Читать книгу Passiontide - Brian E. Pearson - Страница 9

Chapter two

Mid-morning, Harv brought the new car around. He asked what Father David thought of her. The Ford Escort wagon was a metallic baby blue, but Father David didn’t care about its aesthetics. It had almost 200,000 km on it, but that kind of number didn’t mean much to Father David. So he said it looked fine.

He immediately set to filling the wagon with his belongings. He had been up and out early, using his mother’s car, taking what he needed from his office before Margaret got in. He left a note for her, trying to explain what was happening. But he knew there was no way she, or anyone else, would understand. He would just have to leave a few loose ends, though this was so unlike him. The bishop would be making some sort of provision for Sunday supply, so in a matter of weeks they would have moved on without him anyway.

He wasn’t in a mood to chat. So he gave his full attention to packing the car, turning his back on his mother and his brother-in-law as they stood by the curb, watching him. He did not wish to endure Harv’s dismissive smirks, especially as it was now plainly evident that he himself had lied the previous day, suggesting the car had been for Beverley But what did it matter now? In half an hour he would be on his way. He trained his mind on the task at hand.

The cartons of books fit easily into the back, though they didn’t leave room for much else. He stuffed his suitcase into the space behind the passenger seat, and laid out his robes carefully across the back seat. At the foot of the passenger’s seat he placed his boots and his duffel coat. On the seat itself he placed a road map of Canada he had bought earlier that morning. Overhead, on the under side of the visor, he found a place for a small pad of paper, a few pencils, and a thin emergency flashlight.

He placed the requisite car registration and insurance forms in the glove compartment, closed it up tight, and sat for a moment behind the wheel. It would be courteous to offer Harv a ride back to his office, but he was beyond courtesy now. He rose from the wheel, kissed his mother on the cheek, asking, as he did, if she would mind returning Harv to his office. He shook Harv’s large hand and thanked him for helping him out.

Then he started the car, waved, and pulled away. Harv had already turned toward the house by the time Father David checked the rear-view mirror. But his mother remained at the curb, watching him go.

The highway was busy with crosstown traffic. Father David slid in and out of lanes, as he made his way toward the northbound turn-off that, in his mind, would launch him on his journey. He knew there were thoughts to be thought — bad thoughts — about his leaving Beverley and the kids, about walking out on his parish on such short notice, about doing something so reckless he would surely pay for it one way or another the rest of his life. But there would be time for those thoughts later. For now, an intoxicating excitement overruled everything else. He felt almost giddy. He was on his way. He didn’t know where he was going, exactly, but he was finally on his way.

As he turned onto the northbound highway, he thought of all the school children who at this moment were sitting at their desks in classrooms all across the city. He thought of office workers at their workstations or in their windowless cubicles. He thought of the snarled traffic he was leaving behind. He thought of Beverley who would be … what? No, don’t go there! he reprimanded himself.

He drove on, as the apartment complexes and industrial parks at the edge of the city gave way to tracts of new suburban development, curbed roads and stooping street lamps appearing in the midst of empty fields like a mirage, surrounded by dirt and swept by dust. Just beyond the city’s grasp, he surveyed the beginnings of open farmland, with its rows and rows of feed corn swaying dryly beneath a cloudless blue sky. Tall maple trees, their dying leaves turned brilliant red and gold, lit up the wood lots.

He knew this part of the road well. It was the way to his old parish of St. Jude’s. He told himself to be sure to give a nod in its direction when he passed the turn-off, to acknowledge the honest farming community that had informed those early years of his ministry But he was well passed it when he finally remembered, and it was too late.

As the highway began taking him into Canadian shield country, with its rocky outcrops and bent coniferous trees, Father David was amazed at the excellent time he was making. He could drive all day, he thought, and into the night too. He was being propelled by more than the gas in his tank. “I’m travelling on a wing and a prayer,” he said out loud, and the sound of it pleased him.

