Blog

A journalist plunges into the underworld of Paris in 1885, searching for the elusive man who founded the International Red Cross and who has lived homeless, without a trace for twenty years. With this story, Searching For Henri, Richard Stanford opens his new collection, Chance Does Not Exist, elaborating on the themes of missed opportunities, the inevitability of change and the powerful but fragmentary quality of memory. People are on journeys in these stories: two cousins, with temperaments so opposite they live in different worlds, drive in The Chevy Belair through a blizzard to a unique destination; in Jailbirds, a man fascinated with photography gets a job building a prison museum only to travel through time to discover the most inhumane of its acquisitions. Thieves, artists, journalists, wanderers, are the people who populate these stories, so expect the unexpected.

COMPOST FOR ALL SEASONS will give you everything you need know about composting all year round.
Composters, methods, raw materials, location, soil building, green manures, winter, spring, summer, autumn – you will have more compost than you’ve ever imagined.
Your vegetable and perennial gardens will thrive – regardless of the current state of your land.
And you will accomplish all of this without chemicals, fertilizers, or back-breaking work.
This 2nd Edition includes a new chapter DARWIN’S WORMS, exploring the key role these amazing creatures bring to your garden and the part that Charles Darwin played in the discovery.

When buildings are torn down in the city, they often leave an imprint of their structure to the building to which they’ve been attached for many years. Some of these imprints are left to the forces of Nature – wind, rain, snow, sun – which proceed to modify them. Nature is very hard on walls, sometimes carving out small chunks leaving behind what appear to be bullet holes.
Other imprints are left to the forces of humans who also modify them with utilitarian gestures: advertising or cleaning off paint brushes. Like Nature, these too are spontaneous. Signage painted directly on a wall is an art in itself, one that requires a mastery of paints over rough surfaces, many reachable only by ladder or scaffolding, employing those surfaces like a canvas to communicate information. The act of painting itself is done outside the protection of a studio, under harsh rays of the sun and the acid air. This is not about graffiti – Monuments are not graffiti.
Sometimes nothing happens to the imprints and the humans just walk away from what once a home or a means to a future.
But no matter what, each imprint tells a story – people lived against these walls: eating dinner, watching TV, playing music, telling stories, making love, opening Christmas presents, committing murders, writing novels, composing music, watching over the dead.
As you walk by an exposed wall you cannot help but think of stories. You may not know what exactly the stories may be but there is a certitude that stories have occurred. There is no room, no office, no studio, no manufacturing floor where a story has not taken place. These stories, these fantasies are my third dimension. Photography creates the third dimension through the play of light and shadow – our imagination fills in the rest.
I do not see these walls as flat, two-dimensional representations without people. I have often imagined a young boy running out of the front door of the Salena apartments and into the grocery store for another pound of apples. These walls are filled with people, stories and biographies that exist in our imaginations.

This book is available on a CD-ROM for $ 4.99 (CDN). You can contact me directly for the CD-ROM at: rstanford@bell.net

One day, or night, someone in each of these farmhouses sealed the windows, closed the curtains, looked around the empty rooms, stepped out the front door and locked it shut. They turned and walked away, leaving behind the laughter of ghosts and the memories of birthdays, funerals, Easters and Christmases.
Their reasons for leaving may have been dramatic or mundane – maybe nothing more than moving down the road to a more modern farmhouse. It may also have been bankruptcy or death. Whatever their reasons were, the home they left behind is a frozen moment in the life of that family – a portrait of the moment of departure.
Unlike abandoned homes in the city that quickly become victims of the wrecking-ball, farmhouses are left as a testament to the endurance, labours, and memories of the families who worked the land. Not only have the homes been left to stand but in some cases someone returns regularly to mow the lawn. This seems to be not only an attempt to ward off Nature’s advances but also as a sign of respect. They thus become both an abandoned farmhouse and a monument.
Whether they are out in the middle of a field or aside a highway that was not meant to be or at the end of a dirt road or surrounded by woodlot, silent and alone, they are now and forever human constructions abandoned to the indifference of Nature.

If there were bars on the windows the two-storey Filmer School could be mistaken for a jail. As it is, the brick below the windows is stained from the dripping rain of the years, the front grounds are parched, the trees leafless. It could be autumn or spring, it's hard to tell. The sense of desertion is everywhere. There is the photographer who took the picture: H.C. Branch of Webster, Mass., his name burned into the lower right-hand corner of the photograph as well as printed below that. In the upper right-hand corner of the photograph the Stars-and-Stripes is waving in the wind - the flag would have been flying atop its pole only when school was in session. That's what the photograph says.

The postcard says other things. "Father says he did tell B.,” signed, "Margaret", in the lower left-hand corner in ink script with a decisive hand. Margaret addressed the postcard to Miss E.M. Hunter of Oakdale, Mass. "Father" is an intimacy not shared with others therefore Margaret is writing to her sister, otherwise she would write 'Mr. Hunter' or some other formality. Nevertheless, the whole thing irritates Margaret, causing her to underline "did" for emphasis and brevity. In the days before photography, one could write a complete message of at least three sentences on a postcard. Now the photograph has become the whole point of the exercise. You are not sending a message but a picture of a thing, which is supposed to represent ...what? This only adds to Margaret's impatience, of being told what to do and where. She squeezes her five-word message into a tiny space at the bottom of the postcard, as any composition is forbidden on the address side.

Then there is simply the letter "B". It is obvious this person is an intimate of Margaret, Mr. Hunter, and Miss E.M. Hunter, someone they know by the simple declaration of a letter. Maybe that’s her name. Or maybe her name is too long to fit into that tiny rectangle. Margaret smiles a little - maybe it’s her age but she cannot remember herself, after all this time, what B. stands for.

Margaret wraps her coat over her shoulders, opens the kitchen door, pausing for an instant to look back at the black threat of the telephone pinned to the wall. It had been there for over a year now and she still has not gotten used to it. Her instinct is to write, no matter how brief. A telephone call and it would have been over in a minute. No, it would not.

Margaret walks briskly under the rainbow canopy of leaves, passing in front of the Filmer School, trying to remember when the photograph on the postcard was taken. This, too, is a confusion in her mind as she descends the hill, turns the corner to the empty street, wanting to make certain her twin sister understands that Father had not let her down.

Mr. Healy is at the counter of the Webster, Mass. post office, his fist clenching his black ink pounder, confirming the beginning of the postcard's journey at 8 AM on September 26th, 1905, the ink smudging the lime-green Benjamin Franklin one-cent stamp.

According to the black ink stamp of the Oakdale, Mass. post office, the postcard arrived there at midnight on September 26th, 1905. Margaret imagines the card being delivered in the morning mail just as Mr. Hunter kisses his daughter on her dry cheek. "I'll be back Friday. Is there anything you need before I leave?"

Miss E.M. Hunter stares out the window and sighs. "No, nothing," she says.

"You really must make an effort, you know. Life goes on." Mr. Hunter is tempted to give her the full force of the facing life ‘square on’ lecture, until he sees her defiant brown eyes. He strokes her black hair tied tightly into a snood at the back of her head, picks up his suitcase and leaves.

He walks down the stone pathway, guarded on both sides by tall poplars, stops at the mailbox, takes out several letters which he slides into the side pocket of his suitcase, waves to his daughter and heads off for the railway station. The image of his daughter framed in the window would stay with him. So will his impatience. When is she going to snap out of this? He had not taught the girls to conduct their lives with such self-loathing. It has been over eight months now.

When his daughters were young, they were what twins should be. They dressed the same, had the same interests, they even had the same laughter. They were so alike he often could not distinguish the two of them. But when they started going to the Filmer School, a change came over her. While Margaret became more independent of spirit, more like him, her sister remained the same, more static, seemingly unable to move forward, unable to face life ‘square on’.

All the way to the Canadian border Mr. Hunter reads the French grammar textbook that Margaret had sent to him. If he is going to secure the contract to build the three ships and establish a base of operations in Québec City, he will have to speak to the government bureaucrats in the most glowing terms possible. Most of them speak English but it would not hurt to throw in a bit of their native tongue, just to show he does not think of them as colonials. Bureaucrats are the same in Canada or the United States - speak of the future and they'll forget the past.

After the train passes through Canadian customs, Mr. Hunter goes through his mail. Halfway through the stack of envelopes, he comes upon the postcard and stops, eyes frozen, a chill crawling up his spine. That damn school. "Father says he did tell B. Margaret."

He leans his head back and looks at the passing landscape. What a barren land this is - one evergreen tree after another, one rock after another, one wild stream after another, without form or order. At least some of these very pines will be used in the construction of his ships. Thus order will be created. Margaret had underlined "did". This he knows is not simply for emphasis. There was, in that short, swift line, a rebuke. As soon as he gets back, he will tell Margaret what he thinks of this intrusion. How impertinent of her!

Mr. Hunter is increasingly anxious as the train arrives in Ste. Foy, across the river from Québec City. On the ferry crossing the St. Lawrence River, he can see the Château Frontenac dwarfing the diminutive buildings of the old city below. He will have his usual room in the Château overlooking the city, the harbour, and the river flowing relentlessly to the ocean beyond. He is not anxious about the meetings tomorrow. He is thinking about his daughter still staring vacantly at the window.

However, Miss Hunter is no longer sitting at the window. She is pouring herself a brandy. She takes a sip, swirls it around in her mouth and swallows. It burns all the way down. She takes another, deeper sip. With Father not around to watch her every move, maybe she'll get tipsy as she has done many times since B.'s wedding when she was so angry with B. that she did not even join the receiving line. The thought of shaking the groom's hand and letting him kiss her sends a chill through her tense body. Worse was B.'s granite smile. Better to get drunk and remember the three of them – Margaret, Miss E.M. Hunter, and B. - at the window on the first floor of Filmer School watching Mr. Branch take the photograph of the building on a bleak morning in November.

