“Why Alberta?” Lyle, the volunteer at the immigration office, asked when Mansoor told him his decision.

“My father was a cowboy, you see. And so am I.”

Lyle laughed. “Right on, man. And here I thought you were Indian.”

“Of course not!”

“You’ll fit right in there, man,” Lyle said, sliding his yellow tinted glasses up the ridge of his nose. He then scribbled on the immigration forms and handed them to him. “Congratulations, Mansoor. Canada welcomes you.”

In the distance, he sees the faint outline of a structure. Moonlight reflects off the roof. He can’t make it out clearly. A house or maybe a barn? Even if it is a barn, the farmhouse will be close by. Maybe he should walk there instead and ask the farmer to use his phone? It is closer than the main highway. Besides, he doesn’t know which way to start walking. He scans the dark fields—there must be a road that leads to the house, but finding it may be hard. Cutting across the field is the most rational decision.

Mansoor steps one leg through the barbed-wire fence and checks the depth of snow like a swimmer testing the temperature of the water before diving in. He sinks down to his ankles. His galoshes will not do.

He returns to the trunk where he pulls out the pair of mukluks he keeps there for just such an occasion. He bought the boots—with matching ones for Ashif and for Layla, too—for their first winter in Canada. They were expensive, but he wanted his family to be warm. “Like moon boots, Pappa!” Ashif squealed when Mansoor gave them to him. “That’s right. One small step for us, one giant step for mankind.”

Mansoor had assumed they were the best model to buy. After all, the Inuit wore them. But it didn’t take long for him to realize that they were the wrong boots for Calgary. Fine in Edmonton, Red Deer, Banff, or other parts of the country. But in Calgary, chinooks were the problem. Warm winds that blew in and turned streets of snow into pools of slush. The mukluks became waterlogged, making it difficult to walk. But they would do well for cutting across a field of snow. He sits down on the bumper and slips them on.

He is about to close the trunk when he decides to also take the boxy briefcase with him. He will look more respectable this way—a businessman, which he is of course. He does not want to startle the farmer. They have guns! They might think he is a traveling salesman—someone who wants to sell them a vacuum cleaner or solicit donations for a church. This thought makes Mansoor laugh. Well, better that than a wanderer. He would certainly never open his door to someone like that, especially if his family was at home. But then it occurs to him that a salesman is homeless; he is always on the road.