The bus ride from Vancouver took two hours and a half. By leaving Friday afternoon Frank had put himself amongst a crowd of weekend commuters who were headed out of the city after their week's work. The bus was nearly full when they left, but as it wended it's way in an overall north-easterly direction it stopped frequently, in several small towns and milk stops, and sometimes simply at an intersection where a vehicle stood waiting. The driver was acquainted with many of the travellers and knew where they were to get off, and was obliged to get down and retrieve luggage for them from the baggage compartment as they dismounted. They took on no new riders along the route, so that the bus grew steadily more empty.

They came at last to the area close to where Frank was to get off. The bus stopped at a crossroads truck stop, one of those Ma-and-Paw restaurant-store-garage operations, and the driver went inside. Frank consulted his map and then he followed him off the bus and stood by the baggage door. When he returned the driver asked, "I thought you were going to Thurelton."

"Not quite. You know where the old road goes left, about four miles this side of Thurelton?

"Sure. I drove that road a lot at one time. Is that where you want to get off?"

"Yeah, I thought I'd get my kit now, save you getting down later."

The driver removed the plastic lid from his cup of coffee and began to sip from it. He was in no apparent hurry to continue his route. Frank reached inside the luggage compartment himself and retrieved the duffel-bag. When they were back on board, Frank sat in the front seat opposite the driver where he could watch for his stop. The other man liked to talk, and Frank was quite happy to join him after two hours of silence. He asked where, specifically, he was headed, and when Frank told him he said he knew where the Van der Horne place was, though the bus didn't go that way any more, and he remembered a regular passenger who had lived there, several years ago now. He had dropped her off every Friday evening, right where Frank instructed him to stop.

The bus slowed and pulled over onto the gravel shoulder, the doors opened and Frank carried the duffel bag before him as he stepped down. The driver was certainly in no hurry.

"I don't see anybody here waiting for you. Are you sure they're expecting you?"

"They're expecting me, but they're not sure exactly when", Frank grinned at him. "I'll hitchhike from here I guess."

"There isn't much traffic on that road nowadays. You might have to hoof it." He laughed at that.

"That's okay. I like to walk, eight miles isn't far."

"Well, good luck to you." The doors closed and as the bus accelerated Frank was enveloped in a cloud of diesel fumes and dust. He stood with his back to a white painted guard rail that warned of a steep slope that dropped away from the curve in the highway. Before him lay the old road, a narrow affair covered with a patchwork of MacAdam and asphalt repairs. The bus was out of sight around the bend almost at once, but the noise of its tires and engine receded more slowly into the distance. When it was finally out of earshot Frank became more aware of the solitude of his surroundings. There were no motors, planes or machinery to be heard, and the total absence of man-made sound left an eery quiet to which he was unaccustomed.

He swung the kit bag over his shoulder and adopted a pace that he knew he could sustain for many miles. The late afternoon sunshine penetrated his shirt, it's welcome energy warming him in the cooling mountain air. He listened to the solitary tramping of his shoes on the pavement for two miles before passing a single house. A shaggy farm dog walked slowly out the lane toward him, barking in an unenthusiastic manner, and wagging its tail slowly. Frank had passed by long before it reached the roadway, and when he looked back he saw the dog sniffing his scent on the pavement. A little farther along he crossed an ancient cement culvert with iron railings on either side and he paused to look down through the rippling brook to its stoney bottom. He transferred the bag to the other shoulder and pressed on.

The walking was a lot tougher than he was used to, for much of it was uphill, so that he was grateful when he heard the singing of tires approaching on the highway. A recent model station wagon came into view and Frank saw that it was quite full, containing a family of several children and a small dog. He didn't raise his thumb, but turned and continued uphill, and soon he heard another sound. The road behind him flattened out for a piece, along where he had seen the dog and the little bridge, and there began after that a steep grade that curved sharply to the left. Frank recognized the familiar sound of a heavy truck gearing down for a climb, and he sat the duffel bag on its end and waited for it to appear. It took longer than he would have thought, for his hearing was acute in the mountain air, and he had misjudged the distance. He raised his thumb in plenty of time for the driver to see it, though he was certain that the aging red Chevy would stop.

