification so we gave him our Medicare cards.

“Are you boys carrying anything illegal that I should know about?”

“No,” we told him.

Making a suspicious face, he reached over and pulled out our vegetable knife which had been protruding from Francois’ sack. Then, to our wonderment and surprise, he left us alone while he fed our names into the computer in his car.

The tall guy’s name was Shannon Cochrane and I had been his pen pal from Quebec. He had gone to Penquise middle school and was eighteen years old. When I discovered that some of my friends would be driving through Brownsville on their way to a wilderness camp I had seized the oppurtunity to finally meet Shannon face to face. My friend Francois had come along for the journey. Shawn said his dad would also go along with the story too if he had too.

That was not necessary however because the policeman believed our stories and even dropped us all off at Shannon’s house. There, we stayed in his brother’s room. There was a small wood stove, sports equipment everywhere (mostly hockey equipment) and a dysfunctional door leading to the ourside through which his friends popped in and out occasionally to introduce themselves and ask us if we had brought any pot with us.

Our conversations that night covered a variety of subjects: “The Kids In The Hall,” why Shannon had no choice but to join the army next year, and the dialects of different regions. Apparently in Brownsville, Maine, people only use the word wicked in a positive context, to say they liked something.

Shannon told us about his mother who was manic depressive. When she had her nervous breakdown she had been watching the shopping channel. Over the phone she had gone on a shopping rampage and bought millions of things she couldn’t pay for. Each purchase, though, had been carefully thought out and was a gift for either friends or family. She then had gone to the lake and canoed out to a spot where a boy had drowned during her youth. I’m not sure if Shannon said how long she had stayed there.

He said that she wasn’t a bad person and was definitely not dangerous. He gave us his brother’s bed and despite our strange surroundings and uncertain future we slept like rocks.

The first thing I saw that morning was a black shoe which led up a pleated blue pant leg to a very stern looking state tropper. There were other cops standing in the bedroom. This time we gave them the true story. They said that the border guard on the walkie-talkie had in fact heard us, and when the cop from the previous night had phoned the border he had put the two together.

At the station they told us we could have been given three months in a Texas state penitentiary because Maine didn’t have a federal prison. We had a choice between standing trial if we chose to stay in the United States or being escorted back to the Canadian border. Needless to say we chose the latter and were driven back to somewhere they said was close to Sherbrooke. It was actually about ten hours away and we nearly froze to death hitchhiking. We were grateful anyhow for the ride that we got. Two days later we arrived in Sherbrooke, with just enough time for Francois to wash up, grab his tuxedo and go to work. The whole adventure had not cost us more than the two dollars we had spent taking the bus back to his apartment. If it hadn’t been for all the people that had helped us it could’ve cost us much more, maybe even our lives.

Pages: 1 2 3