The Footstop Cafe. Paulette Crosse

      This is not the only casualty this fall. Five weeks and two days ago, a sixty-four-year-old woman was walking her Chihuahua in Lynn Canyon and failed to realize the danger of trying to cross that River without benefit of a bridge. One wonders if it was a suicide, though apparently this has been discounted. She was wearing heels, too. Outrageous footwear for such an activity. They cause no end of damage to the metatarsus.

      What is wrong with people, I’d like to know, that they feel a need to approach that River as if it were immovable concrete. It is a force of nature, unpredictable and therefore dangerous.

      I would call it a menace, but that seems inappropriate, as it was here long before we were.

      Thirty-three lives have been lost since we’ve moved into this house. I have kept track. Today was the thirty-third. I don’t know how many more must die before our Council members do something about it. Can’t people exercise at a recreational centre? A complete waste of taxpayers’ money to erect such centres if people insist on exercising in that canyon instead.

      Karen walks along that River. I don’t understand it, don’t understand it at all. I would talk to her about it — have talked to her many times — but she doesn’t listen. So I’ve stopped. I suppose I could order her to refrain from walking there, but there’s no point in issuing a command that will never be obeyed. That only undermines the authority of the one issuing the order. Besides, she’s my wife; one mustn’t be reduced to believing one’s wife is something one can command.

      But good God, you’d think she’d show some common sense, some responsibility to her children, and stop entering that bloody canyon! What would I ... [Morris pauses, frowns, crosses out “I,” and replaces it with “we.”] What would we do with out her?

      Perhaps we should move.

      The fisherman was only thirty-eight.

      Two doors away Andy, too, is confessing his fears, only not in written form and not to a journal. He is sharing them with his Buddha.

      The Buddha was given to him as a Christmas present two years earlier by Nanny Woodruff. (Lately, Candice has refused to call her that, saying it sounds babyish; she now calls her “Grandmother” instead.) Nanny Woodruff is Andy’s favourite grandparent. Grampy Woodruff simply overwhelms him, the way he heaves his massive bulk to and fro like an active volcano, constantly erupting with deafening bellows of laughter or biblical quotes, and Nanny Morton scares him a little with her embarrassing belches and drool and perpetually gummed-up eyes. Andy has no memory of Grampy Morton, long since buried at the local cemetery behind Capilano College; for some reason this fills him with great relief.

      Yes, Nanny Woodruff is his favourite grandparent by a long mile, and the Buddha is his most prized possession. It stands no higher than Andy’s index finger, its protruding bare belly glossy and cool. The beaming, bald-headed face carved into the ivory appears merry and compassionate. The hugely swollen earlobes (a sign of great wisdom, Nanny W. says) lend the squat figure nobility.

      Most wondrous of all, the Buddha has, casually slung over his back and knotted to a knobby stick, a bag containing all his worldly possessions. To Andy, this hobo’s bag represents more freedom, confidence, and wisdom than every Christian symbol contained in Grampy’s church.