“Good night, Neil,” I said. “It was a lovely dinner. Thank Hannah again for me. You lucked out there, pal.”
“You got that right,” he said. “I got a feeling we’re going to be seeing a lot of each other. Us old-timers gotta stick together, Tony. Aren’t many of us old-school fellas left, buddy.” The telephone was winking red in the darkened kitchen. I was exhausted and wanted to ignore it. The dog was leaping on my leg making small whiney sounds. “Sorry, Birch,” I said. “Didn’t mean to be so long.” Then I realized his bladder was probably exploding. I opened the porch door and he shot out. I flipped on the kitchen light. Then I listened to the message.
“Hey, Tony. Been thinking about you.”
It took a moment for the voice to register. I’d been anticipating Anna. But it wasn’t Anna. And it wasn’t Caddy.
“Hope you had a nice Christmas.” There was a short laugh. “It’s Sophie, by the way. Remember me?” A pause. “Anyway Tony, I just wanted you to know that I was thinking about you, hoping that the day wasn’t sad for you. Call sometime, or write. I miss you.”
The dog was back at the door and so I saved the message and let him in. Then I listened to her words again, this time for tone. I miss you. I took the words to bed with me, played them over and over in my head. They were spoken quickly, shyly. I miss you.
8.
My roommate at the university in 1966 was Mark somebody from Halifax and he wanted me to spend the Easter holiday in the city. I was tempted. I had never been there. Had never been anywhere. Wanted to be anywhere but home. Mark’s father was a jail guard who worked at Rockhead Prison in the north end. Mark said he could arrange a tour now that the old place was to be shut down. His old man had claimed he met Hank Snow in Rockhead years ago—Hank in there over a domestic fracas. He said I’d get a charge out of his father’s stories. Talking to Mark was probably when I first became interested in corrections. But I took a rain check, told him I had to go home, help out on the farm. Didn’t tell him how confused and bruised I was.
You could hardly call it a farm, the old place up the mountain road. A couple of hundred acres, mostly woodland; two cows and a garden. When I was younger we had a horse for the ploughing and the haymaking and most years a pig for slaughter. By then my father was away most of the time, working in a mine out west. He’d been a miner in his younger days and went back to it around the time I started talking about university. He wasn’t going to be home at Easter, which meant the old red half-ton would be at my disposal, not that there was much to do with Caddy gone. I had to keep reminding myself: Caddy is gone. I won’t be here when you come home. A pretty simple statement but it took a while for the meaning to sink in. We were never closer than at Christmas when I couldn’t have imagined life without her. And I would have bet my life she’d felt the same.
They used to call them “Dear John” letters. I think it was because of a popular song by that name—Dear John, oh how I hate to write—a saccharine song about a soldier somewhere getting a letter from the girl back home who was going to marry someone else. Dear John letters were common in university and the people who got them would be teased and mocked until they’d be laughing at their own despair, no matter how they felt.
You deserve to know why I’m going but I just can’t bring myself to tell you because I know how you’d react and your reaction would be such a big mistake in the long run.
Caddy and I had never talked about much beyond the moment or the next weekend. Being together seemed so natural and comfortable that I guess I just assumed that it would go on indefinitely. There had been no declarations; the normal passions, which at times became intense, were managed by her. Recently we’d found ways to achieve a certain embarrassing relief on my part. Enough to calm me down, at least temporarily. Mortal sin just the same, I suppose, but a minor kind if such a distinction was possible. It was something else we didn’t talk about; something else that, like so much in those years of curiosity, was exciting mostly for the progress that it promised. I thought that we were happy together.
You’ll find out soon enough at any rate. And maybe you’ll hate me then. I hope so. It’ll make things so much easier for both of us. Goodbye Tony. Love, Caddy.
