Arrow's Rest, Joel Scott [best book club books TXT] 📗

dozed while disjointed memories of the last months sparked and flashed through his mind. Sometimes the present interwove with the past into one long tapestry winding all the way back to his childhood in Haida Gwaii, and sometimes even further, all the way back to the Creation, when he dreamed he was Raven Child and put the stones in the water. When that happened, it was better than the movies he downloaded from the Pirate Bay.

He woke up when the bus stopped at a small town for supper. Joseph was disappointed that there had been no dreams this time. Although maybe there were and he didn’t remember them. He thought that happened sometimes, and it was too bad. He picked up his knapsack and went into the diner with the other passengers. While he waited for his meal, he pulled up the map and notes on his phone. Annie was out of hospital and staying with Jaimie while she recovered, and she had coordinated the different routes and layovers with the friends and family he visited. His daughter was always looking for things she could do from her bed, and organizing Joseph’s itinerary had occupied her for days. If it had been left to him, he would have just showed up. He hadn’t told Annie about his last stop. She would worry.

He finished his supper, meat loaf, one of his favourites. This one was on the bland side, but that was why they invented hot sauce. He paid his bill and left a five-dollar tip for the waitress, whom he didn’t blame for the meal’s shortcomings. It was a block to the Seven Eleven Motel he’d looked up online, and he took a ground floor room and paid for it in cash using a dead cousin’s name on the sign-in sheet. He napped and watched TV until nine o’clock when he slipped out of the motel and walked a mile back down the road to the lay-by where the crew cab waited.

“Welcome back,” Erin said. He reached across the seat and hugged his grandfather. “You sure you have to do this?”

Joseph said that he was. He lit his pipe one last time as the truck carried him down the road back towards where it all began and thought about what lay ahead. He didn’t relish any of it, but debts were owed. It needed to be finished.

A half hour down the road, Erin looked at the odometer and slowed.

“Should be getting close,” he said. It was another quarter mile before their headlights lit up the hand-lettered sign in front of the gravel road leading off into the bushes.

Welcome to God’s country

PLENTIFUL

6 miles

Jeremiah Albright Prophet

Joseph got out of the truck, swung his knapsack up onto his back, and opened the rear door. Sinbad jumped lightly down beside him, and the two of them moved off into the darkness.

About the Author

Born and raised on the prairies, Joel Scott has traveled extensively and worked as a fisherman, a yacht broker, and a librarian. He is a two-time winner of the Cedric Literary Award. Joel is a lifelong sailor and circumnavigator who currently lives and sails out of Chemainus, B.C.

Copyright

Copyright © Joel Scott, 2021

Published by ECW Press

665 Gerrard Street East

Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4M 1Y2

416-694-3348 / info@ecwpress.com

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any process — electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise — without the prior written permission of the copyright owners and ECW Press. The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

Cover design: Michel Vrana

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Library and Archives Canada cataloguing in publication

Title: Arrow’s rest / Joel Scott.

Names: Scott, Joel (Novelist), author.

Identifiers: Canadiana (print) 20200383345 | Canadiana (ebook) 20200383388

ISBN 9781770415720 (softcover)

ISBN 9781773056968 (ePub)

ISBN 9781773056975 (PDF)

ISBN 9781773056982 (Kindle)

Classification: LCC PS8637.C68617 A77 2021 | DDC C813/.6—dc23

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

The publication of Arrow’s Rest has been funded in part by the Government of Canada. Ce livre est financé en partie par le gouvernement du Canada. We acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts. Nous remercions le Conseil des arts du Canada de son soutien. We acknowledge the support of the Ontario Arts Council (OAC), an agency of the Government of Ontario, which last year funded 1,965 individual artists and 1,152 organizations in 197 communities across Ontario for a total of $51.9 million. We also acknowledge the support of the Government of Ontario through the Ontario Book Publishing Tax Credit, and through Ontario Creates