“Yeah,” said Carver. “Perhaps that’s a good way to be.”
They went into the barn. In spite of what he had said, Archibald found himself going up beside the mare and untying the rope and leading her out into the afternoon sun which reflected on her dappled shining coat. Carver backed his truck up to a small incline beside the barn and lowered the tailgate. Then Archibald handed him the rope and watched as she followed him willingly into the truck.
“This is the last of all them nice horses you had up here, eh?” said Carver after he had tied the rope and swung down from the truck.
“Yes,” said Archibald, “the last.”
“I guess you hauled a lot of wood with them horses. I heard guys talking, older guys who worked with you in the camps.”
“Oh, yes,” said Archibald.
“I heard guys say you and your brother could cut seven cords of pulp a day with a crosscut saw, haul it and stack it.”
“Oh, yes,” he said. “Some days we could. Days seemed longer then,” he added with a smile.
“Christ, we’re lucky to get seven with a power saw unless we’re in a real good stand,” said Carver, pulling up his trousers and starting to roll a cigarette. “Your timber here on your own land is as good as ever, they say.”
“Yes,” he said. “It’s pretty good.”
“ ‘That Archibald,’ they say, ‘no one knows where he gets all them logs, hauls them out with them horses and doesn’t seem to disturb anything. Year after year. Treats the mountain as if it were a garden.’ ”
“Mmmm,” he said.
“Not like now, eh? We just cut ’em all down. Go in with heavy equipment, tree farmers and loaders and do it all in a day, to hell with tomorrow.”
“Yes,” said Archibald. “I’ve noticed.”
“You don’t want to sell?” asked Carver.
“No,” he said. “Not yet.”
“I just thought … since you were letting your mare go. No work for the mare, no work for you.”
“Oh, she’ll probably work somewhere,” he said. “I’m not so sure about myself.”
“Nah, she won’t work,” said Carver. “They want her for birth control pills.”
“For what?” said Archibald.
“This guy says, I don’t know if it’s true, that there’s this farm outside of Montreal that’s connected to a lab or something. Anyway, they’ve got all these mares there and they keep them bred all the time and they use their water for birth control pills.”
It seemed so preposterous that Archibald was not sure how to react. He scrutinized Carver’s scarred yet open face, looking for a hint, some kind of touch, but he could find nothing.
“Yeah,” said Carver. “They keep the mares pregnant all the time so the women won’t be.”
“What do they do with the colts?” said Archibald, thinking that he might try a question for a change.
“I dunno,” said Carver. “He didn’t say. I guess they just throw them away. Got to go now,” he said, swinging into the cab of his truck, “and take her down the mountain. I think he’s almost got a boxcar of these mares, or a transport truck. In two days she’ll be outside Montreal and they’ll get her a stallion and that’ll be it.”
The truck roared into action and moved from the incline near the barn. Archibald had been closer to it than he thought and was forced to step out of the way. As it passed, Carver rolled down the window and shouted, “Hey, Archibald, do you sing any more?”
“Not so much,” he said.
“Got to talk to you about that sometime,” he said above the engine’s roar and then he and the truck and the splendid mare left the yard to begin their switchbacked journey down the mountain.
For a long time Archibald did not know what to do. He felt somehow betrayed by forces he could not control. The image of his mare beneath the weight of successive and different stallions came to his mind but the most haunting image was that of the dead colts which Carver had described as being “thrown away.” He imagined them as the many dead unwanted animals he had seen thrown out on the manure piles behind the barns, their skulls smashed in by blows from axes. He doubted that there was anything like that outside of Montreal and he doubted – or wanted to doubt – somehow more than he could what Carver had said. But he had no way to verify the facts or disprove them, and the images persisted. He thought, as he always did at times of loss, of his wife. And then of the pale, still body of his quiet and unbreathing son, with the intricate blue veins winding like the map lines of roads and rivers upon his fragile, delicate skull. Both wife and son gone from him, taken in the winter’s snow. And he felt somehow that he might cry.
He looked up to the sound of the whooshing eagles’ wings. They were flying up the mountain, almost wavering in their flight. Like weary commuters trying to make it home. He had watched them through the long winter as they were forced to fly farther and farther in search of food and open water. He had noticed the dullness of their feathers and the dimming lustre in their intense green eyes. Now, and he was not sure if perhaps it was his eyesight or his angle of vision, the female’s wing tips seemed almost to graze the bare branches of the trees as if she might falter and fall. And then the male who had gone on ahead turned and came back, gliding on the wind with his wings outstretched, trying to conserve what little energy he had left. He passed so close to Archibald that he could see, or imagined that he could see, the desperate fear in his fierce, defiant eyes. He was so intent on his mission that he paid little attention to Archibald, circling beside his mate until their wing tips almost touched. She seemed to gain strength from his presence and almost to lunge with her wings, like a desperate swimmer on her final lap, and they continued together up the mountain. In the dampness of the late spring Archibald feared, as perhaps did they, for the future of their potential young.
