“He says you’re not my grandfather, only his,” said the sobbing red-haired Alexander MacDonald.
“Of course, I’m yours,” said Grandpa, setting us both down and motioning us towards neutral corners as the referee in a boxing match does. “Of course, I’m yours,” he said, going to stand in the corner of the red-haired Alexander MacDonald, as my sister and I both felt a slight twinge of betrayal. And turning and pointing to me with his huge forefinger, he said, “Don’t you ever say that again. Ever.”
“They’re just lucky,” said Alexander MacDonald, perhaps because he perceived the advantage of having the referee in his corner, “just lucky because their parents are dead.”
“And don’t you,” said Grandpa, suddenly reversing the direction of his finger until it was under the trembling nose of Alexander MacDonald, “ever say that again, either. Never.”
Later, much subdued in the kitchen, Alexander MacDonald sat beside his father, who patted him on the knee but also smiled across at me. His father continued to talk to Grandpa in a mixture of English and Gaelic as Grandpa slid the bottles of beer across the table in his direction. It seemed strange that such a big man could be the father of Alexander MacDonald, while, at the same time, being the son or “boy” of Grandpa. But there was no doubt that he was, especially when you saw the way that Grandpa patted him on the shoulder when he rose to leave. “Take care,” said Grandpa. “Everything will be all right.”
“Yes,” said Grandma, “Beannachd leibh, good luck.”
“I will return it as soon as I can,” he said, standing framed in the doorway before going out into the suddenly descended night.
“It is all right,” said Grandma. “No hurry.”
“Yes,” agreed Grandpa. “No rush, and take care of yourself,” and then he patted him on the shoulder once again.
I think now, years later, that he had probably been borrowing money from them so that he might get over some seasonal crisis or other. Or perhaps it was something else. But at that time I thought, in the security of my childish selfishness, it was unfair that Alexander MacDonald should have such a big, strong father and a grandfather as well. And it was also unfair that this same big man should have his father to pat him on the shoulder and tell him to “take care” and “everything will be all right,” while I and my sister, in our smallness, did not have one at all.
“I will not have any more of that performance,” said Grandma with icy efficiency after the door had closed. Both my sister and I then realized that she had been talking to Grandpa.
“Saying that you are our only grandchildren. There are enough problems in the world without fighting with your own blood.”
“Oh, they won’t do it any more,” said Grandpa. “We all lose our tempers from time to time. I believe I’ll have another beer. We’re not here for a long time but for a good time.”
Now, in the sky, on the high-rise horizon, seagulls appear caught in the glint of the September sun, and beneath them, but invisible to me, is the white activity of Toronto harbour. Farther south, in the country from which I have come, and to which I will return, the fruit and vegetable pickers bend and stretch wearily. The sweat trickles down the crevices of the weekend pickers and blotches their clothes. The children become grumpy and stage brief sit-down strikes, oblivious to the speeches of their parents who tell them of the money they are saving or of how good the produce will taste in winter. Sometimes the parents criticize them harshly, telling them they are lazy, or uttering speeches, beginning, “When I was a child …” The children look at their hands and are fascinated by the earth beneath their fingernails and mildly fearful of the beginning hangnails and the unfamiliar scratches. “I think I’ve got a thorn in my finger,” they say. “What time is it now?” “Haven’t we got enough?” “If I promise not to eat any of this stuff in the winter can I stop picking now?” “My thumb is bleeding. I can see my own blood.” “I wish I had something to drink.”
In other fields the imported pickers move with quiet speed. Sometimes they look towards the sun to gauge the time, and sometimes they stand straight and place their hands to the smalls of their backs but never for long. Their eyes scan the rows and the branches and the full and the empty baskets. They are counting all the time and doing primitive arithmetic within their heads. They do not sweat, and their children do not complain. When the sun goes down, this Saturday evening, the field owner may sell them cases of beer purchased from the local beer store or some of the men may find their way to certain taverns. The strictly religious and the most fearful will not go. Those who do go sit by themselves and talk in their own languages and some add up present and future totals on cigarette packages. Many of them are imagining themselves back home, as they sit nervously tearing the beer labels off their bottles or drumming their blunt brown fingers on the uneven surfaces of the crowded tables, slopped with beer.
I do not know what to buy for my brother or for myself. What to buy for the men who have everything or nothing.
“It doesn’t make much difference,” he said. “It doesn’t make much difference.” Pick your own.
By the time my sister and I were entering our teenaged years, a lot had happened to our older brothers. A lot, I suppose, had happened to us all. A lot of it quietly, coming like the growth of hair in new places for some, while the hair of others was receding or thinning or changing colour. Change without sound, yet change nonetheless, and change that was important, although sometimes invisible as well as silent. As quiet as the cancer cells which multiply within the body or the teeth within the imperfect jaw which “drift” towards the spaces vacated by their fellows. As quiet as the ice which wears and rots beneath its white deceptive surface or the sperm which journeys towards the womb and reaches its destination without a single sound – after the screams of orgasm are no more.
