Page 21 of Big Dill

He chuckles and follows me down the hall. I suit up and wave toward the door. “Tour guide, lead the way.”

Outside, the cold hits my skin and my eyes water as we walk down the steps. He doesn’t lock the door behind us. The sky is pale and bright, the feeling of new beginnings. I soak it in as we head toward his truck.

“I’ll drive you around town and show you the other complexes and then we’ll head to town.” I nod and jump into the passenger seat. I lean toward the heater as he puts the truck into gear and starts down the icy road.

“These complexes all look alike. Good thing I’m with you. I don’t think I’d be able to find my way back.

He chuckles. “Company houses. Everyone here basically supports the generating station. People do come in from all over though for the fishing, and hunting. They stay at the Ritz, usually.”

I laugh “And soon they’ll be coming for pickleball.”

He grins at me. “That’s the Newfoundland Constabulary building there.” He points out a small building with one car in front of it. “We have two police officers in town at all times.”

“Two, huh? Good thing there’s no crime.”

“Oh, there’s crime.”

I angle my head, waiting for the punch line.

“Caribou jaywalking.” He shakes his head. “Always crossing the road at the worst possible spots.”

Look at that. The man does not disappoint.

I roll my eyes at him and he points out hiking and snowmobile trails, and picnic areas in the summer. “Maybe I can get you on the helicopter that takes families to Lab City for shopping. They fly over the falls. You get a great view of the one-thousand-foot drop. It’s quite something.”

“What’s the waterfall called?”

He gives me a cheeky grin. “Churchill Falls.”

I throw my hands up. “Duh, of course it is.”

“Sometimes you can see a herd of moose or caribou from the helicopter.”

“Moose,” I say to myself.

“Working something out?”

“Goose, geese. Moose, meese?”

He laughs out loud. “It’s moose.” I eye him and he continues, “Hey, English is hard and I don’t make the rules.”

He tells me more about the history of the town, the truck slowing, snow crunching beneath the tires as he circles back and heads the same way we came.

We pass by his place again and he goes two more blocks, and parks on Main Street. Last night I was too tired to realize how close we were to the center of town. “We could have walked,” I say.

“Not in this cold. Not yet anyway. I have to acclimate you first.”

I sit still for a minute and glance down the stretch of street, unease once again twisting inside me.

He taps a gloved finger on his steering wheel as he kills the ignition. “There’s not much to it.”

“Jaxon filled me in. My expectations are realistic.”

That earns me a laugh, and we exit his truck. “The generation station is a few miles north. That’s for another day.”

We walk, and the town unfolds slowly. A general store with a bell over the door. A café with handwritten specials in the window. Buildings with smoke curling from chimneys. People wave as we pass, a warm welcome in their eyes.

“Everyone knows you,” I say.