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.