It was not until he had left behind the familiar signs of cottage country — the numbered county roads, the hamburger joints, the gravel turn-offs — that the enormous extent of his journey began to dawn on him. He had travelled in his life. But he had only ever travelled east, which meant he had only ever travelled back.

In the summer before he was to begin divinity school, Father David had gone alone to Britain. It turned out to be a “family roots” tour, taken over by relatives so pleased at last to meet one of Frederick and Lucille’s children. He was the first of the Canadian relatives to visit. So he stayed in the homes of distant aunts and even more distant cousins several times removed. They would have it no other way They took him on tours, extravagant outings that required hours of preparation to drive a mere ten miles to sit in a tea shop overlooking a gray overcast beach, or to buy ice cream and post cards from a vendor’s stand beside a misty field, some derelict abbey way off in the distance. His relatives passed him among themselves, countering every suggestion he made for something he might like to see on his own with a cheery, “We’ll make a day of it then.”

So he had seen the requisite sights — the crumbling remains of Hadrian’s Wall, the crowded Tower, the tomb- and plaquelined cathedrals. But the memories that predominated were of sitting around kitchen tables, sitting in back seats of cars, sitting in stuffy parlours, sitting around tiny pub tables, drinking endless cups of tea and draft beer, all the while draining the very dregs of small talk, trying to patch up the tenuous connections since his parents’ departure twenty-five years ago. It was not like heading out; it was like going home. And it helped Father David appreciate all the reasons his parents might have left.

Israel had been more of an adventure, but it was a journey even farther east, and even farther into the past. He and Beverley had gone the spring after they had been married, a kind of belated honeymoon. They went on a guided tour that was filled with older people, not unlike the aunts and uncles he had left in Britain, who fawned over the newly-weds — a young priest, no less, and his bride who used to be a nun, don’t you know. It seemed so romantic to them all, and they teased the couple mercilessly.

Still, the locations they visited were exotic: the bright turquoise hews of the Mediterranean; the lush Jordan River valley (and here, the “very spot” where our Lord was baptized by John); the fishermen, after all these generations, still plying the waters of the Galilean Sea; the wild and formidable desert spreading out from the salt-rimmed shores of the Dead Sea; and then the teeming city of Jerusalem, with the magnificent Dome of the Rock overlooking the Kedron Valley, and the maze of streets with shops and crowds, here and there signs indicating stations on the Via Dolorosa, the Way of Sorrows. It was thrilling, and the guide was forever making the biblical connections to places Father David had heard and read about all his life, places he had imagined, but never quite like this. It was a journey back to his more distant roots, a spiritual home-coming of sorts.

But now this — this was entirely different. He had never before ventured west. Nor had members of his family It was the open way, the undiscovered land, the uncharted future, as it had been to countless pioneers far more rugged than he. He had no relatives west of Toronto, and he himself had never been north of Parry Sound. He had already passed that by now; the road signs had begun counting down the mileage to Sudbury, the next major destination. As he continued rolling northward, there were fewer and fewer cars on the road. He was entering new and unfamiliar territory.

At Sudbury he decided to stop. It was late afternoon. The car needed gassing up, and he was starting to feel pretty empty himself. A garish strip of fast food outlets was mildly reassuring, not unlike some of the less attractive parts of his own parish. So he entered under the familiar sign of the bucket and found an empty spot by the window. The hard moulded seat was attached by a bar to its matching table, part of an overall design to get him in and back out again quickly, “fast food” having less to do with the time of preparation than the time allotted for eating.

He tried to take some measure of comfort from the fatty chicken, the greasy fries, and the watered-down pop. The Israelites had been given manna in the morning, quails in the evening; this, he ventured, might be the sad modern day equivalent. He filled up the car and was soon on his way again, following the sun as it declined ahead of him in the western sky.

