by Anne Degrace
The pen is in her hand. In the end, the note Jo leaves says simply: I’ll send you a postcard when I get to where I’m going.
Pink isn’t yet there when she gets to the diner. She pulls a couple of day-old sandwiches from the cooler, food for the road. She feels strange standing there, in the middle of the restaurant, empty tables around her. The plaster Jesus hands are on the same crazy tilt, pointing towards the door. She goes to straighten them, and then stops herself. Their direction seems appropriate: salvation to go.
A rattle at the front door makes her turn. Pink is there, pack on his shoulders. Ready for the road.
Wind tails
He that observeth the wind shall not sow,
and he that regardeth the clouds shall not reap.
— Ecclesiastes 11:4
Jo opens the door, the sign rattling against the glass. She glances guiltily towards the trailer, but it has the air of a sleeping house.
“You ready?” asks Pink. His eyes are full of Jo, and the road ahead. Possibility. Promise. It’s all good, he thinks, standing in a patch of sunlight that slants through the open door. Life is good. “Actually, I have something for you,” he says. He found it at that cabin in the woods, he tells her. Jo remembers Bob’s story, about Howie, a little girl, and a heart-shaped rock. She takes it from him, feels it warm in her hand, and then sets it carefully in the centre of the counter with its empty row of swivel stools.
“It’s good to leave something behind. To say goodbye, you know?”
Pink nods: whatever. He’s just anxious to be going. He wants the road, wants to start walking in the cool of the morning, put Cass’s a mile or two behind him while they feel the rush of trucks passing by their outstretched arms. He looks out at the trees, at the wind blowing east. They are going west. Against the wind, but who cares? If the rides are good, they’ll be there well before nightfall. “Let’s go, then,” he says. The café is hot, the air close, the sunlit patch widening as the sun rises. Suddenly, it’s stifling. “Come on.” Pink has the door open. He watches her straighten, smile. She’s beautiful, he thinks.
On the road the air is fresh and cool, the breeze slight. Mare’s tails skitter across the sky, blown by winds higher than a bird can fly. The day is perfect.
They cross the highway and Pink turns to smile at Jo, but she’s looking the other way. Down the highway. East. The way the wind is blowing, treetops bending gently.
“Vancouver’s this way.”
“The wind’s blowing east. Towards Calgary.”
“What’s in Calgary?”
“The end of the story. And anyway, it’s the way the wind’s blowing.”
“It doesn’t matter. It was a stupid idea. Something to give me some kind of direction, that’s all.” Pink believes he can see movement in the trailer across the road.
There’s the sound of a car approaching from the west.
“We should start walking. Let’s go.” He touches her arm.
The kiss she gives him is like the brush of a leaf. It’s so quick, so fleeting, he’s not even sure he feels it, and, confused, he turns to kiss her properly, thinking she needs reassurance before they can get on their way.
She’s running, loping, across the highway, to the other side.
She’s there with her thumb out when the first eastbound car crests the rise.
End
Acknowledgements
For as long as I can remember I have been a story vulture. Tell me a story over a cup of tea or a cold beer, you might see it reincarnated in a piece of fiction somewhere down the road. The seed for this book began with a bunch of friends in a womb-like pub in Nelson, B.C., on the night of January 12, 2005. Ross told a story about a hitchhiker he met who would only travel in the direction the wind blew. Stephanie added her story about a driver who collected hitchhikers’ tales through the postcards they sent, and about the hitchhiker she loaned money to, with a plan to meet again in a remote Irish village on New Year’s Eve. We all traded hitchhiking stories, which evolved into travel stories, funny stories, human stories: I remember heading home with a warm heart and a full head.
Thanks to those who provided seeds for the tales within this novel, or who answered my questions when I needed details to flesh something out: Ross O’Connell, Stephanie Fischer, Mary Keirstead, Margaret Stegman, Linda Mennie, Trish Miller, Wendi Thomson, Pat Rogers, Doug and Faye Hergett, Pietro Comelli, Norm Pratt, Johan Mayrhofer. Thanks to the draft dodgers and Vietnam vets who answered my questions, even though the novel blew in a different direction. Special thanks to my mentor through the Humber College creative writing program, Shaena Lambert, for her insight and encouragement; to Verna Relkoff, editor extraordinaire; and to my writing group, who saw more versions of some chapters than I (or probably they) care to count: Verna Relkoff, Jennifer Craig, Joyce MacDonald, Susan Andrews Grace, and Rita Moir. Thanks to the readers of various drafts: Steve Thornton, Irene Mock, Cyndi Sand-Eveland, Kathy Witkowsky, Jacqueline Cameron. Thanks, of course, to my family, and especially to my children, Alex, Tam, and Annika, who are inspirations in themselves. Finally, thanks to Phillip Jackson for the story: the one I used in the book, and the one unfolding.
Morty Mint prefers I call him a friend rather than an agent; here, I will thank him sincerely for being both. Kim McArthur, Janet Harron, and all of the McArthur team are fine people to have behind you, and I couldn’t be more grateful.
Thanks also to the Columbia Basin Trust through the Columbia Kootenay Cultural Alliance, who provided financial assistance for the writing of Wind Tails.
