The Ride Not Taken

The plan was to leave campus early, before the snow set in, while light still filled the sky. But Aidan had fallen into a rabbit hole of online references and blogs and comments-on-blogs while researching his essay on indigenous land claims in northern Canada. Just an undergrad essay for an optional class, but it had suddenly become make-or-break, the piece he would regard forever more as the point when he committed, the point when he actually took up the cause to work for justice for his people. The library closing-time signal had chimed, forcing him to the surface with a shock. He crammed papers and laptop and water bottle and a greasy lunch container into his knapsack and hurried out.

The plan was to walk back to the sub-let, but one blast of icy wind as he emerged from the overheated library convinced him to dig in his pockets for bus fare. Damn! A dollar short. Greyness descended rapidly like a thick curtain being lowered on a critically reviled show. He decided to board the city bus anyway, pitch in the coins with confidence like he’d seen other people do—the wealthy kids, the entitled kids—and look offended when the driver challenged him.

He shivered alone at the bus-stop pole as winter’s fury mounted. Suck it up buttercup, he told himself, you can put up with a little snow, can’t you? He’d barely scraped through first year, and now it sickened him to think how he’d wasted time and money. After a back-breaking summer planting trees he’d returned to university a changed man, a serious man, a man with a purpose that burned like an ember: something hot, painful, and not to be ignored. He’d given up the party lifestyle; he’d canceled his room in student residence. He was even trying to grow his hair long, long enough to braid. Long braids to honor his ancestors. The snow stung and his sinuses pinched, so he tied his thin scarf not just around his throat but also his lower face, thereby trapping nose-jelly, the taste of chapped lips, and the odor of tuna recirculated from his breath.

He waited ten minutes—sixty minutes with wind-chill factored in—and obsessed about cheating on his bus fare. Could he actually pull it off? Or had his granny, his dear old kokum, raised a goody two-shoes, too compliant to ever break a rule? He tugged his toque lower, so the knitted hat was down to his brow, but it was little brother’s toque and it kept inching upwards, allowing the cold to draw a band of steel around his forehead. If he got questioned on the bus fare, he imagined throwing himself on the mercy of the driver: “blizzard out there, man!” No further hint was needed, he hoped; the case was in today’s headlines: a homeless woman, Yolanda, had died of exposure during the last blizzard.

Every year rumors circulated: drunks or homeless guys who were dropped off outside city limits—some said by vigilantes, some said by police—and were left to find their way back. Or not. But Yolanda was a plump motherly figure, who looked rather like the old widowed Queen Victoria, and her death had touched a communal nerve.

He stomped and tromped, the tingling of his feet reminding him that his feet were not yet frozen. Damn, he had to get on that nice warm bus—but how? Maybe some guys could pretend they’d paid enough fare but his heart said he would not get away with it. Oh, the shame of getting caught! His kokum would be so disappointed. And Mrs. Tandy, his high school science teacher who had pushed him to apply for entrance scholarships, would hear about it. Arrested for cheating on his fare. He could picture the quiver of disappointment on her lip. 

What the hell; he would walk. Walking would chase away those thoughts blowing back and forth in his head like old plastic bags in an alley. Three blocks from the library, the lights winked out of sight behind the admissions building. Soon he glimpsed the benches of the park, with its rows of trees poised like bristles on the toothbrush of a giant.

Brilliant! The shortcut. Of course!

The footpath was blocked by a snow windrow left over from the snowplow’s last tilling of the main road. The windrow was piled up so high he had to step into the middle and shwoop! the windrow sucked the sneaker right off his foot. “Not my Air Jordan high-top, you don’t!” Aidan shouted.

He plunged his arms into the windrow to retrieve the sneaker. He tried not to put his sneaker-less foot in the snow, so he teetered with every gust of wind. He found the sneaker, shook out the snow as best he could, and put it on. Ice pellets in the sole prickled and began to melt. But he scarcely noticed the ice as he hastened to find the footpath before the wind erased it.

The trees the shrubs the shrubs the trees. Eyes narrowed against the wind, he discerned the engineering tower, charcoal against the grey of the storm. Mrs. Tandy had said, “Go into engineering; you’ve got the marks and it’s fun; you can make things.” At first Aidan had said yes, because he liked rockets and robots. But now he wanted to change his studies to law, to know how other things were put together—societies and governments and whole civilizations.

He bent into the wind, which resisted him like the meaty forearms of bouncers pushing him away from a private club. Hands of ice tore at his scarf and slapped at his thighs. The wind’s roar, loud as a jet engine, filled his ears, quietening every so often as if to draw breath. In the lull, he heard the ringing in his ears, the crunch of his sneakers, the thud of his heart. One foot, and then another: ice cubes making indentations in the snow. Damn bus damn bus damn.

His eyes, constantly tearing up in the wind, searched for the tower, his point of reference, but floccules of snow had thickened the sky and he could no longer see any building. He yawned. He shivered uncontrollably. The plan was, he now told himself, to keep walking. He was panting now, drawing shallow breaths. His heart felt jumpy in his chest. Walking and walking, just like kokum used to do across the great big frozen lake. She always said, “keep walking and you will arrive.”

He yawned again. Keep walking—

The snow beckoned. How very very tired he felt—

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