Cape Breton Road

by D. R. MacDonald

  “Dreaming out there, were you?” she said, helping him haul the skiff clear.

  “Not really. Starr coming?”

  “He went to a funeral, in Sydney. An old cousin.” She cocked her head at him. “He was looking for you to go with him.”

  “He’ll have a long look, if it’s the cousin I’m thinking of. You should’ve gone. Can’t beat a good funeral.”

  “I’m not in the mood for a funeral, thanks. Innis, you’re getting tanned. That winter pallor is gone.”

  “Is it?” He set about scooping water from under the stern thwart. “I wouldn’t think you’d notice, Claire. You notice anything about my uncle?”

  “Some things you do, I suppose, and some things you don’t.” She reached for his collar and tugged it straight. “Youth is fine, even beautiful, in someone like you, but it isn’t everything, kiddo.”

  “Tell me, Claire, do you think I don’t know much?”

  “You just need a few more years under that beltbuckle there.”

  “You like it? It’s World War I. I’d like the army cap that went with it, with the cocky green feather.”

  “You’re cocky anyway.”

  “My mother used to say that. I don’t think it’s true anymore.”

  “Was she pretty, your mother?”

  “Still is, I guess. Was yours?”

  “She still got looks at fifty, my mother. But that mattered to her too much, getting whistles, winks from the butcher. I thought, God, I don’t want to be that way, wanting looks. I know it has to end. But if you want to give me a look, Innis, I won’t complain.”

  “You got your suit on under those jeans? I think Starr requires that now. It’s a regulation.”

  “Oh yes, I’m observing the law.” She smiled. “I didn’t know you were a boatman, Innis.”

  “Better day for it than swimming.” The light wind had vanished. There were no waves in the cove and the water sat against the shore as if it had been poured. In the clear green shallows a purple jellyfish bloomed and closed, bloomed and closed, others just helpless blobs in the sand. “I’ll take you out, if you like.”

  She wrapped the towel around her like a shawl, looked at the sky, its dark, still clouds. “All right, Innis. Be my boatman.”

  His shoes were wet anyway, so he pushed the boat off and stepped in, Claire in the stern seat. She sat comfortably, her hands clasped between her knees as he poled out of the shallows. He set the oars in the locks and fell into the rhythm that was becoming familiar to him, Claire looking past him out into the strait where he pointed the bow. If he rowed hard he could make the other shore on this slack tide and what happened after that he didn’t care. He was in good shape, he could pull this boat all day if he had to, his wake was good, straight as a road. The cove slowly receded into shorebank backed with woods. Ah, the ever-present woods. Innis felt liberated from them, there was no sound but clatter of oarlocks, the synchronized splash of the blades.

  “Everything looks different out here,” Claire said. “You can see so far down the strait.”

  “Only a few miles to the sea. Beyond the big bridge you can just make out the narrows there. After that, hey, it’s the ocean, Claire.”

  “Some other day, all right?”

  “I never get other days with you, Claire. That’s the trouble.”

  “Let’s enjoy this one, captain. Look up there!” She pointed above the cove where Starr’s house appeared on the hill, black-roofed and white-sided, and soon, further east, the grey barn, the wild fields.

  “I like it better from here,” Innis said, picking up his pace, leaning deep into his strokes.

  The rain was at first so light it turned the smooth grey surface to sandstone. They both laughed at its touch, raising their faces, opening their mouths. A cormorant, up from a long dive, took fright, its wings skipping water until it was barely airborne, propelling its long black neck seaward. Even the currents seemed just tones, the texture of fossil. Save for the whisper of rain, the stillness extended deep and wide and they were suspended in it: that was what brought Innis up short—the sensation of not moving anywhere in spite of his muscular rowing. He glanced behind him over the bow: this was farther than he had ever rowed and, Jesus, they weren’t but a quarter way across, the mountain hardly nearer. His wake was meandering.

  “Look out,” Claire said. “Here it comes.”

