Danny cleared his throat. “We dropped a water balloon filled with red food coloring on your head,” he said. “About three years ago. We’re sorry we did it.”

  Mr. Gower showed no signs of having understood what Danny said. I wasn’t entirely sure he recognized us, to tell the truth.

  Then Danny turned and headed back up the path. I waved goodbye to Mr. Gower and followed him. We ran, grabbed our bikes, and headed up the driveway. We flew. Fast as lightning. The bikes were so much lighter without the weight we’d come there carrying.

  The Journey to Ompah

  My Dad is so polite his pants catch on fire. Okay, just the once. And it was the bird’s fault, a bird that had no business being in this part of the world. Then again, you have to wonder … If it hadn’t been for the bird and the cute reporter and the burning trousers …

  But let me start at the beginning. Let me take you there.

  * * *

  The whole weird trip starts on a beautiful midsummer morning. The blazing pants are still hours away. I’m sitting at the kitchen table checking out the movies in the newspaper. I have a date tonight. I wonder if maybe Dad does, too. He’s washing a purple shirt in the sink. Except he isn’t really washing it, he’s watching it. Just leaning on the counter as if he isn’t sure what to do next. I’ve noticed that a lot lately.

  “It won’t wash itself, Dad.”

  He tosses me a smile two sizes too small. He says, “According to the directions, it will.” Then he holds up a pink bottle that says Feathery Soft for Delicates. It makes me think of Mom’s stuff hanging in the bathroom. Only it’s not our bathroom anymore.

  “It’s silk,” he says. “Doesn’t like to get roughed up.”

  Just then the timer on his wristwatch buzzes and he returns to his delicate task. I observe. Since the breakup, I’ve been observing him a lot. When I’m at Mom’s, I observe her. I’m trying to figure out how we got to this trial separation thing. How, six weeks ago, just plain here became here and there.

  “He’s too polite, that papa of yours.”

  I watch him rinse the shirt out under cold water.

  I opened up the dictionary and I said to Mom, “Polite as in having good manners or polite as in refined, cultivated?”

  She screwed up her face. “He has always been the perfect gentleman, of course. But lately, he’s … how should I say … intimidé. He’s nervous all the time as if he was having an affair or something.”

  “But he isn’t.”

  She shrugged. Pouts. “He’s too finicky,” she said.

  Gingerly, he wrings out his shirt. Is this what she means?

  I looked up finicky. “So he concentrates too much on small and unimportant details?”

  “Michel,” she said, frowning. “Enough with the dictionary.”

  “I’m trying to understand.”

  She wrapped her arms around herself. She looked as if she was trying to understand as well, leaning on her own counter in her own kitchen.

  “Suddenly it is ‘everything in moderation,’” she said. “But this … this contrainte. This is not moderation. It’s as if he woke up one morning and discovered he was an octopus in a boutique.”

  I watch him slowly wrap his fragile shirt in a fluffy yellow towel.

  “‘Moderation: the limiting, controlling or restricting of something so that it becomes or remains moderate.’ And that’s bad?”

  Now she glared. “He wasn’t always like this, Michel, and you know it. Just the last year or so.” She poured herself a glass of wine. “Everything in moderation is fine. But you have to moderate moderation with a little joie de vivre, non?” She sipped the wine. “He used to be a passionate man, your father.”

  I closed the dictionary. I didn’t want any more definitions. But I lay in bed later that night, trying to think what happened in the last year or so to change things. I became a teenager. Was it me?

  Dad stands back and regards his handiwork, pleased with himself in a modest kind of way.

  The phone rings. He picks it up and his eyes get big. “No!” he says. And I am rigid with fear. Something has happened to Mom. But now I see that his eyes are big with wonder not alarm. “You’re kidding!” he says. Wonder transforms his face to a grin the size of July. “Really?” he says. “Archilochus alexandri?”

  I should have guessed. It’s about a bird.

  “What now?” I ask. “Someone spot a dodo walking up Yonge Street?”