It was a flat-bed truck, perhaps a five ton, the stake pockets rigged out with wooden farm racks, and loaded with baled straw. He marvelled as it approached, for it was a thing of beauty. The curved hood receded back from a tubular chrome grill between rounded fenders, until it reached the split flat windshield. The paint had faded and turned a chalky pink shade on all but the lower reaches, but the vehicle was without a dent or a patch of rust, and Frank knew it would be constructed of a guage of steel seen nowadays only in a gravel shovel. The truck geared down once more and slowed to a smooth stop to pick him up, and Frank saw on the door, in fancy hand brushed gilt lettering, "Jos. Van der Horne,

R.R. 3, Thurelton." He stepped onto the running board, hung his kit from the nearest post of the rack, opened the door and slid onto the worn leather seat.

A tall raw-boned man in his early fifties, of dark hair turning heavily to grey, and tanned to a swarthy complexion, extended a large-knuckled hand. "So I found you after all. When you said you might be here Friday I timed this trip to meet the bus on my way home. I waited a little while and then I realized I had missed it. You've hiked a good distance already."

"Yes, and I'm not sorry to see you. I'm used to walking, but not this alpine stuff."

The older man flashed a set of even, white teeth in lieu of a reply, then gently released the clutch and the truck began without effort to roll once more. The scent in the cab was like a perfume to Frank's nose, a combination of motor oil and dust, of sunbaked auto upholstery and the fresh sweet aroma from the cargo of straw. The seat portion of the bench had worn through long ago and had been re-covered with a thick tanned hide, now worked soft and smooth by the brushing of cotton-clad posteriors. The dash board was of moulded, painted steel, and contained an assortment of gauges; round dials with florescent needles, each surrounded by a nickel-plated ring.

"Nice truck", he admired, as though to himself.

Van der Horne looked at him and grinned again. "This truck?" He seemed surprised. "It's getting pretty old. I only use it around here now, to haul wood or peat, or maybe a little top-soil. I have a cube van for deliveries to the city. But I suppose being from the east, you haven't seen many old vehicles. I've been lucky finding parts for this truck, and I do my own work, so it has been worthwhile to keep it on the road. Because they don't use salt out here, it hasn't rusted hardly at all."

Frank noticed the large boney work-hands where they gripped the oversized wheel and puzzled how, like Tom's father's, they appeared too large for his arms. It must be characteristic of working men as they grow older, he figured, comparing them to his own slender appendages.

The road levelled out occasionally but continued to rise steadily. Here and there an area of the forest had been cleared but none of the ground was currently in use; they passed houses only rarely in the remaining five miles. Suddenly on the left-hand side Frank saw a clearing, in which stood two abandoned weather-beaten over-night cabins, and a clump of mature lilac bushes, now almost in bloom, grew from where a house or motel had perhaps once stood. He craned his neck to look closely out the driver's window but it was gone in a flash, and then almost at once they passed another such clearing, almost identical to the first and containing, again, two small cabins. The road rose sharply now, through the replanted forest, and then there were two more carbon-copy clearings in the trees. The four pairs of little buildings intrigued him, and he asked Van der Horn about them.

"Those used to be part of a motel once, but it burned down. The people who owned it moved away. Here we are!"

He was prevented from explaining further by the appearance of the mailbox on the right, and became busy shifting gears and turning the oversized wheel hand-over-hand as they entered the long lane. It clung to the edge of the forest, along a gently-sloping grass-covered hillside, the road having been formed by levelling out a narrow strip and shoring it up with stone on the right-hand side. It was covered with gravel, not the crushed slate that roads were constructed of in Frank's experience, but with bank gravel; tiny, many-coloured stones tumbled round from the banks of an ancient watershed.