A couple of hours out of Sudbury, the sun now low on the horizon, a rosy splash radiating from behind a bank of clouds, Father David could feel his bowels stirring within him. The quail and the manna were not sitting well. On this stretch of the journey he had grown quiet, his random thoughts languidly turning up and over before giving way, each to the next. But now he grew focused on something else that seemed to be turning up and over. He’d better stop soon.

He was on a gently curving stretch of highway, bordered on his right by an irregular string of tall willows, on his left by the North Channel of Lake Huron. It was pretty, but it offered little by way of rest stops. He was approaching Sault Ste. Marie, he knew, where the neon lights would draw weary travellers to the same predictable fast food chains and economy motels. They promised only bland familiarity, not quality His body felt the truth of this acutely now.

He might not make it that far, he found himself thinking, as he calculated the mileage from the billboard advertising. His insides were gurgling, giving voice to a roiling mass of half-digested chicken and fries that was flowing, chamber by chamber, down to the dark sewers below. He was going to have to pull over, whether a service station appeared or not.

But he rounded a curve and saw up ahead a hand-marked sandwich-board sign with an arrow pointing to a gas station selling “CHEEP GAS.” He anticipated the driveway by several feet, bouncing through the edge of a shallow ditch and lurching up to the side of the building.

Leaving the car running, he bolted for the washroom door. It was locked. He tried the women’s. It was locked as well. He raced around to the front door which opened into an empty grease-smeared office lined by calendars displaying half-naked women. An inside door led to the repair bay. Clenching pelvic muscles he had not exercised in years, he thrust his head into the bay.

“I need the key to the washroom!” he called out. “Quite badly, actually!”

After an agonizingly long moment, a voice called back, “It’s hanging by the door!”

Father David made a grab for it and rushed back round the corner. Fumbling frantically, he got the key into the lock, turned it and burst into the dank washroom, just in time. Relieved, he sat in the dark, catching his breath. The blood had drained from his face, leaving him cold and clammy He began to shiver. He leaned forward and pressed his forehead against the cold edge of the porcelain sink. Oh, God, he whispered to himself, shaking his head.

He waited until he felt steady enough. Then he rose, found the light switch, returned the key, and made his way back to the car. It was still running, making a strange but pronounced ticking sound he had not noticed before. He put the car in gear, and headed back onto the highway.

It was dark now. As he approached the outer ring of the Sault, the city’s lights beckoned just as he had imagined them. But he chose to drive on, following instead the signs for Wawa. The thought of stopping, of taking a motel room, of sitting alone in front of a fuzzy television screen — this was less bearable than the thought of pressing on, though the springs in the driver’s seat were rising up now to greet him in new and tender places. He adjusted his position, with no effect.

His car was one of the few heading north. He saw signs advertising the Agawa Canyon and its spectacular fall-colour train excursion. By driving at night he would be missing this natural wonder, missing what many had described as awe-inspiring: the deep-cut valleys exploding in fall splendour, the sudden trestle bridges, the craggy outcrops of Canadian shield.

But this was not a sight-seeing tour. It was … well, what was it? A journey of discovery, he told himself, a spiritual pilgrimage, a … a cowardly escape; that’s what it was! He was running away. He knew it. But he also knew that he was not able to stop himself. Even now, as the headlights probed deeper into the lonely night, and as the racing yellow line measured out the distance between himself and home, he knew he could not turn around. Wherever it led, this road, for the time being, was one-way Though the ticking sound from the engine did seem to be getting worse.

Somewhere south of Wawa his distracted stream-of-consciousness was shattered when a long-legged animal slunk past the edge of his headlights back into the darkness. He fancied that it had been a timber wolf, though it might have been a dog. He told himself he was entering the wild Canadian northland, and the thought excited him.

It was past midnight when Father David pulled off the road for gas in Wawa. His joints were aching, and his eyes were feeling strained. Still, he could not reconcile himself with the thought of a lumpy bed in a bad motel. But it was more than that: he could not reconcile himself with the thought of staring into a mirror and facing whatever it was he thought he was doing. He brushed aside the mental picture of Beverley and Catherine, huddled together in the chair in their living-room, and of Paul, looking straight ahead, asking if he were coming back. Father David bought himself a pop and a chocolate bar, and pressed on into the night.

