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places, you big dummy. What do you know
about any of that shit?
    His face hurt like hell. Then he remembered the painkillers he’d
stolen from Don’s bathroom. He reached into his knapsack and took
out two of the pills. He swallowed them dry, trying in vain to work up
a mouthful of spit to ease their passage down his throat. He gagged at
the acrid dry taste. He remembered the whiskey in his bag and took a
long pull straight from the bottle. He shivered, his eyes watering. His
face
really
hurt. He took another pill out of the bottle, considered it for a
moment. He knew nothing at all about drugs, or what might constitute
an overdose, and was flying blind.
What the hell,
he thought, and popped
it in his mouth. He took another swig of the whiskey, and another. The
amber liquid seared his throat, the heat travelling down through his body
to his empty stomach, radiating outward towards his extremities, leaving
him light-headed and warm.
    The pills had an immediate effect. A slide show of mental images
flickered across the screen of his mind—his mother, his father, Fleur,
their lovemaking, and, of course, Richard Weal. Jordan’s lips and jaw felt
numb, and he was utterly relaxed.
    Outside, the city was consumed by the night and vanished entirely,
leaving an eternity of highway stretching north as far as he could see.
Only distant neon stars, rendered opalescent by the rain, broke the
blackness. Lulled by the motion of the bus beneath him, Jordan yielded
to the barbiturate admixture of painkillers and whiskey coursing through
his system. He closed his eyes again, and slept.

CHAPTER FOUR
    The bus travelled a north-northwest route along the Trans Canada
Highway towards Georgian Bay, exiting onto highway 69, continuing
north around Georgian Bay towards Parry Sound. The rain stopped,
giving way to thick fog that drifted in from the rolling farmlands on
either side of the highway, which then gave way to tracks of young pine
forest.
    The moon, which had begun its ascent hours before in the rain,
came out from behind the scudding black rain clouds, frosting the road
on either side of the bus with silvery light.
    In Barrie, a mother and her five-year-old daughter boarded, and in
Parry Sound, four passengers who’d boarded in Toronto disembarked.
But no one from Parry Sound boarded. After five hours, the bus pulled
into Sudbury for a half-hour refuelling stop.
    Jordan slept through Jim Marks’s announcement that all passengers
could step out, stretch their legs, and get something to eat at the diner
next to the terminal.
    No one boarded after the break, Jim noted sourly. His mouth tasted
like bad coffee and cigarettes and his back ached. He felt his jacket pocket
for the Dexies he kept there. He hated using the amphetamines, mostly
because of what they did to his stomach. Though at his last physical, Doc
Abelard had warned him that the Dexies, in conjunction with his hours,
the cigarettes, and the forty extra pounds he was carrying around his
waist wasn’t doing his ticker any favours.
Just as a last resort,
Jim told
himself.
Don’t want to fall asleep and crash this old bitch before I get a chance
to collect my pension.
    He looked back. He counted five passengers in the back of the bus
as he pulled out of the lot: an old lady sitting two rows behind him who
had asked him three times already “just to be sure” that he was stopping
in Whitefish; the teenage boy sleeping against the window halfway to
the back who hadn’t gotten out at the Sudbury stop; the tired young
mother with her little girl—Missy, he’d heard the woman call her back
at the dinette; and the guy in the very back row reading a book.
Come to
think of it,
Jim thought,
that guy didn’t get off the bus in Sudbury to stretch
his legs, either.
One of them—the kid, he thought—was getting off in
Lake Hepburn. The other guy had bought a ticket all the way to Sault Ste.
Marie.
    There were fewer and fewer