At the end of the lane the gravel formed a rounded cul-de-sac around which buildings were grouped on three sides. To the left, flanked by trees, stood a white clapboard house, a storey and a half in height, with a steeply-pitched green roof. The windows and trim wore a recent coat of deep green paint, and the building was surrounded by well-tended lawns and flower beds. A matching clapboard garage, with similar roof but in need of paint, came next. On the right-hand side was a very long two-storey structure covered with plank siding, now weathered to a soft grey, with a metal roof, and a high sliding door that permitted access for trucks. The glass hot-house was out of sight on the other side of this building, but a long low plastic-covered greenhouse extended another fifty or sixty feet beyond it.

Van der Horne parked the truck in front of the big door and Frank took down his duffel. He followed Joe around the house to a back entrance leading into the kitchen. They were met at the door by grey-haired woman in a blue print housedress, who wiped her wet hands on her apron, shook his hand, and addressed him as Mr. Wilson. She was quite stout, and so short that Frank looked down onto the top of her head; her hair was pulled back severely and fashioned into a bun. Like her husband, she was much older than Frank, but not by a full generation, and though younger than his mother she had a more grandmotherly appearance, as if from an earlier time. She regarded him candidly, her pale blue eyes appraising behind gold-rimmed glasses. Though he felt no unfriendliness toward him, Helen Van der Horne had an unsmiling, no-nonsense manner that rarely changed.

"I found this fellow along the road", Joe rumbled. His voice, when he spoke softly in the quiet kitchen had a deep timbre. "He'd already walked about three miles".

"Joe said he thought you'd be on the bus today" she told Frank, "but I didn't believe it. I thought surely you meant next Friday. Well, I'm glad you're here. He …" she indicated her husband with a fierce nod, "has been working day and night getting ready. You see, once he knew he would have more help this spring he increased the size of his work load," she explained crossly. "I have no doubt you'll put in long days even with two men, from what I've seen out there."

"Yes ma'am. I thought you might be needing me right away. Uh, where can I put this?" he hefted the duffel-bag.

"Why don't you take that upstairs now? Turn left at the top of the stairs and that will be your room. There's a small bathroom up there you can have for your own."

Frank quickly stowed his scant belongings in the antique dresser provided, and hung the kit bag on a hook at the back of the closet. He pulled a chair around until it faced the double window that looked out to the east, and surveyed what he could of his surroundings. The view was cut in half by the line of coniferous forest that stretched along the north side of the clearing, then swung around to enclose it. The total area might have been ten or twelve acres, with perhaps another ten between the house and the road. Below, he could see, the sloping field had been terraced into wide growing beds, shored up on the lower side by stone walls, and much of this area was now covered in a blanket of straw. The plastic sheds, on two levels, which he could look down into from the window, were clearly empty, he could make out the uninterrupted grey of drainage gravel and flat-stone walks through the opaque polyethylene film.

He was somewhat disappointed, the operation was considerably smaller than he had pictured it in his mind. The glass hot-house, now hidden from his view, was only half the size of the one he had worked in at the prison farm, since it covered only one side of the board-on-board structure that faced toward the house. He had anticipated something grand, more professional in appearance; and yet, Mrs. Van der Horne had intimated that there was a great deal of work to be done. However, he could stick it out until the end of his parole period, and then be free to move on to wherever he liked. Besides, the room was pleasant, of medium size, with sloping ceilings on two sides. The window was large and the sun would wake him as it rose above the tree tops.

Frank heard the red truck start up in the yard below. "He's going to unload it," Frank thought and he picked up his work boots and carried them downstairs. Mrs. Van der Horn was working at the stove when he entered in sock feet and he startled her.

"Sorry," he said, and sat on a chair to begin lacing his boots.

"Where are you going?"

"I thought I'd go help Joe unload the truck."

"There's no need for you to do that. I'm making supper. He'll work out there until I call him."

"I'd like to see the place anyway."