It seems like such an odd time to take a photograph - the grass is brown, the trees barren. It will be the girls’ last year together, so it is fitting that it would have been at this time of the year, when Nature tells of time's passing. The three of them chuckle at the oddity of Mr. Branch, dwarfed by the large Putnam Marvel camera and tripod, carrying the equipment back and forth several times in front of the school, trying to find the perfect position for the photograph. "It would be faster if he did a drawing," says B.

Mr. Branch was the first person in Webster to buy a photo camera and set up his own studio. He had spent most of his time doing family portraits in the studio but now he is going about the town of Webster photographing the town hall, the library, the textile factory, the churches and the schools.

"I'm making a historical document of our town," Mr. Branch tells the class. "A hundred years from now, people will look at my photographs and will understand how we lived."

B., without raising her hand, stands up. "How will they know how we lived if you just photograph buildings? Where are the people?"

"Well, if you want," said Mr. Branch, "you can stand at the window while I take the photograph. But you'll have to be perfectly still..."

"Why?" B. shoots back.

"I have to expose the plate for at least thirty seconds. I doubt you could stand still for that long. If you don't, you'll just be a blur."

The students watch Mr. Branch on the street vanishing under the black cloak, adjusting the camera, and setting the lens. He looks odd: a headless body with his legs spread out wide, his back arched forward. B. is bored with the whole process and goes to her desk. "It's stupid," she says. "No one's ever going to care about a building like this." Margaret agrees and returns to her desk.

But Miss E.M. Hunter remains at the window, sympathetic to the painful process Mr. Branch is going through to get a single photograph. “He’s an artist,” she says. “There is no art without pain.” She feels another kind of pain as she continues looking out the window at Mr. Branch and hearing Margaret and B. sharing another secret. There is always a wall around those two, a wall over which she wishes she could throw Margaret; to be alone with B. and tell her everything. She smiles when finally Mr. Branch pulls the glass plate from the back of the camera and raises it over his head triumphantly, his hair disheveled, his face beaming.

Ten years later, Margaret is walking from the post office when she sees Mr. Branch in the middle of the street, his head buried under the black cloak, the large camera at the ready, documenting the construction of Webster’s new town hall. Margaret calls out to him but he does not emerge from under the cloak.

Margaret carries on down the street, stopping at the intersection. One must do that these days. There are more and more automobiles in the town and although you can hear them coming, at 20 miles per hour they can be on top of you before you know it. It’s a good thing she does stop because here’s one coming now like an angry invader bent on destroying tranquility. Without slowing down, the automobile turns the corner and speeds off down Main trailing a cloud of dirty smoke. Margaret is halfway across the street when she hears the squeal of tires, then the smashing of metal and glass. She turns quickly and sees the camera shattered in pieces and the silent body outline of Mr. Branch under the black cloak. Margaret runs back and stands over the black cloak, unsure of what to do. The driver is surveying the damage to his automobile, muttering, "What the hell was he doing in the middle of the street covered in a black cloak?" A stream of blood eddies out from under the black cloak. Margaret kneels down and pulls the black cloak away. She feels for Mr. Branch's pulse - nothing except for a satisfied smile on his face.

It is the first traffic fatality in the history of Webster. Margaret goes to Mr. Branch's studio to offer her condolences to the staff. The photographs Mr. Branch had taken of the town of Webster over the years are on display for anyone to purchase - at half price. There are large prints of buildings and the numerous postcards that Mr. Branch had made. All the photos are devoid of people.

As Margaret looks through the photographs, she thinks that anyone receiving such a postcard would think Webster is a ghost town. The postcard of the Filmer School appears; she takes it out of the box and looks at it intently. She recalls that day and what B. had said. “Without people, who would care?” It is the first time she has ever seen the photograph. After that November day she had forgotten about it. As she looks, she sees something in the first floor window just to the left of the Ionic columns. Ever so faint is the image of a white blouse. Margaret recalls that she and B. had walked away from the window, leaving her sister alone looking out the window.

That is why Margaret bought the postcard for two cents and why she mailed it to Miss E.M. Hunter. She wanted her sister to know that she was the only person to be frozen on the photographic glass plate that day, and that Father said he did tell B.

Margaret jumps with surprise when the telephone rings. Heaven's sake, must the whole neighbourhood know? She picks up the earpiece, places it gingerly to her ear, fearing the beetle would bite her, and leans into the mouthpiece. "Hello," she says, sensing her voice being sucked into the electromagnetic ether. A metallic voice answers back, "You have a long distance call from Montréal. Go ahead, please."

"Hello Margaret. How are you?"

No amount of electric echo can prevent Margaret from recognizing that voice. "Hello, B. You sound so far away."

"I’m far away, silly."

"Yes, I know." Always trying to make a point, as if she needs a lesson in geography. "You shouldn't be so extravagant, B. This must be costing you a fortune."

"I should think so. That's why I married for money, not love. You should know that. Now listen, you must come up for a visit. We have this beautiful home on Mount Royal overlooking the city. On a clear day, I can see all the way to the river. I use my binoculars to count your father's boats."

"They're ships, not boats. And you'll have more to count soon enough. Father is in Québec City signing a contract to build three more."

"My, my, the oceans won't be large enough to float them all."

Margaret grips the earpiece harder. Talking with B. is like playing chess in a state of perpetual check. She never lets you out to make another move nor does she make the decisive one.

"You know the story about Mr. Branch made the newspapers up here. Anyone who gets killed by an automobile these days makes front-page news. It's kind of funny, don't you think?"

"I fail to see the humour in it, B." Margaret no longer understands this woman who was once her best friend. It's more than just the distance or the distorted voice. Back then Margaret had found her rebellious spirit endearing, something to be admired. Now, it's an irritation.

"I don't mean that kind of funny," says B. "I mean funny in a tragic, ironic sense. The first photographer killed in the line of duty." The telephone line crackles, irritated by the thought. "I'm sorry, that was unkind. Mr. Branch didn't deserve that."

"So when are you coming?" asks Margaret.

"What? Coming down there, you mean?"

"Yes. Father says he spoke to you when he was in Montréal last week. He says you'd come down to Oakdale to see..."

"What are you talking about? I never saw your father. Good Lord, what would he possibly have to say to me?”

"To tell you we wanted you to come to see her," Margaret says, panic slowly gripping her.

"Is she still in self-exile?"

"Yes. She hasn't left the house since your wedding. That's why we want you to come...I don't know. Something happened that day."

"Something happened all right. My god, I'll never forget it. She made such a spectacle of herself with all her weeping and clinging to me like I was her mother."

"I've got to go, B."

"What?"

"I can't talk anymore. I have nothing more to say."

"But why does she want me there, Margaret? Why is it so important to her? Why is it so important to you?"

"Think about it, B. Think about all the times we left her behind. Think about why she cried at your wedding. I've never done this before but I have to hang up. Goodbye."

Margaret gently drops the earpiece on the hook, feeling her blood pulsing. She picks up the earpiece and tenderly dials as if it were a living thing. She listens to the interminable clicking. Finally, she hears the ringing tone, again and again. She whispers into the mouthpiece, her palms sweating, "Come on. Answer. I know you're there."

The ringing stalks its way through every corner of the house but Miss E.M. Hunter does not move toward it. She is in her bedroom at the dresser holding a blue silk scarf. She pulls it gently through her hand, the delicate fabric tingling her palm. She looks up at the mirror, her youthful beauty now faded with yellowing sadness, and recalls that day when everything changed…

"Oh, it's beautiful, B. Almost too beautiful to wear."

"Don't be silly."

"It must have cost you a fortune."

"Just put it on,” says B. making it sound more like an order. “And when you do, think about me while I am strolling along the banks of the Seine and sipping Chardonnay in a café on the Champs Elysées while some handsome dark-eyed Frenchman, call him Emile, ponders my legs. Finally, after I smile demurely at him, he will come to my table, kiss my hand and without asking he will sit down confidently, expectantly. And using my best French, I will lie to him and introduce myself as Gervaise. Then the night will begin."

Miss Hunter wraps the silk scarf around her neck, gathered up the ends and presses the scarf to her face as if she might use it to hide her tears. "How long will you be gone?" the scarf muffling the pain in her voice.

"I don't know. As long as it takes to forget this silly little town. You should leave, too. Get your father to give you the money and come join me. We could rendezvous in Rome. Yes, Rome! Let's make it Rome."

She envies B.'s insouciance but even if she wanted to go, Father would never give her the money. No, she will probably stay here for the rest of her life with this desire burning like hot coal inside her. She drops the scarf from her face and turned to her. "Kiss me, B." B. leans over and kisses her on the cheek. "There. Now, I've got to go. I'll send you postcards from every city I visit. I promise." And without looking back, she is out the door.

B. does not come back for another year, but she keeps her promise. In the end she sends fifty-four postcards. The last one from Marseilles says that Emile never appeared but Henri did and she is bringing him back to the States to marry him. Moreover, Henri is rich. After the wedding B. moves to Montréal where the culture better suits Henri's lifestyle. And it seems to have suited B.'s too.

The day B. gives Miss E.M. Hunter the scarf is the last time they will be alone together, the last chance Miss Hunter will have to speak the secret. She should have told B. where she wanted to be kissed. Not on her cold cheek. She wanted a kiss on her lips, a warm kiss that would convince B. to stay. Miss E.M. Hunter slips the silk scarf through her tightened palm, then wraps it twice around her neck. She looks at a photograph on the wall next to her vanity table. She steps closer to it, looks at it longingly, remembering that sunny day in June when she, Margaret and B. had graduated from high school and wanted the moment frozen for eternity.

