Provider's Son by Lee Stringer Page A

wasnt used to taking care of bills, I wasnt used to the kids, I wasnt used to anything that people have to deal with in the real world.”
    â€œI dont think Im going back anyway. Not my cup of tea.”
    â€œGood man. Youll be better off. Most fellas complains they dont like it, but some of them is addicted to it if they told the truth. They gets sick of it, but give them a few months at home and youll see them hopping on the next plane to wherever, anywhere away from The House. Anywhere away from the bitch theyre living with or the house bills or the son beating up the car or the daughter coming home pregnant.”
    Levi laughed.
    â€œNow you knows Im exaggerating, but you sees what Im saying.”
    â€œOh I sees it perfect by.”
    â€œTo tell the truth me and the ex got along good until, like I say, I retired,” he said. “All downhill from there. But thats it. What are you going to do?”
    It was six in the morning when they landed in Stephenville. The captain came on and told everyone that although they were refuelling that everyone who was getting off in St. John’s had to stay on the plane. The two men sandwiching Levi got off and he sighed with relief. He seriously considered lying across the seat and going to sleep but he assumed the flight attendants wouldn’t let him. At least now he had leg room.
    After a half hour the captain came on and reported that there was still a lot of fog in St. John’s, so they would not be leaving the runway quite yet.
    An hour later they were still on the runway.
    â€œI dont know about the fog,” a fat man across from him said, “but if they dont soon let us off for a goddamn smoke Ill be lighting up one right here. Fog or no fog.”
    Twenty minutes later they left the runway. And eventually they did land in St. John’s.
    It was foggy. So foggy Levi didn’t know that ground was near until they struck it. The plane jolted, struck again, and was rolling over it with the brakes and reverse thrust on at full force, the whooshing sound filling the plane and Levi’s nerves and ears still popping.
    â€œJesus, if they were going to land in fog like this why didnt they just do it in the first place?” the fat smoker asked loudly, followed by a few tired mumbles of agreement. Everyone seemed too relieved to be back home to be angry about anything anymore.
    When they walked off the runway and into the terminal it seemed that everyone had someone waiting for them, except Levi. And this hit him so hard he felt like running in the washroom and bawling his eyes out on the toilet. But instead he went to the bus that was waiting for him and others in the parking lot. Another three hours of being cramped up in a seat next to a stranger.
    The bus was worse than the plane, but Levi eventually made it to the Irving Station at Slate Line. This is where his father would have gotten off the train fifty years ago when he came home from logging in Badger for four months. But unlike Levi, who had his truck waiting in the parking lot for a twenty minute drive down over the 308 highway, his father would have had a five hour walk ahead of him.
    His house never looked so simultaneously lonely and welcoming. But before he went in he stopped in his shed, turned on the lights, and looked around. The heat was still on, had to be on, as long as it wasn’t too warm that it would warp certain woods he had stowed about the place. The smell of sawdust was what hit him first. All the time working in it, he had forgotten how good it smelled. He figured there must still be tiny particles of sawdust floating in the air from the first project he ever worked on. Right now, combined with thousands of other particles, he knew that he was smelling at least some part of that first chair. Why did smell, above all other senses bring back such strong memories?
    He approached his latest project quietly, and stood staring at it as if it were asleep. A thin layer of