The highway was busy with crosstown traffic. Father David slid in and out of lanes, as he made his way toward the northbound turn-off that, in his mind, would launch him on his journey. He knew there were thoughts to be thought — bad thoughts — about his leaving Beverley and the kids, about walking out on his parish on such short notice, about doing something so reckless he would surely pay for it one way or another the rest of his life. But there would be time for those thoughts later. For now, an intoxicating excitement overruled everything else. He felt almost giddy. He was on his way. He didn’t know where he was going, exactly, but he was finally on his way.
As he turned onto the northbound highway, he thought of all the school children who at this moment were sitting at their desks in classrooms all across the city. He thought of office workers at their workstations or in their windowless cubicles. He thought of the snarled traffic he was leaving behind. He thought of Beverley who would be … what? No, don’t go there! he reprimanded himself.
He drove on, as the apartment complexes and industrial parks at the edge of the city gave way to tracts of new suburban development, curbed roads and stooping street lamps appearing in the midst of empty fields like a mirage, surrounded by dirt and swept by dust. Just beyond the city’s grasp, he surveyed the beginnings of open farmland, with its rows and rows of feed corn swaying dryly beneath a cloudless blue sky. Tall maple trees, their dying leaves turned brilliant red and gold, lit up the wood lots.
He knew this part of the road well. It was the way to his old parish of St. Jude’s. He told himself to be sure to give a nod in its direction when he passed the turn-off, to acknowledge the honest farming community that had informed those early years of his ministry But he was well passed it when he finally remembered, and it was too late.
As the highway began taking him into Canadian shield country, with its rocky outcrops and bent coniferous trees, Father David was amazed at the excellent time he was making. He could drive all day, he thought, and into the night too. He was being propelled by more than the gas in his tank. “I’m travelling on a wing and a prayer,” he said out loud, and the sound of it pleased him.
It was not until he had left behind the familiar signs of cottage country — the numbered county roads, the hamburger joints, the gravel turn-offs — that the enormous extent of his journey began to dawn on him. He had travelled in his life. But he had only ever travelled east, which meant he had only ever travelled back.
In the summer before he was to begin divinity school, Father David had gone alone to Britain. It turned out to be a “family roots” tour, taken over by relatives so pleased at last to meet one of Frederick and Lucille’s children. He was the first of the Canadian relatives to visit. So he stayed in the homes of distant aunts and even more distant cousins several times removed. They would have it no other way They took him on tours, extravagant outings that required hours of preparation to drive a mere ten miles to sit in a tea shop overlooking a gray overcast beach, or to buy ice cream and post cards from a vendor’s stand beside a misty field, some derelict abbey way off in the distance. His relatives passed him among themselves, countering every suggestion he made for something he might like to see on his own with a cheery, “We’ll make a day of it then.”
So he had seen the requisite sights — the crumbling remains of Hadrian’s Wall, the crowded Tower, the tomb- and plaquelined cathedrals. But the memories that predominated were of sitting around kitchen tables, sitting in back seats of cars, sitting in stuffy parlours, sitting around tiny pub tables, drinking endless cups of tea and draft beer, all the while draining the very dregs of small talk, trying to patch up the tenuous connections since his parents’ departure twenty-five years ago. It was not like heading out; it was like going home. And it helped Father David appreciate all the reasons his parents might have left.
Israel had been more of an adventure, but it was a journey even farther east, and even farther into the past. He and Beverley had gone the spring after they had been married, a kind of belated honeymoon. They went on a guided tour that was filled with older people, not unlike the aunts and uncles he had left in Britain, who fawned over the newly-weds — a young priest, no less, and his bride who used to be a nun, don’t you know. It seemed so romantic to them all, and they teased the couple mercilessly.
Still, the locations they visited were exotic: the bright turquoise hews of the Mediterranean; the lush Jordan River valley (and here, the “very spot” where our Lord was baptized by John); the fishermen, after all these generations, still plying the waters of the Galilean Sea; the wild and formidable desert spreading out from the salt-rimmed shores of the Dead Sea; and then the teeming city of Jerusalem, with the magnificent Dome of the Rock overlooking the Kedron Valley, and the maze of streets with shops and crowds, here and there signs indicating stations on the Via Dolorosa, the Way of Sorrows. It was thrilling, and the guide was forever making the biblical connections to places Father David had heard and read about all his life, places he had imagined, but never quite like this. It was a journey back to his more distant roots, a spiritual home-coming of sorts.
But now this — this was entirely different. He had never before ventured west. Nor had members of his family It was the open way, the undiscovered land, the uncharted future, as it had been to countless pioneers far more rugged than he. He had no relatives west of Toronto, and he himself had never been north of Parry Sound. He had already passed that by now; the road signs had begun counting down the mileage to Sudbury, the next major destination. As he continued rolling northward, there were fewer and fewer cars on the road. He was entering new and unfamiliar territory.
At Sudbury he decided to stop. It was late afternoon. The car needed gassing up, and he was starting to feel pretty empty himself. A garish strip of fast food outlets was mildly reassuring, not unlike some of the less attractive parts of his own parish. So he entered under the familiar sign of the bucket and found an empty spot by the window. The hard moulded seat was attached by a bar to its matching table, part of an overall design to get him in and back out again quickly, “fast food” having less to do with the time of preparation than the time allotted for eating.
He tried to take some measure of comfort from the fatty chicken, the greasy fries, and the watered-down pop. The Israelites had been given manna in the morning, quails in the evening; this, he ventured, might be the sad modern day equivalent. He filled up the car and was soon on his way again, following the sun as it declined ahead of him in the western sky.
A couple of hours out of Sudbury, the sun now low on the horizon, a rosy splash radiating from behind a bank of clouds, Father David could feel his bowels stirring within him. The quail and the manna were not sitting well. On this stretch of the journey he had grown quiet, his random thoughts languidly turning up and over before giving way, each to the next. But now he grew focused on something else that seemed to be turning up and over. He’d better stop soon.
He was on a gently curving stretch of highway, bordered on his right by an irregular string of tall willows, on his left by the North Channel of Lake Huron. It was pretty, but it offered little by way of rest stops. He was approaching Sault Ste. Marie, he knew, where the neon lights would draw weary travellers to the same predictable fast food chains and economy motels. They promised only bland familiarity, not quality His body felt the truth of this acutely now.
He might not make it that far, he found himself thinking, as he calculated the mileage from the billboard advertising. His insides were gurgling, giving voice to a roiling mass of half-digested chicken and fries that was flowing, chamber by chamber, down to the dark sewers below. He was going to have to pull over, whether a service station appeared or not.
But he rounded a curve and saw up ahead a hand-marked sandwich-board sign with an arrow pointing to a gas station selling “CHEEP GAS.” He anticipated the driveway by several feet, bouncing through the edge of a shallow ditch and lurching up to the side of the building.
Leaving the car running, he bolted for the washroom door. It was locked. He tried the women’s. It was locked as well. He raced around to the front door which opened into an empty grease-smeared office lined by calendars displaying half-naked women. An inside door led to the repair bay. Clenching pelvic muscles he had not exercised in years, he thrust his head into