The Camerons

by Robert Crichton

  “You’d think it was a love letter the way you keep stroking it.”

  “Aye, you would,” she said.

  At first it amused him but finally it began to worry him. All through the day, sometimes several times an hour, she had taken the paper out of her handbag and read it slowly, her lips moving because she was relishing the words, and when she put it back there was a look of peace on her face, a contentment he could almost not remember seeing before. He suddenly reached in and took the paper, only partly playful, and she seized his wrist before he could get it all the way out of the bag.

  “You keep your hands off that, Gillon.” There was no amusement in the voice at all. He let go of the paper and took his hand away.

  “I saw it,” he said. “The letterhead. Ogilvie and Sons. That old sad bastard.”

  “Yes, and be thankful he’s old.” Gillon made no effort to understand.

  Andrew came trotting by. “Have you seen Jem?” he asked. “Last call for the runners.” They hadn’t.

  “Poor Jem,” Gillon said. “He must have gone off because Sam was winning it all.”

  “Och,” Maggie said. “You don’t understand them at all. If Jem went off it’s to find some way to beat Sam.”

  16

  Many started but not many finished the Marathon. In some years, when the weather was bad, no one finished. From the Sportin Moor down through Doonietoon, down past the tipples and pitheads, through the working areas and out the Low Road past Brumbie Hill to Easter Mungo in the twilight and then all the way home in the dark, uphill all the way. Home was the heartbreaker.

  Part of the challenge was the run and part was the ancient challenge of the night and the dark and the moors. Some of the men still carried little lanterns carved out of turnips that they bought for a penny in Easter Mungo and some carried miner’s lamps lodged in hollowed-out cabbage stalks, called custocks. Men had died of exhaustion on the run, some had died, it was said, of fear in the night and men had drowned when they had blindly stumbled into the Pitmungo River and been carried away in its current. There was no excitement at the start; the race was too long to worry about getting a lead position. For most of the men, it was an ordeal to be endured, a ritual of their fathers to be carried on. A man didn’t expect to win, he only hoped to finish.

  “I tried,” he could say after that. “I gave it all I got, and by God that’s all a man can be asked to do.”

  All he can do? He could win, Maggie would have said, and the thought of it forced Gillon to smile.

  “Do you see my brother? Do you see Jem?” Sam asked his father. There were fifty or sixty runners spread out in the shadows behind the starting line, some with groups of friends and family. It was impossible to tell who anyone was. Gillon thought he saw Jemmie, way in back, but he wasn’t certain of it.

  “I don’t know. I’m not sure, but I think he’s in it,” Gillon said, and then came the old cry:

  “SAFE OOT! SAFE IN!” and the clump of runners were going, gone down into the gloaming, down the Sportin Moor to Colliers Walk, all hunched together, supporting each other at the start before the inevitable stringing out began and the men dropped off and got sick and crawled into the drainage ditches until they could get up and make it home.

  Sam ran with the pack for several miles but the pace was too slow. At the rate they were going he would get leg-heavy and never break into the glide of the second wind that, once reached, made the running easier, although faster. No man should be so far above the others, his father had said, but he was doing it, stretching out his legs, stretching out his lead, leaving them all behind, running alone in the growing darkness, a little sad to be out there all alone again and happy about it at the same time.

  There were a few men in Easter Mungo, keepers of the old traditions, waiting for the runners with sponges to cool their necks and spray cold water over their hair and pieces of orange for energy and good luck. The orange had something to do with the sun, Sam knew, but had never gotten the story right. There was whisky for those who felt the need of it.

  “Good lad,” a man said, squeezing the sponge of icy water over Sam’s head. It was good. “Where are all the others? You’re all alone, lad.”

  Sam shook his head. He signed the Check Point Ledger, halfway now, and did the traditional tour of the town square, once around the fountain, up and down the kirk steps to shake the devil, down past the old men by their fires warding off the bad fairies and little people, keeping the customs, keeping the old ways.

