Light Lifting (27 page)

After they cut his body out of the wreckage and lifted him away, he never touched the car again. The insurance company wrote the thing off as a totalled vehicle and he wondered what that meant. The total seemed like a raw number completely added up, the figure they reach for when they need to make something go away. He imagined the end of the van's life. Thought about those compacted cubes of metal he'd seen on TV and about the conveyors and the cranes and the incinerators at Zalev Brothers. He'd looked through the fence there once and watched the smokestacks and the bulldozers moving their mountains of ore. An unmaking as systematic as manufacture. It scared him. Metal turned back into a ferrous dust and smoke. The remains of 12 million Magic Wagons absorbed into the ground, secreted into the river, or floating in the sky to become a microscopic coating of ash inside your lungs.

The same transformations for us, he thinks. A person is one thing and one thing and one thing. Then he is something else. There is a pivot, a before and an after, a shifting. The day he decided to take the buyout. That was it for him. Not the accident. Not the day he left the hospital or the week when his daughter went back to her own life. Not even today, the day she forgot. Everything else is second to the moment when he decided to really walk away, to move exclusively under his own power. Walk and never drive again. Walk and not even allow himself to be carried in another car or taxi or bus. This was the one connection he needed to break. His life fused to the internal combustion engine, almost since the beginning. He wanted them not to touch anymore.

It has been almost a year now and he thinks he has managed it well enough. The groceries and the doctor's appointments and the bank. He leaves himself plenty of time and is never late. Follows a regular routine. A network of well-worn paths through his contracted orbit and a different way of understanding the city. He has his short cuts and his tangents, places he doesn't go anymore. It has been doable so far, but this will be something different. The map says it is thirty miles.

Before he goes to bed, he packs his bag. A raincoat, just in case, and different layers for the way the temperature shifts during the day. A stack of six sandwiches and a water bottle. He sets the alarm for 5:30 and puts his head against the pillow. Then he gets up again and goes down to the kitchen. Digs out a flashlight and some extra batteries. It is going to be dark, he reminds himself. It will be dark at the beginning and the end.

University to Huron Church. Huron Church all the way out to the fork where the 401 begins and the Number Three branches off. Then follow the Number Three to the spot. He will know it when he gets there. The way is simple, a long diagonal cut. University to Huron Church to the Number Three. He repeats it as he falls asleep. It will take all day. Even if he starts early, it will take the full day, but he will get there. He will be where he needs to be.

In the morning, he wakes ahead of the alarm. Gets up and eats another egg and even washes the pan and his plate. He pulls on a toque and a pair of gloves, and shrugs a backpack over his shoulders before reaching for the doorknob. Outside, his breath fogs against the darkness and he turns and squeezes a note into the space between the door and the frame. If she checks, she will know where to find him. He turns the key and slips it into his pocket.

In the early stages, it goes faster than he expected. The longer distance he has to cover makes his normal routes seem shorter. The left leg is worse than the right – he cannot bend it enough to ride a bike – but the humidity is not bad and once he warms up, he finds a regular stride and moves steadily. University passes quickly before he makes the turn onto Huron Church. The spire of Assumption and the old buildings of the school stand on his left across from the massive concrete foundations of the bridge on his right. There is only one block left meant for people and even that is fading as everything clears out to make way for the second span. This is the issue of the day. A second bridge and where it will go and what it will mean and what it will cost and who will pay. Politicians and businessmen arguing on both sides of the border. They say the traffic demands a second span and that it must go here or it must go there. The single most important crossing on the continent, the lifeline of two economies. Delays that must be stopped. The flow of goods over the line. Free Trade and the Autopact. They repeat and repeat. The traffic demands a second span. The traffic demands a second span, as though traffic sets its own course free of human interference. He thinks of the twisted arms and the faces pushed up against the wall and the backroom payouts. Boarded-up houses on Indian road where his kids' friends used to live. All of them gone now, purposely flooded and left to rot until demolition is the only option. It is hard for him to even look at it. Almost like the other side, he thinks. Almost as bad as Detroit itself.