  He heard the drops before he felt them, loud plinks like on glass, then their sting, so hard he shut his eyes. They both hunched down as the rain beat on them and in seconds it fell in long curtains, straight as beads, then slowly moving in long waves as the wind followed, and then the water came alive. He raised one oar, the boat seemed to be sliding sideways, and he turned it back toward the cove with the other. Claire had hold of the gunnels, bracing herself as waves began to hit broadside, easy for his first few strokes, but the troughs grew deeper, he could hardly believe how the surface of the strait was rolling and leaping. In the wind the shore was a dark green blur.

  “The current’s taking us, Innis!”

  There was no wake to see now but she was right, the waves were coming out of the west, shoving them eastward, away from the shore. He could make out her dark hair, her blouse.

  “Bail with that bottle! Under your seat there!”

  There were moments when he lost all sense of where they were headed, he was just thrashing against thick rain and choppy waves heeling them over. He managed to get the boat around so the bow met the waves, but that headed them the wrong direction. The pitch was violent, the bow lifting, plunging. Water washed over his shoes.

  “Innis! Where are we going?”

  He didn’t answer, he was glad she was afraid. He was tiring, but if he could work the oars enough to keep them into the waves, they might make shore, the sea was pushing them sternward. But their drift was too slow, Claire had stopped bailing, the plastic scoop rolled fore and aft at their feet. He would have to come around and ride with the waves, not into them. He lifted the oars to ready himself. He had never been so soaked, so without shelter.

  “Hold on, Claire!”

  She said something he couldn’t hear and then he pulled hard with one oar, he had to do it fast, 180 degrees, but the troughs were short, the boat lurched down, then up, taking spray, and again until he had the bow angled toward land. As the stern lifted under Claire she cried out, water slashing across her back. The rain had slackened but the wind was blowing it about as Innis pulled against the current, it could hit five or six knots when the tide was ebbing, Starr said, but there was always an eddy just offshore running opposite the tide. Innis forced his leaden arms to move, keep moving, he didn’t look behind him until he knew he’d have to rest, and by then the boat did not seem to be slip-sliding anymore, he was free of the current, the shore not thirty yards away.

  “Innis, you can beach it now!” Claire said.

  “I can make the cove.”

  In the eddy he got his second wind and pulled for the cove. The swells were abeam and rocked them good, Claire had to grip the gunnels hard, but there were no whitecaps to raise the water washing at their ankles. When the shore was close he gave the oars three loud heaves, driving the bow onto the sand. He slumped on the thwart, grinning at her. Her blouse was translucent against her skin. She wasn’t wearing a swimsuit. The boat rocked under them, keel grinding in gravel. The rain was merely steady now, nothing dangerous.

  “Claire, you look drowned.”

  She ran her hands slowly over her face and through her hair. “Good God, Innis. Don’t be funny.”

  Together they beached the skiff. Innis tied the bow rope to a tree and flopped on his back, his arms outstretched. Claire knelt beside him. She wiped rain from his face. “We should go up. You’ll get chilled.”

  “I don’t want to see Starr. I just don’t.”

  “He won’t be back, he’s having supper there.”

  Innis opened his eyes. “He’s always jabbing at me. What does he know?”

  “He doesn’
t know what happened that night. But it’s in the air between us, you and me, and he walks through it every day.”

  “Just air?”

  “I’m trying to hold my balance, Innis. Maybe our balance.”

  “I don’t know what you mean. It was just messing around, was it, on the beach that night?”

  Claire touched his face but he turned away. “That? That was wonderful, it was. Listen, Innis, I have a whole history you can’t imagine and it doesn’t disappear in one night. That isn’t possession. I’m not yours or you mine because we made love. You’re so young yet, you’re too serious about it. You don’t see these things, you don’t know that sometimes you take what comes your way, and then it goes. It might come back and you’ll be happy if it does, but you can’t expect it to, it’s not yours or mine, it’s just the way things happened at a certain time. God, there didn’t seem anything else for us to do that evening but what we did. I won’t forget it, I won’t. I used to think I could get something from one man, something different from another. But it’s so difficult, the two of you tied up with me that way, here.”

