A Ghost Story - Part V
Image: Ben Waardenburg
Danny’s daughter, Jennifer, felt… well, there are no words for what she felt, taking off for Canada while her father was dying.
She was a slender woman in her mid-forties with eggplant-colored hair that hung in a scraggly braid past the bra line. She always wore her hair that way, mostly for convenience, and people assumed she was a hippie, which made sense because she also always wore Berks or other ugly, heavy-looking health shoes. And that made sense too, since, by profession, she was a pedorthist and had worked in the comfort shoe business for years. Her husband, Jim, was a popular orthodontist in town, a sweet, mild-mannered, pudgy man who occasionally threw fits of petulance if things didn’t go his way. This was one of those times.
Although Jim was not much of an outdoors man, the idea of a week fishing at an exclusive resort in Ontario was thrilling to him. He was tired. He spent long days fitting metal wires to crooked teenage teeth and badly needed a break. The previous summer they’d gone to Europe, but this year Jim decided total rest was required and booked them into a fish camp in French River, a four hour drive from Toronto.
Neither he nor Jennifer knew what a fish camp was exactly, but when Jennifer announced she couldn’t go anywhere with her father so close to dying, Jim dug his heels in and said they’d paid for a ten thousand dollar vacation and they had to go no matter what.
“But he could die while we’re gone!” cried Jennifer.
“He won’t. And besides, he told us to go. He wants us to be happy! We’ll keep in touch with him the whole time, and it’ll all work out, you’ll see.”
He was right that Danny had pleaded with them to go on their trip, but Jennifer was extremely uneasy about it and dreaded leaving her father in a nursing home, even though they’d been assured he’d receive excellent care. Her husband, she thought, was a selfish fool. But in the end it seemed too complicated not to go along with him. With a wilting heart, she flew to Canada, spent a night in Toronto, and then drove north, a whole day’s trip through miles and miles of barren uninteresting territory till they reached the end of the road. Literally. They were looking at a small body of water, a rough beach, six or seven cabins, and a sprawling wooden lodge.
On the other side of the lake loomed a dark line of trees, an endless forest, the tallest pines Jennifer had ever seen. Beyond the fish camp clearing there were trees, too, and Jennifer realized they were in the middle of nowhere, true wilderness, and itched to put on her new Merrell hiking boots and dive into the woods where she was sure, for a time, she’d find the peace and courage she needed before going back to her dying father.
Cover photo: Sandra Ahn Mode