He moves on and the Caravan follows him everywhere. Parked along the curb and sleeping in driveways and overnight lots, idling at the McDonald's pick-up window and blinking in the left-turn lane. It is always close by, bumper humming just six inches from his repaired knee as he passes inside the crosswalk. Every make and model. Some twelve or fifteen years old, rumbling by, exhaling exhaust and pulling in the air. He can see what the drivers don't know. Those struts are done, my friend. All the ninety-eights had the same problem. And that hint of rust around the wheel well? Looks like nothing right now, but wait one year. Should have sprung for the metallic paint. The telltale wobbles. The bad alignments and the burning oil. The faulty ignitions and the squealing timing belts. Bald tires and bad brakes. He remembers the big radiator recall.

After Wyandotte, after he passes beneath the bridge, the American-bound transports take over. A person walking in this place takes matters into his own hands. The toll plaza and the duty free. The University Stadium, the High School. Two different malls. The strip bar and the fast food. The motels and the fruit stands. They all rise in front and he walks them down. Six lanes running on his right. Trucks backed up and waiting. Petunias planted in the middle of a median strip.

He takes a break at the cloverleaf where Huron Church passes under the Expressway. Six lanes running full tilt on the ground and four more running perpendicular over his head. A place that makes its own air currents. He sits on the hill, eats a sandwich and feels good about his progress. Watches the newspapers and plastic bags swirling always in the same pattern. Sucked upwards and sideways. After the expressway, there are houses with neat hedges set back from the road and then Saint Clair College and the outlet centres and cemeteries lined up on the right. Heavenly Rest waits near the junction where the 401 begins and ends and the Number Three branches off. His wife and his son are in there and it has all been paid for, but he has never seen the graves and cannot stop now to check. The daylight needs to be preserved.

As he moves along the Number Three, he thinks about all the other times he came this way before the accident. There are only two lanes and he remembers how the slower drivers used to frustrate him. It was always easy enough to blow by one of them, but impossible if you ever got stuck behind two or three in a row, especially at night. The way he used to stare at the speedometer and announce the pace. Sixty-three kilometres an hour, he'd say. Sixty-three. Are they all going to church? And he'd gesture through the windshield and calculate the risk of a sudden passing attempt. How fast he'd have to go and how long he'd have to spend on the wrong side of a busy road. He usually took his shot because he trusted the guts of the van. How surprisingly nimble it could be if he had to pick it up for a short burst. He'd hit the signal and drive his foot to the floor and swerve out over the dotted line to take down four stragglers in one go before cutting back to avoid a head-on collision. Whenever they were out there on the wrong side, his wife used to put her hand out and touch his chest and tell him to go back. Stop it, she'd say. Stop it. You know I don't like this. You're going to get us all killed for nothing.

As he walks along the shoulder, he faces the traffic and tries to make eye-contact with each driver. He thinks about all the other kinds of accidents. The big hundred-car pileup that shut down the whole 401 for a week. That wasn't far from here. A diesel fire that burned so hot it melted the road down to the bare earth and welded all the cars together. And all the little side-swipes and fender-benders and the rigs that end up wrapped around hydro poles or flipped on their backs with their wheels spinning in the air. You can count on a car accident. The next one and the next one and the next one. Steady and reliable and always arriving on schedule and in the same places. Rush hour and the dark drunk interval between one and four in the morning. The night after the prom. The poorly engineered curve and the bad intersection and the nasty stretch between Chatham and the Bridge. Ask a 9-1-1 operator, ask the person who dispatches the cops and the ambulance. She will tell you. Nothing surprising ever happens on her regular shift.

He can't walk twenty minutes on the Number Three without seeing another homemade memorial. The white wooden crosses – three feet high and hung with faded artificial flowers – are almost as frequent as kilometre markers. He pulls himself in and out of the ditches and reads every one. Dates and ages scribbled in black. Some are impossible and faded and some are twenty-years-old and still bright. He thinks of the hand coming back to re-paint and re-write the same words every spring and fall. People holding on to their rituals. There are vases and ragged teddy bears and laminated photographs and small piles of rocks that can't be random.