When my sister and I were smaller, we visited our brothers with all of the excitement of children going to visit grandparents who happened to live in the country. We did not go there for Thanksgiving or for Christmas, it is true, but we went when we were offered rides or when we could convince Grandma that we would be careful and not get in our brothers’ way. We explored what seemed to be the surfaces of their lives, although we did not think of it that way. We were fascinated by all of the differences. By the animals which crowded around their house and even came inside if they got the chance. Lambs and calves and hens which would walk into the kitchen if the door was left open. Horses which would press their noses to the window, as if to see what was going on inside. Flies and sometimes wasps and hornets which buzzed in through cracks or tattered screens or opened doors. Cats with kittens in the upstairs bedrooms. And the ubiquitous Calum Ruadh dogs, lying like rugs beneath the table or following behind whatever humans seemed to catch their fancy.
If we were there in the windy days of fall, and if the wind were off the sea, we would run down to the Calum Ruadh’s Point and engage in contests to see who could remain standing in the wind’s force the longest. If we faced the sea, the wind would blow our breath back within us as the spray from the water on the rocks rose and covered us and Calum Ruadh’s gravestone with glistening drops, and we would have to avert our heads and gasp for air or throw ourselves on our stomachs and breathe with our mouths pressed against the flattened grass or the cranberry vines or the creeping tendrils of wet moss. If the wind were off the land, we would not be allowed to go, for fear that a sudden gust might lift and carry us over the point and dash us down to the shining boulders or out to fall into the wind-whipped sea, which was always brown and angry in its state of agitation.
After such storms, the face of the cliff would be changed, although ever so slightly. Bits of rock would have fallen because of the waves’ pounding, and small sections of the seams of clay and shale would also have been washed into the sea. Only the hardest promontories of pure stone seemed to remain constant, but if one looked closely one could see changes in them also. A new smoothness born of a new wearing, or small pockmarks on new
surfaces where previously there were none. The cliff was moving inland, slowly but steadily, while Calum Ruadh‘s grave seemed to be moving out towards its edge.
Gradually, it seemed, my sister went less frequently to the house of our older brothers. It is always hard to notice change when you are in its midst, especially as a child. Perhaps in the same way that one does not notice the change the sea inflicts upon the cliff until the morning following the storm. In retrospect, it seems the change was as much due to their perception of her and her own changes as to any other factor. A certain uneasiness at the development of her own small femininity in the midst of their masculine lives. Almost as if they became more unsure as we all grew older. As if their lives and the environment surrounding it were good enough for them but not for her.
Perhaps they were embarrassed by the fact that the bathroom was a bucket or sometimes not even that; that in the hot summer nights, after drinking beer, they would raise their upstairs windows and urinate down the outside clapboard walls of their silent house, the steam rising upwards to meet them from the dark. Embarrassed by the fact that they slept with loaded rifles under their beds, and on nights when the moon shone with its full brightness, they would kneel or crouch by their opened windows, straining to sight the antlers of the deer who moved across the silent fields towards their beleaguered garden. They would lean forward from their windows, straining to see along the blue-grey barrels of their rifles which glinted in the moonlight, straining to get the antlered head in line with the rifle’s sights by the light of Lochran àigh nam bochd, the Gaelic phrase for the moon, “the lamp of the poor.”
And if the shot were true, they would race down the stairs, fastening their trousers as they ran, and gather their long-bladed knives from the waiting kitchen table. Out in the field, lit by the “lamp of the poor,” they would cut the throat of the still-thrashing deer so that the blood would run free and not taint or ruin the valuable meat. They would work quickly and efficiently, disembowelling and skinning and cutting the carcass into quarters, their knives flashing in and out of the body’s cavities, severing the grey ropes of the intestines and separating the still-shuddering redness of the heart. Later they would pack the meat within buckets and lower it into the well as a means of basic refrigeration, pulling it up by wet ropes when it was needed, but ever aware that it would not last for very long.
My brothers were embarrassed, in my sister’s presence, by the silver-grey rooster energetically servicing the members of his harem, pressing their beaks towards the dust, it seemed, whether they liked it or not, and by the slavering, moaning bull mounting the cow as she offered herself to him in the yard.
And they were embarrassed at mealtimes, embarrassed by the cups without handles and by the fact that they sometimes ate standing up, spearing the half-boiled potatoes out of the bubbling pot upon the stove and sometimes peeling them with the same knives they used to bleed the deer’s throat or to cut the rope and twine of their fishing gear. Embarrassed by the flies and by the dishes waiting too long in the dishpan to be washed.
One day, at noon, my small sister said, “Don’t you have a tablecloth here?” and again, “Don’t you have any napkins?” I remember the eyes of the youngest of my older brothers clouding over at her questions as if he were saying to himself, “If mother were here now, she would know what to do.” Feeling inadequate, perhaps, in what he perceived as a feminine situation and perhaps remembering his mother in a way in which my sister and I did not. Remembering her interest in order and cleanliness. “You are the only person I know who goes around looking in other people’s ears,” he had said grumpily to her that morning before they set off across the ice and when she was making her final inspection. More final, it turned out, than was then realized, for she was never again to look into the cavities of the ears of anyone.
