“Perhaps it was just the difference in the boat,” I offered.
“Perhaps,” he replied, “it was the difference in the boat or perhaps it was the difference in the man. There were a lot of things I could have learned from father, but we both ran out of time.” He paused.
“Four years ago we were in Timmins,” Calum continued, “and we talked all one day and night about the island. In the end we couldn’t stand it any longer so we phoned up Grandfather and first we asked him about the weather. ‘It is lovely weather here,’ he said. We asked him about the island. He hesitated at first and then said, ‘The island?’
“ ‘Yes, can you see it clearly today?’
“ ‘Yes, I see it every day of my life. But today there is a slight southeast wind. You know what it is like when there is a southeast wind, the island always seems closer than it really is.’
“ ‘Can you land a boat there?’ we asked.
“ ‘Not easily,’ he said. ‘There’s no longer any government wharf, but if it’s a calm day you can get fairly close and anchor and then take a skiff or even wade, but the water will be up to your chest.’
“ ‘If we came,’ we asked, ‘could you get us a boat? It is about seventeen hundred miles and the roads are not that good. It will take us a few days.’
“ ‘If you come seventeen hundred miles,’ he said, ‘I will get you a boat. I will be waiting for you.’
“ ‘Okay,’ we said. ‘Tell Grandma and Grandpa we’re coming.’
“ ‘I will tell them,’ he said. ‘Take care. Beannachd leibh.’
“We bought an old pickup truck and a generator and a compressor and rented a jackleg and some drilling bits and steel from the company. We were ahead of our schedule and knew the manager and promised we would be back.
“ ‘Okay,’ the manager said. ‘I suppose if I said “No,” you would just go anyway.’
“The three of us squeezed into the cab and took turns driving. Just outside of New Liskeard a car passed us at high speed. As it receded into the distance, someone flung a kitten through the open window and into the ditch. We all looked at one another and thought the same thing. We pulled over and began to search the grass beside the ditch. We found her with blood coming out of her nose and you could see her heart pounding behind her ribs. She was grey and white. We took turns holding her on our laps and later stopped in Temagami to buy her some milk and a can of tuna, but she was too frightened to eat or drink. We called her Piseag, ‘pussycat,’ and sang little Gaelic songs to her. Once, in a parking lot outside of Ottawa we thought we had lost her and went around calling, ‘Piseag, Piseag,’ as if she could understand Gaelic,” Calum said with a laugh. “Sometimes we even tried ‘Meow, meow.’ A half-hour later we found her sleeping on the floor of the truck beside the gas pedal. She remained there for most of the trip and whoever was driving had to hold his foot at a certain angle so she would not be disturbed.
“When we got home, Grandpa was so glad to see us he almost buried us in beer and Grandma hugged and kissed us. Grandfather said he had made arrangements for the boat. Grandpa looked inside the cab of the truck. ‘What’s this?’ he asked.
“ ‘That’s Piseag,’ we said. ‘She was born in Northern Ontario but she’s going to live here now.’
“ ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘welcome Piseag, ciamar a tha sibh? Would you like some milk?’
“The next morning we left early. Grandfather had borrowed a boat and had a small skiff tied behind it. We loaded our bits and steels and our generator and compressor and Grandpa brought two cases of beer. ‘God,’ Grandfather said to him, ‘can’t you go anywhere without that stuff? You’ll fall overboard and the seals will think you’re trying to steal their mates.’
“Grandma had packed us a lunch and Grandfather had brought some lumber for a staging and some grappling hooks. The sea was as smooth as glass. When we approached the island we could see its reflection in the water and we seemed to be gliding over its surface.
“We hung from the grappling hooks, and using the lumber for the jackleg’s support we drilled our parents’ initials into the face of the rock. We drilled their initials and their dates and Colin’s, too. He was born on the island because it was too stormy for mother to cross. He was never circumcised and when he used to pee we would laugh at him because he didn’t look like the rest of us. Grandpa tied a bunch of beer bottles together and put them in the ocean to keep them cool. The seals swam nearby.
