Category: Fiction

“We have one more stop before home, Robbie.” This was the time. She was ready. It was such a relief to have the words in her head and to know that the time was right. Like the galleon under the waves, the secret will be revealed. Their table was private and should the child become emotional there were no others close by. “Robbie there’s something I want you to know.” He looked up from his Coke. “That your Da and I want you to know. Both of us.” It was so easy, why hadn’t she done this years before? “A secret we kept from you when you were small. Now that you’re grown, well growing…” The words stopped, dammed up in her vocal cords. Her face flushed. She struggled to breath in and exhaled his name, “Robbie, Robbie…”

They never spoke of Minnesota or the folks they left behind. It must have been excruciating to be forced to leave everything they’d ever known with no hope of return, and a community to which they no longer existed. Out of necessity a new life was constructed, among fellow Mennonites, still apart from the greater world. If Ma placed any blame on Pa for their predicament, we children were none the wiser.

Certain neighbourhood traditions no one can explain other than to say they keep repeating themselves. The inhabitants of five houses near Beach and Wharncliffe enjoyed one another’s company enough, a shade of curiosity perhaps, that their lives intermingled four or five times a year. If most of these families lived as much as a mile apart they would have nothing to do with one another, but they were close neighbours and their proximity to one another, over the years, had manufactured a bond of friendship that appeared indestructible. It wasn’t, of course. The Browns, occupying a sixth house for years, had moved a few miles up the highway two years earlier and no one had heard from them since.

He looked at the movie poster in the window beside the unused ticket seller’s booth. It was from the 1945 film noir, Edgar Ulmer’s “Detour”, a good, creepy film as he remembered, starring Tom Neal and the deliciously-named Ann Savage.

Gloria hesitated and simply stared at the enchanting woman; over seventy-years-old and dressed in white from the top of her head – wrapped with a veil-type material – to her ankles, where her long sheer dress ended. She wore a red sash around her hefty waist. Yellow beads hung from her neck, and various bracelets, also beaded, lined her wrists.

“Your first time.” the woman said as a matter of fact.