A photograph can do that now. So with the world spread before them, the three have come to Mr. Branch’s studio. He is uncomfortable doing this. Buildings do not move, they do not laugh, and they give the photographer time to contemplate in ways humans do not. Nevertheless, B. has insisted, and when she insists to the point of spreading the bills out in front Mr. Branch, as if something illicit were about to take place, there are few who can say no. The three young women are wearing their most exuberant dresses, their hair perfectly cut and combed, their faces glowing. B. places herself in the middle, her head held high as if she were about to announce her conquering of the world. Just before Mr. Branch snaps the shutter, B. tosses her blue silk scarf around her neck and over her shoulder. She puts her arms around Margaret on one side and E.M Hunter on the other. E.M Hunter places her arms around B.’s waist and squeezes her tight. B. takes a deep breathe and E.M Hunter squeezes just a little more when the shutter snaps. B. breaks free of E.M. Hunter’s grasp, turns to her and says, “You’re such a child.” She bolts from the studio. As always, it is left to Margaret to comfort her sister.

Margaret listens to ringing over and over. Maybe this is a good sign. Maybe it means her sister has finally gotten out of that barren house, making the postcard meaningless.

It is not meaningless to Mr. Hunter, holding the postcard in his hand as he leans against the railing on the boardwalk, Le Château Frontenac casting a shadow over him and the rocky precipice then sloping out to the dark waters of the St. Lawrence. The day has been a success; the contract has been signed. In a year or two, three more of his ships will be sailing past this spot and out to the ocean. He needs this walk to stretch his legs and to smell the fresh salty air.

Mr. Hunter is tired of looking at this damn postcard. He had always felt there was something between his daughter and B., something sinister, unnatural. When they were in school together, it was always "B. showed Miss Allison a thing or two," or "B. wore this beautiful dress," or "B. wrote this wonderful poem," and on and on and on she'd go as if the girl were a damned saint. Then the crying when B. left for Europe, the postcards that she held with her fingertips, sniffing each one vainly seeking out the slightest aroma or the slightest touch.

And finally, there is her drunken, weeping display at B’s wedding. He can hardly look at her and is embarrassed to admit she is his daughter. What Mr. Hunter does not see is that Mr. Branch has taken Miss E.M. Hunter into an anteroom where he has the camera set-up to take photographs of the wedding party and guests. Mr. Branch has seen her distress and he comforts her as best he can. Still being a bachelor, he is somewhat uncomfortable around women and while he cannot deny some attraction for Miss E.M. Hunter, he cannot see her as anything other than the young, vibrant student at the Filmer School. Nevertheless, his tenderness works and shortly Miss Hunter feels better. She asks Mr. Branch to take her picture but he is unsure. “You know, some people feel that when taking their picture it steals a part of their soul.”

“It’s all right, Mr. Branch. I have no soul to steal.” She takes one end of the blue silk scarf, flips it over her shoulder and looks into the lens. Mr. Branch snaps the shutter.

Another vision comes to Mr. Hunter’s mind and when it does he grips the railing with both hands, as if holding on for dear life, preventing the oblivion he so desires. The last night. Yes, that last night comes to him with all the force of a steel hull. He is unable to understand Rachel’s ultimatum. He cannot comprehend what she is saying – or was it screaming? – about affection being more important than all the ships in the world, or all the money and all the useless things money has gathered around them. Mr. Hunter insists they have much more than material things. They have two beautiful daughters.

“Daughters! What do I care about daughters!” Rachel shouts, knowing they are in the next room and close enough to hear. “I never wanted children, especially a selfish pair like them! I told you that from the start. They were your idea. Never mine!”

When he returns home the following day, the maid hands him an envelope. He does not open it. He knows what the letter will say and pitches it into the fireplace.

That evening at dinner, as if he were chairing a meeting of the company directors, he informs Margaret and Elizabeth that their mother Rachel has left, that she is not coming back, and that he will make absolutely no attempt to find her or bring her back home. “You are both fifteen now and quite capable of taking care of yourselves. I expect you both to face life square on and I’m confident you will do just that.” The two girls laugh. This, of course, is no surprise to either of them and nothing much will change – such is the effect Rachel has had upon their lives. Except for one thing: Margaret wants Rachel’s room.

Mr. Hunter recovers his composure when he hears a voice from below calling out to him. There on the slope is a workman with a large canvas bag slung over his shoulder, speaking to him in French. The workman switches quickly into English: “You are not going to jump, I hope?” Mr. Hunter says he will not. With that assurance, the workman tips his hat to him, then descends the slope, disappearing among the rocks and shrubs.

Mr. Hunter has had enough of this bloody postcard. He holds it between his fingers then flicks it over the edge. A gentle breeze carries it upwards for a moment then it flutters down like a dead butterfly, vanishing into the rocks as he conjures up the image of his daughter sitting at the window, staring with empty eyes at the poplars swaying in the wind.

The poplars are the only things that Margaret likes about this place. To her, it has always been the 'escape house', a place of exile with the poplars standing guard, where Father could forget the home in Webster where her mother had walked out one morning with one suitcase, never to return. Margaret had stayed behind, in the shallow hope that one day her mother might come back. But Father wanted no part of the memories, no part of the bitterness each room offered up. As she nears the house, she can see that her sister is not sitting at the window. Well, that's a relief.

The house is quiet when Margaret enters. She goes into the living room and sees a bottle of brandy and an empty glass. She calls out for her sister. Maybe she has gone out but more than likely she's sleeping it off. She climbs the curved stairway, walks down the hall, taps lightly on the bedroom door, and opens it to an empty bed. Good then, she is not sleeping it off. Margaret sees the window wide open, the wind billowing the chiffon curtains. She goes to the window and is about to close it when she notices a blue silk scarf tied tightly around the latch. She pulls at the scarf to bring it in but it will not budge. It must be caught on the vines. Why would her sister have done this to such a beautiful scarf? She leans out the window. Maybe it's the wind or maybe it's the horror that takes her breath away, for dangling lifeless is Miss E.M. Hunter, the blue silk scarf wrapped around her neck.

The postcard does not rest in the rocks for long. Marcel Lantier sees it flutter down and once he finishes picking up several shards of glass, he climbs over a rock and finds it easily. He looks up to the man who threw it, leaning over the balustrade looking down at him with a steely glare. Their eyes meet for an instant then the man walks away disappearing forever as if into the clouds.

Marcel Lantier loves this job. He always looks forward to the autumn clean-up duty in the steep rocky embankment below the boardwalk of the Château Frontenac. Of all the city jobs, this one told of mysteries. Over the years he has found many treasures that people had thrown over the balustrade for reasons he would spend many hours contemplating: coins from around the world, broken champagne glasses, watches, wedding rings, cufflinks, as well as letters and postcards. He wonders why anyone would throw cufflinks over the edge. Perhaps a gift to a spurned lover? Or perhaps a lover discovered, the cufflinks the evidence? There is a postcard he finds one day in 1901 with a photograph of the Château Frontenac and a note: an American man writing to his wife of the wonderful visit he is having here in "Kaybec", stamped and addressed. Why, Marcel wonders, was it never sent?

The postcard he finds this September afternoon in 1905 is not unusual except for the one sentence written below the photograph: "Father says he did tell B. Margaret." Marcel smiles, anticipating the many hours of thought unraveling the mystery of this one.

That night after dinner, when Lantier sits down to continue his reading of the collected works of Emile Zola, he uses the postcard as his bookmark. He continues doing this as he reads his way through Zola's novels each time finishing with Les Quatre Evangiles then starting all over again with Thérèse Raquin. He continues doing this until his 69th year when on a February night in 1942, Madame Lantier hears the thump of a book falling on the floor. The dark hallway floor creaks as she goes to Marcel's reading room where she finds him with a contented smile on his dead face. On his chest is a copy of La Bête Humaine open at the first chapter. Madame Lantier removes the book, holds her hand to his chest then kisses him on his warm forehead. Madame Lantier smiles. Maybe he was still thinking of the mysteries he wanted to solve. She places the bookmark in the centre of the page and closes the book.

Madame Lantier dies only two years later from what her family and friends say is a broken heart. Their daughter Aline sells the house but she keeps the boxes of cufflinks, watches and wedding rings that her father had collected over his many years of scouring the embankment below Le Château Frontenac. She also keeps the complete novels of Emile Zola out of respect for her father.

The books remain untouched in Aline's basement until 1992 when her grandson, Jean, opens a bookstore. He has renovated an old building on Rue Petit Champlain at the base of the embankment sloping down from the boardwalk of the Château Frontenac. Jean is certain that an 1895 French edition of the collected works of Emile Zola would be a quick seller and he places the volumes on a prominent shelf in his new bookstore.

There they remain for thirteen years until one September day, Carl Hunter enters the bookstore, a gust of fresh autumn wind following him in. Jean senses the young man is English, and that he is the last person in the world interested in reading Zola in French. He is wrong. Carl, a student at Tufts University in Boston, is studying French literature and has a particular interest in Zola. He speaks perfect French and for him reading Zola in the original French would be a wonderful experience. But Carl is curious to know how Jean obtained such a rare collection of Zola’s works.

Jean is flattered that this young man would take such an interest. Jean also cannot deny his attraction to him: the twinkle of his brown eyes; his long, flowing salt-and-pepper hair; and inviting youthfulness of his smile. However, even in these modern times, one must be discreet, and cautious. Carl follows Jean quite willingly to the back of the building where the rocky slope rises up to the boardwalk of Le Château Frontenac. It’s almost with the tone of a dare that Jean invites Carl to climb the seemingly endless stairway to the boardwalk. As they do, Jean tells Carl of the work his great-grandfather did cleaning the slope of not only the garbage but also of the cufflinks, watches, wedding rings and postcards that he collected and kept.