“We walked up to the old house. It had been abandoned since they installed the automatic light which had replaced the duties of the man from Pictou – the one who shot our dog. Someone had stolen the door frames and the window cases, but the rooms were much as we remembered them. There were rabbits hopping in and out of the rooms.
“Mother used to have a patch of rhubarb beside the garden and it had all gone wild,” Calum recalled. “The stalks were like those of the tropical plants you see in Peru. The tops came up to our shoulders, trembling under the weight of their white, clumped seeds. You would need a machete to get through the rhubarb patch. Some of the flowers had taken seed as well and were growing wild. They were pink and yellow and blue, struggling hard, it seemed, amongst the weeds and the grass. We pulled some of the weeds away from them to give them a better chance. When we were children, we used to complain when mother asked for our help in planting her flowers.
“We went down to look at the well. It was still there, although we had to clear some of the foliage and dead leaves in order to find it. We all lay on our stomachs and drank from it. The water was as sweet as we remembered it, pouring up out of the rock into the brambles and vines and decayed vegetation that threatened to overwhelm it. Grandpa went and pulled on his string of beer bottles. They emerged from the water like a catch of glistening fish. He pried off the caps of five bottles and spilled the beer on the ground and then he knelt by the well and filled the beer bottles with the clear, fresh water.
“ ‘For old time’s sake,’ he said.
“Grandfather took out his pocket knife and cut a branch from one of the overhanging willows. He fashioned five willow plugs and inserted them into the necks of the bottles so the water would not spill. He stood for a while looking at the overflowing water. ‘It seems sad,’ he said, still looking at the bubbling well. ‘It seems to be pouring out its heart and nobody knows the difference.’
“We were quiet on the return journey.
“ ‘I guess they’re still under there somewhere,’ said Grandfather, looking over the boat’s side into the glassy sea.
“We were all silent for a while, straining our eyes while looking over the side of the boat and then concentrating on the white water that foamed in the boat’s wake as the island receded behind us.
“ ‘Well,’ said Grandpa, ‘there is lots of beer here. Why don’t you drink some of it? It will help you to forget.’
“ ‘They didn’t come all this way,’ said Grandfather quietly, ‘because they wanted to forget.’
“Grandpa was silent for a while. ‘No,’ he said. ‘I guess they didn’t.’ ”
Calum stared out the window.
We were now on the paved roadway of Highway 17. Once in a while to our right, and through the trees, we could glimpse the small uninhabited freshwater islands of the North Channel and Georgian Bay.
“You must be tired,” said Calum. “I’ll drive for a while.”
I pulled the car to the side of the road and we got out and exchanged places. Blotches of damp perspiration darkened the backs of our shirts, and our pale arms, which had been exposed to the sun, were beginning to redden.
“You burn faster than I do,” he said, “because of your reddish complexion. You’ll burn over and over again and it will never stop. You’ll have to be careful.”
As he eased the car back onto the road, he said, “I was thinking of all those flowers that mother planted on the island. She was very fond of flowers, even wild ones, and she always had vases of them in the house.
“Sometimes
, in the summer,” he recalled, “she and father would lie in the grass and make chains of dandelions and daisies. It seems a funny thing to remember. You seem always to think of your parents as old and it seems unnatural to be gaining on them and passing them eventually. Perhaps when they were lying in the grass, they were becoming sexually aroused, but we never thought of such a thing. They were old to our eyes, but probably young to their own. I am perhaps remembering them from a time before you and your sister were conceived. If it had happened earlier you might never have been born. I guess,” he paused, “the same can be said of all of us.”
He drummed his fingers on the steering wheel as if he were embarrassed.
“Once,” I said, remembering a distant scene, “when I was perhaps five or six I had a nightmare. I remember shouting and crying and Grandpa came to my room. ‘Would you like to sleep with us?’ he asked. ‘We will look after you and you won’t be afraid.’
