She’s spent two hours in Room 3 of the Ojibway Motor Inn every Tuesday afternoon for forty-two weeks, to get away from her husband’s sick-bed. Week after week she rushes past the bear, wolf and loon on the totem pole, past the disapproval of the spirits, their deliberations about restoration of order.
Sandals kicked off to feel the cold ground, she presses forehead against the window, eyes drawn to the loon. She shivers in the certainty Nelson is burnt up in a head-on, and she won’t know until the morning, when the gossipy nurse, jaw moving with three sticks of spearmint gum, masticates the news while changing Anton’s sheets. But forty-one times Nelson has lumbered in, breathless, eager, slipped his hands under her top, cupped the breasts, erection insistent, lifted her and she moaned, unpunished.
The stillness of the blue air is rent by lightning, and lances her eyeball. A loon call shakes her and she feels the earth opening. Her droop-eyed, drooling husband, deserted while she ruts in a motel room, has released his spirit, she knows. The wolf growls as the bear raises its arms in triumph.
She leaves no note. She breathes in the scent of the rich loam, the clusters of the opening purple lilacs. She swerves her beat-up Rambler away from the fiery sun, towards the splash of waterfalls.
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