I didn't think the pineapple would work (I'm not pineapple's biggest fan), but its tasty brightness turned out to be a terrific foil to the dusky apple, all of which was zested into new territory by the tang of the berries.
She's going to try it next with saskatoon berries, which taste like blueberries that grew up on a big farm with a strict dad.
While I forked pie into my aptly named pie hole, Val and her friend Darlene had the kind of conversation people have in pie shops in small towns.
“You know Bill Dean,” Val said, “he's what, 5-foot-9?”
“I don't know him,” Darlene said.
“You know him! Bea and Bill Dean!”
Then Val went off to give someone a bowl of barley soup, and Darlene told me she was a month away from getting her licence to drive a semi-trailer.
Darlene, the soon-to-be trucker— Ian Brown
She's 60 and has already been offered a job. Her husband Al, 64, drives a truck too, and does two runs to Winnipeg and back every day.
“You'll never see each other,” I said.
Darlene said, “We never see each other anyway.” She told me it was her lifelong dream to be a truck driver.
But most of the time I just drove and thought, the way one does in the car.
When I got tired, I sang out loud and made rude noises with my tongue, and did a lot of driver-seat dancing with the windows down, and that got me the rest of the way to Saskatoon, still awash in sunlight but otherwise shut down, and that led me to the bar and the martinis.
So in the morning I woke up and felt as if someone had mechanically transformed my head into a clothes dryer while I was asleep.
I staggered out of bed, had a shower and shampooed my hair, shaved and made a micro-pot of hotel-room coffee (which I can't say I hate, however bad it is, because at least it's coffee).
Then I discovered it was 7 in the morning.
In the elevator, a woman in workout clothes looked at me and said, “I see you've decided to go casual today.” What sort of a thing is that to say to someone?
I headed across the street to the Sheraton Cavalier and bought some yogurt and a cranberry scone and some fresh fruit.
I sat in a corner of the restaurant and read the newspapers, about demonstrations in Toronto and the Stampede in Calgary and the oil spill in the Gulf and the political puling in Washington – about the whole world that was out there, unknown to me as I sped through the prairie air in my car.
I enjoyed the yogurt and the fruit immensely, and about half the scone before my mouth went into a full dry-crumb seizure: I'd forgotten butter.
Finally, I stood up purposefully, nodded to the people in the booth next to me and headed back to my room to write.
In the elevator, to my surprise, I burst into tears: It's so hard to be alone, to see the point and keep going when there's no one to keep going with. What I'd give for breakfast with my daughter!
I got that out of me, and then I felt all right again. A little breakfast, a little loneliness, a place to write it down. Could be a lot worse.
