by Ian Rogers
The tall man was gone. Back to the currents. Trevor walked along the shore until he came to the spot where they had found him earlier that day. Nothing left but two impressions in the muddy riverbank.
Footprints.
LEAVES BROWN
Sheldon Carey woke up to the sound of his grandson screaming. It was a high, wavering sound, almost inhuman, but he still waited an hour before going to check on him.
Sheldon cared greatly for the boy (he was always “the boy,” never Benjamin or Ben, and how that drove his mother up the wall), but he was a superstitious man, had been all his life, and old ways died hard. He couldn’t make himself get out of bed until the shadows had retreated back into the corners of the room. Over the years he had become gradually more aware of shadows and their slow, insidious movements. It wasn’t quite dawn yet, but the tiny scrap of sky out his window had begun to brighten. He could feel the sun coming, especially this time of year, the way he could feel it when a big storm was going to sweep in and give the coast a good thrashing.
He swung his long legs out from under the covers and slipped into the fur-lined slippers on the floor next to the bed. He stood up, joints creaking like the gears in a piece of machinery that has been running much longer than expected, and shuffled over to the low, east-facing window. He craned down (he was a tall man and an old man, but had never developed the hunch that was the curse of most tall, old men) and looked out on the back yard: the clothesline swinging in the early-morning breeze, the autumn-empty trees, the roiling steel-grey waves of the Atlantic. His thoughts were like the water this morning—deep, dark, and restless.
He heard a thump from the next room and thought: I should talk to him today. But then the old doubt came swooping in like a bird of prey, settling on his shoulders and digging its talons in.
He’s too young. He won’t understand.
He pulled on yesterday’s blue jeans, faded almost white from a thousand trips through the washing machine, and a chambray workshirt he’d left draped over the back of the armchair which was the only other piece of furniture in the room. Sue would have chewed him out for not putting his clothes away. It didn’t seem like that long ago he would have done the same thing to her. The psychological notion that kids grow up to become their parents only accounted for part of it. The other part was fuelled by anger—anger at his coming back to Pond Hill, anger at his living in the house again. So much anger. And he supposed he deserved it.
It was funny the way things could change so drastically with the passing of a season. Simple things like the view from a window, and complex things like the ties that bind family together. They could change, completely and irrevocably, as time passed from spring to summer, summer to fall.
It has to be today. If not today, then when?
It was true; he couldn’t put it off any longer. The boy’s screams last night had been the worst yet. It was a wonder his mother hadn’t already said something. He had no doubt she heard him. Those cries could have woken the dead. Or something worse.
Sheldon crept slowly down the stairs, so as not to wake the rest of the house or the arthritis dozing in his hands. It had been good lately, though he knew those days were numbered. This was the time of year when the arthritis really got down to business.
Stepping into the kitchen, he saw his efforts were all for naught. Sue was already up and dressed and puttering around the kitchen in high gear.
“You’re up early,” Sheldon said as he shuffled over to the wood-burning cookstove and began the ritual of getting it started. He noticed the boy had done the thing with the newspapers again, and smiled. He had started doing it a few weeks ago, as if he had known his grandfather’s arthritis was getting worse with the cold weather, although Sheldon had never said anything about it.
“Some of us have to work today.” She kept her back to him as she made sandwiches at the counter.
Sheldon frowned but didn’t take the bait. If she wanted to start the morning off with a fight, then he would have to leave her wanting. Sue hadn’t been like this growing up—although he admittedly wasn’t one to speak authoritatively on her childhood years—and it saddened him to see the angry and bitter person she had become. He supposed she had every right to be this way. She had been married to a man who loved drinking more than his wife, and had ended up leaving her about a year ago. But he couldn’t help but think that it was the boy who suffered most of all.
“Thought I’d go for a walk up the coast today,” Sheldon said, scratching a wooden match across his thumbnail. “Thought I’d take the boy with me.”