The drive became dreamlike after that, mile after mile, coasting down the long hills, dragging slow motion up the other sides, the engine tick-tick-ticking, the shadowy tree line sailing past, sometimes opening to vistas that were themselves swallowed up by the darkness. As he grew more and more fatigued, he felt more numb than sleepy. He permitted himself thoughts of home now, for they failed to rouse in him any emotions whatsoever. Nor were his frail rationalizations worthy of cross-examination, for they flowed along in a ceaseless stream of images, unconnected and imprecise.

It was like a drug, this endless highway He could command the wheel and keep the car on the road almost without effort, and certainly without thought, allowing his mind to wander at will. The car simply carried itself along, now whizzing down long hills, the speedometer coaxed to its upper range, now chugging up the next — ticka-ticka-ticka-ticka — requiring only that Father David keep his foot wedged sideways on the gas pedal, his eyes resting vaguely on the two elliptical circles of light that, moment by moment, delivered him to his unknown future.

Hours later, he slipped into Thunder Bay just as the city was beginning to stir beneath a blanket of wet darkness, a heavy dew having formed in the night. He felt the pre-dawn chill when he stopped for a coffee and a muffin at an all-night doughnut shop, its early morning customers shuffling silently up to the counter, uttering their first words of the day, like mantras: “Large, double-double.” “Medium, with milk.”

Father David felt tired now. He sipped at the coffee, the steam curling up into his face from the hole in the lid, as he followed the signs that led him through the city and out the other side. The sky was lightening in his rear-view mirror. It was time now, he realized.

Without a struggle, he pulled off the road at a campground at Kakabeka Falls, parking the car adjacent to the little warden’s booth at the entrance. He felt for the lever down at the base of his seat, pushing the seat back with his head until he was more or less reclined. Bunching up his sweater for a pillow, and spreading out his duffel coat on top of him for a blanket, he twisted his body sideways, pressed his cheek into the headrest, and fell asleep.

. . .

He awoke several hours later. The sun was up but still low in the east. There was activity now at the warden’s station. Through the narrow slits of his eyelids Father David could make out a couple of recreational vehicles pulled up to the window, checking out. His eyes felt dry and irritated; so he closed them tight as he lay still, allowing his breathing to catch up with the rest of his body as it awoke, registering an ache in his lower back and cramps in his joints, the result of having remained too long in the same position.

Finally he rubbed his eyes, forced himself to sit up and look out onto this new day, and climbed out of the car. It was a crisp clear morning, the dew still thick and shimmering on the ground. He pulled his sweater over his head and slid his arms into the sleeves of his coat, wandering off to find a place to wash up.

His unshaven face looked drawn and haggard in the metal mirror above the row of stainless steel sinks in the campground’s wash station. He found he didn’t really mind the look, though he was usually scrupulous in his appearance. There was the possibility of a new man emerging here, if not exactly the cigarette ad variety, then certainly someone who appeared more “lived in” than his soft — and recently jowly — city persona. He splashed water on his face and brushed his teeth, deciding to remain, for the time being at least, unshaved.

He pulled back onto the highway, his body heavy and his head still in an early morning haze. The road sliced now through bush country, with long stretches between the towns. Father David realized with a start that he was still in the province of Ontario! Almost twenty-four hours had still not brought him to the province’s western boundary It would be another day’s drive before he emerged onto the open prairie. What must that be like, he wondered.

Being a Toronto-centric Ontario boy, he had not often thought of the prairie provinces. His imagination had rarely carried him west of Mississauga. But he had studied the prairies in high school geography classes; he had watched recent television footage of the devastating floods around Winnipeg; he had read the complaints of prairie wheat farmers, demanding increased government support. Now he grew eager to find out what it was like to actually be on the prairies.