The word sat there. “Love.” It was stunning, a discovery. But right after “Goodbye Tony”? There was something cruel about it. I didn’t know the words “gratuitous” or “juxtaposition” back then but the effect of those two words, “goodbye” and “love” almost side by side, induced a kind of paralysis. Anyone watching me in the dining hall that day would have seen a puzzled look as I folded up the letter and shoved it in my pocket, stood and walked away from the table. I left my tray behind, food untouched. That was out of character and they’d have wondered about the letter. Bad news from home; Dear John. Looking back now, nobody knew me well enough to read my expressions or to safely mock, not even Mark, my roommate. Some things you never talked about to anybody.
I hitchhiked home on Good Friday. I walked the last two miles and arrived just after noon. Ma was in the middle of the sacred silence, one of the Good Friday traditions, and just hugged me and pointed to the clock, a reminder of the church service at three. I nodded and went to my room and sat there studying my hands. Then I read the letter again. You’ll find out soon enough at any rate. Find out what? Probably for the first time in my life, I was looking forward to the grim Good Friday service, all purple and slow with medieval dirges making everybody think of hell instead of the redemption it was supposed to promise. For a moment I was sure that I’d see Caddy in the usual place, among the Hector Gillises, three pews back on the right side where they always sat.
She wasn’t there. Ecce lignum crucis. It seemed to take them a frigging hour to peel the shroud off the wooden cross. Maybe she was sitting somewhere else, among friends. But I had plenty of opportunity to search the crowd during the Stations, when the priest and altar boys circumnavigated the church and we followed the progress, kneeling, standing, praying along. She wasn’t there. Ecce lignum crucis. Coming back from the rail after the Adoration, near the end, when everybody goes up front to kiss the exposed cross, I caught her mother staring at me with a sad, sympathetic look that told me everything but why.
Saturday and Sunday I spent at the books. Finals would be starting shortly after the Easter break. The history section was about the U.S. Civil War and was unusually well written so that kept me focused. English lit was another matter, all the poetry and essays about love and longing left me staring out the window for much of the time. When you’re young each remarkable moment obscures everything before it, becomes a foretaste of forever. Which is mostly good since, for the lucky ones, so much of youth is happy. But it’s also why youthful grief, at least for those who are unlucky and unwise, can be so dangerous.
Late Saturday afternoon I went for a walk and on an impulse took a rifle from the rack in the back porch. It was just a .22 but there was something reassuring in its heft, its light fragrance of oil, the smoothness of the stock. Of course that time of year there was nothing left to hunt since anything worth eating had been eating badly for so long or had been eaten by another predator. I think now the rifle was a test. Is life worth living any longer? I had to force myself to seriously consider what it was that generated this feeling like congestion that sometimes made it hard to breathe, that worked up into my head and pressed behind my eyeballs, that sometimes caused my breath to catch and then release in ragged sobs. Is this how I will always feel? Because if it is … Jesus Christ, I said more than once. What’s the matter with you?
I sat on a stone in a clearing and from there I could see out over the water, silvery beneath the pale sun. There were still clumps of granular snow in the woods, darkened and dirty from falling leaves and tree needles. I thought of a distant relative of Caddy’s, a Gillis, who went off into the woods somewhere up near the strait the day that Kennedy was shot in 1963. Sitting in a place like this they say he drank rum for a while, then he shot himself with a .303. Or maybe a 30
-06. Made no mistake. It was talked about everywhere, lots of speculation. Women trouble, booze, that sort of thing. Then it came out that he had shell shock from the war. War and its aftershocks,you hear about it all the time. And then I thought of Neil Archie MacDonald and the war that everyone was talking about in those days. Indo-China, or Vietnam. In the co-op, people huddled over the newspapers. “God help him, his timing couldn’t a been worse,” someone would invariably say. Or: “Poor Neil, he’s got a lot of the old man in him, couldn’t stay out of a fight if his life depended on it.” Ma said that at Mass the previous Sunday they prayed for his safe return.
