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Heading East

I met Jacob outside a laundromat in Cheticamp, Nova Scotia.

He was sitting on the seaside curb drawing a picture. The sound effects with which he accompanied his pencil strokes caught my attention so I lifted my eyes from my well worn book to watch him. Occasionally I'd catch him glancing my way and I sensed that he was looking for a reaction on my part. Obligingly I turned away from my reading and focused on this blonde 7-year-old sitting next to me.

"Nice picture," I opened, trying to decipher what he saw in the seemingly random lines.

"Thank you," he replied politely as he took a moment to admire his own work. He went on to explain to me the intricacies of his art - how the one mountain-like sketch was firing bolts of lightening at the car-like doodle, and how this was the cause of his enthusiastic soundtrack. I smiled sincerely. "I'm not really from here," he said, before I'd had a chance to ask. "My parents just bring me here for the summer." He gestured towards the seas, the road and the green hills behind us.

"Me neither," I replied. "I'm from Montreal. Just passing through for the night." He looked up at me, his hair blowing in his eyes and seemed satisfied with this situation.

"I can't wait to get home. I get to start grade two." So proud, as he continued to doodle. "What grade are you in?"

I smiled and told him I was done with school. I had finished.

"Oh, yeah?" he seemed sceptical. "What are you doing now?"

"I don't know," I said. "For now I'm just taking a break before going home." He took a few seconds to scrutinize me, to satisfy himself that I wasn't playing a joke on him.

Convinced that I was on the up-and-up, he went on to tell me stories of his school and his friends in the neighbourhood. At one point he referred to some people as "big kids - like you," and though I smiled at being called a kid of any kind, I looked at him and said, "I'm not so big." To this he just met my grin and replied in a patronising tone, "Well, you're big to me."

The look in his eyes and the you're-being-silly smile on his face clinched it: I had to take something tangible out of this beautiful encounter. A mere photograph didn't seem worthy, so I asked Jacob to draw me a picture.

"Can you draw a bike?" I asked him.

"Sure." He pointed at the black and white one leaning against the laundromat wall. "I can copy that one."

"That's my bike," I informed him.

"I know," he said in the voice of someone who's just been the first to yell surprise at his own surprise party. "I saw you drinking out of that water bottle." The kid was right on the ball. Earlier I'd been taking sips out of the bottle that now found its place in the holder of the bike we were discussing. This attention to detail, this awareness of surroundings was something I wished I could take with me.

He started with a wheel. A rough circle and many bursting lines for the spokes. After that things started to require a little imagination, and soon enough Jacob himself confessed that he'd decided to turn his creation into a tractor. Artistic licence and all.

When it was done I asked him to print his name below it, which he did in big, bold, unencumbered capital letters. He handed the creation over to me and I tucked it away neatly just as I heard the silence of my dryer coming to the end of its cycle.

He came inside with me and watched me go through the mundane motions of loading my somewhat clean clothes into my saddlebags. How far was I travelling, what did I do for food, how heavy were my bags, did I ever get lonely? I tried to answer his questions as best and as honestly as I could. The kid seemed so perceptive that I struggled to match the mind and the words to the young, cherubic face that looked up at me. Jacob was beautiful in the way that only a handful of kids ever appear to me. I thought back to a time in an airport waiting lounge where I witnessed the easy interaction of two young strangers. Bored with the silent reading of the grown-ups around them, these two kids from different countries, with different languages, shyly observed each other from across the room. They approached cautiously and, though no words were exchanged, the mere fact that they saw each other as the same was enough to engage them in a hybrid game of tag. Soon they were running around the plush seats and their stuffy occupants, and I couldn't help but smile at the sound of their laughter.

I do not plan on having children of my own, but encounters such as those with Jacob leave that conviction slightly wobbled. The beauty of those rare moments chips away at my hardened stance.

*

Beauty.

It's a thing that's been much talked about lately. I've been told to take things slow and to keep my eyes open for it. Her words on scraps of paper, given to me on the night she drove me to the bus station - on the night we said good-bye.

