“Don’t worry, it’s not a real tree,” quips the bartender. A big plaster oak tree is this bar’s signature piece of decor. He tosses two coasters in front of us. We’re still talking about whether I should have gone for extra groceries today. There’s a rumour they’re going to close grocery stores. No bread on the shelves. The empty skid of bleach and lines from the checkouts all the way to the meat counter at Costco. How seriously should we be taking this?
The bartender sets down our beers. “They’re blowing this way out of proportion,” he sighs with a voice that wants less bartending and more smoke breaks. “SARS was worse. Swine flu was worse. H1N1 was worse. The media loves to make stuff like this seem like the end of the world.”
“Yeah,” I say.
The next day, all bars and restaurants are ordered to close and the bar with the fake tree lays off all its staff.
There’s nothing really left to do, beyond the couch, but go hiking. The front gate at Rattlesnake Point is open but nobody’s there taking entry fees. A printed message taped to the gatehouse door flutters in the breeze, the usual advisory about COVID-19.
The trails are slick with ice and craggy with half-frozen mud. We walk along and talk about the virus. We wonder aloud about what it might be like to lose a parent and talk about that story about a guy in the states who bought the entire meat department at a grocery store, and a woman selling toilet paper out the back of her SUV.
Occasionally other hikers pass us, staying two meters away, and I catch snippets of their conversations. Social distancing. Lockdown. Nurses and ventilators at St. Mary’s Hospital. Daycare. A coworker sent home with a fever. Trudeau and 82 Billion dollars.
Moss glows green on the rocks and meltwater runs along the trail. There are mushrooms on a tree stump and chickadees in the sumac. The air’s still winter cold but the sun is summer warm.
Back at the car we change out of our muddy boots and apply hand sanitizer. I start the car and wonder about the tickle in my throat. Wonder about her hand in mine. Wonder about that bartender. Wonder about my parents. I drive us back home to sit and wait and wonder.