“ ‘Yes,’ I said.
“I went to sleep between them. Grandma must have risen early to do her work and then someone came to the door of the house looking for Grandpa. Grandma came and knocked on the bedroom door and we both awoke with a start. He started to roll and rise from the bed before he was fully awake and bumped against me. He had an erection which had come to him during sleep and for a second he was unaware of his condition. When he noticed himself, he took a huge step across the room and began hurriedly putting on his trousers which he had flung on the chair. He dressed with his back to me. ‘Don’t worry,’ he said over his shoulder, ‘it’s only nature.’ Then, regaining his composure and good humour, he added, ‘But if I weren’t capable of that, where would you all be?’
“I drifted back to sleep and when I awoke the sun was streaming through the window. I did not know what he meant at that time, so his remarks and his condition seemed of little significance to me. I did not remember them for a long, long while because they had very little to do with my life as I thought I understood it at the time.”
Suddenly we were aware of a repetitive thumping and Marcel Gingras’ car began to vibrate. “Shit,” said Calum. “Does this car have a spare?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I never looked.”
Over a rise and through the waves of shimmering heat we saw what we thought was a service station.
“We’ll try to make it there,” he said.
We wobbled into the station’s lot amidst the odour of burning rubber.
“You have trouble,” said the man at the station with a helpful smile. “You’re lucky you didn’t ruin the rim.”
We inquired about a tire.
“If you put a new tire on that car,” he said, “it will handle poorly because the treads are so worn on the other three. I’ll sell you a used tire for ten dollars. It will be no worse than the other three and it will get you to wherever you’re going. Perhaps you picked up a nail in this one, but all of your tires are bad, and this one here is ruined.”
“Something has been troubling me,” said Calum as we pulled back onto the road. “The day that Alexander was killed most of us had come out of the underground early. We had had a bad night. We had blowouts at the face and made no progress. Something like last night, only worse. I went for a walk outside the camp gates by myself. It was about five-thirty or six in the morning and I met Fern Picard. He was probably scheduled to start at seven. I think he had heard of our bad luck and he laughed and grabbed his crotch. I hit him with my fist as hard as I could in the mouth. His right hand was still down at his crotch when I hit him, so he was taken by surprise. He fell into the bush and before he could move, I went and stood over him. He was at a disadvantage and looked at my boots as if I might kick him in the head. He was afraid to move and I was afraid to turn my back on him. He lay there and I stood and our eyes locked. Five years ago in Rouyn we were in a tavern brawl with them. There were about twelve of us with nothing but bottles and chairs in our hands, and our backs to the wall. There was a sea of them because we were on the Quebec side of the border. I remember thinking in Gaelic, ‘Sin agad e,’ that’s it, and I looked directly into Fern Picard’s eyes. He knew he had me, but then the police came. He took three or four steps backwards and spat on the floor while still keeping his eyes fixed upon me. We were charged with creating a disturbance and all of us lost our jobs.
“I looked at Fern Pickard lying at my feet and took three or four careful steps backwards. He got up carefully and took three or four steps backwards as well. Both of us were afraid to turn our backs on the other. We spat on the ground and continued to move away. When we were a dozen steps from each other, he turned and walked towards the camp gates where the security guard apparently had been watching us. ‘This isn’t over,’ he said as he turned, speaking in clearer English than I thought he had.
“That afternoon someone came and said they needed a man to clean the sump. Alexander was well rested and he needed the money from the extra shift. When the ore bucket came down and decapitated him, the hoistman said he had been given the wrong signal or had misunderstood the signal. He was a young hoistman and had difficulty expressing himself in English. When we came back after the funeral, I went to look for him, but he had quit and returned to Quebec.