Joe had pushed the big sliding door along the front of the two-storey barn, and had backed the truck inside. He had a conveyor running up into the loft when Frank arrived and he was starting to drop the straw onto it. There was a staircase at the far end of the room and he climbed it, arriving in a large loft used to store all sorts of supplies. He could see where the straw was kept, and he began to carry the bales back and pile them against the wall. Joe was dropping them onto the moving belt as quickly as he could unload them, and they tumbled into a pile that Frank was making little headway against. As he returned from one trip he saw Joe had came upstairs and was watching him.

"You're up here Frank! I didn't see you come in." He assisted in clearing up the backlog. "I'll send them up more slowly now that I know you're here, besides I'll have to travel some with them now."

The densely-packed parcels came at a more evenly-paced rate, Frank worked steadily until there were no more, and the belt stopped. Joe came up again then, appeared satisfied with the job he had done and showed him around the storage area. It was largely empty, for there was far more space than would ever be used. In it were stored all manner of greenhouse grower's supplies; wooden flats, bales of peat, bags of perlite, vermiculite and fertilizer. On wide shelves were stacks of cardboard boxes, containing plastic pots of different sizes, plastic growing flats, wire stakes, and conical wrappers for potted flowers.

Joe had eked out a living from a small operation, reducing costs wherever possible and building tables and flats himself. The boards for this were stored in the loft, stacked between strips of wood to allow air circulation around the drying lumber. A double set of loft doors opened over the gravel roadway below to facilitate their reception and removal.

They descended the narrow staircase and Joe showed him how the cube truck could be backed inside until the rear doors sealed against the opening into the greenhouse, allowing fragile crops to be loaded safely in cold weather. The area downstairs was also used as a truck repair garage, a carpentry shop, and a loading bay for supplies. It comprised about half the floor area of the wooden building. They passed next into the greenhouse and once inside Frank looked about him in wonderment. The wall of the barn, which formed the north wall of the glass greenhouse, was solid stone. The dark grey mass radiated a warmth in the early evening which could be felt where Frank stood six feet away. Much of the floor area was taken up by light-weight benches of Joe's own design, which could be handled and set up easily by a person working alone. The tops were covered with one-inch wire cloth, and held hundreds of potted Easter lilies; most just beginning to form flowers. They saw hundreds more lilies stored in the "cold room", their growth being retarded so they wouldn't be too far along when the holiday arrived.

Another area was taken up by tables covered with plastic, moisture clinging wetly to the underside, under which lay flats of tiny seedlings, some of which Frank recognized as tomatoes, peppers and various members of the cabbage family; cauliflower, broccoli and the like. Joe explained that they were ready now for "pricking off", an operation they would begin tomorrow morning, and was probably, he added, one of the worst jobs about the place.

He explained how they grew only a few crops, specializing in lilies for Easter, poinsettias for Christmas, hydrangeas and azaleas for Mother's Day and geraniums and chrysanthemums for summer. At times in the past, when his daughter and wife had both assisted him, he had started bedding plants, and this year he had tried them again once he knew for certain that Frank had been hired. If successful, the crop would pay Frank's wages for the entire year. He showed Frank the potting room, and the steam chest where tools, flats and potting media were sanitized to get rid of disease, weeds and pests, and to make the soil more porous. As he talked he checked gauges, adjusted ventilators and turned off fans. He explained the function of the masonry wall; with the insulated shed behind it, which drew off heat in the day time and released it at night. The hillside location with a southern exposure provided protection from the north wind, and because the greenhouses required an east-west orientation, permitted the north side of the plastic houses to be set in the ground, reducing heating costs and making rudimentary solar collectors possible.

A short glassed-in passage led to the upper of the two plastic greenhouses, and a ramp dropped from there to another on a lower level. The two were thereby completely isolated one from the other and could be operated independently. Joe noticed a small tear in the plastic. The poly was getting old and brittle but a few simple repairs would get another season out of it. He advised Frank that they would begin to use one of these houses the next day to grow the bedding plants, which could be placed directly on the floor. Soon too, they could begin setting up tables in the remaining house, in preparation for the transplanting of mums and geraniums. They were moved from propagation flats to four-inch pots and finally to six-inch pots, requiring more space with each transplanting. Soon all three buildings would be full, and he would have to calculate carefully to find all the space they would need.