“Fine,” Sue said. “After he rakes the yard and finishes repairing the shutter.” She turned and fixed him with a steely gaze. “And I don’t want you helping him. He broke it so he’ll fix it. He needs to start doing things for himself.”
Like you are?
The words seemed to hover in the chilly early-morning air between them. They both heard them although no one spoke them. They had danced around a thousand fights since Sheldon came back to Cape Breton, never quite going the full distance to set each other off. Sue had her own reasons, whereas Sheldon kept his mouth shut because he was a guest in her home—was paying rent, even—and he knew it was pointless anyway. You could sooner change the weather than you could the past. And even if you could, who’s to say the new decisions you made would be any better than the ones you made the first time around?
On one occasion when they had come close to butting heads, Sue said: You’ve stayed out of my business for so many years, you might as well stay out of it forever. Sheldon hadn’t argued with her, in part because of his reluctance to fight, but also because he agreed with her. If her life had ever been his business, it wasn’t now.
But the boy . . . they both had a stake in his future.
There was nothing he could do to improve the boy’s relationship with his mother, but he could help him with the things that were keeping him up nights. Dark things of which Sheldon was something of an authority. Things that would frighten him, disturb him, but left unmentioned could drive him off the island as Sheldon had been all those years ago.
The boy needed his help. He didn’t know he needed it, but that was okay. Most folks could be drowning in trouble and never even think to ask for a life preserver. Trouble had a way of latching on like a leech, silent and undetected. The boy had a goodness about him—Sheldon saw it in things like wrapping the stovelengths in newspaper so that he didn’t have to do it and work his arthritis into a frenzy—but it could be stifled as easily as blowing out a candle flame.
By the time Sheldon got the fire going and put the kettle on, Sue had finished making her lunch and was slipping into her coat. “I won’t be back till late,” she said, turning up her collar. “You can make dinner for yourself and Benjamin?”
“I can.”
“Good.” She went out the side door without saying another word. No good-bye, no have a nice day, no take care of Ben. Sheldon heard the engine on her old Buick cough and sputter into wheezy life, the sound fading as it lurched down the gravel driveway to the old dirt track that led to the main road.
It was very quiet in the kitchen, then. The only sound was the soft rustle of the flames in the stove and the low, intermittent shriek of the wind. Sheldon sat and sipped his tea, holding the cup in both hands like a child. He leaned back and the chair squeaked. He let his mind wander.
It drifted up the stairs, walking on invisible feet that brought no creaks from the old worn steps, and down the hall with its faded wallpaper peeling at the top and bottom like long pieces of parchment. The house needed a lot of work, but as Sue was quick to point out, money didn’t grow on trees. No, it didn’t, and speaking of trees, he could see the one through the window at the end of the hall, still wearing some of its red and gold leaves. Down the hall to the boy’s room, passing through the door, no need to open it, and there was his grandson, sitting on the edge of his bed, dressed in a hooded sweatshirt and grey cargo pants,
tying the rawhide laces of his boots with hands that wouldn’t stop shaking.
It must be today.
He set his cup on the table, nothing left but the leafy detritus at the bottom. When he was a boy, Sheldon had known a woman who could read the future in those leavings.
He heard a thump from upstairs. A moment later the boy came clomping down the stairs. He looked around for his mother; seeing that the coast was clear, he smiled and said, “Morning, Grandpa.”
“Morning it is, b’y. You must be one of those educated fellows, eh?”
Ben grinned and went over to check the fire. Grandpa had been off the island more years than Ben had been alive, but his Cape Breton accent was still the strongest one he had ever heard. He liked to listen to his grandfather talk, even though he didn’t catch every single word. There was something calming, almost reassuring, in the way he rounded his r’s, the way he said b’y instead of boy.
“Your ma wanted me to remind you of your chores,” Sheldon said. “She wanted you to get started first thing, but I thought you might want to join me for a stroll up Horsehead Cove.”
