I was in contact with my father many times during the year I spent working on this story, but I only saw him once. We corresponded mainly by telephone, and by mail, verifying facts, gathering background information and reviewing chapter outlines. By late spring I had the typed manuscript ready for his approval, and because I was to add a short conclusion, I decided to deliver it in person and be there in his milieu when I wrote the final chapter. I had only four days to spare, so I flew out and drove a rented car northward from Vancouver into the mountains.

I arrived late. It was well past dark when I turned onto the parking space at the edge of the clearing and saw that a table lamp had been left burning for me in the front porch. A lamp was lit in the kitchen too, and when I turned off the headlights I saw a silhouette in the doorway. The dog barked wildly just outside the driver's door, until I wound the window partway down and spoke to him. "Okay Rocky." He jumped up to the window then, front paws on the opening, sniffing, tail wagging. I opened the door, and started for the house, the dog bounding happily beside me.

"Hi. Come on in."

I looked around quickly. "Where's Clara? Gone to bed?"

"At the farm. We're all on full hours right now, so we're staying over there. We thought we would loan you this place for a few days, since we won't be using it." He indicated a chair and I sat down.

"Thanks Dad. It'll make a great place to work."

"Yeah, and we'll still have evenings free to visit."

"And work — on the manuscript!"

"Right. Tell me, how is your mother making out? — married to old Fatso."

"Pretty good, I think. I was over there for coffee last week, and I don't believe I ever saw her looking so good at nine a.m. George is retired now, and he keeps her just hopping, with things he wants done and how he likes everything kept."

"No kidding? The fat fucking martinet! Oh well, I hold him no grudge, and I'm glad she's happy. He was just what she needed maybe."

"Maybe. What's that hammering I hear next door? Is Tom doing some building?"

"Yeah." He appeared surprised I didn't already know about this. "Tom and Leila have decided to start a family, so they're adding another room."

"I see. I guess Leila will quit working with you then?"

"Leila quit! Not likely! We had to convince her that six adults could take care of one little kid without interrupting our lifestyle very much. It was the only way we could get her to agree."

He brought me up to date on all the news then, and we talked until after midnight, when he prepared to set out on foot for home. Whenever I was up and around in the morning I was to come over and see the folks. Meanwhile he would leave Rocky for company. He opened the door and the dog darted in, went directly behind the wood stove where he curled up on a discarded winter garment placed there for his bed.

The fours days of my visit sped past; I soaked up sun and solitude, and worked a couple of hours each day on revisions. The company and the surroundings made it impossible to do more. I rose each morning at nine, made my usual breakfast; coffee, and at lunchtime I joined the greenhouse crew at their noon meal. In the afternoons I tagged along while they worked, assisting when they would allow it. Every evening they used my presence as an excuse to party until long after dark, and I was glad I had come west to finalize the story. Being amongst them at work, at rest, and at play provided me with a feeling for what they shared, for the bonds that held them together, in a way that merely knowing their background had not.

There was a genuine, uninhibited affection between them, evident in the way they worked together efficiently and energetically no matter how they were paired up. The hours passed quickly, and they had plenty of energy left to raise hell at the end of the day. I witnessed them engaged in a water fight one evening, romping and frolicking like children after an exhausting eleven hours of labour.

The operation had grown since I had seen it last, but I had come to know it through my writing as it had once been, in Frank's descriptions of eight years ago. The terraced beds extended now to the bottom of the hill, since lily bulbs now generated almost as much income as the greenhouses. They were Joe's main interest now, and he had developed and named two new hybrids in the past year; he was becoming recognized as a major producer and an expert in the field. Van der Horne's was a successful concern, and with no debts to repay, was making a lot of money. Joe was anxious to raise wages, Clara told me, but Tom was delaying it, scheming and researching to find ways to share profits while reducing the tax bite. He was lobbying for new vehicles, business conferences, and company-paid trips to the major horticultural exhibitions.

My last evening with them was a Tuesday, we had consumed an enormous meal, and my father and I were walking to the cabin where my car waited. I was to leave in an hour to catch a night flight direct to Toronto. I had the revised manuscript under my arm, all changes were completed, and I had his unqualified approval on the finished work. He had been embarrassed at the intimate moments he had found in the text, and had changed some of them. "Things look so different in print," he said.

I couldn't help comparing him, as we walked along, to the person I had known as a boy, in what seemed now like another lifetime. He had been a quieter, colder man, who worked Saturdays, appeared more straight-laced than other fathers, and who had seemed incapable of the kind of emotional attachment he demonstrated now towards this, his adopted family. I had never witnessed much feeling in him at all, not if you discount anger as an emotion. He was now wilder, impetuous, and had a passionate nature. It wasn't so surprising, living now as he did in a fantasy-like setting and situation. Frank said it himself, in describing his unconventional route to the happy state.

"It's been like a fairy-tale, how I was released early from prison into this job, which has in turn provided me with a wonderful girl, and a place I can call my own."

"But Dad, there was no magic involved. You took a low-paying job that demanded long hours, and you worked hard at it, donated thousands of hours of free labour to an enterprise you had no secured interest in. You trusted these people and adopted their dream. You treated that girl with patient unselfish affection; you shared what you had with her — and you built your home from abandoned materials. How can you call that a fairy-tale? Isn't it how things are supposed to work out?"

"Regardless, there are many who work hard, long hours all their lives, demonstrating slavish loyalty to greedy employers. Providence never selects them out to enjoy success, and others more fortunate despise them for their poverty and failure. No my boy, what has brought me here is Luck. She provided me with a great job and a comfortable home. I love it here! I love these mountains, my old lady, my dog! I love my boss too, and my partners, and the ground I dig in. I love the product of my labour. I love it all!"

And that is the final image I have of him. We stood atop a hill, the roadway descending in a straight path down the undulating slope before us. He had the wind to his back, arms outstretched, his long hair and beard whipping round his face in the stiff evening breeze. Raving and roaring, he exulted wildly at the end of a long day's work.