Truth and Bright Water by Thomas King Page B

like one of those postcards that Gabriel Tucker had in his sporting goods store for the tourists who stopped in for hunting licences and bullets. There was an old hotel on a hill overlooking the lake, and, of course, my mother had to stop just to see the place. It was old, and it smelled old, and the people who were sitting around in the lobby looked old. There were a couple of tour buses parked out front and everyone on the buses was over fifty at least. I saw a couple of kids, but they were dressed like theirparents and moved around as if they had never been outdoors in their entire lives.
    My father stayed outside and smoked a cigarette. “I’m going to watch the view,” he told my mother. “And think about the money I’m losing.”
    The inside of the hotel was mostly logs and planks and big branches, and my mother dragged me back and forth, reading a bunch of boring junk out of one of the colour brochures that someone had left lying about on a table.
    “Take a guess at how old this hotel is.”
    “Who cares?”
    My mother went to the front desk to see how much a room would cost. She came back smiling and said that they had a few vacancies left, and that we could get a nice room for one hundred and fifty dollars.
    “Is there a pool?”
    “The lake’s right there.”
    “That much for just a room?”
    “It’s a world-heritage resort.”
    My father stayed outside, smoking and looking at the lake, so he didn’t get to hear about the price of the room until we were setting up our tent at the campsite. “How much?”
    “That’s what they said.”
    “Must be why this sorry-ass campsite is costing us twenty bucks.”
    “Why?”
    “Because we get a view of the hotel.”
    My mother cooked up some rice and hot dogs and we got some soft drinks out of the cooler. After we had eaten, we sat on stumps and watched the sun settle into the lake. “What do you think now?” she asked me.
    I should have told her that I was beginning to like Waterton Lake, just to make her happy, but I didn’t. “Don’t worry,” she told me, “tomorrow’s going to be a lot more fun.”
    It rained all the next day. We sat in the tent and played rummy and fish. The tent leaked a little at one side, and we had to keep shifting around because our legs would get cramped. Every so often, myfather would unzip the flap and go out into the rain. We’d wait for him, look at our cards, and plan our strategies. After a while, he would come back in, wet, and we would begin again. I did most of the talking.
    “They should put in a miniature golf course. I bet they could make a lot of money off that.”
    My mother didn’t mind the rain. It was an adventure, she said. After each hand, she would carefully add up the scores and write them on the back of one of the brochures she had picked up at the Prince of Wales Hotel.
    My mother was right, of course. The mountains were different from Truth and Bright Water. In the mountains, everything was bowed in and close. On the prairies, you could see forever. In the mountains, the air felt heavy and dark. On the prairies, the air was light and gold.
    The next morning, the rain stopped and we went for a walk along the lakeshore. My father and I had a contest skipping stones across the lake. “So, what do you think?” he said.
    “About what?”
    “Your mother’s vacation.”
    “It’s okay.”
    “Pretty exciting playing rummy in a wet tent,” he says. “And the mosquitoes are a lot of fun, too.”
    “Rain’s stopped now.”
    “Your mother wants to hike to Crypt Lake.” My father picked up a large, flat rock and threw it sidearm so hard I was sure it was going to bounce up and rattle off across the surface all the way to the far shore. Instead, it buried its nose in the water and sank immediately. “And she wants to take a boat ride up the lake and back.”
    “Great.”
    My father stood on the shore and watched the spot where the rock had disappeared, as if he expected it to come floating to the