They reach the boardwalk, both out of breath. For Carl, the energy spent seems like the aftermath of love itself. The sky is pure cerulean and the fading sunlight is refracting off the trees and rooftops in piercing golden rays. The harsh wind from the east tells of the coming of winter. Carl tells Jean that it was from here, according to his father, that his great-grandfather would come to look out over the harbour and view the ships he had built as they set off for the Atlantic. He made a fortune building those ships and then lost it all when most of them were torpedoed during the First World War. “I wonder,” says Jean, “if our great grandfathers ever met here?” Carl chuckles at such an idea. From everything he’s ever heard about “the great shipbuilder”, he would hardly have spoken to anyone literally and figuratively “below his station in life”.

With the coming darkness, as night stretches into the long hours of evening, Carl and Jean come closer and closer together, returning to Jean’s apartment above the bookstore for dinner, wine and lovemaking.

In the morning, Jean shows Carl his great-grandfather’s boxes of found articles. Carl picks out a few of the artifacts, handling each one with tender respect. He knows these things represent lives long since gone, of hopes long since dashed, and of messages never delivered. “Why would anyone throw away a postcard? Some of them have stamps on them,” says Carl.

“And some of them have stories,” says Jean. “That’s why my great-grandfather kept them.”

By the time Carl is ready to leave a couple of days later, he and Jean have fallen in love. There are promises of a return visit over Christmas and after that? Who knows. Carl walks along the boardwalk taking in a last view of the city and the St. Lawrence as the fresh autumn wind blows through his hair. He is carrying a box containing the complete set of Zola’s novels that Jean has given to him as a gift – a token of his affection. Carl stops at the balustrade to look out to where the Hunter ships once sailed out to the Seven Seas. He leans forward to take in the smell of the wind, to inhale it deep into his lungs, when suddenly he hears a voice in French saying, “You’re not going to jump, I hope?” Startled, Carl looks down to a man coming up between some rocks on the slope. He has a large canvas bag slung over his shoulder, a sly smile on his reddened face and a mischievous twinkle in his eye. Carl shakes his head. The man tips his hat to him then disappears among the rocks and bushes.

Carl is not able to start reading any of the Zola novels until Thanksgiving when his family traditionally gathers in the ancestral home in Oakdale, on the outskirts of Boston. The Hunter clan, as Carl has been told, has been coming here for Thanksgivings and Christmases, Easters and baptisms, weddings and funerals since the turn of the century - the 20th of course, for it was now the 21st and nothing much has changed. Carl has been told many things about this place and as he walks down the stone pathway with the tall poplars on each side bending in the harsh November wind, he pauses to look up at the third floor window where, he has been told, his great-Aunt Elizabeth, the one who had been afraid of heights, had committed a final solitary act of defiance. Carl continues on to the house knowing that every family has at least one secret that is never talked about or that history had simply swallowed up. There is, however, a difference this year, for Jean is walking beside him more nervous than he has ever been before in his life. Regardless of the Carl’s sincere assurances, Jean says, “This is America. They crucify gays here.” “No we don’t,” says Carl with a sly smile. “Besides Massachusetts isn’t America. “

As soon as the door opens, Jean’s apprehensions vanish. Carl’s father, mother, sisters, and several aunts and uncles welcome him like an old friend and it is not long before he has a glass of wine in hand and is being peppered with questions about the romance of Québec City. He has little time to catch his breath.

The following day, Carl takes Jean into the sanctum that is Elizabeth’s room. It has been left exactly as it was the day she hanged herself from the window. This is the promise that Margaret made and a legacy that the family has held like an albatross through the generations.

Draped over the chair in front of the vanity table is a blue silk scarf. On the wall next to the vanity are two photographs. Jean is curious and looks closely at each one. The first one, Carl explains, is of his great-aunts when they graduated from high school in 1905. The woman in the middle with the scarf around her neck was their friend B. “She married three or four times. All ended in divorce. Apparently, she died penniless in Montreal sometime in the 30s. Aunt Margaret became a newspaper publisher. At one time she owned half the newspapers in the State. She was seventy when she died. The grand-dame of the family. This photo is of Elizabeth apparently taken at B’s first wedding. Does she look happy or what.”

Jean is up close to the photos, looking intently at each one. He points to the group shot. “That grip your great-aunt has around B? That’s not the grip of a friend. She looks like she’s in pain. And the scarf,” he says pointing back-and-forth at each. “It’s the same scarf.” Carl moves in on the photos. He nods, “Well, what do you know.”

That night after everyone has gone to bed, Carl lays some logs on the fire and settles down finally to read some Zola. He has brought along his favorite, one he has read before in English but never in French - La Bête Humaine. He watches the fire devouring the logs, the embers falling below the grate and emitting warmth to his face. He feels a chill as if a hand is moving listlessly up his back. He turns, feeling the room is cold, the heat unable to penetrate. He senses something in the room but there is no noise except for the crackling of the fire and the rustling of the leaves of the poplars. He smiles, assuring himself that certain things do not exist. He leans back in the chair, warms his feet near the fire, and opens the book. The postcard flutters into his lap. He picks it up and brings it closer to the shimmering light of the fire. He reads the hand-written note: “Father said he did tell B., Margaret.” He turns it over and reads to whom it was addressed.

Carl comes into Elizabeth’s room. He looks at the photograph of Elizabeth and her sad, watery eyes. Then at the other: the intensity of Elizabeth’s grip and the subtle grimace on B’s face. He places the postcard on the vanity, turns off the light and closes the door.

AN IMPROBABLE PLACE

Flowing along a gravel grey road through a land so flat you’d think you are in Saskatchewan, kicking up a stream of dust that was once the sediment of the great sea that covered this land thousands of years ago, you can feel that you are the only person left in the world, the air so fluid you feel that you might drown. You can, of course, feel that way on the corner of St.Catherine and St.Laurent on a Saturday night. Here at an intersection of endless cornfields, you might think that culture or art of any kind, could not possibly exist. It all looks empty and desolate and we all judge books by their covers and culture by its sacred cows.

This cornfield is in the middle of the triangle that forms the southeastern end of Ontario with the western tip of Québec. Bounded to the north by the Ottawa River and to the south by the St. Lawrence, the great sea left behind a black gold of its millions of years here: a land rich for farming and painting and photography and sculpture. How rich? If you went along the internet highway to the website for ARTSEO, (www.artseo.com ) you would find that this region is home to more than 205 artists and 12 active galleries. If you were standing at the corner of Bloor & Yonge, you would not think it odd at all to have 200 artists working in the area. But out here is a different story altogether. How is it that under this big sky there are so many artists creating work that is at once of this place and not of this place at all? Is the critical mass of artistic expression in this region a pure accident of circumstance or a perfect reflection of this place and its disappearances?

Along one of these roads near the town of Alexandria, Brenda Kennedy who has been has been exhibiting her paintings for over thirty years. A graduate of the Nova Scotia College of Art & Design, her work is in both public and private collections in Canada, the United States and Europe. Not surprisingly, in a painting like Oatfield it is the big sky that has inspired Kennedy and which speaks to her sense of this place where the sky dominates and the open road vanishes into the distance. Says Kennedy: “Artists in the city yearn for this kind of isolation. But out here, you have in fact gotten off the bus. After a while you can’t figure out why you’re here in the country. Isolation is not something you have to yearn for here – it’s part of our daily lives.”

There are complex feelings explored in Kennedy’s Where She Sat. This isn’t just any private space – it is one that holds deep emotional significance. Rather than rendering a maudlin portrait of a lost loved one – in this case a stepmother – Kennedy exercises remarkable restraint in giving us minimal evidence of a full life with an almost forensic eye: the chair, well-used even though we are given only an edge of it; the window looking out to the world and its dying light; and the telephone with its wire coiled suggesting the unconscious nervous fidgeting that often accompanies long phone conversations. This is a story of the death of a loved one, the dying of the light and the first of many disappearances.

For one: the Grand Hotel of Caledonia Springs. In its heyday between 1875 and 1915, the Grand Hotel stood proudly over a village of pavilions, rooming houses, a spring-fed heated swimming pool and a bottling plant whose Seltzer Water won first prize at the Chicago World Fair in 1893.

The violins and pianos have long stopped playing. Like the ruins of ancient Mayan temples hidden amid the jungle’s undergrowth, the remains of a stately hotel and its mineral springs are lost amid the overgrown bush about 10 kilometres southeast of Alfred, Ontario. There is little to recall the luxurious Victorian lifestyle of the gentry who came by train from Ottawa and Montréal more than a century ago to bathe in the warm, welcoming waters of the mineral springs. Only the deteriorating stone walls of the old bottling plant can be glimpsed like a ghost house lurking from the glare of the present. All that remains are the cement sidewalks now leading to nowhere, unlike the sidewalk along Home Street in Vankleek Hill from which you turn off into a copse of trees behind the farm co-op store and take the curving dirt road up the incline to the red brick building that is the Arbor Gallery of Contemporary Art (www.arborgallery.org ). Here the chances are excellent that you will see just about anything – a place in a perpetual state of surprise of paintings, drawings, sculpture, and photography.