When they returned to the main hothouse Joe selected out a few Easter lilies and put them into cool storage. He asked Frank to turn all the others a quarter turn to prevent stem curvature. A telephone rang in the potting room but Joe didn't stop working to answer it, and it stopped after two rings. "That will be supper", he said, and they finished quickly then and went into the house to their evening meal.

After dinner, as a consequence of a wonderful meal, and the warm kitchen, Frank began to yawn uncontrollably. He hadn't enjoyed a proper night's sleep since Tuesday. He had been in a state of anxiety since his release from prison (could it really have been only five days ago?), excited to get here, in a sweat to get all his past affairs tied up, nervous about his first plane ride, and uncomfortable in the strange surroundings of the hotel room in which he had barely closed his eyes the night before. He felt now the ennui of a five-day adrenalin rush winding down.

Helen Van der Horn poured them a mug of strong tea, and Joe went to the cupboard and fetched a tobacco tin. Frank was surprised to see him extract cigarette papers and begin to build himself a smoke. He watched hungrily as he pulled apart the fine Dutch shag and distributed it onto the paper. Joe noticed him and offered him the tin, which he accepted gratefully.

"I didn't know you smoked Frank. I don't myself really. It's too humid in the greenhouses, besides the nicotine is bad for plants … and other living things I suppose," he grinned. "Still, there's nothing like a smoke after dinner."

"I know. I never used tobacco before I went to jail, then I started, mostly out of boredom I think. I decided to quit when I got out, and I must say I never really missed it until I saw you rolling up just now."

It was long past dark now, and in spite of the effects of the tea, Frank found himself falling asleep at the table. Joe was listening to an old-time music show playing softly on the radio while his wife cleared away dishes. He excused himself for the night and climbed wearily up the stairs to bed.

As he removed his clothes he saw the moon was rising over the mountain; rich gold in colour and of enormous size. In awe he watched it as it rose rapidly, growing smaller in the space of a few minutes, and lighting the yard with its light while changing from gold to bright silver-blue. It shone through the plastic of the greenhouses, diffusing itself as it did so, giving them a phosphorescent glow, while it reflected liquidly where the angle was more correct. He lay down then, and the bright light shone onto his face as, somewhat more alert, he contemplated his situation.

. . . . . . . . . . . .

He felt no awareness of sleep, or the passage of time, but his next sensation was that the light on his face had grown warm, and he became instantly alert, awakened by the morning sun. There remained no trace of the tiredness of the night before, and he washed and shaved quickly in the tiny efficient bathroom. When he reached downstairs he found Helen drinking coffee by the window.

"Hello. I thought I was the first up."

"Not hardly. Joe is always up at first light to check everything, and begins to regulate the heat. That's a process that goes on all day, because when the sun is out, you have to keep opening vents and using exhaust fans to keep it cool enough, then a large cloud might come over, and you have to shut down quickly to avoid a big drop in temperature. And of course, when the temperature changes, so does the humidity. When it begins to stick to the glass for example, the air will dry out a lot. Joe is a very good greenhouse man, the temperature out there never varies more than five degrees above or below ideal. That requires a careful operator when you don't have automated systems. And he hardly ever checks gauges! Anyway, he goes out there early and starts moving things around, watching for the temperature to reach a point where he can shut down the heating system for the day, and he usually gets involved and forgets to come in for breakfast. He'd work all morning and never think of his stomach if I let him."

Frank picked up his boots. "Maybe he needs a hand with something," he suggested.

"No, you sit here and have your coffee," she commanded in her stern way. "You'll work long days here as it is, without following him around. We needed someone badly, but I'm hoping it will mean keeping more civilized hours, not just increased production."

Presently Joe came in and they ate breakfast. When he told her what they intended to do she volunteered to help.