Ben shrugged. “Sure.”
“We’ll see how far up the trail we can go. I don’t like the look of those clouds.” He nodded at the darkening sky outside the kitchen window. “They look sketchy.”
Ben snickered as he lifted one of the hotplate covers and dropped in another piece of kindling. Another thing he liked about his grandfather was his seemingly endless supply of strange sayings. The sea’s having a hissy today. The trees caught the autumn fever something fierce. Those clouds look sketchy. Ben sometimes wondered what the world looked like through his grandfather’s eyes. Sometimes, if he concentrated hard enough, he thought he could actually see it. It wasn’t a trick he tried very often. Sometimes he didn’t like what he saw.
Sheldon kicked off his slippers and stepped into his old, scuffed work-boots. He took his coat off the wooden peg by the door, slipped it over his bony shoulders, and went outside.
The day was almost perfectly still—an eye-of-the-hurricane day—and Sheldon took this as a good sign. It had been long years since he had paid attention to the subtle nuances of the weather. The world beyond the island had lost whatever interest it once had in the portents that could be gleaned from such things as the sound of the wind before sunset or the colour of the clouds at dawn.
The air was redolent of pine needles, wet leaves, and wood smoke. Underlying it all was the salty scent of the Atlantic. Sheldon took a series of deep breaths and watched as the air poured out of him like smoke. The joints in his hands were tying themselves into tight little knots, but even that couldn’t take the smile off his face. It was a perfect fall day.
Behind him, he heard the squeak and wheeze of the screen door opening, followed by the rifle-crack as it snapped closed. If the boy’s mother was around, she would have yelled at the boy, maybe ask him if he could possibly make any more noise. Sue Carrey was definitely of the opinion that children should be seen and not heard.
The boy stood on the stoop with his hands in his pockets, looking at Sheldon expectantly.
“Ready?” Sheldon flipped up his collar and immediately felt his fingers scream out in pain.
“Yeah,” Ben replied. “You sure it’s not too cold for you?”
“Too cold for me?” He feigned surprise. “I decked on the ore boats in the Great Lakes for twice as long as you’ve been alive, b’y. Now that’s cold.”
Sheldon started down the path to the woods. “I was going to ask you the same thing,” he said over his shoulder. “Out of concern, you understand.”
Ben hurried to keep up with his grandfather’s long-legged stride. “Concern for what?”
“Well,” Sheldon said ruminatively, “going up to Horsehead isn’t exactly a stroll or a wander. It’s not as serious as a hike or a marathon; it falls somewhere in betwixt. And I don’t have a saw, y’see.”
“A saw? What do you need a saw for?”
“Oh, it’s not for me. It’s for you.”
They walked in silence for a little while, as if the conversation had reached its natural conclusion. Ben knew otherwise, but he tried to wait his grandfather out. It was a pointless endeavour. His grandfather was a master of the waiting game.
Finally he asked: “So, why do I need a saw, Grandpa?”
“Whassat?” Sheldon looked around, bewildered, as if he had been woken from some deep reverie.
“The saw.” Ben tried to inject a tone of exasperation into his voice. “Why do I need a saw?”
“Oh! Right! The saw!” He gave his grandson a sly, sidelong look. “Why, for your arms, of course.”
“My arms?”
“Sure. I see you’re wearing the boots I bought you for your birthday, and I know for a fact they’re plenty warm enough. But you’re not wearing a coat, just that hoodie.”
Ben looked down at his sweater a little guiltily. “It’s not that cold out.”
“True, true,” Sheldon agreed. “But the frostbite has a way of creeping in. And once it does . . . well, like I says, we pro’ly should’ve brought the saw.”
“What, so I could saw my arms off?”
“No, course not,” Sheldon said. “So I could saw ’em off.” He stopped walking and looked off thoughtfully into the distance. “Though I suppose you might be able to do the one and I could do the other.” He turned and looked at his grandson. “What say we work that out later on?”
