In the First Early Days of My Death (17 page)

I saw the waters of the Red River flowing all the way up from the Mississippi, pouring into Lake Winnipeg and then the Churchill River, emptying into Hudson's Bay. And from the west, the wide Assiniboine, snaking south and north and south again, through the foothills of the Riding Mountain and the plains of Manitoba.

In all that space, all that vast continent, you'd think those two rivers could manage to avoid each other, but somehow they couldn't. They ran smack into each other. They coincided. Here. In the city where I was born and had died. And I thought that if such a thing could happen, such an unlikely event, then nearly any accidental meeting might be possible here. Even mine and Marty Smith's. Because this was a place of unlikely events. The exact, geographical centre of coincidence.

Catherine Hunter teaches English at the University of Winnipeg. In addition to
In the First Early Days of My Death
, she is also the author of three thrillers,
The Dead of Midnight
,
Where Shadows Burn
, and
Queen of Diamonds
, as well as a spoken word CD,
Rush Hour
, and three poetry collections,
Lunar Wake
,
Necessary Crimes
, and
Latent Heat
, for which she received the Manitoba Book of the Year Award.