"When Clara was home, we always sold bedding plants each spring, and she and I would do the pricking off, our fingers are smaller than his, and you have to pick the plants up by the two tiny leaves, never by the stem. He finds it a terrible job, but we never minded. The two of us could just about keep up with Joe filling and levelling the flats, and dibbling them."

"Dibbling?"

"You'll see" she replied in her ever-serious manner. "You know, that table of seedlings doesn't look like much right now, but by the time we've transplanted them all to growing flats the greenhouse will be packed full. You get three dozen flats from every germinating box."

"That's true" Joe added. "In two weeks everything will be packed full … and that with the lilies gone, too."

Breakfast was ample, but consisted of light foods,and dinner, he was told, would be the same. Heavy foods didn't sit well working in the sun and humidity. The biggest meal of the day was always supper. They ate quickly and by seven-thirty Frank and Joe were ready to begin work.

"I'm going to clean up here and then I'll be along to help."

"Okay, but don't be in any hurry. We have a lot to do first. I thought since it's going to be nice today, we'd carry the potting table out into the sun and work there. See you later."

Frank helped to carefully fold the plastic film off the tiny seedlings, and noticed they were all sitting in sub-irrigation trays. This was done so that the seeds wouldn't be washed out during watering, he was told. Joe talked steadily as they worked at a number of jobs, instructions being few and largely unnecessary, but explanations and background information plentiful. He simply went from one task to the next, Frank accompanying and assisting in each operation. In a few hours the daily chores had been completed, the greenhouse plastic repaired, tools and materials were at hand, and they were ready to begin. Joe sat down on a peat bale then, the first time he had stopped moving all morning, and with a gesture of his hand he invited Frank to do likewise.

"It sure is nice to have two sets of hands at last, the work seems to just fly, doesn't it?" He indicated the table of uncovered seedlings, the soil now beginning to show signs of drying. "I started these at different times so they would all be due for transplant now. Bedding plants are the easiest thing in the world if you're careful about sanitation. Mind you, the competition is fierce, because they only require a cheap plastic shed, and there's more automation now, but there's always a great market for flowers; people want to be able to stick them into the garden or planter boxes at the beginning of summer and have an instant garden, already in bloom." He chuckled at this.

Frank saw that he was happy to have company to talk with, to teach, and to work alongside. It must have been lonely for him working long days in solitude, for weeks on end, as he had been doing. He showed Frank how to operate the shredder, to prepare their materials for mixing, and then after piling measured quantities on the potting table, he began to mix, pushing the shovel all the way to the backboard, and distributing the mixture evenly along the length of the return stroke as he turned the shovel to the left. He repeated the entire procedure several times, alternating from a left-hand turn to a right-hand one each time.

Finally, they began to work. Joe filled the little plastic flats, either sixes or twelves, levelled them off with a single sweep of the trowel, placed them into a wooden flat, and dibbled them with a piece of plywood into which nails had been placed at exact intervals. He pressed this onto the wooden flat, and twenty-four little holes were instantly excavated for the seedlings. Frank carefully pulled the tiny plants from the loosened soil, placed them into the waiting dibbles and pressed down gently with his fingers in a single stroke. Once he had repeated the procedure a few times it went more quickly, the cart filled steadily with the finished transplants, and Joe watered them thoroughly with a fog nozzle before moving them away. Helen arrived and began at once to assist, and the three worked quietly in the spring sunshine until lunch time. Within a half-hour they returned, and worked steadily until six o'clock when they quit for the day. Frank went for the first time into the other greenhouse. He could not believe the volume of work they had put out that day. The plastic shed was getting close to full, and they hadn't finished the job. The sight was rewarding, unaccustomed as he was to work that could be measured at the end of the day in terms of productivity. It made the aching tightness he felt in his neck and between his shoulder-blades worthwhile, and what felt like writer's cramp in his thumbs and fingers. At the end of his first day on the job he decided that if this was as tough as it got, he would learn to like it just fine.