Calvin stood erect and walked away from the store window. He had a hundred and twenty miles still to go. There wasn’t time. He shuffled down the sidewalk and past a bar, the sour, warm aroma of beer floating out to him as someone opened the door and entered. Maybe he should just give up. Just panhandle some dollars, go in that bar and get wasted, and let whatever was going to happen take its course. What did he care? He was an old man. He would be dead before the thing that was upon them could ever make its real mark on the world. And he was tired. His powers were returning, but they were slow and rusty and he was not pleased to be using them again. He stopped and leaned against a snowy hydrant. He could get there faster of course, but he would have to prepare. And what if that preparation robbed him of the strength to do what he must on arrival? He made a decision.

He closed his eyes and prayed silently to the Great Spirit to forgive him for what he was about to do. He could carry on no longer, and his eyes filled with tears that found their way out of his tightly shut lids as he faced his failure. He opened his eyes and choked back a sob.

Up ahead, the door of a food store burst open and two little white girls ran out into the snow ahead of their harassed and laden mother. They slid along the sidewalk as best they could, foiling snow boots designed to stop them doing that very thing and their laughter as they stalled and stumbled carried in the evening air like lark song. Calvin sniffed away his tears, wiped his nose with the back of his hand and braced himself to beg from their mother.

She would be worth a couple of dollars. Just to be rid of him and get her groceries into the car. He’d learned that one in Calgary. Get them when they couldn’t walk away from you. A bus queue, people paying a cab driver, girls waiting for their dates. Any time they were forced to confront a man who had less than they had and couldn’t escape from his pleading eyes. And those big brown bags of food were the perfect things to make her feel bad about a man who might not have eaten for days. As he assumed the posture of a beggar the smaller of the girls took a run and managed to complete a huge slide along the icy sidewalk, stopping right in front of him, her cheeks ruddy from the cold, her eyes shining under her red woollen tammy. She could be no more than five or six years old.