What would that be like? I wondered. Just go to the States and join the army. One of the Americans at the university was saying it would be a piece of cake. They love recruiting foreigners and poor people. No political downside losing folks like that in a controversial war. I could go out in glory, not like this, alone in the darkening woods on Holy Saturday, an instant scandal, like Caddy’s distant cousin. They’d never suspect woman trouble. They’d blame the books I bet, blame the pressures of university. I studied the rifle, looked down the barrel. With a .22 you’d have to stick it in your eye, or right up against the roof of your mouth.
I spit out the bitter taste of oily metal and discharged gunpowder.
Then I went home.
Monday morning Ma was looking at me with an expression that spoke of hard questions held back. I didn’t help her, offered no entry point. Now that I was sure of things, that Caddy really had gone away, I just wanted to go back to the university, hit the books, lose myself in the finals. Then think of summer work to help with another year’s tuition. Or not. Maybe drop out for a year or two. Just after the noon meal she drove me to the highway. I slid out and slammed the truck door quickly, before she could ask. When I was standing on the road, she rolled her window down. “I heard from your father last week. He probably won’t be home before Christmas.”
I nodded, thinking of his absence for the first time.
She said, “It’s lonely with you both gone.”
I said, “It’ll only be a few weeks though, I’ll be back.”
“Uh-huh. Then what though?”
“Where is it that he’s working?”
“Saskatchewan,” she answered. “Some place called Estevan.”
I just shrugged. Yes. Then what? “Bye, Ma.”
Later, waiting for the next ride, I studied the leaden sky. The air was warm, heavy with moisture. After a series of passing cars, drivers resolutely staring straight ahead as if I was invisible, I channelled disappointment and impatience into that dark place where the grief was and it all fused as in a chemical reaction. Suddenly I wept. No sound. Just tears flowing down my cheeks, around the corners of my mouth. It was a relief in a way. But that was the only time. And then a car slowed down. I wiped my face on my sleeve and trotted toward where it was paused, passenger door swung open, offering a temporary sanctuary.
I spent that long summer in Saskatchewan, working with my father in a potash mine. Duncan never talked much but one evening in the cookhouse he said, “I hear that the young Gillis one gave you the heave-ho.” And he smiled. It was a warm smile, free of mockery and I could feel the creeping flush in my face, a sudden heaviness.
“Oh yeah?” I said, all nonchalant. “Where’d you hear that?”
“I don’t know,” he said. He made a harsh throat-clearing sound, which usually signalled that he was finished talking. But then he said, as if from a great distance: “You’re better off. There’s a bad streak in those people.”
“What people?”
“Those Gillises.”
“That’s a lot of people,” I said. “There’s nothing but Gillises.”
“That crowd is different from the rest of them. There’s lots of good Gillises.”
“So what’s wrong with that crowd?”
“Oh, I could tell you things.”
It was as if the noisy cookhouse had suddenly emptied. “Ah well,” he said. “Best left where it is.”
I nodded, focused on my plate of food. “You mean the one who shot himself, up near the strait. He was related?”
“Yes,” he said.
“How did you know him?” I asked.
“The war,” he said. “I saw him near the end of the war. He was never the same. Got wounded bad. I was there.”
“You were there?”
“Shortly afterwards. Himself and his buddy named MacAskill got into something. I was military police, which was why I was there. It was Holland we were in. Just before the end.”
“I didn’t know,” I said. “That you were …”
“Anyway, it’s best not talked about. It was a long time ago. I was just saying, there’s a bad streak in that crowd. You’re best out of it.”
And the billow of sorrow rolled over me again.
And then it was September. There was merry laughter in the co-op. It stopped when I closed the door behind me, but not before I heard Caddy’s name.
“What about Caddy?”
“When did you come home?” Big Frank, the manager, was watching me, face tight.
“What about Caddy,” I repeated.
“Caddy’s expecting,” he said quietly.
“When did Caddy get married?” I asked.
“Who mentioned marriage,” a voice behind me said. I turned.
Big Frank said sternly, “Tony …”
His name was Peter. Older than I was by at least ten years. That’s all that I remember. Except for the expression on his face as he said, “It would’ve took some kind of a man to get into Caddy’s …”
And the rest is a lot of confusion, things toppling, and me suddenly on top of that fucking Peter, strangling his fucking neck until the eyes bulged, face turned purple.
