FRASER CALDERWOOD
FRASER CALDERWOOD // 30
NORTH PORTAL, SK J
aime tried not to blame the woman. The mistake had been his. He got sloppy when he crossed into what felt like a less menacing country. Or, after everything, he was still too trusting. Or simply he was tired from living like a rabbit so long. The town to which this remote house belonged was called North Portal. Jaime had hitched his way to its twin on the North Dakota side, walked in the borderless darkness until he thought he counted enough steps that he must be across. Then he walked another two hundred steps. When he’d been forced to walk through the fields before, near Sioux Falls, a brittle snow crust covered
the ground. Now it was swampy, blotted with ponds where the earth underneath had not thawed. The night in this season was so still that as he listened for any whir of drones overhead, the smoosh of his own feet in the mud was the loudest and only sound. He’d rationed what food he’d managed to slip into his knapsack at the Walmart in Minot. He looked for shelter. The absolute cold had yet to settle. He’d heard stories of people freezing to death as they walked. A night could turn murderous, and no jacket they sold south of here could prepare a body for it, even in spring. The only lights were the gibbous moon and the single yellow pixels of distant windows. Between this
SOMERSET BRIDGE BERMUDA, 30” x 40”, PHOTO ARTISTRY, 2018 | JOAN BUTTERFIELD
