Saskatchewan is the tattered fragment that haunted my sleep. Memories crowded the podium. Ghosts lurked everywhere. I had thought I was done with my past, perhaps, but it wasn't quite done with me. It could never be that easy.
Barlow nestled the bus amongst the diesel big rigs of highway 11 in Chamberlain, a famous Saskatchewan truckers town, where we ate a huge truckers breakfast and then drove into Regina. My apprehension increased with each approaching kilometre. The grain elevators of every small town became prairie beacons on the horizon as we neared Regina, and a dark past I was reluctant to see again. Back in the old Buffalo hunting massacree days Regina was known as Pile-O-Bones, and to this day I had always considered the place apty named, for I too left behind a few skeletons in my midnight haste to leave town.
We drove past the reserve where my kid lived and I was immediately overwhelmed with delinquent fatherly guilt for continuing on. Barlow was intensely curious and was prepared to swing the bus around but I was much to anxious and afraid of meeting the ex-wife again to veer off in that direction. Instead we drove into town and knocked on a few doors. I made Barlow wait on the bus while I scoped out a few things. It was important to find out how certain floks would react to my being back in town. In the meantime, I showed here the Museum of Natural History in Wascana Park. We wandered around the exhibits marvelling at the displays of stuffed animals and stuffed natives.
Barlow hunkered down in the park to write letters while I biked around my old home town kicking up the dirt around all the sleeping dogs in my path. I spent the entire day that way. Finally it became too much for me. I drove over to my best friends place, Garth Fichtner's where we drank beer and exchanged anecdotes as old buddies are prone to do. Like most of the pals from my boyhood days, he has a wife and kids and all the usual trappings of domesticity, lawyer fees, mortgage payments and such. Fortunately for Kim and I, Garth is also an accomplished mechanic. We could have had him working on the bus for days but we didn't have the time to stop over to accomplish all that needed to be done on the bus. He agreed to hook up the stereo at the very least. "You can't do a road trip without music." I returned to the park to fetch Kim and the bus.
Garth hooked up the stereo and gave us some cash to travel with. We left at dusk. I didn't want to leave but staying in Regina was a dangerous proposition for me, with paternity suits, arrest warrants and repo men awaiting my return. You Can't Go Home Again.
