Not in any kind of rush at all, or any kind of anything at all, she ambles and weaves down the gravelled shoulder of the highway. It’s still early-ish, not yet nine a.m.; cars pass infrequently. Each time the burn of an engine approaches from behind, she sticks out her thumb and gives it a half-hearted wag. If she catches a lift, great. If not, it doesn’t matter so much. She doesn’t have anywhere she needs to be until later, when she’s meeting an old friend.
Every now and then she stops and prods at the blackberry brambles that grow in abundance alongside the road, hoping to find a few gems. Stepping too close to the bramble, she’s caught by a branch of thorns that impale the loose cotton of her knee-length shorts, expertly latching on. In trying to twist free, she’s hooked at the shoulder by another overhanging branch. Blackberry thorns are wily, and the harder you fight, the deeper they clutch. She stops moving and, with nimble fingers and a bit of imaginative contortion, delicately pulls the branches from her clothes and steps back onto the road.
There’s no point to any of this, this search for ripe berries. You could say it was a fruitless endeavour. It’s much too early in the season, and the berries are uniformly bright green and rock hard. Coy, bitter studs, giving nothing away.
She continues to walk and eventually a truck pulls over onto the gravel. The tailpipe shudders and coughs as she approaches.
‘Wickaninnish?’ she asks the driver, a man she’s not seen before. His face is plump and hairless and doesn’t give away his age—he could be twenty or he could be forty. Across the eyes he looks friendly enough and the cab smells like bubblegum.
He tells her he doesn’t mind giving her a lift if she doesn’t mind sitting in the back; his cab is packed with electrical equipment. This suits her just fine, so she climbs up and into the flatbed, grateful not to have to make small-talk.
He drives.
She settles against the back window of the cab and stretches her legs across the cold metal of the flatbed. The world passes by and the morning breeze pinches her skin, in a non-sympathetic but invigorating way. Kind of like her mother’s touch.
Also in the back of the truck: muslin sacks of animal feed, the rusted frame of a bicycle, a heavy stack of loosely folded dust sheets tied with yellow nylon rope, and one black cork boot that has cracked and faded to chalky grey.
There’s a tear in one of the muslin sacks and every time the truck goes over a bump, the tear burps a dribble of colourful seeds and dark purple kernels onto a growing cone of feed. She leans over and scoops some into her hand and, for a lark, presses her tongue into the seeds. The taste makes her think of goat’s milk and barn and wool.
The wind blows from all directions and goosebumps rise on her arms, the sun not yet high enough to clear the trees on the side of the road. She zips open her bag and pulls out her towel, which she has brought in mind to find somewhere to shower today, and covers her legs with it. Unfortunately, what with living in a tree, the towel is never not damp, and provides little warmth.
The truck slows and, inexplicably, turns right onto a smaller road. This is not the way to Wickaninnish Beach. The forest is gloomy and thick on either side of this road, and they pass few buildings. Some houses fronted in cedar clapboard, sheds, a rank of post-office boxes, and a hand-painted Private Property sign nailed to a tree at an unfriendly angle. She twists around and peers through the window of the cab but can’t see past the electrical equipment to the driver, so she raps on the glass with her knuckles, lightly, in a casual way—she doesn’t want to embarrass either of them, but come on.
She leans over the driver’s side of the truck and waves but can’t see his face in the wing mirror. Looking over the edge of the truck, there’s the road, passing fluidly, and she tries to guess how fast they’re going. Soon, the pavement ends in an abrupt line and the road is now dirt.
‘Hey,’ she calls, ‘hey!’ She leans back and knocks again on the cab window.
Everything is rattling now as the vehicle grinds awkwardly over the uneven dirt road—her teeth, her eyes, her tongue. She sits back against the cab and presses her foot on the frame of the rusty bike. ‘You could swing that at someone’s head,’ she says aloud, to feel less alone. She laces one end of the yellow nylon rope that holds the dust sheets together around her pinkie finger and considers its usefulness, in a defence scenario, and comes up with nothing. She chuckles weakly at herself, not truly believing she’s in danger. ‘You can’t be stuck in a berry bush one minute and axe-murdered the next,’ she says to the cork boot, now wondering exactly how sharp are its metal spikes.
The truck passes into a long stretch of sun that has made its way through the trees. Every single morning, at this time, she thinks, trying to rein in the skip to her heart, the sun touches here.
Her mouth has turned pasty and dry. She tongues a sharp seed that is wedged between her back teeth. ‘Idiot,’ she whispers.