Midnight Cab - Hardcover

James W. Nichol has been a prominent playwright in Canada since 1970. Midnight Cab was inspired by his immensely popular radio drama of the same name, broadcast on CBC in 35 half-hour episodes and sold internationally on cassette. His adaptation of Margaret Laurence’s Stone Angel is currently revived in productions across Canada. Peggy Delaney, his most recent radio series, will feature eighteen new episodes on the CBC’s Mystery Project this fall. Midnight Cab is James Nichol’s first novel.
From the Hardcover edition.

Chapter One

1995

Three-year-old Walker Devereaux is standing near a road, though he's too short to see it. Tall grass surrounds him, grass the tawny colour of a lion's mane in the late afternoon sun. Occasionally, cars swish by.

He holds onto a square of wire fence with all his might and stares through it towards more grass angling sharply up a hill, and silvery moss further up, and towering shelves of black rock.

"Hold on," she had whispered, "hold on tight." Her shadow over him, her dark hair descending, covering his face, her warm breath against his ear.

But he already was holding on, so tight the wire was cutting into his hands, so afraid of something or someone that he didn't dare shift his eyes from that square of wire, or the grass. And then she was gone.

The rusty wire turns his hands orange, the afternoon sun gets colder. He begins to sway. The hill bends over him, the tall grass marches by him like an army on the move, chattering, banners flying against the sky. Still he struggles to listen to the sound of the approaching cars, each one bringing his mother back, each one passing by.

And then one stops.

He hears the slam of a car door. His heart leaps but he can't turn to see, he's stuck to the fence by now. All he can do is cling there in the dusk and stare up the hill and wait.

A man's voice rings out. "I told you. Come on up here. Look at this."

He can hear the man rustling through the grass. A puffy red face bobs out of the gloom, suspends itself beside his ear.

"Let go of the fence, son," the red face says.

But he can't, even though he tries, so the man has to reach out and pry his fingers off the wire, one at a time.

"Jesus God," the man says.
That was the beginning of everything, nineteen-year-old Walker Devereaux's first memory. He had been abandoned; not left in the care of a friend, or with the Children's Aid, or even in some bleak motel room, but dropped off at the side of a road like an unwanted puppy. And always the question, the aching question, why?

The bus lurched. Traffic began to slow down, an unbroken line of cars and campers and boat trailers, as weekenders tried to shoehorn themselves back into Toronto on a Sunday night.

Walker stared out his window. So many people, big-city people. He was already beginning to feel like a small-town dork.

He looked down at his worn jeans. He had a tear in the right knee, but in his case it wasn't a matter of fashion, it was just a tear.

He tried to stretch out his legs without touching the middle-aged woman crammed into the seat beside him. they'd sat there together for the better part of sixteen hours, unavoidably rubbing elbows from time to time but saying almost nothing. Once, she'd got out a Kleenex to dab at some tears. Walker hadn't known what to say, so he hadn't said anything. He'd assumed she was lonely, because he was lonely, for his adoptive family, for his friends. And for Cathy.

One thing about his family, they all stuck together. They'd thrown him a big party the night before, and there they were early the next morning — everyone but his mother and his three younger sisters hungover, heads pounding — standing bravely in the bright morning sun on the main street of Big River, waiting for the bus to pull in from Thunder Bay.

And when it did, all six of his sisters began advising him on how to survive in the big city, as if they knew, his three brothers-in-law shook his hand, and Gerard Devereaux, a forester all his life, a drinker all his life, stayed silent as usual amidst the female cacophony, but he looked straight into Walker's eyes as if he didn't expect to see him any time soon. Mary Louise Devereaux's arms were suddenly around his neck, and her lips were fiercely on his cheek and lips; his best friend Stewey helped him stow his duffel bag in the belly of the bus, and all his friends and family gathered around and said, good luck, Walker. Good luck!

But Cathy stayed away. He had known she would. One night, parked in his old truck, she'd said, "Walker, this doesn't have anything to do with me."

"You could come along," Walker had said, not really meaning it. "See the world."

"You stupid ass," she had replied, turning her face away.

He could have kissed her. He could have whispered, "I don't want to lose you." He could have smelled her delicious smell, mixed in with that perfume she was always dabbing behind her ears that drove him crazy, he could have drawn her to him one more time and cupped her breasts in his hands and murmured, "We can go, we can stay. As long we we're together, Cath, that's all I care about," and they would have steamed up the truck one more time. But he didn't. Because there was more to it than just his desire to see the world. He'd discovered something. Something he didn't want to tell anyone.

"I'm going, Cath," he'd said.
From the Hardcover edition.