"Vancouver or Bust"

Nan could still hear the echoing laughter at the news that she was leaving Toronto to take a job in Sudbury. "Teaching bonehead English in a community college? In that god-forsaken mining town? Are you suicidal?" her friends asked. When they couldn't persuade her to stall on her dissertation until the university market perked up, they vowed to ship a care package. But somehow it never arrived.

Nearly a year later, settled into a comfortable lakefront cabin with her finances in the black for the first time since Trudeau left office, Nan asked them to visit. "Great," Greg said. "We're all off to Vancouver on the cheap in Dad's old Buick. Why don't we pick you up?"

"Sounds perfect. When are you going?"

"June 10th."

"Could you wait a day or two? Graduation duties."

The itinerary was already set, he explained, but they would spend a night and review departmental gossip. Nan consulted Julia Child to flag special recipes. Fresh fruits and vegetables were just making their long journey north, but she combed four stores to locate a firm eggplant and peppy romaine lettuce. Waving a shameful VISA advance, she purchased beef filets and thick pork chops at the Italian meat market, and tossed a potato salad with the last precious drops of balsamic vinegar and walnut oil, regretting that she had not given Greg a wish list. Homemade rye bread and three expensive Chardonnays rounded out the dinner menu, a world apart from their beer and bean potlucks. As an afterthought, she bathed her border collie Nell, rubbing conditioner on the silky coat.

While the comforting spices of baking pumpkin cookies filled the house, Nan leafed through her Elizabethan poetry anthology, smiling as she recalled their heady conversations, the old academic rigamarole. On the wall was framed the cartoon Greg had sketched, featuring her nailed to a cross, yielding up her dissertation and crying, "It is finished." Now even her speech had simplified; no more flexing those wonderful words and pumping syntaxes. All the last word meant to her Correctional Worker students was the high cost of smokes and booze. Yet the Nickel City had proved friendly, welcoming newcomers with a pioneer passion, flattered to think that anyone would disbelieve the moonscape publicity enough to visit, let alone stay.

The sounds of a car bumping down the driveway galvanized her out of her reveries. She ran to meet it, waving her arms. "I can't believe you guys are here!"

Greg got out first and whirled her around. "Wow, the boonies! Look at my wild woman," he said, rubbing her ultra-short haircut. "Be we in danger from bears? Moose? Where's my Uzi?"

Kit and Ted followed, complaining of the six-hour trip. "No wonder you never made it down to the city all year. A cowpath from Collingwood. Rock cuts and transfers blowing by. Why don't you stop electing all those socialists?" Ted said. He presented a slim volume of his poems. "Sure, it's a vanity press, but that's how Peggy Atwood started. Published her own chapbooks and hawked them for fifty cents each. Now they're worth a couple thousand." Kit, who had been peering around, gave Nan a quick embrace, kissed the air under her earlobe and asked about the bathroom as she tugged at her Laura Ashley print dress. Had she been expecting an outhouse, Nan wondered?

They unpacked, Kit and Ted off to the second bedroom while Greg took his luggage unbidden to hers. "Missed you, lady," he nuzzled into her neck and the familiar pleasant scent of 4711 cologne recharged her. She had hardly thought about sex for the entire year and wondered if the powers were still sparking.
Dinner brought abounding compliments, as if Nan had excelled in spite of great odds. "You did remember that I'm allergic to pepper, I hope," Kit said, and Nan nodded. Dipping the cookies into the cappuccino ice cream, the trio said that their favourite Just Desserts restaurant had been closed since a woman had been shot there in an attempted robbery.

"You're safer in the north," Greg said. "T-O is getting as dangerous as Sarajevo."

Kit and Ted worked their repartee about James Joyce, which made Nan grin, but other remarks hinged on new people or in-jokes. The flow of the wine boosted their volume, and they barely shifted to let her clear the table.

Nan waited for a lull in the conversation. "I have a place in the bush that I want to show you."
"Intriguing," Greg said. "A crumbling hermitage? The salvage man?"

Nan smiled. "Ye olde Faerie Queene. Don't need Spenser much teaching freshman grammar. No, it's a surprise. We'll go after breakfast."
Ted drained the third Chardonnay into his wine glass. "Hey, last dead soldier. Any rye or scotch in the fort?" He and Kit headed for their bedroom with Nan's birthday bottle of Glenlivet as the darkness pooled.

