23. The Fire
I was excited about seeing the rich, green pastures, the white-sand beach swept clean by the sea, the enclosure of spruce trees, and to hear the call of my eagle family again. But I was to be denied. A thick, woolly fogbank obscured the fields and the dune when I turned onto West Road. I was anxious to return to my trailer but stopped to visit Dan first.
Instead of his familiar yellow pickup, an ancient, blue, flat-deck Ford one-ton, the truck he’d purchased when he visited me in Burnaby, was parked in place of his previous wreck. I waited on the top step and knocked on the Moby’s white door before I stuck my head inside and yelled, “Mick-or-Mack. It’s me, Ethan. You home?” There was no response. If Dan was here, he wanted to be left undisturbed, or, I suspected, he was out