Because there was no wharf on the shore off which my brothers fished, their boat had to be dragged onto the rocks above the high-water mark when the day was done. It also had to be pushed into the water when the day began, and sometimes they would be up to their knees or even their waists before the boat would have enough water to float free of the strand without grounding its prow upon the rocky bottom. After the final shove, they would clamber over the bow or even the sides, if the boat had begun to turn, and they would grasp the oars and pole or row themselves out farther until it was safe to kick their engine into life. Eventually they built themselves a primitive skidway of creosoted timber, which they coated with grease and which made both the launching and the landing considerably easier. On the shore, beside the skidway, they kept a horse collar and a set of harnesses and a whipple tree and a chain. And each morning, when they set out, they took with them a can of oats with a tightly secured lid which they placed within the bow of the boat.
When their day on the water was done and as they approached the shore, my oldest brother, Calum, would stand forward in the bow and, placing the fingers of his right hand within his mouth, emit two piercing whistles. And the mare, Christy, although often grazing almost a mile away with the other horses, would raise her head and toss her mane and come galloping down towards the shore, sending the small rocks and flecks of turf flying before her eager hooves.
And after the engine was shut off, and as the boat glided silently towards the land, its wake spreading out in a widening V behind it, she would wait, nickering and tossing her head and lifting her front hooves impatiently in the water curling upon the shore. “Ah, Christy,” he would say, “M’eudail bheag,” and he would jump over the bow and come towards her, holding the oats before him like an ancient trader proffering goods to the individual who waited upon the land. And as she nuzzled the oats, he would pat her neck and croon into her mane, a mixture of Gaelic and English syllables – almost as if he were courting and she were the object of his strong affections. And then he would put the collar on her neck, followed by the harness, and hook the chain into the steel ring which he had drilled into the boat’s prow. And, again, responding to his whistle, she would leap forward and, in a scrabble of flying rocks, haul the boat up the greased skidway and to the safety which lay beyond the water’s reach. And then he would pull the harness off and pat her some more while she rubbed her strong head up and down against his chest, and then she would go off to join her fellows while he and his brothers walked towards home.
And I remember a day when I had accompanied them on the water and everything had seemed to go wrong. It had been cold and raining and the engine seemed to sputter and cough because of what was perceived as water in the gas and the carburetor had to be checked and the gas lines blown free while the boat rocked randomly at the mercy of the waves. The buoys were adrift and the ropes seemed to become fouled and tangled with a perverse spirit all their own. And the left side of Calum’s face was swollen and throbbing because of the broken and infected molar which had been pulsating there for days. It was a Saturday morning and I had received a ride to their house on Friday evening and had begged to go with them in the boat on the following morning. They had not been expecting me and were reluctant to take me because of the unpleasant weather but uneasy too about leaving me in their house alone. I had finally been allowed to accompany them and my responsibility was to take the oats for Christy. Now as the boat finally neared the shore I realized I had forgotten it. We had been rushed in the morning and everyone had been so occupied with the day’s problems that its absence had gone unnoticed. I did not say anything. It had been a miserable day and I longed for the comfort of my grandparents’ house and my microscope and my stamp collection and the radio and the possibility of playing chess with my sister. I had made more than one mistake, it seemed, but I still did not say anything.
As the boat approached the shore, the engine which had been so troublesome all day was shut off and Calum went to the prow and uttered two shrill whistles. We could not see any horses, but assumed they were standing in the trees as they sometimes did to take shelter from the rain. He whistled again and then she appeared, silh
ouetted in the rain high above the Calum Ruadh’s Point. And then she came galloping down to meet us. Once, her hind legs slipped sideways on the rain-drenched footing, leaving a brown skidmark on the wet greenness of the grass, but she recovered quickly and came hurtling headlong down towards us.
“Where’s the goddamn oats?” he said as he prepared to go over the side to meet her. My omission was suddenly noticeable to all.
“Jesus Christ,” he said. “As if there hasn’t been enough wrong with this goddamn day, and now this.” And he seized me by the front of my jacket and lifted me with my feet dangling above the side of the boat as I looked into his enraged and swollen face. I had the temporary sensation that he might fling me overboard.
“Put him down,” said my other brothers in chorus even as I said, “But it’s okay. She comes anyway.”
“It’s not okay,” he shouted, shaking me so that my teeth rattled. “She comes because it’s part of the bargain. She depends on us to do the right thing.” And then he more or less let me fall into the bottom of the boat. And it was difficult to know whether I had been rejected or released.
“Jesus Christ,” he said, putting his hand to his jaw. “This is killing me.” And then he reached forward to the box of tools he had been using too much all morning in an attempt to solve the engine’s problems. Taking the grease-stained and gasoline-smelling pliers in his right hand, he thrust them into his mouth and twisted even as he pulled. There was the sharpened shudder one associates with the fingernail upon the blackboard except it was more screamingly intense. And perhaps it was caused by the steel on the tooth but more likely by the tooth grinding on the bone of its foundation. Twice he twisted and jerked his head sideways even as he leaned it in the opposite direction and the blood and pus began to run down the contours of his jaw and down his neck to vanish within the hair upon his chest. But in spite of the strength of his hand, the loosened and bloodied tooth held firm within its place.
No Great Mischief Page 7