  “Nobody can keep a secret like me.”

  “Come on, you’re shivering.” Holding his hand, she got up and pulled him to his feet.

  They walked slowly without speaking up through the woods, the dripping trees, Claire ahead. “Wait,” Innis said. He plucked two stalks of bluebead lily, dangled the indigo berries at her earlobes. “Beautiful.” She smiled and kissed his face and they went on. At the house she stopped in the kitchen for a small glass of rum. “Take a swig,” she said, “it’ll warm you.”

  He winced, it burned his throat. “Not used to it anymore,” he said.

  Upstairs they parted to their bedrooms. Innis peeled off his shirt, his jeans, wrung out his shorts in the crockery basin. He stood at the window and dried himself slowly, under his arms, between his legs. He buried his head in the towel and rubbed it vigorously, flung the towel away. Bending to the mirror, he combed his hair back with careful strokes and tied it with a piece of leather bootlace. He closed his eyes: it felt so good to be naked. He wanted a joint, but there wasn’t time for that. Sometimes he wondered what there was time for. When he was as old as Claire, what would he have? Hearing her singing, too soft to make out, he went to her open door and stood there, his arms at his sides.

  In her robe, her back to him, she was brushing her hair. She saw him in the mirror and turned, setting the brush carefully on the bureau. “What’re you singing?” he said. She looked him up and down, smiling almost sadly. “It’s French. My mother.” He didn’t move. “Innis, what am I going to do with you?” “Something good, I hope, Miss Claire.” She came over to him, caressed the muscles of his shoulders, his chest, his neck. She reached behind him and tugged loose the bit of leather that bound his ponytail. “There,” she said. He spread her robe open until it slipped from her arms. “Claire in the daylight. Something else,” he whispered. “Yes,” she said. “I haven’t been whispered to in the daylight for a long time, like this, close.” She kissed him quietly on the lips and he cupped her face in his hands, her flesh against his flesh was incredible to him, everything was spinning down to this. His voice was gone but he took her hand and led her into his room. “No,” she said. “You lie down. Go on.” He lay there and watched her, she pulled the window curtain closed, then leaned over him and ran her fingers lightly down his torso, kissed the hard muscle of his belly before she slid over him on her knees. “Lie back,” she said. “I’ll row us out to sea.”

  18

  CLAIRE FLUNG OPEN ALL the upstairs windows after she got out of bed. “Let that rainy air blow through,” she said, “it’ll take us out of here before Starr gets back.” Innis had lain there listening to her, the sweet feel of her cooling over his body. “I’ll get myself out of here,” he said, “I’ll hitch down to the priest’s. I don’t feel like talking to Starr, or listening to him, not today, Claire. You know what I mean?” “Yes,” she said, “I know what you mean. I’ll drive you, this time.” When she dropped him off at the Wharf Road, he said, “I should have thought of this sooner, you driving me places.” “Believe me,” Claire said, “this is soon enough. And what places?”

  The priest was not at the cottage. At the wharf Innis watched the mountain sundown through a drizzle, a mixture of white vapor, smoke, small apertures of brilliant light, altering moment by moment. Into the darkening water he sidearmed a stone, cutting the surface in neat accelerating skips. Seven, maybe eight. The taste of her was still on his tongue.

  A stone looped high over his head and plunked in the water. Innis turned to see Father Lesperance on a drift log, rocking on his heels, his hands clasped innocently. Behind him stood another priest, dressed clerically, even Father Lesperance wore black, except for the small yellow feather in his stingy-brim hat.

  “Innis, my man,” he said. “What’s new?”

  “Not a lot, Father. I’ve finished.”

  The two priests looked back at the cottage, with its fresh white shingles, the blue-trimmed windows. “Brighter inside and out. It needed that light, yes. Innis, this is an old friend of mine, Father Swaydo. We’re off to Antigonish, Father Swaydo and I, to visit a few brothers. We all went to school together.”

