Twenty
The white farm pickup truck jolted into the cabin driveway, its suspension loose and squeaky. Beck was sitting by a fly s**t–speckled window, reading a self-help paperback his mother had picked up at a church bazaar. It was a dingy morning. He was bushed from the harvest banquet, his legs rubbery from walking to the farm and then back to the cabin the night before. Light snow was falling, a half-hearted, thin powder. n***d birch trees shivered among the spruces. His father was in Lanark, shopping for cross-country ski gear with Doctor Griffen. His mother was kneading bread dough, singing to herself, ignoring him. He was reading to prevent himself from obsessing over Marjorie’s hostility at the banquet. The olfactory memory of the old woman lingered in his synapses, and his senses k
