The Chrome Suite by Sandra Birdsell

to close a door!”

    I remember that I ran across the school yard, carrying my father’s camera against my chest. The day seemed to be bleached by the sun, the colours faded. The baseball diamond, the school building radiated heat. I cut through the RCMP compound and its squat two-storey red brick building. Behind it, and seemingly ironed flat against the sky, was the silver bullet-shaped water tower, CARONA painted in shiny black enamel. Once I was out of view of the veranda, I slowed to a walk. I cut through the front and back yards of houses, heading towards the cemetery at the edge of the town and, beside it, my grandparents’ house. I walked head down, watching my feet. I imagined that I floated across a body of water. I became the girl on the inside cover of
The Book of Knowledge
, floating on top of a book towards a strange new horizon. I passed by a Chinese junk with red and gold sails, going on towards a city where a rocket thrust up through a yellow and turquoise sky I floated towards faces carved in the side of a mountain, cannons aimed at belts of snow hanging above valleys, a fountain spewing, water arching over menacing-looking totem poles. There was just one thing about the picture on the book that puzzled me, though. It was the presence of tiny yellow moths fluttering alongside the book the girl and boy stood on asthey held hands and floated towards their future. Why moths? I wondered, as I turned and entered the broad alley-way behind the town’s oldest hotel.
    On one side of the alley, the white stucco wall of the hotel’s back side reflected the sun. On the other stood the sagging livery stable, doors removed, dark insides gaping open like an old man’s mouth and emanating the odour of another era. It was a thick, comforting odour and I became Amy the squirrel, age two and heading out for the first time, way the hell and gone down the street before Margaret snagged me by the hem of my dress and reeled me in. Where was I going? “She was going to buy an ice cream,” Timothy had said, and would repeat the story at my every birthday and at the same time plunk down a brick of ice cream for me to eat. Spoonful by spoonful, the whole quart of Neapolitan ice cream disappeared inside my round little body. But Timothy had been curious. “Don’t chase her,” he instructed. “Let’s just see what happens.” They sent Mel to follow me and I took him places he’d never been. Somehow, through a wandering, circuitous route, we wound up on the back steps of Andy’s Cafe behind which, beyond a row of rusting oil barrels, flowed the swollen Lucy May Creek. Afterwards Timothy built the fence and screwed a hook closure on the outside of the gate. He watched with a mixture of pride and despair when, later, I wheeled the baby stroller over to the gate, climbed into it, and then went up and over the fence.
    As I passed by the hotel I heard the rumble of voices inside it. Then the back door opened and a grey-looking man reeled unsteadily into the bright sunlight. “Holy cow,” he muttered. He couldn’t see me. He turned his back, bent to fumble with his pants. I heard the splash of his stream hitting the wall. I wanted to raise Timothy’s camera and record this but decided not to. Margaret had warned me often to steer clear of the men who went in and out of the old hotel, those who would wave me over and call me “lass” or “darling” or“princess.” “Go on, help yourself,” they’d say, urging me not to be shy but to come on over and take a coin from among the change held out in their soil-stained hands. I would be invited to choose a nickel and buy a treat. An ice cream. I had been warned often about the promises of ice cream. But there was nothing sinister about these men, so often I did pluck a nickel from their palms, or a quarter. They didn’t seem to care or know the difference. The grey-looking man was lean and stoop-shouldered. He turned and saw me as I passed by. “Hey now, get on out of