“Maybe if you got frostbite in your legs I’d be able to keep up with you.”
“My, what an awful thing to say,” Sheldon said reflectively. He saw the blanched expression on the boy’s face and slapped him companionably on the back.
They entered the gnarled, black-branched embrace of the trees. Their boots made rustling sounds as they walked through the knee-high drifts of leaves. It made Ben think of the snow he’d be trudging through in another month or so. Winter seemed like the one season that always demanded a little more of you—from the extra layers of clothes (and the extra time it took putting them on and taking them off) to the extra energy spent on even the most menial of tasks, like walking. Winter, he thought, was the greediest season of them all.
“It’s not greedy,” Sheldon said. “It’s just bitter.”
Ben’s head swung around. He was still walking and didn’t see the root sticking out of the ground. He tripped over it and fell flat on the ground. Leaves went flying in a burst of red and gold.
Sheldon came and stood over him, but made no move to help him up. “I guess you didn’t say that out loud, eh? Sometimes I get so caught up in the flow I forget when someone’s workin’ their mind instead of their mouth.”
Ben rolled onto his side and looked up at his grandfather. Sheldon offered his hand, and Ben took it and pulled himself up. Wet leaves clung to him like strangely coloured leeches. He brushed them off absently as he rose to his feet, his eyes never leaving his grandfather.
“I asked you out here for a reason.” Sheldon sounded almost guilty about it. “I’m usually an upfront kind of guy, but this ain’t something I ever talked about before.”
Ben opened his mouth to say something, but nothing came out.
“It’s okay,” Sheldon said. “You don’t understand, and that’s to be expected. This ain’t part of growing up. You ain’t gonna hear about this at school. But you do need to be told about it.”
They started walking again, Sheldon moving slower now, and Ben was able to keep pace with him. He stole glances at his grandfather while looking out for more protruding roots.
They came out on the other side of the woods. The path turned to the left and wound along the edge of the cliffs. Further down the shore, at the end of the curiously shaped breakwater that gave Horsehead Cove its name, stood the lighthouse.
They stood for a moment and admired the view, feeling the salt-scented wind wash over them, listening to the sound of the crashing waves below.
“Look
s just like it did on the day I left,” Sheldon said.
“The lighthouse?” Ben asked.
“All of it.”
“Why did you leave, Grandpa?” Ben asked suddenly.
Sheldon smiled and started walking again. Since he came back to Pond Hill, people had asked him all sorts of questions—where did he go, what did he see, why did he come back—but no one seemed curious to know why he had left in the first place. Edie St. Paul from across the road had taken to calling him “Sheldon from Away,” even though she knew very well that he had been born and raised on the island. She used to sit for him when he was little. She sees the mark on me, he thought, like the one God put on Cain before sending him into the Land of Nod. The Mark of Away.
A few people knew why he had left, and the rest . . . well, they didn’t want to know.
“I guess I left because I was scared.” His voice didn’t sound like his own. It had a strange hollow quality that Sheldon had never heard before.
“What were you afraid of?”
“Things no one else could see.” He continued to stare at the dark cliffs and the inexorable ebb and flow of the tide. “Dreams mostly. Like the ones that are keeping you up nights.”
Ben paled and lowered his head. Sheldon turned and looked at him. “Nothing to feel bad about,” he said. “Everyone has nightmares. But the kind we have are different, as you’re probably already figuring out. I didn’t leave the island just because of things I saw while I was sleeping. I left because I started seeing them when I was awake.”
Ben seemed to consider this.
“You know Edie St. Paul ’cross the road.”
“Yeah,” Ben replied, unable to suppress the disdainful note in his voice. When he was little, Edie St. Paul used to chase him with a broom handle when she caught him playing in her yard. She was unbelievably fast for a woman her age. “Mom says she’s the oldest woman in town.”
“Probably the biggest bitch, too,” Sheldon said offhandedly.