  He shakes his head. “Nothing so large,” he says, “But rare. A black-chinned hummingbird.”

  Right on cue, a ruby-throated hummingbird zooms to the feeder outside the kitchen window. I can see it hovering, its wings a blur, just beyond my father’s shoulder. It’s not such a big coincidence. They feed about every three seconds. They’re the only birds in the world with ADHD.

  “So this black-chin — there’s only a few left?”

  Dad shakes his head again. “It’s not an endangered species. It’s just that they summer in Texas, not Eastern Canada. This little fellow is thousands of kilometers from home.”

  He rubs his hands together. It’s as if his whole day just took on a brighter hue. Then he glances hopefully my way.

  “Want to come?”

  I groan inside. When I was little, I enjoyed clambering around in other people’s hedges to spy on wrens and warblers, but the thrill has gone.

  Oh, but the look on his face. I check my watch. It’s only ten. And after all, I want to do my part toward bringing about world peace, if only in the Whiticar family.

  “Okay,” I say, a little slow on the uptake. “As long as we’re back by dinner.”

  From the look on Dad’s face, that’s not an option.

  “Ottawa?” I say, when he explains where this tiny Texas fugitive has been sighted. “That’s, like, 400 kilometers away.”

  “Not quite Ottawa,” he quickly adds. “Some little place in the country northwest of there. Bob is going to email me a map. A place called Elphin.”

  I try to imagine what kind of a road map leads to somewhere called Elphin.

  “Can we put it off until next weekend?”

  He explains that it’s a very rare occurrence and I explain how getting a date is a very rare occurrence and he explains how there’ll be plenty of dates down the road and I explain that there’ll be plenty of birds down the road and then he’s about to play his next card but he stops midsentence, takes a deep breath and says he understands.

  That’s something else he does a lot lately. We hardly ever get up a good head of steam on an argument anymore before he bails. I see a flicker of tension along his jaw and realize how much this understanding costs.

  Then the phone rings again. Good, I think. It’s Bob to say the sighting was a hoax. But the joke’s on me. It’s Delia, and the date is off.

  * * *

  So there we are, Dad and I, speeding along old Highway 7 northbound to adventure! Bob canceled. Maybe he suddenly remembered he had a life. It’s all rough and tumble up here. Bush as far as the eye can see. Rock and pine and wetland. There is a lake around every curve of the highway. Some are little more than beaver-dammed ponds littered with the gray trunks of dying trees. I find the Tragically Hip on the radio then lose them again. Even radio waves get lost in these endless woods.

  This is the fringe of the Canadian Shield, the oldest mountain range in the world, worn down to low-slung hills. I wonder what that little hummingbird thought when he landed here. This isn’t Texas anymore, Toto.

  Dad smokes. He never used to. It’s a nervous habit and being alone with me in the car seems to make him nervous. He cranks open his window and hangs half his torso outside in an attempt to save me from second-hand smoke. But that doesn’t save me from the second-hand worry. I remember Mom’s word. Intimidé. I intimidate him. And I don’t know why.

  He closes the window and natters about faculty politics at the university where he teaches math. Now that we only see each other every other week he saves this stuff up. I try to be interested but it’s pretty dull and it never stops. Then suddenly it does.

  Dad stops talking. I see his hands tighten on the wheel. There is panic in his eyes. I’m afraid he’s having a stroke.

  “Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine,” he says too quickly, training his eyes on the road. He looks as if he’s going to say more and I wait. That’s how I must have missed the sign. Too busy observing Dad.

  * * *

  You’ve heard of the back of beyond? Elphin is beyond that. It’s like a trip back in time. We’re climbing up into the Lanark Highlands and I keep expecting to see some Algonquin hunter standing on the shoulder staring at the cracked and pitted pavement of County Road 36, wondering how it got there. So it is all the more astounding to come upon so many cars after kilometers of nothing. Twenty-three vehicles I count, pulled well off onto the verge under a canopy of maples alive with summer breezes.