It was here at the Arbor Gallery that I was introduced to the photography of Jeannine St. Amour. She fixes an intense gaze upon seemingly ordinary Nature – ice, marsh reeds, mud - and shows us a Nature of fantastical abstraction. We can list the elements, the details that appear in her photos, and yet are unable to explain why the image haunts us. We imagine we will get closer to the heart of the work instead of merely staring at it from across a divide: the gap between a poetic or visual language.
“I want my abstract work to be an experience of exploration for the eyes which holds endless possibilities,” says St. Amour. “I aim to provoke the imagination of the viewer, and as a result, create a pause in their life.”

The Curator at the Arbor, Jessica Sarrazin, (M.F.A – University of Windsor ’05) oversees a dizzying programme of exhibitions and art classes at the Arbor Gallery. There is an average of 12-16 group and solo exhibitions a year covering myriad themes and disciplines: one month you could walk in to find works with a Water theme and the next month, it could be Feminism. There is not a day that goes by where there is not something on the walls, on the floors, in the windows; on canvas or burlap; photo paper or handmade paper; mortar or rope. The courses include drawing, painting, mixed media, photography and framing workshops. It is a testament to Sarrazin’s intelligent hard work and to the dedication of the artists that the Arbor Gallery was recently awarded a grant from the Ontario Trillium Foundation.

The Arbor Gallery dares to move into the future with the art graduates of the University of Ottawa. Several of these artists were given the opportunity to flex their young artistic muscles in the summer of 2009 in the Incubator show: Amy Mackay’s Tire Path, a plaster-cast sculpture recording the passing of a car; Brad Snow’s abstract birch tree paintings; Emily Sova’s drawings of the mapping of rural roads; and Veronique Guitard’s photographs of miniature spoons, knick-knacks conjuring up the personality of the owners. There can be nothing more thrilling for an artist than to have their work seen in a gallery for the first time and the fact that the Arbor gives young artists this experience is a testament to its role in the community and its chutzpah.

Sarrazin’s curatorial skills mean that she maintains a high level of artistic integrity in the exhibitions without having a bureaucratic haze imposing its will. There is simply Sarrazin’s calm assurance that whoever comes through the door with a work of art under their arm will find a clean white wall to hang it on and a receptive audience.
Artists always move into realms that are seemingly foreign to their environments. In the paintings of Marianne Faguy, the spindly human figures can barely stand upright seemingly consumed or about to be consumed by the intense glare of the sun or of television. Her characters occupy a world which resembles Mars more than the lush green hills which meet her eyes every day.

On the other hand, Erica Taylor’s, Mare’s Nest introduces Surrealist influences into the mix. The polymer clay miniature horses curled in a nest of horsehair harkens to a distant time of Meret Oppenheim’s Fur-covered cup, plate and spoon (1936). Taylor has ‘filled the cup’. The whimsy of Mare’s Nest belies a sense of deliberate dislocation of reality, of the weirdly conceived: a nest of horse hair is entirely possible but ‘hatched horses’ is in another cup of tea altogether. Perhaps Taylor’s background as a professional sign painter has much to do with it – advertising in any form requires the juxtaposition of the bizarre with another bizarre.

For anyone who believes in ghosts the lands around Alexandria, Glen Robertson, L’Original, Glen Nevis, Blue Corners, St. Eugêne is where you might find them. Until I came to an intersection south of Dalkeith, I never believed in them myself. Staring at the one-room schoolhouse that guards the intersection, you can hear the clanging of the bell under the teacher’s steely gaze, eager for her children to continue reading Richard the Third, ringing them in from the field where Henry has just hit a line drive into the gap next to the quivering aspen and as he slides through the grey dirt into second base he is heard shouting, “My kingdom for a hit!”

South of Vankleek Hill, the Rigaud River rises then flows east to the province of Québec near St. Eugene. This is not a river of romance. It is very muddy with such a non-reflective surface that it has the effect of a liquid brown crypt. You can watch the motionless river from the high bank as it flows into Québec and ponder not only what this water may contain but what is in the building behind you – The Skelly Gallery.

Owned and operated by Elisabeth Skelly, whose perpetual grin makes you think she has been told a joke that she is just too busy to retell, the Gallery occupies the top floor of a converted coach house with the main floor being the ‘bread-and-butter’ business of a frame shop. Skelly curates four shows a year, two in the spring, two in the autumn. Thus by the time you wend your way from the attractions of the river up the slope to the gallery, you may have a difficult time getting through the front door and it’s not because of security. It’s because the gallery is packed, which puts another myth to rest – that the country is not a place to appreciate art or to meet people who love it. On this day the art is ThRecycle, an exhibit made entirely from recycled materials.
Mac Williamson collected fruit juice can lids for 10 years, eventually creating The Iron Curtain: 620 metal lids held together with keychain wire. The message is clear but sunlight and wind reconfigure any notion of totalitarianism as suggested by the title to create a vibrant, self-reflective curtain. The temptation is to fold or rattle the curtain to make the sound of chimes.

Susan Valyi’s Industrial Urn is sub-titled 1198891, Serial box,Industrial Urn, Cyclepath or Mac’s old Peugeot. Valyi says of it, “My son, my neighbor and I took an entire retired old Peugeot bike and chopped it to fit into a display case…The serial number is on the stand and it looks like a plaque. The idea was a tribute to old technology inspired by the way scrap metal is compacted for transportation and recycling.” It may not seem unusual for artists in the country to be concerned with environmental issues. But recycling is easy; it does not require any significant sacrifice. It does, however, ensure that whatever is soon to disappear may find another life as art or as truly another life.

On Canada Day 1989, Margaret Hawking returned to her home on Main Street, Glen Sandfield, Ontario. She’d been given a souvenir Canadian flag to wave at the Canada Day celebrations at Dalkeith Centennial Picnic. She wedged the flag into the side beam near the door, swept a few leaves off the porch and went inside for about five minutes. All this was seen by Margaret’s neighbor, Abby Pratt, who waved at Margaret as she left her house. Abby asked why she wasn’t taking the station wagon. Margaret said she was meeting someone and it wasn’t necessary. “Besides, it’s out of gas.” Abby was so pleased - finally, maybe a new man in Margaret’s life to quell the loneliness of 15 years of widowhood. Margaret has not been seen nor heard from since. According to the police, Margaret Hawking, 44, has vanished. Ever since, Abby and some of her friends keep the grass cut and try to make sure things don’t get too rundown in the hope that one day Margaret will return.

When I first saw Driftwood by David Beddoe I thought the young woman of this compelling portrait could be Margaret. I am more than likely wrong; the country air creates fanciful delusions. Nonetheless, the woman of this painting is hiding from someone – covering her head in a hoody while sitting not within the lush bucolic hills in the distance but on a perfect rock, rounded by millions of years of erosion, surrounded by the bomb-effect of a forest clear cut. Who says one only feels alienation in the city?

There is, however, another aspect Beddoe brings to this and the other paintings in this series: he paints on the burlap of used coffee sacks. The weave for this burlap is tighter than the kind you might purchase in a garden store. It creates a fine texture to the surface and a warm hue.

Floating over a grass-covered runway the Great Blue Heron lifts for take-off, its slow, powerful wings beat like the rhythm of an abandoned prehistoric monster returning to its home centuries ago. Is this creature like a distant star whose light takes billions of years to reach us and thus what are we are seeing is the event as it was billions of years ago? Its silent lift-off has taken over from the drone of combat aircraft within the huge concrete triangle formed by what are the remains of an abandoned military airfield used to train combat pilots during World War II. The triangle shaped airfield is so huge it can be seen clearly on GoogleEarth. At earth level, however, the concrete is overgrown with wild grasses, trees and the flight of the Great Blue.

The conventional wisdom is this location, about 50 kms. west of Montréal, was far enough away from the prying eyes of spies and that it best replicated the terrain of Germany where these men were soon to make bombing runs. I puzzle over this: I’ve been to Germany and it doesn’t look anything like this place. I suspect it may have been because of the good company of the villagers of nearby St. Eugêne who may have taken in these young men on a lonely Saturday night or for Thanksgiving dinner, their last before they went off to disappear in the war.

Is this an improbable place for a military airfield? For the Grand Hotel? For 205 artists? For the Arbor Gallery? It may be. However, the chances are very good that there are thousands of such improbable places right across the country. The proximity of Montréal and Ottawa may account for the artistic impulse of the Prescott-Russell and Montegérie region. These artists could be nothing more than refugees who could not stand the noise or these cities simply weren’t big enough for us. Whatever the reason, the truth remains that there is a critical mass of artistic enterprise within this triangle that is challenging, innovative, and stimulating and if the next time you find yourself at a deserted blacktop surrounded by cornfields and ghosts, look over your shoulder into the distance – probably that’s where you’ll find it.

**********************************************************************
In a report compiled by Hill Stratégies Research (January 2010), one-quarter of the 140,000 artists in Canada reside in small and rural municipalities (36,500 artists, or 26%). This is almost exactly the same number of artists that reside in the cities of Toronto and Montreal combined (35,700).
Visual artists and craftspeople are the artists who are most likely to reside in small and rural municipalities. Almost one-half of artisans and craftspersons (47%) reside in small and rural municipalities, while 35% of painters, sculptors and other visual artists do so.
Census data is available for the 261 small and rural municipalities with 40 or more artists. These 261 small and rural municipalities are home to 21,100 artists, representing 15% of all Canadian artists


All the works are reproduced with the kind permission of each of the artists.

