John Picken reclined back on the cat-hair covered chair he had bought at Costco.

The frame was broken, so his long body slumped to one side, making him look like he’d slip off at any second. He rested his head on his hand, and his clear blue eyes blinked sleepily as he watched the sun set over Blind Bay. He coughed and wheezed a few times and said, “I think this winter will be my last, Leni.”

I looked up at him from my bucket of dishes soaked in seawater and asked, “Why do you say that, Mr. Picken?”

“I’m old now,” he said. “I’ve lived a good life, you know. I lived some of the best years this country had to offer. I was only 15 when I left home to travel Canada in search of gainful employment. One of my first jobs was selling an aphrodisiac made of ground up elk horns. I made a decent living at it too!” He looked over at me. “Your generation, well…” He smiled at me, concealing his pity with a wink. “I don’t know what’s going to be left for my grandkids, your generation will be ok, but your children’s children?”

I waited for a pause to speak. Having heard this story many times before, I asked, “How do you know this is your last winter, John? You can’t just wake up and ask for a heart attack.”

“Oh yes I can!” he declared with pure determination. “All I have to do is slip into the sea, I’ll get hypothermia instantly and shed this mortal coil. It happened before, in Great Bear Lake; within ten minutes I was paralyzed and if I hadn’t had the strength of a young buck to drag myself out, I would have been dead.”

I smiled and continued to wash the salty dishes. “You’d think you’d get used to the water after being a sailor for so long?” I asked, suspicious of his lark, a word he taught me.

“I’ve always been terrified of water,” he said. “I don’t know how to swim and I don’t care to learn.”

I laughed and said, “I wonder how you survived to be this old, John?”

He replied, “Good reflexes, good balance, no fear, and a hell of a lot of good luck!”

“Well, I don’t want you to go.” I pouted.

“Don’t worry, sweetheart,” he said. “I won’t be gone for good. I think I’d like to become a dolphin, travel the seven seas… although, with what they’re putting in the water these days, it’s not even safe for a dolphin.” He paused and said, “I’ve seen a lot in my time.”

Mr. Picken leaned back in his chair and looked to be lost in his thoughts. I reveled in the strangeness of our companionship, a young woman and an old man on a desolate island. I had met Mr. Picken when I was 19, hitchhiking down the coast to Vancouver. I used to get onto the ferry and ask everyone I saw if they had room for me. I saw John from behind, sitting by himself reading the paper. I approached him and said, “Hi. Would you happen to be traveling to the next ferry?”

“Yes ma’am!” he replied, “I’m guessing you want a ride? People ask me for rides all the time. I think it’s because they think I look like Santa Claus.” He chuckled.

Once I told him that I was just returning from India, he said that if I ever needed work, I should call him. He was looking for a hardy girl that could handle rustic living, and could work for him on his oyster farm on Nelson Island. He told me, “I prefer to hire women because the guys always want to play with my toys!” He was referring to his vast collection of power tools that were scattered across his 10-acre property, most notably ‘Lola,’ his KX41 Kubota Excavator, which, in the 6 years I’ve known him, he’s only let me use once!

I could hear the waves splashing against the rocks under the house. I listened for the seagulls fighting over the slime left from my oyster trays, creatures you could never imagine were hatched on the West Coast. John came out of his dreams.

“I had fun alright,” said Mr. Picken. “No regrets whatsoever, it’s your generation I pity. We had a free-for-all! Lots of good jobs, a clean environment… Yes, I lived at the right time.”

A flicker of sadness flashed across his face, as it always did when he talked about the end of his winters. I always wished that the sadness was for me, that he was thinking about how he would miss me, my cooking, my ever-listening ears, the years that I had dedicated to him and his island. After each expedition into the world, I always returned to the calm and quiet of his sea shanty. When I returned from my last adventure abroad, after a particularly nasty bout of dysentery, he took me in and fed me. I plotted out gardens, some of which I had been plotting for years, some half-planted, and all the beds that would not grow on the rocky shores of Nelson Island. I painted and rebuilt, in some cases for the third time, the tiny cabins speckling his property, all infested with squirrel nests and mould. He had built the cabins for his three children when they hit puberty. “I don’t mind rock and roll,” he would say, “but there was no way I was living with those rug rats once they started growing facial hair!”

I would dive naked into the bay at every sunset and imagine that all my fears and desolation were stripped away. I would then return to the house for supper and the endless stories that Mr. Picken gave me, again and again, as if they were being recited for memorization so that I might pass them on. But our bond was not created by catching up on each others’ lives, or the looking back, it was about surviving from day to day, and I think we both understood that it was a gift. His sadness was not for me, but the sadness that comes with the life and thoughts of death of Mr. Picken, death that would bring an end to the meaningfulness of his memories, of his life.

“John,” I asked, “how are you going to get hypothermia when we have all these oysters to split? And with summer approaching fast, that water’s getting warm…”

“Oh, I guess I’ll have to wait until next winter,” he replied.

“So this isn’t your last winter, it’s your second-to-last winter?” I smirked, licking the salty plates just for the joy of knowing they were washed in the sea. Mr. Picken stood up and walked to the sliding glass door overlooking the bay.

“Well maybe it’s cold enough,” he said with crossed arms. He pushed his black felt hat back and thought it over.

“You’re sure as hell not offing yourself while I’m around,” I blurted. He turned and smiled at me.

“Well perhaps I’ll fire you!” I looked down and started drying the plates, as impossible as it was. “You know dear,” he said, “I would have the makings of a great hermit, if I didn’t love women so much!”

“I’m sure you would, John, I’m sure you would.”

He raised his arms as if to remember something. “Let’s have a glass of sherry.”

I brought over two plastic glasses three-quarters full of sherry and sat beside the old man.

“To summer,” I said, raising my glass.

“You’re the devil’s mistress,” he said.