Tinker and Blue (41 page)

Tinker watched the Plymouth pull away from the curb, while Blue watched him waving frantically in the rearview mirror until the car turned the corner and Tinker was gone from sight, and Blue was on his way home.

Tinker, standing on the street corner, laughed long after the Plymouth disappeared, wondering how long it would take Blue to realize he had driven off in the wrong direction.

Epilogue

Blue coaxed the Plymouth up the steep hill on the TransCanada Highway. On the other side of the hill lay Auld's Cove, the last place on mainland Nova Scotia.

“Just keep your eyes on the top of this hill here, buddy. Don't blink, because all of a sudden we're going to get to the top, and just when we get there it's going to look like an island is suddenly rising up out of the sea, so just keep your eyes glued to the summit. Any minute now ... any minute ... and there. There it is. Across the Strait of Canso, Barney, old buddy, Cape Breton Island. God's Country, as the other fellow says.”

Frank Macdonald is the award-winning author of
A Forest for Calum
(CBU Press 2005) and
A Possible Madness
(CBU Press 2011), both long-listed for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, and both finalists for Atlantic Book Awards. A long-time and award-winning columnist, Macdonald is also an accomplished writer of short stories, drama, poetry and songs. His humorous, often satirical columns in the Inverness
Oran
have twice been anthologized;
Assuming I'm Right
in 1990 became a stage production that has toured Nova Scotia and elsewhere in Canada. His play
Her Wake
won Best Canadian Play at the Liverpool International Theatre Festival in 2010 and, also in 2010, he published
T.R.'s Adventure at Angus the Wheeler's
(CBU Press), a children's book, illustrated by Virginia McCoy.

Frank has participated in a number of book and writers festivals, including The Word on the Street, Read by the Sea and the Ullapool International Book Festival.

Frank lives in Inverness, Cape Breton.