Jailbirds

The rock dove soared over the grey wall, caught a draft of warm air that lifted him higher over the courtyard to the centre block building and beyond that the North Star. With the beacon secure in sight, he dipped his left wing and allowed the up-draft to spin him in a wide circle, spiralling upward over the dome of the rotunda, over the concrete exercise yard covered with sparkling broken glass. The rock dove stopped flapping his wings, dived into gravity through the jagged hole in the skylight and into the damp, brittle air of the tier block. He glided along the length of the tier block, and when he felt the others had seen enough, he turned sharply and rose up to the rusty steel rafters. He landed gently, his claws gripping the cold metal. He fluttered his wings, shaking off the dust then tucked them to his warm body. He looked at the other birds, at least fifty here, none interested in him. They had all arched their quivering green necks to look down at the two men invading their nest with the thunderous echoes of footsteps. They have not seen the likes of these in a very long time.
Rocky Smith led the way, followed by Lee who was looking up at the rock doves, marvelling at how this place had become an aviary.
“I find it fascinating that we call corrections a service. Who exactly is being served?” Smith said, his tall, strapping frame cutting through the harsh rays of morning light streaming in through the dirty windows rising three tiers high. His eyes squinted, always moving, his salt-and-pepper hair waves straight back after years of facing the wind on the bridge of HMS Chiswick.
“What is it you want done?” asked Lee, taking in the aroma of aged urine that tickled his nostrils.
Rocky started up the spiral staircase towards the hundred eyes of the rock doves studying him. “Mr. Robinette, I wish you to clean up the entire tier block. Two tiers, twenty-six cells, topped with a penthouse level of 12; sixty-four cells in all, each one four-by-eight feet. I have some archival photographs taken in the late 19th century for you to look at. It will give you an idea of what St. Vincent-de-Paul Penitentiary looked like in its prime.”
“This place had a prime?” said Lee.
They reached the second tier and walked along the narrow gangway past the cells. Lee became aware of the sound of his work boots on the metal grate. No matter what pace he kept or how hard his boots struck the metal, it would in future always sound to him like marching.
“A fine point, Mr. Robinette. Nevertheless, a good scrubbing, some sandblasting and some paint will do excellently well. Children will come with their parents and pose for photographs in the cells, acting as if they are hardened criminals. Then they will go home, turn on their television sets and scream for the death of the first criminal they see. We’ll also make money renting the place out as a movie set. Prison films - a wonderful, popular genre.”
Rocky stopped at one of the cells and pulled back the heavy steel door. “These were built for silence. Here you were supposed to pray to God for guidance, to contemplate the error of your ways. Who could pray in here? Indeed, who could stay silent in here without first going stark, raving mad? That, of course, was the point.” He entered the cell, his body filling the narrow space. Lee hesitated. Over twelve years of house construction and renovation he had been in small spaces like this before but never one without windows. Rocky smiled at him and said, “It’s all right. I won’t lock you in.”
Lee stepped inside the cell, his lips pursed, his bright blue eyes looking amused and watchful as if anything might jump out at him. Rocky could see that Lee was strong across the shoulders, befitting his profession. The rest of him was spindly, his frame diminished within the narrow cell. Rocky wondered how long it would take for the pressure of the turquoise walls to do their magic. Lee stretched out his arms, touching the opposite walls, feeling the years of dampness.
“Not a lot of room is there?” said Rocky. “Now then, if you come across any lettering, words, names or poems etched into the walls, it’s imperative to leave them there. Do not sand them away.”
The cell imposed an intimacy that made Lee nervous. He backed out to the gangway. “And all this for a museum?”
“Exactly,” said Rocky as he came out of the cell and leaned over the railing. “I used to be a warden. Now I’m a curator. Imagine. I want you to recreate the worst possible place in the world, the very last place you would ever want to stay…right here.“
Lee watched several tufts of feather float down from the rafters through the rays of sunlight. “A warden?”
“I trained with Her Majesty’s Prison Service until I became too controversial for them. I came to Canada and your Corrections Service allowed me to establish the very first minimum security prison for young offenders. They were a fine group of fellows. I know those fine fellows were murderers. Nonetheless, they were geniuses, each and every one. I would go to the courthouse, watch their 30-second trials and collect them as they were taken to the paddy wagons.”
“You selected convicts for your prison?”
“Indeed.” said Rocky. “I collared a mathematician once…murderous fellow…killed his grandmother in a wild shooting spree. He became a poet,
published no less, and a very good one. Not a Keats by a long shot, but dramatic nonetheless. We produced plays, magazines, books, comic books, literacy classes. We almost got our hands on a movie camera but when the department got wind of that, well, they swooped down on us and gobbled up all the equipment. Now that would’ve been a movie!” Rocky suddenly marches off along the gangway. “I must be off. If you have any questions you know where to find me. It goes without saying that it’s government so take as much time as you need. Have a fine morning, Mr. Robinette.”
Rocky’s footsteps faded into the dull grey distance of the cellblock. Then, Lee was alone with the silence, except for the soft fluttering above. He looked up at the line of black eyes peering down at him. “Sorry,” he whispered while admiring the oddity of their choosing this prison rather than any number of barns just on the other side of the river.
He spent the rest of the morning carrying in his equipment from his truck and set up a long table on the main floor of the tier block. He didn’t bother bringing in any of his portable lights; it seemed there was more than enough tawny gold light penetrating through the weathered windows and the shattered skylight high above, making it feel as if it was always sunset.
None of the guys in Lee’s crew wanted to take this job even though it was a government contract. Lee didn’t care. He hadn’t minded not being around those guys since last summer when he began seeing the world through a viewfinder. He watched one of the rock doves swoop down from the rafters and land in front him with an expectant tilt of the head, like an old friend asking where he’s been all this time. Lee broke off a piece of muffin and offered it in the palm of his hand. The rock dove snapped it up. “You want some coffee with that?” said Lee offering out his thermos cup. The rock dove seemed insulted and flew back up to the rafters, his neck shining in the golden light.
Lee entered a cell. He ran his hand over one of the walls. There were scores of cracks - each would have to be cemented, sanded and painted. The only grouting needed would be in the corners and along the joins in the floors. The bolts holding the bar frames would have to be replaced, the bars sandblasted and spray-painted. The tip of his forefinger touched something that suggested a pattern. He ran his finger over the groves that formed one letter, then another: angel fin be/as 5255 ftw. Lee moved in closer, trying to understand each word but without success. The next set of groves: 32,000- 48,000- 80,000, with a check mark next to each. A final 90 dangled, unfinished.
Each night for the next two weeks, Lee showered twice: first when he got home and again after supper. “You look like a prune,” Shirley said when Lee came into the living room, only a towel around his waist, his long brown hair cascading around his neck. She released a glass of wine to him; he took a sip, savouring it. It was the first time since the summer that they had been so close but Shirley grabbed it back like the swing of an axe. “Why are you doing this job alone?”
“I told you, none of the others guys wanted it.”
“You own the company.”
“I want to do it this way. I’m tired of them,” he said, trudging up the stairs.
Lee lay in bed, pouring over several photo contact sheets, zooming into each image, trying to recall the forest trail he had taken, the rocky slope he had climbed, or the abandoned farmhouse he had passed on that misty morning in July. The image he was looking at didn’t look like anything he could recall: the cedar trees were a dark, lurid green and the stream shimmered in silver over the rocks. Looking at these images, he doubted he would ever find those locations again and he was sad, wrapped in the warmth of that time.
Lee had pleaded with Shirley that they go somewhere different – New York, the Grand Canyon, anywhere but another two weeks on Lake Weir and the endless rounds of beer, horseshoes, barbecues and target practice. One of his crew, Drake, had gone paranoid on them after several contractors’ trucks were hijacked for their equipment. Using his contacts from his lengthy record on the street, Drake picked up seven .41 calibre Derringers for each of the vans in the fleet. Now on their holiday, he wanted everyone to take target practice.
Lee laughed. “These aren’t for Rambo,” he said. “They’re for Bat Masterson.” Drake tilted his head like a quizzical dog. “It was a 1950s western. Gene Barry? You never saw it? He wore a black derby, vest, black jacket, carried a cane, and his gun was an ivory handled Derringer that he never used.”
“How old are you, Lee?”
“Old enough to know what videotape is. I left that stupid pop-gun in the van and it’s staying there. Try not to kill any squirrels, Drake. I’m going to do my own shooting.”
Lee had bought a Yashica-D double reflex with the larger 2¼ negative because he wanted to feel like he was taking a photograph, not a snapshot. It took him away every morning at sunrise. He drove along roads he had never taken before, past the rolling green hills of the Canadian Shield. He looked for dead-ends, discovering that there were always pathways that carried on into the deep forest. It became a daily passion of securing images in the viewfinder, of not clicking the shutter instantly, of waiting for the light to shift just a little, and of panning the camera ever so slightly one way or another seeking a line or a shadow or an empty space he could not explain. When he found that moment, he clicked the shutter. Each day he drove further and further away from Lake Weir, deep into the hills where the rocks had taken over, until near the end of the holiday he had not returned to the cottage in time for supper. He was sitting on the top of a cliff a hundred kilometres to the northwest watching the sunset.
When he returned, Shirley was on the balcony waiting for him in the shadows. “You’d rather do that then spend time with me?”
Lee shot her a look that stabbed. “I was the one who wanted the two of us to go to the Grand Canyon. So here we are.”
“Some of us are. Others, not so much.”