He stopped for a mid-morning break in Dryden, at a roadside diner that promised home-style cooking, a pulp and paper plant within sight, belching its plumes of sulphuric stench into the air. He had the Big Breakfast. It delivered what it promised: a lean steak with two eggs over easy, home fries and toast, and a bottomless cup of coffee, which the waitress kept filling without even asking.

Country and western music played from speakers hidden in the ceiling panels, real C&W, not the pop mulch that passed for “new country” music on the city stations. Like the strong bitter coffee, burning on its way down, this was music with a twang, music that stung at the same time that it soothed. Father David found himself mildly interested. The words were hard to make out, though he was pretty sure they were about someone who was hurtin’.

He paid up, leaving a two dollar tip for an eight dollar meal, gassed up, and was on the road again, his little engine tick-ticking constantly now, struggling against even the gentlest rise in the road.

His mind had grown clear again. He realized that he had succeeded in putting a safe distance between himself and whatever it was he was leaving behind. Cautiously, he began pulling the fragments of the last few days out from the shadows, as if they were old photographs strewn about the glove compartment. He reached in and took out the first that presented itself to him.

It was a picture of his empty church and of the stained glass windows telling the story of Jesus’ Passion. He found he was not able to stick with any one thought for long — sustained theological reflection was too much work right now. But he turned over in his mind this new notion of Jesus losing everything on the cross. Of course, it could not be otherwise. If Jesus had fully expected that somehow the Father was going to spare him this pain, and this tragic end, his dying would not have been a real death; after all, which of us dies with such assurance? No, in the moments of his dying, Jesus — like us — must have felt that all was lost.

How we linger at the portal, Father David thought, terrified of letting go — he had seen it so many times at the bedside — knowing that in death there is no retrieval of things lost. Everything really is lost to us the moment we lean back, close our eyes and let go. Whatever else there is, waiting for us beyond the grave, it is something brand new, something not available to us here, not until the old is utterly relinquished.

So it must have been for Jesus. It must truly have seemed to him that he was losing everything, not only life as he knew it, but also his great mission, which was scattering to the four winds even as he hung on the cross, the disciples disappearing into the crowd.

Father David let the thought linger. It was starting to grow fuzzy, starting to slip from his grasp. Okay, he thought, just let it go. It’s okay. Like death, there’s nothing you can do but let it go — let it all go. If it has any truth it will return.

He stopped again in Kenora. It felt strangely familiar to him, this northern town set amid rocks and lakes, like some of the towns he knew in the Muskokas, but rougher around the edges. Some native men sat together on a park bench overlooking the river, one playing a guitar. At first Father David assumed they were drunk, like so many he had seen in the city parks. But they were not drunk. They were just enjoying one another’s company over this sunny noon hour, making music and trading stories. It reminded him of bright fall days like this at college, when students would spread themselves out on the lawn in the quad under a cacophony of music blaring from stereo speakers propped in the open residence windows overhead. It represented a measure of freedom he had never allowed himself. He had always had something important to do.

As he carried on, the rocks and lakes soon gave way to lower deciduous groves — aspen mostly, the silver leaves trembling in the breeze — and to roadside scrub brush. The topography was changing, flattening out. The sky was opening up around him.

Soon after he passed the sign saying, “Welcome to Friendly Manitoba,” the roadside trees vanished altogether, and he pulled out onto a flat limitless expanse. The flatness was oddly exhilarating to him, though at some darker level also disconcerting. He had never been surrounded by so much … space!

He was suddenly reminded of a nightmare he had suffered as a young child, something he had not thought of for years. It was among his earliest memories. There were no characters in the dream, and there was certainly no plot. There was only the growing perception of a vast yawning emptiness opening up before him, like the screen of their old television set in its dying moments after it was turned off. Everything just went gray. Except, that is, for a tiny diminishing dot at the very centre of the screen.