And being jerked to my feet by Big Frank who was behind me.
“Jesus Christ, Tony … he was only kidding …”
“Fuck you all. Fuck every one of you.” And the door slam.
——
But it was true. Ma said: “I suppose you heard about Caddy.” She shook her head in sympathy or disapproval or some combination of the two.
“It’s such a shame,” she said. “There’s her life, gone. And for what?”
I couldn’t suppress the question. “When?”
“Her mother told me, it’ll be sometime late October. They’re just devastated.”
There was a long silence then, or all senses paralyzed. I waited for the mental math and the speculation that was irresistible, but it only hung there, silently, expanding until it filled the room. “I think I’ll go out for a while,” I said.
Nobody talked about Caddy Gillis around me after that. Which is not to say that there wasn’t a lot of talking about Caddy going on, especially inside of me. Mostly questions. If it wasn’t me, then who? I was working backward in my mind, trying to remember how far she let me go and when. I told myself: It doesn’t take much. When you’re young and inexperienced it can happen pretty much without you knowing. But if it was me who got her pregnant in some freak accident, why would she go away without telling me? Maybe to spare me? Probably to give it up without me knowing. That would be like her. But then I had a flash of anger at that thought. You deserve to know why I’m going but I just can’t bring myself to tell you. This wasn’t just about her. It took two to create that life that was now a problem she was trying to solve alone. No. She wouldn’t do that. But, then, maybe, for noble reasons—she’d want to spare me the grief and scandal.
A friend of mine from younger days—I’ll call him Dave—arrived home unannounced in March one year. He’d been working far away so there was much speculation about what brought him home at that unlikely time. He kept to himself for the week he was around and it was said that he seemed grim. Was he in some kind of trouble away? Was there someone sick at home? Then he went away again. The reason for his visit remained a mystery until May when his girlfriend who was still in school began to show. It was a major topic of discussio
n.
Caddy knew her well and told me how it happened. One night while he was home for the Christmas holidays they were necking on a couch after her parents had gone to bed. And before she knew what was happening he’d slipped it in. Caught her totally by surprise, she told Caddy. It was her first time but it didn’t hurt, she said. She’d been pretty turned on herself, from all the fondling. He was only in for like three seconds when she panicked and he pulled back, squirting stuff all over her and the couch. What a mess! Caddy was blushing telling it.
They got married in June, right after high school graduation, because that was what you did. You did the right thing and the right thing was for the community, upholding standards that held the place together even if it was at some painful cost for the individuals involved. Values. Civility. Doing the right thing was never the wrong course of action, not in those days. You sinned and you were sorry. You owned up and did your lifelong penance after an act of contrition called marriage. Everything was okay then. I was ready for that but Caddy spared me.
And then I did the math again: I hadn’t seen her from the Christmas break until the end of February. So if it was true that she was due at the end of October it was someone else who’d sinned. Someone who’d just run away, turned his back on values and civility.
Duncan had it absolutely right. I was just saying, there’s a bad streak in that crowd. You’re best out of it.
It was mid-November when I heard a baby had been born a few weeks earlier. A girl. Catherine Rosalie. No shame there, I thought. Maybe they’ll call her Caddy too. But she went by Rosalie, according to the scraps of gossip I’d hear from time to time. Everything was clear and simple then and my reaction was unambiguous. The hurt confusion had by then grown thin. I was profoundly and permanently angry. And there would be moments of cold elation. What a lesson! I should get in touch and thank her. To learn something so revealing about human nature was worth more than anything I was learning from the university professors. I looked at girls and women differently, saw them for the perils and complications that were always festering within their complex needs. After Caddy I could still be friendly, even passionate in particular situations. But I always held something back and, perversely, it seemed to make me more attractive. Women seemed to be obsessed by the idea that there were things they couldn’t know about me, places I wouldn’t let them go, things they couldn’t have. I was like that right up until I met Anna.
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