Free Twenty-Six by Leo McKay Page B

had come in a paper-wrapped package that most of the extended family had gathered in Didu Staciw’s kitchen to see opened. It had been one of the first warm days in late spring. The windows and doors were open, letting in the earth smells from the damp garden at the front of the house. Didu was sitting at the kitchen table with a crowd of people standing expectantly around him. He cut the twine from the bundle and folded back the heavy paper wrapping. Inside were some pieces of cloth that Arvel was too young to understand the significance of. The women in the kitchen raised a fuss over these. In a yellow envelope inside the package was a photo of Didu’s village. Several stern-looking, bony-faced men and women stood, stuffed into ill-fitting clothing, in front of a small group of farm buildings.
    Arvel’s father began laughing. “Look at what they’re living in,” he exclaimed. “Thatched roofs! Holy shit! Welcome to the twentieth century!” Didu pulled the photo from Arvel’s father’s hand, shouted something at Arvel’s father, and stormed into the living room. He sat in the swivel chair and spun his back to the kitchen. Arvel, three, maybe four years old, followed his grandfather into the living room and approached the swivel-based armchair from behind. When he got to the front of the chair, he looked up at his grandfather. The old man was holding the photo close to his face, a few centimetres from his glasses. Behind the thick lenses, his grandfather’s eyes were blinking rapidly, tears were pouring freely down the sides of his nose.
    The air was dry and cold now and smelled of the frozen earth that had been ploughed up with the snow. Banks of old snow were pushed up on either side of the sidewalk as he made his way up Foord Street. Near the corner of Bridge Avenue, naked trees thrust their frost-whitened branches against the sky. A few ragged wreaths, weather-beaten, face-down, and half-covered with ice and snow, remained on the steps that led up to the war monument, leftovers from Remembrance Day. It could have been last winter that the wind had blown massive drifts over the ridge at the edge of the Anglican graveyard, up behind the monument. He and Ziv and Bundy Burgess and other kids from this end of the Red Row had taken running leaps into the snow, diving headlong into the powder, going so deep that a semi-darkness set in amid the translucent white of the drift. It could have been last winter, but it wasn’t. It was more than ten years ago, that day he remembered so well. No, it was more than fifteen years ago. Why did he remember this so clearly, when yesterday and the day before had already gone shapeless in his imagination?
    Travelling south from the Red Row, it was only a short distance to the centre of town. Once across Bridge Avenue, a block of tall, square Victorian houses with big front porches and paved driveways quickly gave way to what was once, before the advent of one-stop shopping, the commercial district of Albion Mines. The century-plus-old buildings maintained their commercial appearance: front doors that opened directly onto the sidewalk, large display windows that had once housed samples of merchandise. But commerce had largely left the area. There were still a few banks, a couple of convenience stores. The original cut-stone post-office building still stood, still housed the post office. But many of the buildings, which had once held candyshops, tinsmiths, clothing outlets, hardware stores, now were used as residences.
    The Tim Horton’s on Foord Street stood out like an alien. With its plate-glass windows, brick and steel construction, paved parking lot, and iridescent plastic and aluminum sign, it was an envoy from another time. This was the unmistakable stamp of the present on the main street of Albion Mines.
    Arvel crossed Foord Street and turned up the sidewalk. As he reached the doughnut shop, he crossed the salt-tinged pavement of the parking lot and looked through the front