“I never told anyone about hitting Fern Picard in the mouth that day. Later we realized that all of our crew were on the surface and probably sleeping when whoever it was came for Alexander. The only people working were Fern Picard and his crew. If Alexander had asked me, I would have told him not to go, but he probably didn’t want to wake me. I would have told him that under the circumstances, and on that day, it was best for him ‘to stick with his own blood,’ as Grandma used to say.”
My brother turned towards me. His palms were slipping from perspiring on the steering wheel and he took a soiled handkerchief from his pocket and tried to wipe them dry.
“A lot was happening,” he said, “on your graduation day.”
“Poor Grandma,” he continued, “she always used to say, ‘You’ll get used to almost anything except a nail in your shoe.’ Perhaps she was wrong. Anyway, I’m having a hard time getting used to this. Or else this is the nail in my shoe.”
He looked in the rear-view mirror above the swinging dice. “Now what?” he said.
I looked over my shoulder. Beyond the bobbing head of the plastic brown dog, the police cruiser’s headlights rose and fell in concert with the undulations of the road. The rooflights flashed in rhythm on the shimmering metallic roof, which seemed to send its heat waves back in the direction of the sun.
We pulled over to the shoulder of the road. The police officer approached the driver’s side of our car. “Can I see your driver’s licence and your registration and proof of insurance?” he asked.
He looked at the car with disapproval. “The licence plates on this car are expired,” he said. “We’re tired of you guys from Quebec driving these old cars on Ontario’s highways.”
We looked in the glove compartment, but there was no registration. The makeup bag with the pink-handled comb was stuffed at the back of the compartment, but there was nothing more.
The officer looked at my brother’s licence. “What are you doing driving a Quebec car with a Nova Scotia driver’s licence?” he asked. “Where is the car’s registration? Maybe you stole this car?”
“If I was going to steal a car,” said Calum, “I’d steal a better one than this.”
“Will you step outside of your car, please,” said the officer. “Will you open the trunk?”
We both got out of the car. I noticed the officer’s name tag read Paul Belanger.
The trunk of the car contained two tire irons but no tire. There were two or three empty oil cans and an old ripped checkered shirt which I remembered seeing Marcel wear. There was also a pair of worn gloves and a length of chains. In one corner there was a soiled and crumpled bill from a garage near Temiskaming which bore Marcel’s name and address. The bill was for a second-hand replacement radiator.
“Is this t
he owner of the car’s address?” asked Paul Belanger, looking first at the bill and then at my brother.
“Yes, it is,” I said.
“I’m not talking to you, sir,” he said. “I’m talking to the driver of the vehicle.”
He took the bill and my brother’s licence and walked back to the cruiser with its flashing lights.
“You can wait in your car,” he said over his shoulder. “This may take a little while.”
When he came back he walked around the car, noting its worn tires and scrutinizing the meandering crack across its windshield. He returned to his cruiser once more. When he came back the second time he handed my brother what seemed like a sheaf of summonses or tickets. He told Calum to read them carefully.
When we resumed our journey he followed us for what seemed like a very long time. We drove very slowly and noticed, for the first time, that the speedometer was also broken. When the cruiser roared past us my brother took the sheaf of papers, crumpled them into a ball, and threw them out the window.
When we arrived at the Sudbury airport we realized how tired we were. We had slept very little in the past two days, and our heads kept dropping forward. We tried to fortify ourselves with coffee, but it turned brackish within our mouths. We went to the washroom and splashed water on our faces. When we looked in the mirror we remembered that we had not shaved. Our eyes were bloodshot and our arms burned from the sun. We splashed water on the backs of our necks and ran our dripping fingers through the black and redness of our hair.
When the passengers came off the plane we watched them carefully. Although we had never seen this Alexander MacDonald before, there was no doubt in our minds concerning recognition. “There he is,” we said simultaneously. He had shoulder-length red hair and wore a buckskin jacket. He looked like a young Willie Nelson and he extended his hand when he saw us approaching.
No Great Mischief Page 19