“He had fortified himself with two or three bottles of rum to ‘protect’ him from the cold, as he said. We could see him approaching the island, the dog running ahead of him, and then the team of horses pulling the sleigh. The horses were brown with white stars on their foreheads, one was the mother or grandmother of Christy and the other was one of her colts. I remember our father saying, ‘Look how in step they are. They raise and set their feet in perfect unison. They have the same rhythm. If you were to buy another horse and pair it with one of them, they could not pull the load in the same way, because they would always be slightly out of step. They are like dancers or singers from the same family. They are always perfectly in tune. And in time. And have a harmony all of their own.
“The horses moved forward,” my brother continued, “confident in the sharp corks upon their shoes which bit into the ice and gave them a purchase on the slippery surface. In spite of the cold they were sweating from the heaviness of their load, and the white froth beneath their collars emphasized the hoary whiteness of their coats as their perspiration froze upon them. Frost upon frost moving across the whiteness of the ice.
“As they approached we could hear Grandpa singing Gaelic songs to himself out on the ice. We knew he was slightly inebriated because he was singing some of the verses out of sequence and repeating others which he had just finished. We went down to the edge of the ice to guide him ashore. After we had unloaded the hay and stabled the horses and had something to eat, Grandpa lay down for a nap, but then he got up and said he was going back. He had slept longer than he intended and darkness was not far away. Everyone wanted him to stay for the night, but he said he was planning to play cards with his friends later on, and that the horses would be eager to get home, and without the load behind them they would make the crossing rapidly. After he left our father said, ‘It is difficult for a man ever to give advice to his father. Even if you try to think of him as just another man he is still your father and you are his child, regardless of how old you have become.’
On the return journey Grandpa apparently fell asleep, comforted by the warmth of his winter robes and his rum and trusting to his horses and his dog. When the sleigh stopped he assumed he was in the yard of the horses’ owner and leaped out of the sleigh and began unharnessing them. It was then that he noticed the dark water slashing before him. The ice had “opened” and the dog had stopped and then the horses. Darkness had fallen and his fingers were too numb to reharness the horses and he knew he would have difficulty getting them to turn back towards the island so he finished unharnessing them and let them go.
He turned back himself to walk towards the island’s guiding lights, hoping that the open water was now behind him instead of in front. Later in the darkness he came scrambling up the rocks of the island’s shore, apparently still in possession of one of his rum bottles. He had not had a light with him on the sleigh and no one on the island or on the mainland was aware of what had happened. His ears and his cheeks, along with his fingers and toes, were badly frostbitten and we heard later that he confided to our father in Gaelic, “I think I froze my dick, but don’t say anything in front of your wife and young children.”
They bathed most of Grandpa’s extremities first with snow and later with cloths soaked in lukewarm water. Said my second brother, “You could see the ice crystals glittering in his frozen ears as they gradually thawed.”
Later he sat with his feet in a dishpan of warm water and with his hands wrapped in wet warm towels.
Later that night, said my brother, the dog and the horses arrived home on the mainland. They had picked their way across the ice, perhaps jumping or swimming across any narrow leads that opened up in the ice before them. The people in the house were playing cards when they heard the dog barking and jumping at the lighted window and heard the scrunch of the horses’ hooves upon the snow and then saw the huge brown heads of the horses against the window’s frosted panes. In extremely cold weather, horses that were outside would be drawn towards the orange glow of the light beckoning from behind the windows. It seemed to symbolize, for them, an image of warmth and hopeful salvation, perhaps like that offered by the lighthouse on the island. If someone did not rush outside to respond to their mute request, there was a danger that the pressure of their heads against the panes would break the glass and the warmth that had attracted them would escape into the frigid air.
Before the people went outside they feared there had been a tremendous accident, but when they saw that the horses were unharnessed they reasoned that they had “escaped” from the island because they wanted to be at their own home. There was no telephone to the island and no way to make contact, so the people stabled the horses and waited for morning.
In the morning the sleigh was visible out on the ice where Grandpa had left it. People from both the mainland and the island could see it clearly through their binoculars. There was no longer any open water before it and it was as if the ice had “healed” during the night and the open wound was no longer visible. Later in the afternoon the sun shone and our father walked across the ice from the island and was met by the men from the mainland. They used the sleigh as a meeting point, all of them carrying picks and poles and testing the ice before them. The mainland men were told what had happened and were assured that Grandpa was all right. The water and slush had been frozen to the sleigh’s runners and the sleigh was solidly embedded, but after testing the ice around it, the men decided to pick the runners free. Later they came with the nervous horses approaching the sleigh from the direction opposite to that of the recently opened channel, well aware that what supported a man might not support a horse. The ice “held” and they were able to get the sleigh ashore safely. Because it was March and because of what had happened no one wanted to risk horses on the ice again. Because Grandpa’s feet had been frostbitten he could not walk very well for a while and stayed on the island for a number of weeks. His frostbitten ears turned black and then a kind of purple, yielding to pink as the colour and circulation returned to normal.