  “Safe in,” they shouted to him. “Safe in, lad, God run with you. Watch yoursel’ on the moor,” and he was gone, back into his running trance, alone, alone, alone, and then he was startled to hear someone come upon him in the darkness and go by him.

  “Who?” he called out, but the runner went on, slap, slap, slap into the blackness toward the fragile lights of Easter Mungo. He wasn’t all that far ahead, Sam realized, and was surprised. Someone with guts. The uphill would get him. The rise began almost outside the town limits of Easter Mungo. An hour more to go now, almost all of it uphill. He began to pass the first of the men who had fallen out, sprawled along the edge of the road, a few sick, all exhausted, some just lying there in the dust.

  “Safe in,” they called to him. “Safe in, Cameron.” After all he had done to them that day! Generous men. What was it his father had said, wasn’t it time to let one of them have a share? and here they were, cheering him on. Finally he was through the fall-outs and felt better, out of their sight, alone in the darkness, when he heard the steps behind him. He didn’t believe it at first. But someone was there, hanging behind him, matching him stride for stride, feet pounding the road, unlike his own. He was still on his toes the way a runner should run; the other man was running flat-footed and gasping for air. He went through the list of all the young men who could still be staying with him, the football players and rugby boys, and there were none. For a moment he was afraid, all the old stories of things that had happened in the blackness on the road.

  Tam o’ Shanter stuff, bogle-bo stuff, warlocks and witches, Sam told himself. Lies made up by men to account for their failure. Still, the steps kept coming. He looked behind him but couldn’t see the runner.

  “Who?” he called back. “Tell me who you are.”

  Only the steps pounding. He slowed his pace but when he did, the runner behind broke stride and slowed also. When he sped up, the runner came with him. To hell with him, Sam thought; run your own race and kill him on the hill. It was black but the stars were out. He could see the tipple, that was good, and suddenly the bonfire erupted on the moor. They were waiting for him. He hit the rise, the long long rise, Break Ass Hill, and started up. It was hard then.

  “You’re going to kill yourself,” Sam shouted back. “You’re going to crack your heart.”

  There was the river and the stream to ford and then the works, up past the brick kilns, the old tipple, and the new tipple, and he had lost him. Thank God for that, Sam thought, because no man who had not been in serious training should be doing what he was doing to his body. He felt a genuine sorrow for the man, someone who wanted to beat him so bad that he was pushing himself beyond where he should safely go. Men died.

  He reached the cobblestones, the foot of Colliers Walk, and several times stumbled on the stones. His legs were heavier than he thought they would be. The day had taken a bigger toll than he had planned for, and then that bastard behind him had pushed him a little harder than he had wanted to be pushed. The first of the people were along the Walk now, lining the way. He could hear them and hear his name being shouted up the line ahead to the people on the moor, but he couldn’t make out any faces. Too tired now to focus.

  “Sam Cameron. It’s the Cameron lad again,” going up the Walk mouth from mouth. The lower town looked wild in the dancing shadows from the great bonfire on the moor. The sweet wages of victory, Sam thought sourly, his name fleeting through the town. He felt a strong desire to give in then; he had run enough. Many winners in t
he past had walked the last way in, and so he broke his pace trotting but not running the way he had been doing before, and then he heard the second cry, a new one, and it took him so much by surprise that he broke stride entirely and stumbled again on the stones.

  “Someone else,” he heard, “someone else. He’s comin’ on, he’s comin’ on.”

  He could hear him now, closer than ever, closing the gap on him. He turned but he still couldn’t see him.

  “Who?” he shouted at the people along the Walk. “Who is it? Who is it?”

  They didn’t know. He felt a new fear go through him, not of losing, but of a terrible price being paid because of him, someone wanted something so terribly that he was risking his life for it, tearing himself apart for it, he could hear him now, not his feet slapping the stones, the feet must be pulp, Sam thought, but the man’s throat, gasping literally for the breath of life, sobbing from pain and what it was that was driving him.