After the high heat of the afternoon, his head begins to feel fuzzy and a sunburn cracks his lips. The last of his water is gone and he knows he must be a little dehydrated, but he recognizes the spot immediately. It is impossible to make a mistake when you approach this gradually. The traces of tread are still there and they point the way, directing him back. He steps clearly into what passed so quickly the first time and everything is as it was. He thinks he can almost see the space he opened in last year's corn. He goes in, parts the stalks like coats on a rack. From the road, the field looks scattered, but inside everything is straight and the rows are evenly planted. It is all the space he needs.

Good, he says. Good enough. He lies down with them. Palms flat on the ground and his cheek turned. This is what he came to do. The shadow from a cloud passes over and a tide of deep fatigue rises. Dizziness and a regular throbbing in his legs now that he has stopped. There is no next move. He rests his head on the backpack and closes his eyes. One quiet hour here with them. A bit of time spent together and then he will head back. Maybe he will get a motel on the way home.

His body rests in the cornfield and a crowd of stalks stands over him. Waning sunlight, green warmth, insects and silence. An ant crawling on the back of his hand. Mosquitoes and then a single Monarch butterfly. Almost time for you to go, he thinks. He remembers a visit to Point Pelee, something the guide said about their incredible migration. The amount of time it takes to make it down to Mexico every year, their repeating cycles and the long distances and short lifespans. Four rounds before they get through. Whole generations born and giving out while still en route.

There is a whirring when he opens his eyes. He hears the road but can't see it. It is dark and cold and he is stiff. His watch says 8:30 but the night is already full black. More than four hours of sleep and he is still exhausted. He tries to stand but his joints feel calcified and arthritic. A swollen knee and puffy fluid he can squeeze through his jeans. Tough going from here . Need to be careful and take it easy. He limps out of the field and up the ditch. Grabs at a tangle of grass to get some leverage. There is a pain in his foot when he pushes off and something wrong with his breathing, a soreness behind his ear. He emerges onto the shoulder and crosses over.

A single ray of light cuts the dark and comes down on him fast. He hears a high-pitched drone and watches the light approach. There is nothing reflective on his body and the kid is almost on top of him before he sees and makes his adjustment. There is a quick cut away from the side and a fading waaaaaaaaah. He catches only the first syllable of the boy swearing at him. Ninety miles an hour, he thinks, at least. Wearing only a billowing T-shirt and a pair of jeans. Skinny arms and bare elbows and his legs wrapped around the engine of a purple Kawasaki. A yellow helmet with a fire decal, streak of colour in the night. Maybe a hundred, he reconsiders. That kid might be moving a hundred miles an hour.

He keeps the flashlight pointed at his feet and walks with one foot on the asphalt and one foot on the gravel. There is a white line that separates the road from everything else and he tries to follow it, but the pavement crumbles in spots and comes apart. He turns his back and pushes his palm against his eyes whenever a car approaches. Needs to keep his pupils from dilating if he wants to hold his night vision. There are no stars in the sky and he remembers a smog warning from the forecast, high rates of particulate matter in the air.

He is not certain if this is the right direction anymore. Could be mixed-up and turned around and moving out instead of back. There is wetness in his socks and dryness in his mouth. He thinks there must be one sandwich left, but it isn't in the bag. Should have brought more water. He feels himself weaving across the line, but can't adjust in time and comes back too far, rolls his ankle, and falls into a swampy culvert. People with their high beams on and the slipstream from every passing vehicle. Always this wind knocking him around. The biggest trucks create a vacuum that takes everything away, even the air. He has no idea how long he has been out here.

It would be easier to stop and take three steps to the left. He knows this. No one would be surprised. Just time it right and close his eyes and move laterally and open his arms. He could wait for the next Plymouth Voyager. Select the one he wants, identify its approaching headlights and press himself against the oncoming grill. He could feel the sails of the ship and sink all the way through. Penetrate directly to the core and meld with the moving parts. The option is always there.