Grandfather crossed over a couple of days after the accident. He took two of his younger relatives with him and they all wore “creepers,” which were somewhat similar to the “corks” on the bottom of the horses’ shoes. They were attached to the footwear in a manner similar to the horses, and gripped the surface of the late ice. Grandpa kept them hanging on a nail within his porch. The men carried ice poles and coils of rope and a portable light, although the sun was shining. “You never can be too careful out on the ice,” said Grandfather. They also took some clothes for Grandpa and a bottle of whisky and a note from Grandma, “Bless his dear heart,” she said to them before they left.
After they arrived on the island, Grandpa asked Grandfather to go with him into one of the bedrooms at the top of the stairs. They were both older men of roughly the same age and had been together for a long time and shared a sense of intimacy. The different cadences of their voices drifted down the stairs as they shifted from Gaelic to English and then back again.
“Froze your dick?” said Grandfather in exasperation. “It sounds to me like you froze your brain. What kind of old fool are you? Out on the ice, drunk and by yourself in the dark without a light. You might easily have drowned. You should have thought of what you were doing.”
After Grandpa had fallen asleep, lulled by the warmth of the whisky, Grandfather spoke to the rest of us gathered in the kitchen. “I talked to Grandma before I came over,” he said, “and she misses him terribly. You ought to know that he spent two days borrowing that sleigh and getting those horses shod and purchasing and loading that hay. He paid for the hay with money from his own pocket. He knew you were in trouble out here as far as your animals were concerned and if someone did not come across your animals might starve. He was in the business of salvation.” Grandfather paused. “He might not approach life the same way I do,” he said, “but as your grandma says, ‘He has a heart as big as the ocean.’ I believe that, and none of you should ever f
orget it.”
The ice apparently broke quickly that spring and it was possible to launch a boat and get Grandpa home safely. His hands and feet had healed and the embarrassment of his black and purple ears was no more. When he was leaving our father inquired discreetly about his “other business.”
“Oh, it will be all right,” he said with a smile. “I will have a warm place to put it when I get home.” Grandma was overjoyed to see him. She had purchased a large bottle of rum for him and decorated it with a ribbon and placed it on the kitchen table. As they embraced, Grandpa’s eyes filled with tears. “God bless your dear heart,” said Grandma. “It is so good to have you home.”
In the time following Grandpa’s “almost accident,” there was little said about it, perhaps because it seemed embarrassing and might have been avoided. Once, though, when Grandpa had had too much to drink, he was overheard talking to Grandfather. “Do you remember the way it looked?” he asked cheerily.
“No,” said Grandfather grumpily, “I don’t. Let’s change the subject.”
“Okay,” said Grandpa agreeably, “but, by golly, let me tell you that night out on the ice it was hard in a way you’d never want it to be.”
“You wouldn’t remember any of this, ‘ille bhig ruaidh,” said my oldest brother. “At that time you and your sister were only infants, sleeping in baskets by the stove.”
“I guess that’s right,” I said. “It was before our time to remember.”
“It is peculiar what you do remember,” said my second brother. “In hindsight I often think of what our father said when Grandpa started across that evening with the horses, about how it is difficult ever to give advice to your father because somehow you are always his child regardless of your age. At that time,” he continued, “we would sometimes question our parents’ decisions and wish we could be free of all their advice, and then one day we had more freedom than any of us could have wanted. There really was no one to tell us to wash our faces or change our underwear or socks or to tell us when to get up or when to go to bed or if and when we should go to school. I have often thought of our mother’s remarks about my ears on that final day, of how I was annoyed that she wanted my ears to be clean while all I wanted was to be free.”
“For some years there in the old house we really did do almost anything we wanted apart from the necessities needed for staying alive,” said my third brother. “Sometimes girls would come to visit us and they would say, ‘Isn’t this great to be in a house with no parents nosing around,’ but after a while, even they would begin to look at their watches and speak of deadlines and boundaries that spoke to them but not to us.”
“It is curious,” said my second brother, “how Grandpa was saved from the ice in March and yet was perceived as a careless man, while our parents who tried to do everything right went down without salvation. Grandpa could have been lost as well and then things would have been quite a bit different – especially for you, ’ille bhig ruaidh. Do you ever think of that?”
“Yes I do,” I said. “Quite a bit.”
“He never mentioned his own close call after the loss of Colin and our parents. I guess he considered it trivial by comparison,” said Calum. We were sitting on benches outside our bunkhouse when this conversation occurred. It was late in the afternoon and the sun was in decline. Fern Picard walked by and we thought we heard him say, “Fuck you,” but we could not be certain. We went inside to get ready for the evening shift.
Above the Toronto street the sun moves on its appointed journey. Lost in my own thoughts I have not noticed that it has achieved its zenith and now, in this country, beyond the towers and the expensive restaurants and the Supreme Court of Ontario, it begins its descent towards the west. Still it is very hot and, perhaps because of the heat, I decide to buy beer because it will last longer and because the alcoholic content is submerged within its liquid volume.