  In a clearing is a tidy little log house obviously owned by the three bears. This is the object of our pilgrimage? No. Something buzzing around that neat little house. Something the size of a sugar cube, a sugar cube with attitude. There are license plates from as far away as Quebec, New York and Vermont. There’s even a van from a TV station.

  Dad gathers his camera equipment together and we head off to join the eager throng. Except that Dad sees a candy wrapper and has to stop to pick it up. He pockets it. He has this thing about litter.

  * * *

  The birders wait patiently by the roadside until they are invited, in small clutches, to see THE BIRD. Dad bides his time, chatting with fellow birders and occasionally stooping to swoop up a gum wrapper.

  The three bears turn out to be three nice hippies: Papa Hippie with a ponytail, Momma Hippie with a longer ponytail and Baby Hippie with the longest ponytail of all. They seem to enjoy the company. Mamma Hippie has baked brownies and Baby Hippie shows everyone his tree fort.

  Black-chin clearly does not enjoy the company. He’s in a foul mood. But then, in my limited experience, hummingbirds are always in a foul mood. You’d be in a foul mood if waking up in the morning was enough to kill you. It’s true! Hummingbirds sometimes have heart attacks just waking up.

  The little heart-attack-in-training darts around, dive-bombing the birders and dive-bombing the local ruby-throats as well. The weird thing is, it takes me a long time to distinguish this accidental tourist from the locals. I was hoping for something neon yellow with racing stripes. But Black-chin looks just like the ruby-throats as far as I can tell: long beak, bad temper. In a reverent whisper, Dad points out the purple band around the stranger’s throat.

  For a purple band, we have driven 317 kilometers?

  Finally our turn is up and we head back out toward the road.

  Goldilocks is waiting.

  She’s in red high heels. She has a microphone in hand, a cameraman on a chain, and from twenty meters away you can see that she’s singled Dad out from the herd. He immediately lights up another cigarette.

  I observe him through the smoke. He looks calm enough. No one else would know he was nervous. And suddenly, I am, too, because I can’t help noticing how good-looking he is. It’s not supposed to matter how your father looks. But I see Goldilocks fuss with her hair, and it makes me jumpy.

  “You don’t have to talk to her,” I whisper.

  “That would be rude,” he whispers back. He takes one last long drag on his cigarette and bravely smiles for the camera.

  “Ornery little cuss, isn’t he?” says Goldilocks, flashing a hundred-watt smile. There are introductions all around, but Goldilocks only has eyes for Dad. “The bird attacked my cameraman,” she says. “And he only weighs three grams.”

  Dad grins pleasantly. “He looks to me as if he weighs closer to ninety kilos.”

  “Oh, that is so funny,” squeals Goldilocks. “Did you catch that, Ray?”

  The cameraman holds up his hand to indicate he’s rolling, and Goldilocks puts on her TV face.

  “I’m talking to Terry Whiticar who drove all the way up here from Toronto with his son to witness this rare event. What do you think brought this little fella our way, Terry?” she asks.

  Dad shrugs. “Maybe someone in Houston sneezed,” he says.

  Goldilocks is in raptures. She’s getting good tape. I figure this must be a big step up from reading the weather.

  “Some people say he might have lost his sense of direction,” she says. “Others say he got caught up in a trade wind. What’s your take, Terry?”

  Dad looks back across the lawn to where the latest gaggle of birders is gathered in silent awe. His face becomes thoughtful.

  “Maybe it wasn’t an accident,” he says.

  Goldilocks looks surprised. “Really?”

  Dad turns to her and his face is serious, almost pained. “Maybe things were just so bad back home, he had to get away.”

  And that’s when his pants go up in flames.

  Well, not flames, exactly, but they sure as heck are on fire. Remember the cigarette? Dad slipped the butt into his pocket along with all the other trash. He just didn’t quite put the butt out first. Suddenly he is dancing around hitting himself and I’m running after him hitting him, too. All I can think is that I’ve got to put Dad out!