David would watch that dot as it got smaller and smaller, as the surrounding grayness of the screen grew darker and darker, swallowing it up, until there was nothing, nothing at all but his own reflection staring back in the glass, nothing but the helpless sensation that he, little baby David, was drowning in the sea of his own expanding consciousness. His breathing would stop. Then he would suddenly gasp, sucking air into his tiny lungs, and wail with all his might into the dark night. Amazing, that he could recall all that now. And the sheer terror of it.

Without noticing it, Father David was speeding up, flowing along with the afternoon traffic bound for Winnipeg. He opened his window and stuck his elbow out into the breeze with an assumed nonchalance, as if he had driven this patch of road all his life, as if the world opening up before him was not, in some mysterious way, terrifying to him. But there was an autumn chill in the air, and after a few minutes he retrieved his arm and wound the window up again.

The road stretched on and on. He reached for another mental picture from the dark glove compartment of his mind. It was clericus. He smiled slightly, shaking his head with recognition. It was not so much that he didn’t like his brother and sister clergy. Well, okay, it was that he didn’t like them. But that seemed so — he didn’t know — petulant or something, something not worthy of him. Perhaps it was more that he just couldn’t trust them. That had been his father’s view.

Archdeacon Frederick Corcoran had not been a joiner. Otherwise, Father David was certain, his father would have been a bishop. He was hard-working and sincere, giving to his ministry whatever was required, which was just about everything. He had no life outside of the demands of his job and the obligations of his family. Father David had known his father only as the rector of large churches, with important people occupying specific pews, looking up at him as he preached.

His father worked for days on those sermons, locked up in his study, reading biblical passages from the original Greek and Hebrew, trying out sentences aloud before committing them to paper. Then, on Sunday mornings, those same sentences were lifted directly from the page and once again given voice, magnificent voice. His father was a good preacher.

But on more than one occasion Father David had heard his father complain to his mother about his colleagues. This one was lazy, that one was unscrupulous, the other one was ambitious. He had high standards, his father, and none of his ordained brethren seemed capable of measuring up.

Father David recognized those same feelings in himself about his own colleagues. Theirs was a high calling, after all. It was not good enough to approach one’s ministry as if it were a career, climbing the ladder, telling people what they wanted to hear, ingratiating oneself to the rich and influential. His father never pandered to anyone. Father David admired that in him.

Yet his mother had found life with his father to be difficult. This was a new thought altogether. He wondered how he could have missed it. They had never fought; at least, he was unaware of it, if they had. They had had their disagreements, it was true, and he could remember his mother on one occasion crying softly in their bedroom. But his father had gone to her, and they had spoken together in hushed tones. Eventually they re-emerged and everything carried on as usual.

But the price for holding to one’s principles is necessarily high. People may not like you. People may take advantage of you. People — even those closest to you — may tempt you to compromise. His father had not compromised. He had brought dignity and integrity to his ministry, and it spilled out into his family as well, into the orderliness of their day to day life, into their standards of honesty and hard work.

Sometimes, Father David now realized, he had felt sorry for his father. The man had had no friends but his mother. Father David couldn’t remember him laughing very much. And he died far too young, before either he or Paula were launched into their adult lives, leaving something undone, something unsaid. Father David wondered now what that might be. What would he want to hear his father say to him, if he could? He allowed the thought to trail off as he adjusted his position on the hard seat.

Late in the afternoon, Winnipeg suddenly appeared to the north. From the bypassing ring road, the city rose up in the distance as a small cluster of skyscrapers and high-rise apartment buildings. He was sure that it was peopled, that Canada’s Gateway to the West was all there, intact. But he wasn’t about to deviate from his course to find out. He stopped only long enough to eat a limp Caesar salad and a dry piece of garlic bread from a gas station restaurant, and then he drove on.

Again Father David found himself driving into the setting sun. He followed it as long as he could, along this open highway with its vast expanse of sky in all directions. But the sun beat him to the horizon and, after a torrid sky-lit farewell, Father David was once again left alone in the dark. Mile after mile, hour after hour, he wedged his foot onto the gas pedal and plunged deeper into the night.

