A Note to the Reader  It’s March, 2001. Brenna Trent and her husband Ed Fletcher are getting ready for a three-month-long canoe trip to James Bay. It seemed so easy at first. Just wait for ice-out, pack up, and go. Now that the real planning is under way, however, some of their difficulties look overwhelming. Who’s going to mind the store while they’re gone, for one thing? Brenna’s afraid they’ll have to sell out, but Ed’s reassured her that “something will turn up.” Was he right, or is he only whistling in the dark?

 
Our story continues…

 
Chapter Three

 
Brenna closed the shop door behind her and stepped out into the street. Traffic hissed by, spraying salty slush onto the sidewalks. A slight southerly breeze ruffled the exposed fringe of her short, brown hair. Seeing a break in the stream of cars, she jogged across the highway, hoping to make it to the other side without getting soaked. No such luck. A speeding silver Toyota Tacoma splashed her just as she reached the curb. “Damn!” Brenna muttered to herself, brushing futilely at her now-damp jeans.

The plate glass windows of Shirley’s Diner were fogged over, but Brenna could see that the place was packed, even if the standing and seated shapes all looked like wraiths emerging from a mist. She pulled the heavy oak door open and went in, to be met by a rush of warm air, bearing the welcoming odors of cinnamon, bacon, and coffee. She walked up to the counter and sat down on the lone empty stool. Though it had only been a couple of hours since she’d eaten breakfast, her stomach gave an audible growl. Her mouth watered.

“Hiya, Brenna,” said Shirley, whose improbably blood-red lips were framed between a sharp, thin nose and an aggressively pointed chin. “Whatcha want? The usual?”

“Not this time, Shirley,” said Brenna. “I’d like six sweet rolls.”

“Six rolls! For just the twosaya?” Shirley chuckled. “Somebody’s birthday or somethin’?” As she spoke, she levered the sticky cinnamon buns off a baking sheet and dropped them into a white cardboard box, separating the tiers with layers of waxed paper. Each bun was bigger than a saucer. The box bore the legend, “Shirley’s World-Famous Buns.”

“Nope,” Brenna replied. “But we are celebrating something.” Her eyes followed each bun hungrily, and her words came out in a rush. “We’re gonna go back north this summer. Gonna paddle our canoe right up to James Bay. We’ll be gone for three whole months.”

“Three months!” Shirley exclaimed. “Who’s gonna mind the store while you’re away? Somebody die and leave you money?” She smiled to show she was joking.

“Not likely,” Brenna shot back. “Maybe we’ll just shut the shop down…or maybe sell up.”

“What’s this town commin’ ta?” Shirley said. “Everybody’s shuttin’ down or retiring. Everybody but me. When’s the last time I even took a vacation? Nineteen-sixty-five, that’s when!”

“Come off it, Shirley!” teased Brenna. “You always said you liked this place too much to leave. And anyway, didn’t you go to Atlantic City last summer?”

“A trip to Atlantic City ain’t a vacation, honey.” Shirley’s voice was all injured innocence. “Don’t you know nothin’ about finance? It’s an in-vest-ment opportunity!” They both laughed. Shirley slid the white box over the counter and turned to ring up the total.

Brenna paid. It was a good thing she’d had at least one big sale that morning, she thought. Then she said her good-byes and hurried to the door. Sitting at one of the small tables in front of the window was her “model” from yesterday, the white-haired man who’d taken so long to choose a single paperback. He was alone except for an empty cup of coffee, and his back was toward her. The book he’d bought was propped open against a napkin dispenser. Brenna noticed that he was nearly finished. Whatever the book was—”What was the title?” Brenna asked herself, and then remembered that it was Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn—it had him well and truly hooked. He was lost in a world of his own, far from the bustle of Shirley’s, going down the Mississippi in company with Huck and Jim.

When Brenna got back to the shop, Ed was nowhere to be seen. She called out to him.

“Back here!” came his shouted reply through the open door to the work room. Brenna found him on his knees next to a radiator. “No one was in the shop,” he explained. “Thought I’d finish bleeding the air out of the system. We’ve still got a month or two of cold weather ahead of us.”

“Good idea,” Brenna said. “I’ll make us some coffee to go with the buns. Hope you’re feeling hungry.”

She turned the hot plate on, filled the kettle at the utility sink, set it on the hot plate, and spooned coffee into the carafe filter basket. Then she heard the harness bells on the shop door ring out. A customer, she thought, and went to see who’d come in.

It was the white-haired man. “Hi,” Brenna greeted him. “Saw you in Shirley’s. Looked like you were really lost in that book.”

“Yeah,” he replied. “I was. It’s a great book. When I started it, I thought, you know, that it was a kid’s book, but it wasn’t.” He shuffled his feet unconsciously, clearly ill at ease—a tall man suddenly at a loss for words. Then he pulled the book from a pocket in his well-worn greatcoat and put it on the counter. The slight slapping noise it made seemed loud in the quiet shop. “I was…uh…that is…I was wonderin’ if I could trade it in on another one, that is….” His voice trailed off.

Brenna looked up at him thoughtfully. Then she launched into the old and too-familiar spiel about how The Book Locker wasn’t a public library, and how she’d be happy to take the book for credit toward another book, but she could only give him a quarter for it…. And then, for some reason she couldn’t quite understand, her voice, too, trailed off.

The silence that followed seemed endless. Neither she nor the white-haired man spoke. He stood quietly before her, one hand resting lightly on the book on the counter. She looked into his deeply-hooded eyes, wondering just how else to say what she’d already said once. Just then there was an enormous, echoing bang, followed immediately by the sound of rushing water, and Ed’s voice, raised to its full sergeant-on-parade bellow, hurling obscene entreaties at a malevolent universe…. Read more…

 

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A REMINDER This is a work of fiction. All the characters are figments of the imaginations. It’s NOT a paddling guide. If you’re planning a trip on the Albany River—or any other body of water, come to that—consult the most recent edition of a good guidebook and be sure you’re thoroughly familiar with all applicable regulations. While maps of Ontario show some of the waterways mentioned here, the places depicted in our story exist only in our minds—and in yours.