It was a distracted good-bye, made hurried by the perceived impatience of the bus driver. We'd held onto each other all night and now it was one quick hug and one quick kiss before I scampered up the steps and searched for a window seat. I found one easily enough, settled down, and turned my attention outside for a last look.

She was already gone.

I popped a Bob Dylan tape into my walkman and the first lines I heard him sing were "she's got everything she needs, she's an artist, she don't look back." I had to smile.

So pulling out of Montreal under a full moon, heading off on a trip that was supposed to be about me, I find my thoughts focusing on her. I was still excited about the vagueness of my plans. I just found it a little hard to leave as an empty shell. Instead, my trip now has that romantic mystique I've always claimed to want.

*

Things will be all right. This is what I tell people I believe. And sometimes I really do.

*

A long bus ride has a way of isolating its passengers. Cruising through the night in our shielded vessel, watching the dark scenery through large windows like big-screen televisions, time seems to stop for us. The towns we stop in are just bus terminals. Vending machines and washrooms. Motels, restaurants, and a gas station. That's what we see of Riviere-du-Loup. The people there just work from busload to busload. We come into port at two in the morning and spark a flurry of business before continuing on our way, leaving silence behind.

Sleep is hard to come by for me, so I content myself with watching the one unblinking channel lying outside. Others seem to be able to curl themselves into the smallest of balls in order to catch a little bit of shut-eye. The girl sitting across from me is one of those. From the conversations I'd overheard back in the Montreal line-up, I know that she's just coming back from a 5-week tree-planting expedition in the north woods of Ontario. She's heading home now with callused hands, a sore back, and many stories to tell her family and friends. She's richer, fuller, and surer. But for now she sleeps. The hard life of a tree-planter has instilled in her the ability to get the most out of any conceivable sleeping space. Humans adapt. That's what we do.

Still, sleep doesn't come to me. I'm awake (and feeling like the only one) to see the sun starting to peak through the fractures in the clouds. Dull red fills the grey cracks over the cold, still St. Lawrence. A muted sunrise. Inconspicuous.

*

Morning.

Up ahead a bus is stopped at the side of the road and its passengers are milling about beside it. Our driver pulls up to see what the problem is. Such is the camaraderie among like vehicles (something I will experience myself in the near future). It seems that a flat tire is the cause of the problem (also something I will experience myself) and, though help is on the way, it is agreed that we will take on some of the more impatient stranded passengers. Two of these shuffled humans strike me as among the saddest, most lost looking couple I have ever seen. They looked like otters - sleek, with big, black eyes. Their faces were sharply angled, almost aerodynamic. His black hair was shaved to the scalp; hers pulled back in a tight ponytail. They wore dark clothes - nothing but greys and blacks.

Slowly walking down the aisle, they searched for two seats together. You could almost feel the disappointment radiating off them when they found none. They settled for seats across from each other: the guy next to me, the girl next to a French teacher from Moncton. I know he was a French teacher from Moncton because, upon seeing the downcast eyes of this couple and noting the way they held hands across the gap, I offered to switch seats with the girl. I'd have wanted the same and it was such an easy thing to do. How could I not do my part to allow this couple to be reunited in their fretting over the world around them?

I watched them for a little while: the way they tried to curl up into one being, the way they created consistent, silent contact. I tried to imagine where they had come from. I made up stories for them. Two young lovers with too heavy a cross to bear. Perhaps escaping from disapproving parents. Running away to an uncertain life together, confident only in their feelings for each other. Perhaps she was pregnant. Or perhaps she had been pregnant. What could be the cause of their unspoken but constantly felt sadness?

I couldn't help thinking of Romeo and Juliet and all the lesser tragic couples of screen and story. Soon enough I had them reduced to melodramatic movie characters and that's when I knew it was time to look away.

A line from a Tragically Hip song came to mind: "I'm a highway romance milking thief."

I've always loved that line.


Cape Breton
P.E.I.
New Brunswick
Gaspe
Quebec City
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