As midnight approached with not another vehicle in sight, Father David pulled over to stretch his legs. He gathered his duffel coat around his shoulders as he wandered down toward the ditch. A split railed fence marked the edge of a farmer’s field that stretched off into the darkness. The farmhouse was nowhere in sight. Leaning on the fence, he gazed up at the night sky, pulsing with stars.

In the distance he heard a strange sound, like the humming of power lines when they are wet with snow. How odd, he thought; the sky was dry and cloudless. He relieved himself in the tall grass, looking furtively up and down the highway for headlights. He walked back to the car and stood by the driver’s door. His breath misted up in front of his face. Then in the corner of his eye he saw a flash off to the north. Descending from a great height, there danced an impossible curtain of shimmering green, unlike anything he had ever seen before.

He wondered if it might be the reflection of a town’s lights. But this luminous display was too fluid, too heavenly, to be of any earthly origin. It was as if the angels were ascending and descending from their celestial home, ringed in radiant splendour, their tinted hues meeting and mingling like waves crossing and criss-crossing on a beach, casting hue upon hue, each one more brilliant than the last. The fantastic display turned suddenly red now, brilliant red, spreading across the entire northern horizon. He could detect again a faint hissing, like the sound of the wind in the trees. But there was no wind; and there were no trees.

Father David held on to the roof of the car to keep his balance. He felt he might otherwise be lifted up to simply float away with the incredible wonder of this sight. He remained still for as long as he could, until the night chill entered his joints and he began to shiver. He climbed back into the car and, in his first real prayer since beginning his journey, whispered, “Thank you, Lord. I just want to thank you.”

He put the car into gear and drove on to the first motel that displayed a vacancy sign. He pulled up, registered at the desk, found his room, and crawled into bed.

. . .

It was well into the morning when he woke. The motel provided a continental breakfast in the tiny lobby, which meant a pot of drip coffee and an open box of small sugar-dusted doughnuts. He ate three, gulping down the coffee from a Styrofoam cup. He was preparing to leave when a thought struck him. He rang the bell on the counter. A pleasant-looking middle-aged woman appeared. She might have been the same one who had been on duty the night before, but he couldn’t remember.

“Is there a service station in town?” he said.

“You need gas or repairs?” she asked in return.

“I need to get something checked out, a sound coming from under the hood,” he said.

“Then you want Al’s,” she said, and gave him directions.

“What town is this, by the way?” it suddenly occurred to him to ask.

She smiled, but it was a wry smile. “This is Grenfell, Saskatchewan,” she said.

He thanked her, and left. He was in Saskatchewan.

Father David found Al in the service bay, a lanky humourless man wiping his hands on an oily rag as he stood, pensive, before an open hood. He appeared to be about Father David’s age, but with the no-nonsense look of someone who had been around a lot longer.

Father David explained to him the “ticking” problem.

“How is she on pick-up?” Al asked.

Not very good, Father David explained, and it seemed to him it had been getting worse.

“Where you headed?” Al asked.

“British Columbia?” Father David answered, though he hadn’t intended it to sound like a question.

Al took off his cap and scratched at his temple, running his hand around to the back of his head. He replaced his cap. “I don’t think so,” he said.

“You don’t think so?” Father David asked.

“I don’t think she’s going to British Columbia,” Al said, matter-of-factly “I doubt she’ll make it.”

The problem, Al explained, was that it was a four-cylinder car that was probably running on only three cylinders. The reason for that, Al suspected, was a cracked cylinder head, a problem that was only going to get worse and that would be putting pressure on the other cylinders in the meantime. Father David could wind up with a two-cylinder car.

“I’m not sure I’d be wanting to drive through the mountains on two cylinders,” Al concluded.

“Well, can you fix it?” Father David asked.

“Yup, I think so,” Al replied.

“Great. So how long would that take, do you think?” Father David asked, feeling hopeful.