  “Hello, Father.”

  Father Swaydo stepped forward and shook Innis’s hand. “How do you do, Innis.” He was a thin, erect man, his blackrimmed glasses magnifying his eyes. From his black fedora to his black shoes he was all priest, but there was something about the cut of his coat, his trousers, that seemed out of date, from another time.

  “Let’s get out of the weather,” Father Lesperance said. “I want to settle my account with you, Innis.”

  “There’s no hurry, really.”

  “Odd, but I have a feeling that there is.”

  Innis led the way to the cottage, as if he were showing it for sale. Inside there was still a smell of paint.

  “We’ll all be comfortable here now,” Father Lesperance said, clasping his hands together. “Gloomy, wasn’t it? Before?”

  “I didn’t think so, Father. Maybe sometimes.”

  “I heard the Captain is coming down after all, later in the month maybe. Did you know? It’ll clear up the mystery when he does.”

  “What mystery?”

  Father Lesperance peered out the front window. “John J. MacKeigan has a key, he looks in every few weeks or so. The wheels have mud on them, John J. said. Well, I said, Captain MacQueen might very well have parked her in that condition. And John J. said, He very well might not, he’s a fastidious man.” He took Innis aside and spoke low to him. “It’s a small place, St. Aubin, Innis. Lots of space, lots of separation, but still small. Keep that in mind, eh?”

  “I have, Father. I know what you mean.”

  Father Swaydo had spotted the prie-dieu. “Ah,” he said, and knelt carefully on the bench, pressing his palms together. “Do you put in a lot of time on this, Henri?”

  Father Lesperance winked at Innis. “Don’t pray yet, Richard. We have a Protestant in the room. We wouldn’t want to give away any secrets, would we?”

  “You can trust me, Father,” Innis said.

  “I have not the least doubt of that, Innis.” He pulled out a white envelope from his coat and handed it to him. “I hope that will cover your work, for good work it was. Count it.”

  “No need to, Father. It’s fine, whatever it is.”

  “Suit yourself. I might find other work for you, you know, later.”

  “Thanks, but I … I’m kind of winding down.”

  “Not leaving soon, I hope? Back to the States?”

  Innis smiled and shrugged. “No, not back there.”

  “Well,” Father Swaydo said, rising from the prie-dieu, “at least you don’t have Pierre Elliott Trudeau back there.”

  “Oh come now, Richard, you old Tory,” Father Lesperance said. “The man has charm, admit it. It’s his wife, poor girl.”

  “Ah, yes. Her and the rock stars.” Father Sw
aydo adjusted his glasses delicately to examine the painting of the Jesuit Martyr-Saints. “Henri, where on earth did you get this kitsch?”

  “We like it, Innis and I. Kitsch isn’t even relevant to what we like about it. Not so, Innis?”

  “That’s right, Father. There’s a lot going on there, from the top to the bottom.”

  “Exactly. See, Richard? That’s art. Now we’re on our way. I won’t say goodbye, Innis. I will see you again, I’m sure.”

  “Don’t forget the key.” Innis held it out to him.

  “Listen, you hold onto it for now. Use this little house when you need to or want to. All right?”

  Innis shook hands with them and walked them out to the road. Before getting inside the car, Father Swaydo picked up a stick and whirled it high toward the shore. “I’m better with a football,” he said, straightening his hat brim. He waved as they drove off, Father Lesperance’s muffler noisier than before. Innis envied them, off to see old friends. There was something about them he knew he could never have, never understand. He squeezed the key. There might be a night when he’d like to crash here, alone. But the Captain was coming back. What could you prove from muddy tires? Nothing. Still, Innis had been on this little road more than anyone else these last months, people knew that. The car was over there, it was waiting. The urge to be free of Starr felt almost maddening, but how could he leave the house, his plants in the ground, unharvested, unsold? And Claire.