“I told you,” he said. “I can’t take listening to them anymore, the same conversations. Do you want to see the photographs I’ve been taking?”
Her dark eyes blazed at him for only a moment before he heard the sounds of her retreating footsteps on the porch then the screen door slamming shut. For another second Lee brooded on the swinging door, then walked back to his car, and drove home.
Back at work, Lee avoided his usual stop at the Tim Horton’s where his crew would gather for their morning bitch session. Instead, for the first time he drove off the highway into the dirt parking lot of Napoleon’s Coffee Shop.
The walls of Napoleon’s were sickly green, aged in steam and fat. Lee walked by the truckers, none of them looking up at him. This was the feeling he wanted: to have no one know him so he could think of this as his last morning of freedom, his last cup of fresh coffee, the last time he would breathe the fresh September wind blowing in the mist off the river. The waitress behind the counter greeted him with a twist of a smile and a coffee. He had never seen such alabaster skin or such sad eyes. He went back to his truck, thinking the waitress’ legs would be the last and the most beautiful he would ever see again.
Lee didn’t drive through the main gate of the prison. He chose to walk through the tunnel under the perimeter wall, out to the wide courtyard of cracked concrete, surrounded on all sides by rusted razor wire looping along the top of the wall. Above him a rock dove soared upwards, beating its wings, landing gingerly on the shattered glass of the skylight, then vanishing inside. Lee continued towards the centre block rotunda, the hub for the five tier blocks that fanned out like the spindles of a wheel. Two of those spindles, three storeys of gray-black granite, enveloped Lee as he moved closer to the rotunda. It swallowed him whole as he stepped through the steel door.
“I say, old chap, how are you doing?” Rocky Smith called out from the far end of the tier block. Do empty prisons need wardens? thought Lee. “Haven’t heard from you in a few days,” said Rocky, his footsteps echoing into the infinity of the tier block.
“I’ve been busy. It’s a big job.”
“That’s not why I’m here, my good man.” said Rocky, walking around the large table, curious over Lee’s drills, sanders, brushes, bags of plaster, cement, spatulas, chisels and gloves covered in white dust and all arranged in perfect rows. “I’m not expecting a report. I thought you might be interested in those photographs. You know, the prison all spit-and-polish, everyone dying on the inside. It’s fascinating material. You really must come and see. I insist. We’ll have a cup of tea.”
It was the first time that Lee had ever been invited for tea…and photographs. Something about it made him feel shy, as if this ritual might suggest an intimacy. “All right. I’ll come by, maybe tomorrow.”
“Wonderful,” said Rocky, marching off down the range.
As soon as Lee snapped the sound mufflers over his ears, the rock doves knew what was coming and all flew off through the glass. Lee turned on the sander, pressed it against the wall until it bit into surface paint, obliterating it into a swirling cloud of white powder. Within moments the sandpaper was torn to shreds. He turned off the machine and pulled off the mufflers. Through the ringing in his ears he heard footsteps. Stepping out of the cell he expected to see Rocky Smith. Instead it was the silhouette of a short man flickering like an early movie in the waves of dust.
“How you doing, my friend?” the man said. He strode past Lee looking the cells up and down as if he were admiring a work of art.
“Can I help you?” said Lee.
“Hell no.”
“You’re with Correctional Services?”
“Ha! Correctional Services. You might say that. I used to live here, off and on for a few years – mostly on,” he said with pride. He pointed: “That one up there, that one over there, and this one right here,” he said disappearing into a cell. He came out shaking his head, “I heard they were turning this hole into a museum. That’s funny. I’ve been to museums. They have paintings on the wall.”
Although short, he had the torso of a body-builder, bulging muscles, broad shoulders and short arms; black curly hair with a Brylcream sheen; and dark arched eyebrows that gave his face the look of perpetual surprise which matched his constant smile.
“You mean you were an inmate?” asked Lee.
The man stopped, and turned to look Lee in the eye: “Yeah. Inmate, con, crook, rounder, jailbird, square john, incorrigible. But hey, I’m not angry,” he said turning back to his slow walk along the range. “I loved every minute of it.”
Lee was certain this guy was out of his mind. Or maybe in this place you perfect the art of irony. “You loved it?”
The short man arrived at end of the range, turned and started back, slowly this time: “Benny used to live in there. Yeah, I loved it, damn straight. Guys like Benny were the best friends I ever had. When I was in school, all my friends wanted to be astronauts or doctors or lawyers, shit like that. Me? Right from the start I wanted to be a criminal. I even put it next to my graduation photo for the yearbook but the principal had it cut out. Imagine that. I had a vision of what I wanted to do with my life and that s.o.b. censored me. I watched every heist movie ever made, all of them. Even if the movie wasn’t about a heist but it had a heist scene in it. People would be talking about making love or having meaning in their miserable little lives and suddenly BANG - someone decides to rob a bank. I’d watch it, just for the rush. I was twelve years old when my old man took me to a bank to open a savings account. The teller told me how to fill out a withdrawal form, leanin’ over real close. She thought I was a horny little kid just ogling those tits but it was all I could do to stop from checking out the security cameras, the guard at the door, the exits, where the safe was. Shit. Twelve years old and I was casing the joint. For nights after I lay in bed, closed my eyes and walked through how I would do it. Ten years later, I did. Went like clockwork. ‘Course I had time to think about it. It was the guts that took the time. Lovely.”
“The guts?”
“Anybody can rob a bank. But to actually do it you need chutzpah.” The man suddenly stopped to take a hard look at Lee. “First time you’ve ever been with an ex-con, right?”
“No,” said Lee. “Half the guys in my crew are ex-cons, the other half current ones.”
“And that’s why you’ve got the job, right? ‘Cause none of them wanted anything to do with fixing up this hole.” He looks up to the rafters and the rock doves. “Look at that. Thousands of men thought of nothing else but how to bust out of this joint and those pigeons bust right back in. I’ll tell ya, in a few days you’ll like it too – just like them. So long,” he said and with a quick turn he marched out of the range. Lee watched him walk through the rotunda, slap the shattered glass on the guard booth and shout: “Fuck you, Sanderson!”
The next day, Lee took Rocky up on his invitation to view the archival photographs of the prison. Rocky covered a table with a dozen 8x10 black-and-white photographs of St.Vincent-de-Paul Penitentiary in its “new and clean days”. Lee saw the photos as utterly empty – nothing more than steel and concrete with shadows moving through them. There was the classic long shot of the range, in deep focus, black and dark, the light from the windows blocked from somewhere way off-frame. There was also a shot of the rotunda taken in 1948 from the third tier catwalk looking down on about a hundred inmates gathered in a perfect circle, a solitary guard watching over them. Each inmate wore the same uniform: jeans, a jacket with a number patch over the chest and a cap. Lee saw that many of the inmates had lowered or turned their heads away from the camera. There were a few, however, who looked defiantly at the camera as if to say: “Take a good look, sucker, ‘cause one day soon I’m gettin’ out.”
“We would never do that today,” said Rocky. “Gathering inmates all together at the same time in an open space like that - much too dangerous. You’d never leave one guard with that many convicts. I’m sure off-frame there was several guards with shotguns.” The irony did not escape Lee as he attempted to build this museum, with walls that must be ripped open, the years blasted away, pulverized into dust, revealing the letters and numbers of a million stories while Rocky looked at photographs of what he thought was one of the finest museums of all time.
“I suspect you have little,” Rocky paused for emphasis: “…sympathy for these men?”
“How can I? They’re all dead.”
“And…?”
“This is a contract job, simple as that. I don’t give a shit about all the rest. What I do want to know is how the hell did someone like you get a name like Rocky?”
“Indeed. My full name is Selwyn Rocksborough Smith and thus hardly something to be uttered on a range. Interestingly enough, it was an inmate who gave me the name Rocky. I thought that any inmate who had the audacity to change the name of the Warden, and right to the Warden’s face, was a good man to keep around. I was proven correct. He became a writer.”
“You don’t expect me to believe this crap do you? Writers, poets, literacy classes. You make out as if your prison was a university.”
“Believe what you will, sir. There is no doubt as to the crimes my prisoners committed and that they deserved to be incarcerated. However, people are sent to prison for punishment, not to be punished. What I found was that once they were treated respectfully, their anger slowly dissipated and I discovered beneath the surface a host of talents. When you think about it prison is the perfect place for creative expression. It has many of the attributes that artists strive for: isolation, silence, and release from the mundane.”
“And steel bars. That’s always handy,” said Lee.
Rocky nodded, realizing there was nothing more to be said to Lee, al least nothing that would penetrate. He began gathering up the photographs.
“There was a guy who came to the range yesterday,” said Lee. “Said he was an inmate and wanted to see the range before it got painted over.”
“Really? How odd. We didn’t exactly announce anything publicly.”
“He was a very strange guy. He said he really liked it here.”
Rocky smiled: “That’s not unusual. Next time, get his name. I could hire him to work as a museum guide.”
On his drive to the prison the following morning, Lee wondered why Rocky Smith had assumed there would be a next time. He drove into the parking lot at Napoleon’s. He was a regular now and yet had never mustered up the courage to ask the waitress her name. Rhonda finally gave up hope and one morning she just told him.
“I suppose now you want to know mine,” he said.
“I already know it, Lee Robinette,” she said with glee. “It’s written on the side of your truck.”
Lee blushed, stunned by his own stupidity.
“Do you like going in there?” Rhonda said, tipping her head in the direction of the prison.
“It’s a job. How did you know?”
“The prison is the only news around here.”
“But it’s closed.”
“Exactly. So what are you doing in there?”
“Renovations. They’re turning it into a museum.”
“A museum? You must be kidding. Will that include the bodies?”
They shared a laugh. Lee looked into her deep brown eyes, feeling a tenderness he has not felt in long time, a sense that this may be the one person who has some interest in him.
