Vulcan, the blacksmith, in his forge, a sooty, greasy, black and white saturnine face I can almost recognize, wide, passed it on the highway to Nelson, now I've stopped, I want to grab my camera, he's hammering and twisting a piece of metal, and while he's huge he's using a small ordinary hammer, his arms aren't what I expect, and when I ask about the great hammers blacksmiths usually use he sighs, yes, but he doesn't any more, and he gets me to move the piece of twisted and flattened rod over to a large model of a plane, he wants it set on top, it will hold the windshield...
...Upstairs from the garage, a warm house, older, from an imagined childhood, a younger man, maybe 50, and his father, 70ish, and a child, running about, there's something wrong with the child, autistic, maybe, but he's taken to me, and they ask me if I speak English, well, I tell them, well enough, French? Not so Well, Italian? Only curses, and they confer among themselves, the little autistic kid is running around touching everything, looking for batteries, there are none, and I offer to drive him down to the local store, take him by his hand...
...wet, dark outside, leaving by the front door we walk over 2 big old doors set into the front stoop, root cellar, and I want to lift them, see what's downstairs, in the basement, the boy doesn't know, we carry on...drive down to Balfour, town, Balfour not Balfour, Balfour with a bunch of inviting cosy old restaurants on the top of a hill on this rainy Kootenay evening, people inside, we find the store-not-Balfour store, get him his battery, I want to go in to the restaurant, have a bite to eat, but I've got to get this kid home, I have a feeling they have a proposition for me, teach the kid English, better English, and maybe I can fill in the gaps in my finances...