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Show waiting. When it finally came, his name was not on it. He had not been chosen. After several weeks hiking in Canada and a few days touring some of the National Parks, we returned to where we had started, the heart of the nation, the Winnie spinning along on its new set of tires. During those final days my mother contracted conjunctivitis, we spent an entire day fighting the summer traffic in Yellowstone, and my dad spent $200 on a rafting trip that we all decided was not much fun. At our campsite near the Kicking Horse River the evening after our expensive rafting trip, the Winnie trip came to a grinding halt. ^ Dinner had ended and Bryan was gathering wood for a camp fire. The metal door to the Winnie slapped shut each time my mother carried another load of dishes into the tiny kitchen. Inside, Scott and I read books by the thin light offered by the generator, moving every now and then to release our legs and arms from the vinyl bench seats. On my way out the door, at the very limits of the lights, I stepped on a mirror and broke it, a tiny rectangular mirror, a tool really, that my dad had been using all summer to fix the Winnie, sliding it into the depths of the engine in hopes of seeing behind and between. It was August third, less than two weeks before the end of our trip. Scott had been told by my father earlier in the evening to pick up the tools. My father fractured like the mirror, yelling at the sky, at us, at a universe that dealt him repeated injustices. He threw pieces of broken glass in every direction, much like I imagined he wished to toss us. Angered by expense, the lack of decent signage, construction, full sewer dumps, and children who whined about getting out of the camper 208 |
