This All Happened(77)

            I keep the receiver to my ear, waiting for her click. But she has paused, waiting too. But I can say nothing and those silences so often between us, our language not folding into conversation but solidifying into isolated fragments. And she hangs up.

            All of Max’s windows lit up, burning around the edges of curtains and shutters. I bet there is no one else out in this weather by choice, waiting under a tree, obviously in a mood.

            22 We pack Jethro for the trip west. It’s an eight-hour drive to Corner Brook.

            I drive as Lydia sleeps. She is peaceful in sleep. I reach behind for a blanket and as I do this I turn the wheel. Jethro is hurtling quietly down a rough steel grey shoulder full of spruce and ditch, and now a terrific new sound occurs, which wakes up Lydia and startles Tinker, and my arm shoots over to brace her.

            The sun dead ahead the light of gods or inquisitors the gold of speculators.

            We plunge sideways down the embankment. A hundred kilometres an hour over a boulder. Just stop now Jethro pleasy please and Lydia wide-eyed as if I have dropped a snowball down her neck. We lurch forward in our seat belts and stare at each other.

            A rap on my window A young couple who have climbed down to us. I have to push hard to open the door.

            Is everyone all right?

            He ducks a look in and seems shocked that I’ve gone off the road in good weather. Embarrassment that I’ve been reckless. If only there were four more cars in the ditch.

            That was some dive you took.

            He calls up to a woman, Theyre fine. Then smiles. That’s my wife, he says.

            They offer us a lift. As we’re getting in their car I notice the sign in the rear window: Just Married.

            Congratulations. We’ve been thinking about getting married. Woman: Dont do it.

            Then she looks at her husband and laughs.

            We’ll take you up to Glovertown Irving. You’ll get a wrecker from there. Nice dog.

            A wrecker. The next step. A ride to the Irving and get a wrecker.

            23 We spend the day in Glovertown. We camp out at Kozy Kabins. The wrecker brings Jethro to a buddy of his who fixes Hondas. All he needs is an arm or a rod or something I can’t remember but it’s steering-related. It involves torque. In the morning we’re on the road again.

            I had stroked the word LOVE in the Glovertown roadsign. But Lydia might have thought I stroked OVERT.

            I tell Mom and Dad about the accident. How Jethro was off the road in a second. Mom interrupts: Did you say death row?

            We sleep in the room of my childhood. Feet hanging over the bunkbeds Junior and I grew up in.You grow at night. Best to write in the morning, when youve grown.

            24 Lydia watches my father work. He has a mahogany table leg clamped in a vice, its claw foot sticking up, clenching a ball. He cradles a carving tool. If you keep both hands on the handle, he says, you’ll never cut yourself.

            We watch him carve around the filigree in the knee. I realize that my father is a handsome man. That I probably won’t be as handsome when I’m his age. For some reason I’d thought the human race was evolving into better looks, but it’s not the case.

            He understands the physical world: electricity, plumbing, capillary action. He has built all the furniture in the house, and the copper ornaments contain his planishing. He has opinion and decisive comment whereas I am hampered by the acceptance of multiple views. I have learned no trail through the world. If I could show him batts of insulation.

            25 Dad asks where Long’s Hill is and Lydia says, It’s the very bitter end of the Trans-Canada, Mr English. You never put on your indicator. The Trans-Canada turns into Kenmount Road and Kenmount turns into Freshwater and Freshwater turns into Long’s Hill and Long’s Hill is where Gabriel lives.