  He tried to pick up his pace, to re-establish his stride, and it wouldn’t work for him. He had quit too soon; he had let down, and now the other man was getting him. But he couldn’t be doing it, Sam knew, he could not be, he couldn’t keep it up, his own legs like fleshed lead, his lungs on fire, his heart pounding so hard in his ears that he felt it was possible his head could split from the pressure of it.

  Men had died on this hill, men had died, Sam thought. He was beginning to get his pace again, the muscles responding to a call he didn’t know they still could answer. The other man was at his shoulder now, positioned in such a way that when Sam turned he couldn’t see the smaller man hugging his shoulder blade.

  “Stop it,” he said, “don’t do this.” The man kept on. “Stop doing this to yourself.” The man grunted something Sam couldn’t make out. “You slow down and I’ll slow down. You’re going to hurt yourself.” He was wasting his breath. For a moment he thought, I’ll stop and let the bastard go past, and realized that he was never going to do that, that he would have to be beaten, because it wasn’t a matter of winning now but of not knowing how to lose, and then the man was even with him, coming on, and, incredibly then, pulling ahead of him, pulling away from him, the people running alongside the runners, screaming at them, screaming at the dark little man pulling ahead, every stumbling step pulling ahead.

  “Jem!” Sam shouted. “Christ, don’t do this to me,” and he put the kick on, four weeks of running mile after mile on the roads, feeling some kind of response in him again, up past Rotten Row and Wet Row, up to Miners Row and then the bottom of the moor. Three hundred yards upward to go now, deep grass, dark little holes in the moor, the young people of the town running along by Jemmie then, shouting at him to keep going, to go on, go on, go on, he was ahead, he was winning, some of them trying to hold Jemmie’s elbows, propelling him upward toward the bonfire which must have been flaming liquid in his eyes. He’s out of his mind, Sam thought, he’s running on craziness now, because he had gone beyond human effort. And then he decided, I won’t let him do it, I won’t let him take it away, and he went into that land where he had driven himself several times before, beyond pain, beyond his own true limits, borrowing from sources never tapped before; and he moved, he was at Jem’s heels and at his side and he looked down at his brother’s stricken face, his distorted face, and he went by him as if he had never seen his brother before, running to the flame.

  * * *

  Gillon was there at the finish but almost no one else. The others had run down the moor to where Jemmie had fallen, fifty yards short of the line, and they carried him and put him down over the line so that he would get credit, at least, for the second-place finish; a little red ribbon and five shillings.

  “You had to do that?” his father said to Sam.

  “Aye, I had to.”

  At least Sam was crying, Gillon saw, for himself, he knew, and for what some force in him had driven him to do, and crying for his brother, too. He saw his son begin to run again, alone across the moor, looking as if he could run forever, run right up into the blackness of the sky, and then when the boy had punished himself enough he saw him come back down to where Jem was lying by the pump on the moor.

  Sam thought Jem would be unconscious but he wasn’t. His brother’s body was burning but his hands were cold and that alarmed him. He put his hand under Jem’s head and lifted it and cleaned his mouth.

  “Why did you do that, Jem? Why?” His brother’s eyes were vacant. My brother is going to die, Sam thought, and then the thought left him.

  “One man can’t have it all,” Jem said. “You have to pass some of it around.” He began to tremble and Sam told some of the football boys to go up to the house and get the cart and blankets for Jem.

  “I nearly had you, you son of a bitch,” Jem said. “I nearly got you.”

  “Had me? You nearly killed me, man.”

  “I’ll get you, Sam, you know I will. I’ll keep coming at you, Sam, and I’ll get you.”

  “You should have won this year,” Sam said. “You deserved to win.”

  As exhausted as he was, Jemmie sat upright. The idea amazed him. It angered him. It was Cameron heresy.

  “How did I deserve to win if I didn’t win?” Jem said.

  It was enough for Gillon, enough of a display for one day. The brothers holding one another, that was good; and trying to hold back the tears that they couldn’t explain, that was good. But that thing that drove them on beyond where others went, beyond where they very possibly were meant to go, there it was again, as full-blown as ever, nothing learned, only reinforced. Perhaps they would never learn.