He had seen the eagles in other seasons and circumstances. He had seen the male seize a branch in his powerful talons and soar towards the sky in the sheer exuberance of his power and strength; had seen him snap the branch in two (in the way a strong man might snap a kindling across his knee), letting the two sections fall towards the earth before plummeting after one or the other and snatching it from the air; wheeling and somersaulting and flipping the branch in front of him and swooping under it again and again until, tired of the game, he let it fall to earth.
And he had seen them in the aerial courtship of their mating; had seen them feinting and swerving high above the mountain, outlined against the sky. Had seen them come together, and with talons locked, fall cartwheeling over and over for what seemed like hundreds of feet down toward the land. Separating and braking, like lucky parachutists, at the last minute and gliding individually and parallel to the earth before starting their ascent once more.
The folklorists were always impressed by the bald eagles.
“How long have they been here?” the first group asked.
“Forever, I guess,” had been his answer.
And after doing research they had returned and said, “Yes, Cape Breton is the largest nesting area on the eastern seaboard north of Florida. And the largest east of the Rockies. It’s funny, hardly anybody knows they’re here.”
“Oh, some people do,” Archibald said with a smile.
“It’s only because they don’t use pesticides or herbicides in the forest industry,” the folklorists said. “If they start, the eagles will be gone. There are hardly any nests any more in New Brunswick or in Maine.”
“Mmmm,” he said.
In the days that followed they tried to prepare for the “singing” in Halifax. They had several practices, most of them at Sal’s because she had talked to the producer and had become the contact person, and also because she seemed to want to go the most. They managed to gather a number of people of varying talent, some more reluctant than others. One or two of the practices were held at Archibald’s. The number in the group varied. It expanded sometimes to as many as thirty, including various in-laws and friends of in-laws and
people who simply had little else to do on a given evening. Throughout it all, Archibald tried to maintain control and to do it in “his way,” which meant enunciating the words clearly and singing the exact number of verses in the proper order. Sometimes the attention of the younger people wandered and the evenings deteriorated quite early and rapidly, with people drifting off into little knots to gossip or tell jokes or to drink what was in Archibald’s opinion too much. As the pressures of the spring season increased and many of the men left logging to fish or work upon their land, there were fewer and fewer male voices at the practice sessions. Sometimes the men joked about this and the future make-up of the group.
“Do you think you’ll be able to handle all these women by yourself in Halifax, Archibald?” someone might ask, although not really asking the question of him.
“Sure, he will,” another voice would respond. “He’s well rested. He hasn’t used it in fifty years – not that we know of, anyway.”
Then at one practice Sal announced with some agitation that she had been talking to the producer in Halifax. He had told her, she said, that two other groups from the area had contacted him and he would be auditioning them as well. He would be coming in about ten days.
Everyone was dumbfounded.
“What other groups?” asked Archibald.
“One,” said Sal, pausing for dramatic effect, “is headed by Carver.”
“Carver!” they said in unison and disbelief. And then in the midst of loud guffaws, “Carver can’t sing. He can hardly speak any Gaelic. Where will he get a group?”
“Don’t ask me,” said Sal, “unless it’s those guys he hangs around with.”
“Who else?” said Archibald.
“MacKenzies!” she said.
No one laughed at the mention of MacKenzies. They had been one of the oldest and best of the singing families. They lived some twenty miles away in a small and isolated valley, but Archibald had noticed, over the past fifteen years or so, more and more of their houses becoming shuttered and boarded, and a few of the older ones starting to lean and even to fall to the pressures of the wind.
“They don’t have enough people any more,” someone said.
“No,” added another voice. “All of their best singers have gone to Toronto.”
“There are two very good young men there,” said Archibald, remembering a concert of a few years back when he had seen the two standing straight and tall a few feet back from the microphone, had seen them singing clearly and effortlessly with never a waver or a mispronunciation or a missed note.
“They’ve gone to Calgary,” said a third voice. “They’ve been there now for over a year.”
“I was talking to some people from over that way after the call from Halifax,” said Sal. “They said that the MacKenzies’ grandmother was going to ask them to come back. They said she was going to try to get all her singers to come home.”
Archibald was touched in spite of himself, touched that Mrs. MacKenzie would try so hard. He looked around the room and realized that there were very few people in it who knew that Mrs. MacKenzie was his cousin and by extension theirs. Although he did not know her well and had only nodded to her and exchanged a few words with her over a lifetime, he felt very close to her now. He was not even sure of the degree of the relationship (although he would work it out later), remembering only the story of the young woman from an earlier generation of his family who had married the young man from the valley of the MacKenzies who was of the “wrong religion.” There had been great bitterness at the time and the families had refused to speak to one another until all those who knew what the “right religion” was had died. The young woman who left had never visited her parents or they her. It seemed sad to Archibald, feeling almost more kinship to the scarcely known Mrs. MacKenzie than to those members of his own flesh and blood who seemed now so agitated and squabbly.
“She will never get them home,” said the last voice. “They’ve all got jobs and responsibilities. They can’t drop everything and come here or to Halifax for a week to sing four or five songs.”