"You're not keeping that dog in here, are you?" Greg asked as he stripped to black silk boxer shorts. "Jesus, it's rather distracting." He was developing a slight ring of fat and sucked in his middle as he strolled around, touching Nan's pictures and knick-knacks, old familiars in a new territory. Nan shooed her confused pet into the living room, made a comfortable blanket nest and returned to Greg. Logistics did not fail them, though the cries from the other bedroom kept her awake. Kit must have been playing Molly Bloom again, for "Yes, she said. Yes, yes" rang out more than once.

The next morning Nan sat on the deck to watch the sunrise, taking Greg his cup of coffee at seven. "Hey, what time is it? We're not used to the working world, you know," he said with a frown.

After scrambling their mushroom omelets, Nan tidied the living room and was packing lunches when Ted shuffled in, his eyes red and bees-winged. "Whoa, have I got a head. Hope Kit can make it." He gulped at the coffee, lit a cigarette and commandeered Nan's empty breakfast plate as an ashtray.

Kit was scratching her elbow as she joined them later, blue circles puffed under her eyes. "Must have been something I ate. Look at these welts. But you said no pepper. Was there any bark?"

"Bark?" asked Nan.
"Cinnamon. What do you think I mean?"

"No. Just nutmeg in the cookies."

Into Nan's backpack went roast beef sandwiches with the trimmings, four cans of soda water, the everpresent bananas, and a bag of Smartfood, their signature snack. "It's about half an hour," she told them. "No bad hills. Nell stays here because porkies have been around." She rubbed bug dope on her arms and legs, passing it to the boys, who did the same.

Kit sneezed. "Forget it. I'll wear my jacket and long pants. That stuff stinks."

Walking down the road, they met her neighbour Sulo bearing garbage for the bin, shiny lures festooning his rumpled hat. Nan introduced her friends.

"You fellows like to fish?" Sulo asked. He had presented Nan with a fat lake trout last week.

Ted replied, "Nothing freshwater. I prefer orange roughy. Maybe skate."

Greg had been staring at Sulo's sign. Cottagers took special pleasure in artistically routed: "Cedar Grove" or Nan's "Parliament of Owls."

"Hey," he said, pointing to the apostrophe. "Do you know this should be 'Jackomans'', not 'The Jackoman's'. There isn't anyone called 'The Jackoman,' is there?"

"Nope," said Sulo, his face darkening.

Nan tried to catch Greg's eye, but he barrelled on in a linguistical mode. "Of course you could have 'The Jackomans' with no possession, or 'Jackoman's' as in Eaton's department store. Your choice."

"Well, I guess the damn thing's been here so long, it's a tradition," Sulo said and stomped back to his porch.

"Jesus, Greg. What were you trying to prove?" Nan asked.

"Calm down, little teacher. Start in your own back yard." He patted her arm and chuckled along with Kit and Ted, who were rolling their eyes.

The trip went quickly, since the bugs were tormenting taskmasters and the oily dope worked less efficiently under sweaty conditions. When they reached the corduroy path over the creek, Nan tried to point out which logs to step on, but Kit scuffed her Weejuns, Ted muddied his white Nikes, and Greg nearly lost one of his Mephistos in the swamp muck.

"Gross," said Kit as she wiped at the black ooze on her fish belly white legs.

Nan hoped to distract them by calling their attention to mushrooms along the trail. "This is a schoolroom in the woods," she said. "In August I found amanitas, russulas, even black earth tongues. Over thirty species." She bent down. "Here's one from last year. Scaberstalk, an unusual bolete."

"Perfect name for my next novel. Eleanor Scaberstalk," said Kit.
"Hey, I'm a fun guy, too. Get it?" Ted said. "Send us a few poisonous ones to even up the competition for jobs."

Finally, they cleared a hill and reached Nan's destination, a small lake, hanging like a jewel in the valley, the mist finally blown off. Bugs had fled with the arrival of the late morning wind. Ringed by cedars, ragged spruce and fir, the water sparkled, from the beaver lodge at one end to the burgeoning dam on the other. White-throated sparrows trilled to each other. "Surprise Lake, I call it," Nan said. "I've seen blue herons, beavers, moose, even a sleeping bear under a tree."

"When do we eat?" Ted asked. "Where's the water? I'm dry as the proverbial bone." When Nan handed him a soda, he grimaced, then shrugged. "No Perrier, eh?" He guzzled two cans between gaseous acknowledgements.

