A large backpack was on the ground beside him, but it was his coat that caught my attention. It looked like it was made of old, heavy, faded brown canvas, the kind of canvas used for tents in an earlier generation. The coat had large patches of blue denim as well as red and green material sewn, I guessed, over some of the holes in the canvas. It made me think of Joseph’s coat of many colours.
He was standing at the junction of Highway 97C leading to Ashcroft and the Trans-Canada Highway just south and west of Cache Creek, B.C.
I stopped. He ran toward the truck but brought his backpack inside with him instead of putting it in the truck box.
“I’m Walter,” I said, reaching out my hand.
“Yurgi,” I think he said (or was it Yuri?), shaking my hand, “Hope you’re going all the way to Vancouver.”
“Well, almost all the way,” I said, “I’m going to Coquitlam and if we can get along and you don’t smoke you can ride all the way with me.”
“I smoke,” he said, “but I won’t smoke in your truck, I promise!”
He was in his late 40s, I guessed. He had a few days’ growth of a stubbly beard with a touch of grey. He wore a baseball cap, but I could see his hair was dark above his ears. He had an unusual odour, a smell of fire, of being in wood smoke. He had a white cloth in his left hand, about handkerchief size. I noticed he dabbed at his left eye occasionally, then I saw that his eye was puffed and red.
“So you’re going home to Vancouver,” I said. “Where have you been, how long have you been gone?”
“Oh, just been gone for the long weekend, I wanted a holiday,” he said, “but I had an accident at Loon Lake, so I’m going home a day early. Hurt my eye.”
“I see that,” I said, “How did it happen?”
“I was camping, camping close to the lake,” he said. “I found some wood, was going to make a fire. Didn’t have an axe so I was using a big, piece of wood like an axe to break some smaller pieces that I had leaned against a rock. Worked good until a small piece flew up and hit me in the eye. Really hurt, my eye wouldn’t stop running, but I made a fire, cooked some food and stayed overnight. But this morning I decided to go back home.”
Loon Lake was about 20 km north of Cache Creek and about 20 km east of the highway. It was about 50 km from where I’d picked him up.
Just about then I noticed a nice long black tarp strap with both hooks attached lying on the highway. I slowed down and stopped.
“I forgot to tell you,” I said, “I like to pick up tarp straps that I find on the highway. We just passed a good one. Do you mind running back and getting it?”
“Sure can,” he said. He got out of the truck, ran back and picked it up.
I watched him in the rear view mirror. He came walking back but he didn’t toss the tarp strap into the truck box. He opened the door and laid it, neatly coiled up, on the hump in the centre of the cab.
“Here you are, sir,” he said as he laid it down. It was like a retriever bringing back a duck to his master’s feet.
“Thanks,” I said as we started moving. “So you caught a ride from Loon Lake back to the junction there.”
“Oh no,” he said, “got a ride from Loon Lake back to the highway but they were going north. I was going south, but not very long after, an RCMP stopped and picked me up. He heard my story about my eye and took me right to the hospital in Ashcroft. Then he waited until they looked at my eye. They put some drops in it and gave me some more to put in. Told me it should be OK in a few days but to see my doctor in Vancouver if it isn’t.”
“And the RCMP brought you back and dropped you off at the junction where I picked you up?”
“No he didn’t, cause I was getting hungry because I didn’t have any breakfast at the lake, so he took me back to the A&W in Cache Creek. Dropped me off there.”
“So after you had breakfast in Cache Creek, your next ride was only a few kilometers to the junction back there.”
“Right,” he said.
“And I just had lunch a little while ago in Cache Creek, but you just had breakfast.”
“Yup, spent almost all of the last of my money for breakfast,” he said. “I was really getting hungry. Don’t even have enough left for a SkyTrain ticket home. Guess I’ll have to hike as far as I can and walk the rest of the way.”
It was the Labour Day weekend, the beginning of September. It had been a chilly morning at the cabin a few hours earlier, I had made a fire there. It would have been just as chilly at Loon Lake.
He was still wearing his coat of many colours.
“I noticed your coat when I picked you up,” I said. “I’ve never seen one like it before.”