  Sure enough, Mr. Black-chin gets in on the act, chasing us, his wings making this low whirring whistle over our heads, until Papa Hippie solves everything with a bucketful of water. It’s well water from the cold clear depths of the oldest mountains in the world.

  * * *

  Ray gets the whole song and dance on tape. Goldilocks takes Dad’s email address so she can send him a link. Right.

  “That was so stupid!” I shout, when we’re back in the car. “You could have seriously hurt yourself.”

  Dad turns the car around and we head back down to the world.

  “I’m sorry,” he says.

  “I don’t want you to be sorry,” I shout. “I don’t want you to understand. I don’t want you to be so polite that you go up in flames.”

  There’s silence for about three-tenths of a kilometer. He reaches for his cigarettes then changes his mind. He clears his throat.

  “I’m sorry for apologizing,” he says.

  It’s a joke. I know it’s a joke, but for some reason I bellow at him to shut up and then, before I know what’s hit me, I’m crying. It’s totally absurd. I sob and sniffle and basically dissolve right there on the passenger’s seat.

  “Where’s Michel?” Mom will ask. “Oh,” Dad will say. “He dissolved, sorry.”

  Dad is smart enough not to say anything. It’s not about the fire. It’s about everything. Anyway, it is through a veil of stale tears that I see the road sign. The one I missed on the way up.

  “Oompah,” I say, like a tuba.

  Dad says nothing.

  I turn as we pass the sign and read it out loud. “‘Turn Right for Oompah.’ Why does that ring a bell?”

  Still nothing. But I notice Dad’s hands tighten on the wheel. He’s wearing pants he borrowed from Papa Hippie. Faded yellow jeans with crazy patches on them. His face looks kind of yellow, too. We’re driving into the sunset.

  “It’s Ompah,” he says at last. “To rhyme with stomp.”

  I sniff and wipe my wet face. “You mean to rhyme with stompa,” I correct him.

  His smile is grim. He shakes his head as if he’s trying to jiggle something loose in his skull. Then all of a sudden he slows down the car.

  “Dad?”

  No answer. We just roll to a stop. My window’s down and the evening air is filled with cricket song and the screech of blue jays.

  “The Ompah Stomp,” he says. “The big end-of-summer hoedown.”

  Then I remember. “Ompah. Of course! That’s where you grew up.”

  He shakes his head. “The road to Ompah,” he says, as if there is an important difference. He seems lost in thought. I sit back, feeling empty and exhausted.

  I notice that we’ve pulled to a stop right at the intersection of Highway 509, the road to Ompah. There’s a big homemade sign at the intersection: “Blue Skies,” it reads, with an arrow pointing north.

  “So that’s where those blue skies got to,” I say.

  I look at Dad. He’s ticking. It’s his brain, I think, ticking like a time bomb. Then I notice it’s just his fingernail on the steering wheel. His eyes look as if he’s watching a horror movie and it’s come to the scene with the knife and the bathtub. I want to reach out and touch him, but I resist the urge. I don’t want him to go off.

  He must be remembering his parents. They died years and years ago, as far as I know. There’s no pictures, no cards. I don’t think he was a happy kid. Watching him now, he doesn’t look like a happy kid.

  He clears his throat. “Archilochus alexandri,” he says so quietly I can hardly hear him. The Laurentian Shield gets a little older, erodes just a little more before he speaks again. “Maybe that bird was sent to me,” he says.

  Now I’m really worried. Can a fire in your pants actually fry your brain? But he chuckles — seems to guess what I’m thinking.

  “Sorry,” he says. “I’m not making much sense.”

  I shrug. “Yeah, well, join the club.”

  It turns out he’s still thinking about the Black-chin. “Nothing else would have brought me up this way,” he says. “I don’t know why I’ve avoided it so long.” He looks at me squarely. “Do you mind if we pay a little visit?” he asks.

  I groan, partly from hunger and partly from apprehension, but I keep it to myself.