Free Turtle Valley by Gail Anderson-Dargatz Page B

drive again, he became the driver. I still did all right on country roads and on side roads in town, but highway driving threw me. The thought of driving in a city like Calgary terrified me.
    Ezra stopped for a yellow light at the intersection next to the McDonald’s, and the driver in the SUV honked for him to keep going. “Fucking asshole!” said Ezra. When the light turned green and Ezra started off again, the SUV stormed past over a solid line. Ezra swerved into it, nearly hitting the vehicle. Both my mother and Jeremy cried out.
    “Ezra!” I said. “What the hell are you doing?”
    Ezra fingered the driver and the man fingered him back. The sticker on the window of the SUV read:
Know Fear.
“He’s the asshole, not me.”
    The rage in his face. I took a breath and mentally paged through the responses the counsellor had offered me to deflect his anger in situations such as this, when his judgment was compromised. “How about I take a turn at the wheel?” I asked him, as cheerfully as I could.
    “You don’t like city driving.”
    “It’s my hometown. I’m sure I can manage.”
    “You think I’m a shitty driver?”
    “You’re a very skilled driver, but you sometimes drive differently when you’re exhausted. You often help me out. I’d like to help you here.”
    “Don’t give me that patronizing therapist shit.”
    I turned away, blinking back the sting of tears, to look out the passenger window. A couple walked along the side of theroad, carrying a branch between them from which a jack terrier dangled, its jaws locked around the stick.
    Below us, the town followed the curve of this arm of Shuswap Lake. The town of Salmon Arm was named for the fish that were once so abundant that farmers pitchforked them from the lake, and the river that fed into it, to slash into the land for fertilizer. Now the highway cut the city lengthwise, drawing curve-nervous Albertans down to Shuswap Lake and into houseboats. A tourist town. A town I didn’t leave until I was twenty-five, when I was jerked from these comfortable waters like those salmon caught silver and pink in surprise. I both thank and blame Jude for this. When I left the area, I left him.
    As we came down the hill near McGuire Lake, our truck began to slow and drift toward the centre lane. Ezra smacked his lips and his right hand circled in his lap. Seizure.
    I grabbed the steering wheel. “Put your foot on the brake!” I said. “Your foot on the brake!”
    His foot was off the gas, sitting loose against the floor. I couldn’t reach over the console between us to brake the truck myself. “Ezra! Your foot on the brake!”
    My mother leaned forward. “What’s happening?”
    I honked the horn, keeping it pressed to warn other drivers as we passed through an intersection. Ezra turned to me, his tongue still pushing against the inside of his lip. His eyes were yellowed and glazed and his cheeks drawn. “Your foot!” I cried. “On the brake!”
    He kept looking at me, and not the road, but he did brake slowly. I finally steered us to the side of the highway near the Dairy Queen and put the truck in park.
    “Daddy, put your foot on the brake!”
    “It’s okay. We’re okay now. Daddy had a seizure.”
    “A seizure!” Mom said. “Good God! We could have been killed.”
    A semi barrelled by, shaking our truck as it passed.
    “Are you all right?” I asked Ezra.
    He nodded. “Silly,” he said, struggling to find the word
sorry.
He said it again and again, “Silly. Silly.” Caressing my arm. Trying to let me know that he was okay, that everything was okay. As if either of us could believe that now.
    “Sorry,” he said at last.
    I led him by the hand to the passenger side and buckled him into his seat. Then I got behind the wheel and signalled to get back on the road. I waited too long, unsure now how to merge with the stream of traffic. After a time a hole opened and I pulled quickly into the right lane. Too late I saw that I was nearing an