The beer store is fashioned with items of commercial happiness. It seems at first glance like a cheery clothing store for those who are under the age of twenty-five. Brightly coloured shirts and caps and jackets and tank tops proclaim the jolly goodwill of their distant manufacturers. There are coolers and icepacks and thermoses; all of them dedicated to summer fun although it is already September. The companies are reluctant to relinquish the joy of summer. The handsome young man who waits upon me whistles as he works. When I ask for two cases of twelve he is temporarily taken aback because I do not mention a specific brand. He gestures towards the array of bottles and cans displayed above the conveyor. “Pick your own,” he says. When I assure him that it doesn’t matter he regains his smiling composure and rolls the cardboard cartons lightheartedly towards me. I place my money on the plastic tray. Everything in the beer store exudes happiness and goodwill. It is as if the store is imitating the relentless TV commercials, and obviously both the commercials and the store itself are born of similar agencies. I do not think the agencies would recruit my blood-stained brother sitting on the edge of his bed in his underwear as an example of one of their happy consumers.
As I leave through the automatic doors, a shaking old man in a winter overcoat asks me if he might “borrow” a cigarette. I give him the change from the plastic tray. The ever-alert and pleasant young employee comes to the door and tells the old man to move along. He no longer seems quite so upbeat. The old man shuffles away. The young man returns to his oasis of happiness.
The street is more congested now and I keep my beer cases close to my knees to avoid contact with my fellow pedestrians. I have ordered two cases of twelve rather than one of twenty-four because they are easier to carry, but now I can feel the cardboard handles of the cases digging into the tenderness of my hands. My hands have grown soft from the years of exploring the insides of other people’s mouths. Since the AIDS scare we have all taken to wearing latex gloves. When the gloves are peeled off I see my hands with their damp pink wrinkles as they were so many decades ago when released from the stench of my miner’s gloves.
In the years when my brothers lived in the old Calum Ruadh house and before they went to the mines, their hands were so calloused that they could hardly close them. In the evenings by the light of the oil lamp they would cut off the hardened dead skin with their knives or with razor blades. The discarded remnants of dead skin would lie on the oilcloth of their tabletop like the curled yellow parings from old fingernails. My brothers would open and close their hands to ascertain movement and feeling. Where the dead skin had been cut away, the flesh was first white and then pink when it came in contact with the deepened pulsing of their blood. On the next morning when their hands gripped the axes or chains or the ropes from their lobster traps, the callouses would begin to build again. My brothers were always careful not to cut so deeply as to cause their blood to flow.
When I leave the street and ascend the stairs once more the atmosphere no longer seems surprising or shocking. Familiarity establishes itself rapidly. “You will get used to almost anything,” Grandma used to say, “except a nail in your shoe.”
The door is open and he has splashed some water on his face and his undulating white hair. He seems to have been pacing across the small room. The water droplets glisten on the whiteness of his hair. “Ah,” he says, “you are back. That did not take very long. I see you brought beer. It will last a long time. Any port in a storm.”
He reaches for the nearest case and rips open the cardboard top with his huge hands, which are steadier now after his consumption of the brandy. I notice that the brandy is almost gone; perhaps two inches of it remains in the heel of the bottle. The brandy is like a transfusion and one can almost see it flowing through him. It reddens his face and highlights the crosswork of tiny damaged purple veins high above his cheekbones and beneath his eyes. The huge veins on the backs of his hands have become distended as the fluid pulses through them.
As he removes the beer bottle he twists off the cap in a single motion. No need to open it with one’s teeth any more. He throws the cap towards the
wastebasket, but he misses and it lands with a small clatter upon the floor. He offers the bottle to me. “Not now,” I say. “Maybe I’ll have one later. I have to drive back. We have to go out to dinner tonight.”
He smiles and then gulps from the bottle. Then he moves towards the brandy bottle and swallows the remainder of its contents.
“Now that I have the beer,” he says, “there is no need to save this.”
He drinks more beer to ease the burning sensation of the brandy. The beer bottle is now either half full or half empty, depending on one’s point of view.
“It’s a nice day on the Calum Ruadh’s Point today,” he says, moving towards the window. “I listen to the national weather forecast every morning to check on the Cape Breton weather. I did it even when I was in Kingston. Even when we were in the mine and the actual weather didn’t matter for our work, it was still an interest. I guess we were so close to it for so long, always thinking of tides and storms and weather for hay and the winds that might damage the boat or bring the mackerel or herring. And of course the shifting and changes of the ice,” he adds after a pause, directing his glance through the grimy, sun-shot window. The dust motes flutter in the rays of the sun. He wipes the back of his hand across his mouth.
“Remember when we lived in the old house and we would go outside right before going to bed to check the weather for the next day? To feel for moisture in the air and dew on the grass, to check the direction of the wind and to listen to the sound of the ocean and to look at the stars and the moon? Do you remember? ”
“Yes, I remember.”
He turns from the window to face me. “Poor Grandpa,” he says, “he had an old joke about an older couple who go outside before bedtime to check on the weather but also to relieve themselves. The woman makes a comment about the moon, but the man thinks she is referring to his penis. He says something like, ‘Don’t worry, it’s low now but it always rises during the night,’ or ‘Later when its darker it will rise up higher,’ something like that. Do you remember? Did he ever tell you that?”
No Great Mischief Page 16