Home Free by Marni Jackson Read Free Book Online Page A

the sun. There is the same plain white church with the same worn-out, tape-recorded bells tolling the hour. I step into the dark coolness of a store where there are open barrels of amber honey. The woman behind the counter is asleep, head on her folded arms. On the patio of Café Vitória, several old men sit as if they haven’t moved for 33 years. Which might be the case.
    I park the car by the highway and right away I find the overgrown footpath that goes the back way up the “mountain”—just a big hill, really. Our place was on the crest of it. Everything feels the same, even the small white wildflowers underfoot and the clarity of the air. It has a distinctive sparkle here, like Vinho Verde. I walk past barking dogs, and clucking chickens. O tempo volta para tras.
    The first time I arrived here, I had taken the bus to São Brás, left my bags in a residencia then walked the four kilometres to Alpor-tel, asking here and there after the tall inglês . They kept gesturing up the road. It was dusk by the time I left the highway and began to climb. At the top of the hill I came to a two-storey house, ochre and white, with an explosion of purple bougainvillea against one wall and grass growing up through the tiles of the patio. The dark wooden panels of the front door,with a brass knocker in the shape of a woman’s hand, were narrow as a cupboard and opened down the middle. The place was elegant but slightly derelict-looking.
    I had no idea what to expect. My plane mate could have a wife and family with him, if not a cult.
    I knocked, then pushed open the door and there he was, like a page out of some Graham Greene novel. He was sitting in a dark leather armchair in an otherwise empty room,with a book in his lap, a cigarette between his fingers, and a glass of red wine on the floor. He was surprised to see me, but not overly.
    â€œAmazing,”he said. “I’ve been thinking of you the past few days, wondering if you’d come.”
    That night, we walked all the way back to my residencia , where we slept badly in the single bed, facing the painting of Jesus Christ on the wall. The next morning we brought my things back to the villa, and I moved in. His father owned the place and planned to rent it out some time. But for now it was empty.
    We cooked over a brazier and lived mostly outside, where the back wall of the house jutted out into a ledge. Hours were spent just sitting on the ledge, watching the mists lift off the hills to the north. Our Portuguese neighbours were remarkably accepting of these English hippies who did nothing all day long. And it was, accidentally, domestic life, a home , the thing I missed but didn’t realize. There wasn’t even the problem of being in love, at least at first. Politics, the scene in London,my family—they all felt as far away as Jupiter. We had successfully dropped out.
    Several months went by.
    My decision to go back to Canada was as casual and careless as my arrival; it was almost Christmas, and I thought I should show up for it.
    Chris walked me to the highway,where we flagged down the big smoke-windowed bus to Lisbon. I was wearing a long, three-tiered brown woollen cloak, the kind the local shepherds wore, and had packed a big bag of unshelled almonds. Although I waved from my seat on the bus I doubt he could have seen me through the tinted glass.
    My parents lived in Burlington, near a big bridge called the Skyway, not far from the American border. On the day before Christmas, at the end of 1971, I flew to London, then New York, then took a bus north. One of Buffalo’s famous snowstorms enveloped the area—the winds were strong on the arch of the Skyway. The driver agreed to drop me beside the toll booths, where my sandals sank into more than a foot of new snow: O Canada.
    In my bag was a glass kerosene lamp and ceramic bowls from Portugal, presents for my parents. A cab ride took me to my parents’ front door. It