I checked my small canvas bag through in Chicago, since it contained the Smith & Wesson (disassembled in accordance with federal firearms regulations). I’d packed lightly, not intending to be gone beyond a day or two, just jeans, shirts, a heavy sweater, and underwear. I didn’t even carry a purse—just stuck my wallet in my jeans pocket.

After an hour’s layover in Toronto’s bright modern airport, I boarded Air Canada’s Ontario puddle jumper. We stopped five times on the way to Thunder Bay on tiny airstrips which loomed out of open country to receive us. As people got on and off they exchanged greetings and light conversation. It reminded me of a bus ride through rural Louisiana in the freedom-march days; I got just as leg of the trip climbed down rollaway stairs into a clear, cold night. We were perhaps six hundred miles north of Chicago, a difference in latitude sufficient for winter to have barely ended.

Most of my fellow passengers were wrapped in winter coats. I shivered across the tarmac in a cotton shirt and corduroy jacket, wishing I had carried my sweater instead of packing it. A husky young fellow with red, wind-whipped cheeks and a shock of black hair followed close behind with the luggage. I picked up my canvas bag and set off in search of a night’s lodging. Thunder Bay boasted a Holiday Inn. That sounded good enough to me. They had plenty of vacancies. I booked a room for two nights.

They told me they would send a car along for me—their regular van was broken. I waited forty-five minutes inside the tiny terminal, drinking a cup of bitter coffee from a vending machine to entertain myself. When the limo finally came, it was a beat-up station wagon which I almost missed until it was rolling away. Then I could read THUNDER BAY HOLIDAY INN painted on its side. I went racing after it, yelling frantically, my canvas bag bumping me in the leg. I longed for the gigantic, impersonal efficiency of O’Hare with its ranks of surly, illiterate cab drivers.

The car stopped fifty feet ahead of me and waited while I came panting up to it. The driver was a heavyset man dressed in a graying white pullover. When he turned to look at me, a pungent draft of stale beer swept over me. The forty-five minutes I’d been waiting he must have spent in a bar. However, if I tried to get a cab I might be there all night. I told him to take me to the Holiday Inn and I leaned back in the seat with my eyes shut, grasping the side strap. It couldn’t be any worse than riding with Lotty sober but the memory of my own accident was too fresh for me not to be nervous. We moved along at a good clip, ignoring honking horns.