  * * *

  When they went for the wagon they found it was gone. Both the wagon and the new little Highland garron, named Brothcock, were gone. Some Miners’ Freedom Day lark, they said, a case of too much freedom and too much ale, but when Sarah didn’t come home it was decided that Gillon should walk up the Terrace to the Walter Bone house to see if their son was home. Sandy Bone was gone.

  “I can’t believe it,” Maggie said. “She wouldn’t do that to me. I told her I won’t have that cripple-dick hirpling around my house.”

  Gillon had never done anything like it before. He put a hand around her throat.

  “A fine young man was buried under the slate, and I won’t have him demeaned by you for it.” She broke away from him, her dark face as flushed as his.

  “Easy, Daddie,” Andrew said.

  “If my daughter has run away with him, if she’s married him, she’s married above herself.”

  “Marrying anyone from Pitmungo is to marry beneath yourself.”

  “Aye, I should laugh if it was funny,” Gillon said. “If that man can make a life after what happened to him, he’s entitled to it. If that means having my daughter, he can have her. If that means having him in this house, he can come.”

  “She promised me,” Maggie said. That, Gillon could see, was the real insult. “How would she have the gall to do that?”

  “Because she’s in love,” Gillon cried out. “Can you understand that? Or is it beyond you?”

  Maggie got away from him, afraid of his hand again but unwilling not to say what she intended to say.

  “She lied to me.”

  Gillon made an effort to control himself. He could see the red marks left by his fingers on her flesh.

  “Love doesn’t understand about lies,” Gillon said.

  “Love is all lies,” Maggie said. “Love is promises that are always broken.”

  “Do you really believe that?”

  “Aye, I do.”

  It had been cool coming up from the moor and Gillon looked for his jacket. He couldn’t stay in here, he knew, not for a while at least.

  “Jesus, I feel sorry for you,” he said. “And, Jesus, I feel sorry for me,” and he shut the door on his house.

  17

  To the surprise of Pitmungo and himself, because he was a Doonie and an incomer and a common face miner, Gillon was becoming a friend of Walter Bone. He had been shy about it. Mr
. Bone was the pillar of Tosh-Mungo Terrace, the mainstay of the most solidly established family in Pitmungo, one of the deacons in the Free Kirk and an overman in the pit besides. Overmen didn’t talk to face miners. But Gillon’s need to know about Sarah broke his shyness down.

  “How’s my daughter doing in your house, Mr. Bone?” he asked one day, on his way down for their shift in the mine. Mr. Bone had looked at him in surprise and Gillon felt anger start but later understood that he had only startled Bone out of his early morning thoughts.

  “Doing?”

  “How is she getting along?”

  “Your daughter,” he said after a considerable pause, “is a blessing to my house.”

  “Then she’s happy?”

  “Happy? Let me see, I hadn’t considered that.” He was silent again. “I would have to say she’s happy, whatever you mean by that. Her mother won’t have her back in the house yet?”

  “No, nor ever.”

  “Oh, she will,” Mr. Bone said. “She’ll come around. From what I hear Mrs. Cameron is a sensible woman.”

  Mr. Bone, Gillon thought, didn’t know Mrs. Cameron well.

  After that they met more often, going down to the pit and home from it, and found they had a great deal in common. In comparison to the other miners, they were serious and both of them were listeners and learners and, to some extent, readers. Like so many Scotchmen, they loved argument and disputation. For all his stiff-necked approach to life, one that John Knox himself would have approved, Mr. Bone was willing to question or defend any point of view for the sake of a good debate. They were arguing a point about the right of a workman to get compensation when they first saw the men—strangers to Pitmungo—with surveying equipment out on the moor. It was Bone’s point that the workman must take on the risk in return for the opportunity to earn money in the employer’s mill or mine.

  “It’s assumed the master doesn’t want to wreck his equipment,” Mr. Bone said. “It’s assumed he doesn’t want to hurt trained men.”

  “It’s assumed the master doesn’t really care,” Gillon said. “And what do you think those men are doing?”