“Made it myself,” he said proudly. “Made it from an old tent. I’ve had it for a long time. Made it big for when I spent three years in Mexico living in the desert. Wore it every night in the desert. Gets really cold at night living in the desert.”
“In the desert in Mexico?” I said with awe in my voice. “What were you doing in the desert?”
“Just living, just living out in the desert by myself. Just wanted to see if I could live in the desert by myself, and I could. Was there for three years. That was quite a few years ago but I still got the coat. Can wear lots of clothes under this coat. Keeps the rain out too. I like it.”
“Smells like smoke,” I said. “Smells like you slept in it lying beside the fire at Loon Lake.”
“I did. Slept in it beside a fire at night a lot of times! And that’s what they said at the A&W in Cache Creek, said I smelled like smoke. Just sitting there after I had my breakfast, nice and warm just sitting there. Then the manager guy came over and told me I should move along, get outside the restaurant, people were complaining, telling them I smelled like a smokey old fire. So I went outside and started hiking again.”
We were getting closer to our friends at Hilltop Gardens, an orchard and fruit stand run by the Rice family a few kilometers north of the small village of Spences Bridge. The orchard, mostly apples, was on one side of the highway; their house, more orchard and gardens, were on the other side of the highway. I told Yuri or Yari or Yurgi I was stopping there, we knew the people. They let us pick windfall Macintosh apples. Would he like to help me? He nodded.
We stopped. Yuri got out with me. I introduced him to some of the Rice family; they are a nice family. They looked him over and allowed us to cross the highway into the MacIntosh area of their orchard. I made applesauce with those apples after I got home.
Yuri helped me enthusiastically, picking the best of the apples on the ground, filling a large box and a 20-litre pail. It was getting a lot warmer. He took off his coat, he was wearing regular jeans and clothes underneath.
I told him to choose a nice apple or two and eat them. He did, again with enthusiasm. He really liked the apples. He had a smoke in the orchard too, and put the butt out carefully. I watched him.
Back on the road he told me more about himself and his life. He was born in Toronto of Hungarian refugee parents who came to Canada after fleeing the revolution in Hungary in 1956. He said he graduated from high school in Burnaby, so they must have come west some time after he was born. He said that as a teenager he didn’t get along with his parents, his dad especially. He left after high school and began hiking and travelling around. He didn’t have an occupation or training, he worked at a variety of jobs. He said he liked bricklaying. He worked for a temporary work company, worked when he felt like it or needed the money. He said he lived in a subsidized apartment but still needed to make at least $350 a month for groceries, cigarettes and the balance of his rent.
I tried to figure him out. Yurgi was intelligent, but, I believe, unemployable. He lived mainly a transient lifestyle, he was unmotivated with no aims or objectives in life. He wasn’t mean or objectionable, he had some basic manners and didn’t appear to be a drug user. He was just a loner, a drifter and a survivor. He said he was broke and needed to make some money before September 15.
He told me of his weekend “vacation.” He had started in Vancouver on Saturday morning with $20. He took a bus to Horseshoe Bay. That cost $2.50. He hiked to Whistler, had a snack and drink that he had brought with him. Hiked to Pemberton, got a hamburger there but couldn’t get a ride so he slept beside the highway overnight. Sunday morning he caught a ride to Lillooet and bought some groceries there— potatoes, an onion, a few carrots, some meat, a loaf of bread. He ate about half the loaf for breakfast and hiked to Loon Lake, arriving in the afternoon. That’s when he hurt his eye while making a fire to cook his dinner. He stayed at Loon Lake Sunday evening. He got up on Monday morning and decided to go home.
He had an A&W breakfast in Cache Creek after his hospital check in Ashcroft.
He had about $0.50 left in his pocket.
We stopped for gas in Boston Bar and had an ice cream cone each, I paid. He had another cigarette.
We had another apple each and some cookies that I had in the truck when we passed Chilliwack.
I took him right to the SkyTrain station at Braid Street in New Westminster. I parked the truck in the drop-off area. He put on his big canvas coat outside the pickup while I shoved some apples and cookies into his pack. I gave him $5.
A lady had just parked her car beside the truck. Her eyes widened as Yurgi (or Yuri), dressed in the large tattered and patched, multicoloured canvas coat threw his arms around me before he picked up his backpack and walked into Braid Station.