As Nan passed around the lunch, Greg retrieved a mini-tape player from his pack and put on some Mahler. "Old Herbert von 'Carrion' in his better days," he said. "What a travesty. Babbling and clacking his dentures conducting now. Should have packed it in when he could." The strident sounds blasted across the lake, rousting the song birds and causing a strange splashing near the beaver lodge.

"I think he's dead. Turn it down a bit, Greg," Nan said.

While the men were off poking sticks into the lodge, the women found some log seats. "He said he missed you," Kit said. "But it didn't stop him from dating Angela Trevor. And last time I talked to her she had the worst yeast infection! Ate Valium for breakfast until it cleared up."

Nan felt a sudden discomfort, shifting uneasily on the log. Greg should have warned her, she thought, glad that she had taken some small precautions.
The boys returned. "Yeh, I felt something in there," Greg said. "You can raise beavers, you know, like Grey Owl."

Nan led them into a grove of soft white pines which sheltered a patch of bulbous pink blooms, swollen airy bags. The rare moccasin flower, soon to be hidden by emerging bracken. "I'm planning on taking one for a wild bed on my property," she confessed.

"Phallic or what?" Ted said. He wiggled his eyebrows at Kit, who had stripped to a t-shirt and shorts in the hot sun.

After lunch, Nan spent a few minutes packing up the trash while Kit nestled amid greenery under a feathery tamarack tree, the moccasin flowers in a wilted bunch beside her. "Ted is so romantic," Kit said, smelling one and tossing it aside. "No perfume, though."

"I'm not sure you should lie in there," Nan warned. "There could be some poison ivy around, though it is early."

Kit laughed and weaved her fingers through the foliage. "No way. My family spent every summer at our camp in Muskoka and Father told me that there wasn't any poison ivy or oak north of Perry Sound." She pulled off some small branches. "See? No three leaf pattern. Opposites." Then she brushed her hair back and closed her eyes.

Greg had been rustling through the undergrowth. "Hey, look, fellow gourmets," he said, waving some fronds. "Fiddleheads! Got to pick them before they unfurl." He popped some into his mouth and chewed pensively. "Bitter. An old-fashioned taste only the Europeans seem to appreciate. Just like endive."

"Exactly," Kit added. "My naturotherapist says that our bodies crave a dose of bitter to balance the humours."
"They might be bracken, Greg," Nan said.

"Bosch, as in Hieronymus, my girl. I've bought them in the Kensington Market. Cost the earth, and they're not fresh like these." He picked off the soft white covering on the fronds as he finished several handfuls.

"Geez, no more water?" Ted asked. "I need another drink before I start back. I've been sweating like a hog." He roamed around, disappearing behind a hill until finally he yelled, "Hey, a spring! Just what the doctor ordered."

Nan joined him and studied the stream. "I don't think so, Ted. It's run-off, and even if it looks clear, that means nothing."

He scooped up several cupfuls and poured the rest over his head. "Tastes great. Hey, you should bottle this stuff. Local industry. The woman who saved Sudbury."

Nan led them a blistering return pace, but nobody complained. Greg kissed her goodbye at the car. "Oh, babe," he whispered. "Could you spare twenty? I'm short and there might not be a cash machine until Winnipeg. My maiden aunt lives there. Haven't seen the old bag since I hit puberty. Just in time for a new will."

Nan gave him the money, recalling that he still owed her fifty dollars from the Yo Yo Ma concert. She waved them down the driveway, then went inside, ferreting around for the only alcoholic drink left, a disgustingly sweet sherry for cooking. Still, it did the job.

She opened up her atlas and followed the remote route across Northern Ontario. Greg would be first. Her mother had made the same mistake when they camped at Algonquin Park, cooked bracken fronds with butter. Quite a famous nineteenth century purgative, just the ticket for stubborn winterized bowels. The urge would hit around midnight while they would still be navigating the deep bush between Marathon and Thunder Bay, trying to avoid the cost of a motel. She doubted that they would even find a gas station open. Then in about three days, from the way she had been wiping her face and neck, Kit would develop a classic case of poison sumac, a more virulent cousin of poison oak and ivy. With her hyper-sensitivity, the rash would probably torment her for weeks. Jovial old Ted would be last. Nan had suffered beaver fever after a canoeing trip. It had set in nearly two weeks after she had sipped from some damnably enticing creek. In a month of constant diarrhoea and nausea, she had lost fifteen pounds.

Tracing the road to Vancouver with her finger, Nan sipped more sherry. So delicious. The dog inspected the universe between its paws. They sighed contentedly.

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