The Calling by Inger Ash Wolfe Read Free Book Online

Quebec. The towns in all of the province were much like the ones he’d encountered in British Columbia and Prairies—outside of the cities, the villages appeared like beads on a string along two-lane country roads, one perhaps every fifteen or twenty kilometers, about the distance between where you might have last rested your horse and where you might want to stop again. The villages were small, tiny even, some with nothing more than a church, a store, and a Victorian post office long since converted to another purpose: a pub now, a bed-and-breakfast, an antique store. Here, in Humber Cottage, where he pulled over
after driving in a mainly easterly direction for three hours, it was a small café. He was tired and in need of something to eat.
    He’d sat with Delia until two in the morning, doing his ministrations, cleaning up after himself, and wandering around the house. Just before two, when she was ready, he brushed her hair, sat her up on the couch, and photographed her. He thanked her then, blessing her, and took to the road. He spent the rest of that day, Saturday, November 13, in a roadside forest, praying and resting. At 3 A.M ., he’d got back into his car and started east again. At 6 A.M. he’d switched to smaller roads, and now, an hour later, a predawn gloam was spreading a fan of thick orange light over the few buildings that lined this part of Highway 121—the hamlet of Humber Cottage—where he would breakfast.
    As he came to the door of the café, a pretty woman in her mid-thirties unlocked it for him. “Early riser?” she said.
    “Just passing through.”
    “Coffee isn’t even on yet. Come in, though.”
    He told her he didn’t drink coffee, not to make any on his account, that if she would bring him some hot water, he would make his morning drink. She brought him a little teapot, stained from years of the hard water in this part of the province, and watched him drop a pinch of gray leaf into the pot. He swirled it around and poured it out into a cup.
    “Imported stuff, huh?” she said. “I have a cousin who has a teashop in Cottingham, just back twenty or so klicks. You should visit her.”
    “I grow my own,” he said. “This is damiana. A natural tonic.” He sipped it. “Have you any fruit?”
    “I can make you cottage cheese with berries in it. That’s a good breakfast.”
    “If you don’t mind, Miss, I’d rather just the berries. Nothing else.”
    She shrugged her shoulders good-naturedly and turned for the counter. “I don’t mind anything, hon, but you look like you could use a proper meal.”
    “It’s early for a full breakfast,” he said, “but thanks. Put the hot water on my bill, of course.”
    “Wouldn’t think of it,” came the reply.
    She disappeared into the kitchen, where he presumed she was now slicing his breakfast. He hoped she might bring strawberries with the tops still attached; the greens were rich in astringent, and his gut felt damp and heavy. But it attracted strange looks, a man who ate something destined for compost.
We are all destined for compost,
he thought, and smiled to himself.
We are but clay.
    She brought out the fruit—blackberries, strawberries without their greens, raspberries. She had brought a couple of slices of honey-dew, which he would not touch, as it broke down in the mouth and caused anything in the stomach to ferment, and he did not touch alcohol. “Nothing else, then?” she said.
    “Not for now.”
    She stood by the side of his table, regarding him with a gentle look. “Are you some kind of a doctor?” she said, her head tilted with curiosity. “You have the look about you of a doctor.”
    “And what does a doctor look like, my dear?”
    “A little tired from saving lives.” She laughed at herself. “Have you been saving lives all through the night, Doctor?”
    This one was very charming, he thought to himself. Sweet, even-tempered. But very young. “I have, in fact, been saving lives. So you can pat yourself on the