“Sorry, “said Rhonda. “That was crude.”
“It’s all right. I’ll see you tomorrow morning.”
“You know we serve a really good lunch here.”
“I’m sure you do. Maybe. Thanks. You make good coffee.”
Rhonda watched Lee as he walked out to his truck. “Really good coffee,” she repeated to herself with a sigh.
In the prison parking lot, Lee paused for a moment to make sure no one was around before taking his camera bag from the passenger seat. He walked quickly through the main gate as if he were carrying a bomb. Only when he reached the courtyard near the rotunda did he slow down, secure with his secret - except for the rock dove swirling overhead. Lee did not want to risk embarrassing himself in front of Rocky Smith. Besides, he wasn’t sure he could even do it. But from the moment he had seen Rocky’s archival photographs of the prison, he wanted to try something different from the streams of his summer landscapes.
Inside the range, Lee paused, awaiting any tell-tale echoes of footsteps. He opened his camera bag and removed the Yashica-D and a tripod. As he unfolded the tripod he looked at the huge columns of yellow light illuminating all three floors of the range as intensely as a film set. Lee didn’t even think about it: he set the aperture for f22, the shutter speed for 1/500 and looked through the viewfinder. It was perfect. This was not the chaos of meandering streams, rocky slopes and quivering light. Here was geometric precision, the rails and cells multiplying into infinity, into the brilliant white chasm beyond the columns of light.
Lee panned the camera to a cell. In the viewfinder it held no interest for him. He panned the camera back to take in the entire range, a hundred barred eyes staring out into the void. He pressed the shutter button.
Later in the day, Lee cleaned up his paint brushes and watched the rock doves return from their day in the sun. They ignored him, cleaning their
feathers, slowly closing their eyes, tired, contented. Sunlight: something that Lee no longer seemed to miss. The same rock dove swooped down and landed on the table. He nibbled the crusts of bread that Lee held out in the palm of his hand. The soft touch of the dove’s beak on Lee’s skin sent a cold shiver down his back, not of fear but of excitement. Suddenly the bird flew off to the rafters upon hearing the thunderous echo of footsteps coming down the range. Lee was angry that their moment together had been so cruelly interrupted by the short man once again.
“What the hell are you doing here?” barked Lee.
“Hey, back off. I have tenant’s rights,” he said, inspecting the newly painted cells. “You’ve done a lot of work here. Looks good.”
“Who are you, anyway?”
“Louis Morel. And I know who you are.”
“Yeah, looks like everybody does. So if you have tenant’s rights, I want to ask you something. In here.” Louis followed Lee into a cell and pointed to the wall where angel fin be/ar 5255 ftw is coated with new paint. “What does all this mean?”
Louis leaned in for a closer look. “Angel? Don’t remember him. That would’ve been his nickname. A fin is five years; b&e for break and enter; ar for armed robbery. 5255 is his inmate number. Ftw? That’s fuck the world.”
“And what about these numbers?” asked Lee pointing at 32,000- 48,000- 80,000.
“That’s not Angel. That’s a lifer marking out the hours of his time. Hours are easier to deal with than years – more digestible.”
“Lifer. That means murder, right?”
“Yeah. The 90 means he probably died in here.”
“Serves him right,” said Lee walking out of the cell and back to his tool table.
“Hey, none of us said we didn’t deserve being in here. We took it
as an occupational hazard, the cost of doing business. You know, overhead. But doing time? It was a picnic. Three squares a day, basketball games, poker, and years of quiet, peaceful rest, each one of which I badly needed.”
“You needed rest?” said Lee incredulously.
“Hey, it’s tough work. Casing out a place can take weeks. Then doing the job takes a lot out of you. The stress alone can kill you. Then, once you have all that money, there’s living on the lam, boozin’, travelling, women, and they’ll suck you dry, I’ll tell you. I’d bet you’d like it.”
Lee shook his head, angry with his audacity.
“Oh no, you would. I can see it in your eyes. You have that desperate look about you, like the last subway train just pulled out of the station and you’re stranded alone in the city. I figure you like coming here. Secretly you enjoy it because it gets you away from all the boredom out there.”
“You think you’re Freud?”
“Was he a famous warden? I know a con when I see one and I think you’d like it just for the thrill. It’s like sex only more lucrative.”
“I think you’d better go.
“I’ve seen you in that greasy spoon down the highway, and...”
“What! Are you stalking me?”
“Hey, I was havin’ breakfast. Relax. I could see that waitress’ eyes all over you, especially when you walked out. She was sizin’ up your ass something fierce. You could rob that place.”
Lee stared at Louis, curious as just where he might take this.
“It would be easy, don’t you get it?” said Louis. “You guys would be like Stanwyck and MacMurray in Double Indemnity. She could be in on it, hand over the money while playing it all freaked out. Then you’d rendezvous afterwards, run off to Mexico together and spend six months makin’ love on the beach. Hell, you wouldn’t even need a gun. But having one gives the whole thing more of a rush.”
“You live in a fantasy world,” said Lee.
“If you think I’m the first jackass in the history of the world to come up with a wet dream like that, then you’re the one living in a fantasy world. Let me tell you something. I’ve seen enough of prison to know more about freedom. Louis shot a sharp, burning stare. “Watch yourself, punk ass. Watch yourself.” With a high-pitched laugh Louis walked off down the range. “Have fun doing your time.” As he walked through the rotunda, Lee heard “Fuck you, Sanderson!”
Lee cleaned up the last of the paint brushes. He turned off the power line, bid goodnight to the rock doves above and walked down the range. He stopped at the doorway of the rotunda, looked out over the courtyard and the wall cutting across the horizon. The moon went on like a lamp, slanting across the roofs, laying a shadow of clouds across the prison courtyard. Beyond the wall, Lee’s wandering gaze caught the flickering house lights of the distant village. He felt that with the act of turning on lights these people were cutting off all contact with him. Now he were freer than he had ever been, at liberty to wait here in this place as long as he wanted, as if nobody would dare touch him or drive him away or even speak to him.
Lee drove to Napoleon’s hoping to have dinner with Rhonda but one of the waitresses told him she had finished for the day and wouldn’t be back until the breakfast shift. He ordered a club sandwich to go. While he waited he called Shirley. He was ready to use the guaranteed overtime excuse but it wasn’t necessary. He hung up before the answering machine clicked on.
He drove the van through the main prison gate and parked in the courtyard. He walked to the rotunda carrying a sleeping bag and a pillow. He went to the cell he had just finished that day. It was freshly painted pale blue, the bunk cream white and the writings on the wall floating in lines of rivets. He spread the sleeping bag and pillow on the bunk, washed his face in the cold water of the sink, and lay down on the bunk, expecting the ghosts to burst forward at any moment. He’d brought nothing to read. He wasn’t expecting sleep or silence. But silence is what he got. He recalled it was not the same silence he felt diving underwater at the lake, for even there he could hear the sounds of bubbles and waves. Here it was a silence so deep, the concrete so enveloping him, surrounding him with the weight of a million tons of soundlessness, where nothing moved, nothing sounded and all light vanished into the black hole. After a time he could not measure, he grew accustomed to it and he floated in boundless space.
The first yellow beam of morning light shone into Lee’s eyes, startling him back to life. He jumped out of the bunk and out into range. Up above, the rock doves were gone. He had not heard any fluttering in the night or their flight to the outside. He ran down the range and burst out the door into the screaming, brilliant sunshine. It blinded him. He continued at a brisk pace to the van.
Rocky Smith saw Lee, his hands over his eyes, jogging across the courtyard. “Mr. Robinette, you’re looking rather pale. Did you get the name of that ex-convict who visited with you?”
Lee got to the van, fumbling for his keys. “Yeah...Louis Morel, I think.”
“Louis Morel? I think that bloody unlikely. Louis Morel killed a bank teller and was hanged here in 1924. So unless he has a namesake, you’ve seen a ghost. I don’t believe in ghosts.”
“How the hell do you know that?”
“I told you. I’m a curator and I know the name of every man who was hanged here. I am like a curator of death. Louis Morel was one of the more infamous ones.” Rocky Smith watched Lee intently as he found his keys and started the engine. “Mr. Robinette, did you sleep in the prison last night?”
“Yes.”
“That is not a fine idea, my friend.”
“I was working late, too tired to drive home. I just crashed on a bunk.”
“Yes indeed,” said Rocky with a worried look. “I think you’re taking this job far too seriously. Why don’t you come for a cup of tea, settle things down a bit?”
“No, I’m sorry, I can’t do that. I’m clear on what I have to do now. Very clear.”
“Mr. Robinette, it’s a bloody government museum...,” but Lee cut him off by pressing on the pedal and speeding away.
The van weaved down the road. Lee reached into the glove compartment and rummaged around until his hand locked on the Derringer. He held the gun. Despite its size it had the weight of granite. The sign for Napoleon’s loomed up ahead. Lee tucked the Derringer inside his belt, steered into the parking lot and turned off the engine. He opened the twin barrels of the Derringer. Both were loaded. Through the front window he saw Rhonda sweeping up a line of coins at the window table. She waved to him with a hurry up gesture of her hand.
Lee secured the Derringer in his belt, fastened up his jacket, stepped out of the van and started towards the front door. The gun pinched his skin and he feared if he walked too fast it might go off. Then, he heard him. He looked up to a blur diving to the earth. The rock dove soared up to the deep blue sky, its neck vibrating silver green, spun off into a wide figure-8 over, and then swooped high to join up with the flock. Together they flew along the river ravine away from the prison.
Rhonda went to the counter to ready Lee’s coffee. She turned and saw Lee standing motionless in the middle of the parking lot staring up at the sky. She knew he was shy, but this was pathetic. With impatience this time, her hands insisted he come in. He never saw her. Lee walked across the highway towards the river ravine. Rhonda felt foolish now as if she were a teenager begging for the last dance. She saw Lee unfasten his jacket, pull out what looked to be a rock and throw it as far and as high as he possibly could. It arched high in the air then tumbled with a dead splash into the muddy water. Lee, with a smile on his face, walked back across the highway heading straight for her.