The voice proved right, although in the following ten days before the producer’s visit Archibald thought often of Mrs. MacKenzie making her phone calls and of her messengers fanned out across Toronto, visiting the suburbs and the taverns, asking the question to which they already knew the answer but feeling obliged to ask it, nonetheless. In the end four MacKenzies came home, two young men who had been hurt at work and were on compensation and a middle-aged daughter and her husband who managed to take a week of their vacation earlier than usual. The really good young men were unable to come.
When the producer came he brought with him two male assistants with clipboards. The producer was an agitated man in his early thirties. He had dark curly hair and wore thick glasses and a maroon T-shirt with “If you’ve got it, flaunt it” emblazoned across the front. When he spoke, he nervously twisted his right ear lobe.
Archibald’s group was the last of the three he visited. “He’s saved the best for the last,” laughed Sal, not very convincingly.
He came in the evening and explained the situation briefly. If chosen, they would be in Halifax for six days. They would practise and acquaint themselves with the surroundings for the first two days and on the next four there would be a concert each evening. There would be various acts from throughout the province. They would be on television and radio, and some of the Royal Family would be in attendance.
Then he said, “Look, I really don’t understand your language so we’re here mainly to look for effect. We’d like you to be ready with three songs. And then maybe we’ll have to cut it back to two. We’ll see how it goes.”
They began to sing, sitting around the table as if they were “waulking the cloth” as their ancestors had done before them. Archibald sat at the head of the table, singing loudly and clearly, while the other voices rose to meet him. The producer and his assistants took notes.
“Okay, that’s enough,” he said after about an hour and a half.
“We’ll take the third one,” he said to one of his assistants.
“What’s it called?” he asked Archibald.
“Mo Chridhe Trom,” said Archibald. “It means my heart is heavy.”
“Okay,” said the producer. “Let’s do it again.”
They began. By the twelfth verse the music took hold of Archibald in a way that he had almost forgotten it could. His voice soared above the others with such clear and precise power that they faltered and were stilled.
’S ann air cul nam beanntan ard,
Tha aite comhnuidh mo ghraidh,
Fear dha ’m bheil an chridhe blath,
Do ’n tug mi ’n gradh a leon mi.
’S ann air cul a’ bhalla chloich,
’S math an aithnichinn lorg do chos,
Och ’us och, mar tha mi ’n nochd
Gur bochd nach d’fhuair mi coir ort.
Tha mo chridhe dhut cho buan,
Ris a’ chreag tha ’n grunnd a’ chuain,
No comh-ionnan ris an stuaidh
A bhuaileas orr’ an comhnuidh.
He finished the song alone. There was a silence that was almost embarrassing.
“Okay,” said the producer after a pause. “Try another one, number six. The one that doesn’t sound like all the others. What’s it called?”
“Oran Gillean Alasdair Mhoir,” said Archibald, trying to compose himself. “Song to the Sons of Big Alexander. Sometimes it’s known simply as The Drowning of the Men.”
“Okay,” said the producer. “Let’s go.” But when they were halfway through, he said, “Cut, okay, that’s enough.”
“It’s not finished,” said Archibald. “It’s a narrative.”
“That’s enough,” said the producer.
“You can’t cut them like that,” said Archibald, “if you do, they don’t make any sense.”
“Look, they don’t make any sense to me, anyway,” said the producer. “I told you I don’t understan
d the language. We’re just trying to gauge audience impact.”
Archibald felt himself getting angrier than perhaps he should, and he was aware of the looks and gestures from his family. “Be careful,” they said, “don’t offend him or we won’t get the trip.”
“Mmmm,” he said, rising from his chair and going to the window. The dusk had turned to dark and the stars seemed to touch the mountain. Although in a room filled with people, he felt very much alone, his mind running silently over the verses of Mo Chridhe Trom which had so moved him moments before.
Over lofty mountains lies
The dwelling place of my love,
One whose heart was always warm,
And whom I loved too dearly.
And behind the wall of stone
I would recognize your steps,
But how sad am I tonight
Because we’re not together.
Still my love you will last
Like the rock beneath the sea,
Just as long as will the waves
That strike against it always.
“Okay, let’s call it a night,” said the producer. “Thank you all very much. We’ll be in touch.”
The next morning at nine the producer drove into Archibald’s yard. His assistants were with him, packed and ready for Halifax. The assistants remained in the car while the producer came into Archibald’s kitchen. He coughed uncomfortably and looked about him as if to make sure that they were alone. He reminded Archibald of a nervous father preparing to discuss “the facts of life.”
“How were the other groups?” asked Archibald in what he hoped was a noncommittal voice.
“The young man Carver and his group,” said the producer, “have tremendous energy. They have a lot of male voices.”
“Mmmm,” said Archibald. “What did they sing?”
“I don’t remember the names of the songs, although I wrote them down. They’re packed away. It doesn’t matter all that much, anyway. They don’t know as many songs as you people do, though,” he concluded.
“No,” said Archibald, trying to restrain his sarcasm, “I don’t suppose they do.”
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