He heard something rustling about outside the camper and got up to check, swinging the door open and peering into the pre-dawn gloom. Nothing.
Funny how we automatically conclude nothing really exists unless we actually see it, or feel its touch, its bite, he thought. Hearing’s not enough. Sounds revealed half-truths at best, which you had to fill in with guesses. At worst, they could be formulated into lies.
Could have been a rat, he supposed. Cat? Stray dog?
Whatever it was had merged back into twilight.
He checked his mobile: October 7, 6:43 a.m. Scrolled across to the weather icon and tapped: Sunny days on the way. Yeah, right. Go back to bed.
He shuffled onto the camper’s dining nook bench instead and considered the probability of a drift back into sleep. Yeah, right. Decided to make himself a coffee. Might as well be awake if I’m not asleep. He’d usually be up before six anyway, had slept in actually.
Unsynchronized biorhythms had long been a point of contention between him and Leanne. “I wish you wouldn’t make so much commotion getting up,” she’d complain, as if the grunts, quaking, and rustling from his side of the mattress were intentional—that he should have made himself silent as a ghost slipping out of the room. “Close the door,” she’d gripe at the incandescence of the hallway nightlight if he didn’t sneak out quick enough.
When had love and companionship calcified into crankiness? Whose fault was that—the slow metamorphosis from passionate reds inside the eyelids to indistinct greys, the hulking, immobile forms of the bedroom furniture become noticeable in the darkness, shapes and masses that hunkered round, hemming them in… Change of subject!
What am I supposed to be doing here? he asked, brought back to his here and now by the gurgle of water boiling on the stove. Bernice hadn’t been too clear about it. He’d have to ask. Set things straight. Housework? Yard work? Playing checkers with Harry? Walking Mr. Beasley? All the above? She hadn’t provided a list of chores and duties. Anything goes, he figured, ashamed at his own mistrust.
Maybe I should go back to work? Get a real job?
He’d seen an ad in the Courier—right next to Bernice’s—for a ‘Multi-Media Journalist’, working out of Duncan, just twenty minutes down the road. “Your new career with Black Press starts here,” it proclaimed. What the hell does a ‘multi-media journalist’ do? he wondered. Words and phrases from the ad jumped out at him: ‘outstanding and diverse writing abilities’, tick; ‘specifically suited for both online and print’, half-tick; ‘work well under deadline pressure’, tick; ‘advanced video and photography skills’, ex; ‘knowledge of social media’, ex again. Forget it.
Maybe he could become a janitor-recluse? Live up to the nebulous expectations of that university aptitude test he’d failed all those years ago. Splice life’s archival footage together, as if the complicated histories of journalism, marriage, and fatherhood had never happened and his family home on Sunnyside never existed…
Isn’t that what I am doing? he asked, unsettled by the possibility. “No!” he yelped. No!he insisted, clinging to denial for a prolonged heartbeat before letting go. Experience had taught him that the harder you denied something, the more it asserted itself as a damn near unavoidable truth. Trick was to pretend it had never even occurred to you—not even as a wayward thought.
When he’d moved into the camper, he’d noticed a kayak stowed beneath. Bernice said it belonged to Jenny. Maybe I could borrow it, he reckoned. Go for a morning paddle out onto Stuart Channel, stroke and glide, stroke and glide. No harm in asking…
That would be nice, he thought. Paddling out onto the ocean, into the contradiction of a relatively safe unknown.
He looked out the galley window at the bleed of sunlight over the hump of the Esplanade escarpment. As soon as it’s ready, I’ll take my coffee out and have a look. If the yak proved seaworthy and the weather calm, he’d ask Bernice if he could use it from time-to-time. Starting today, perhaps?
What about a life jacket?
“Don’t need one,” he figured.
Next: Doggie Treats