My mother laughs. “Don’t pay any attention to the wild stories. They’ll never touch that church.”
It’s been more than a hundred years since they started grumbling about the difficulty of getting on and off the island. I often want to ask why anyone would want to live on an island if they were so worried about getting off it.
Back in the eighteen hundreds they were asking the government for help getting people and animals across the strait by boat. Politicians and merchants started talking about a bridge, but most ordinary people couldn’t imagine such a thing. The strait is deep and fast and wide. Then, somehow, they suspended a huge cable from a tower on top of the cape to a high pole here for the telegraph service. After that anything seemed possible for a while. But the cable eventually sagged until it was catching in the masts of sailing ships, and the pessimists were all saying: “See? A bridge? Not a chance.”
Then they put the cable under the water, and the businessmen and politicians and all the optimists were saying “Progress can’t be stopped” and “It’s only a matter of time” before somebody with courage and drag and imagination finds a way to build the crossing.
Then there was a long period of time with no talk. People travelled back and forth as best they could, figuring the telegraph cable was the last word in progress. And eventually there was a modern ferry service for cars and even trains. That seemed to keep the people satisfied for a long time.
It was only after World War Two, after Angus L. Macdonald returned from Ottawa where he ran the navy during the war, that the talk started again. There was agitation from people who ran the coal mines on the other side of the island and the steel plant in Sydney—and from Newfoundlanders. Angus L. made it his business to get the government in Ottawa interested in a bridge. They probably figured they owed him, for being a war hero and everything else that he’s achieved, and in 1949 they made a decision to build one. A bridge?
People were making jokes about the bocan bridge. The word bocan means ghost.
Then they changed their minds again. They finally realized that the strait was too deep and the tides too strong. And in the winter the drift ice that made so many problems for the ferries would tear a bridge apart.
“Typical,” the Tories said. “More broken Grit promises.”
You’d think that Angus L. would have known, without being told by engineers, how, in winter, slabs of ice the size of small ships sail through, sometimes jamming up, grinding and buckling, and piling up on the shore and turning the strait into an icefield, but never still or stable enough to walk across. Even I knew that spanning the strait would take something stronger than the relentless moving ice, something more durable than wood or steel or even concrete.
Something like rock—but not just any rock.
And when they finally announced a permanent crossing to be made from rock from Mr. Fraser’s mountain, there was silence even from the Tories. There is something indisputable about words like rock and causeway. There is a sensible simplicity about the notion of carving chunks of granite from the face of old Cape Porcupine to build a road across the rushing water. News of a causeway finally had the credibility that was lacking in all the previous speculation and political promises. It seemed so natural and so obvious, you had to wonder why nobody had thought of it long ago. In time, I suspect, the causeway will be just another part of the natural landscape—a natural offspring of the cape.
The cluster of important-looking men parts for a moment, and someone is having a serious conversation with an older gentleman in an important-looking hat. This is obviously the lieutenant governor. He is listening carefully and staring at the ground, deep in thought.
The other day there was a rumour in the paper that they paid Mr. Fraser only $5,500 for the ten million tons of rock they’ve used, and that they appointed him lieutenant governor to keep him quiet. But he’s going to sue them anyway and, from what I hear at home, he can’t possibly lose. He’s a lawyer. Even ordinary people think he’s been screwed.
I thought for a while last year, before the mission, that when I grow up I would become a lawyer. I got the idea listening at The Hole and hearing my mother telling my Aunt Veronica that she was going to have to get one to help with her problems.
“That’s all there is to it,” she said. “You need a good lawyer.”
It was another evening when there was quiet talking and sniffling at the table, and I gradually realized that the lawyer was necessary because my aunt has no water on her property and is in a dispute with a well driller she hired to dig a well. His name is Wendelblo, and he isn’t from around here. He’s one of the new people, which probably explains a lot.
My aunt has always had a water problem. From what I understand, water is a constant source of worry for adults and, when I really think about it, I can understand why. Just from school, I realize how important water is and how hard it is to find sometimes. I hear people complaining that, because of the blasting on the cape, wells are going dry. This doesn’t surprise me. At three in the morning at the end of August, they set off two explosions, and I thought the house was falling down. I read later that those two blasts blew 350,000 tons of rock off the mountain.
My Aunt Veronica has no man in the house, just her two little boys, and has to carry her water in buckets from the old town well, which is down at the foot of her street, in behind where Danny MacIntosh lives. The town well is beside what was once another lane before the well-to-do storekeepers blocked it off so the poor people would have to pass their businesses when they were travelling through the village.
So my aunt finally hired the new well driller named Wendelblo to try and find water on her property. And she’s been at war with him ever since.
Something I’ve learned since this construction project started is that big changes have a way of sneaking up on you. Even up to the summer of 1953, the changes weren’t all that conspicuous. School ended in late June last summer, and I set about my new routine as always—swimming in the cove, wandering in the woods with the dog. Early in July, when Ian’s uncle, Big Ian MacKinnon, started making hay, I went there to help.
He uses a horse, named Nellie, hitched to a clattering mowing machine with steel wheels. Nellie plods around the fields in large circles, with Big Ian sitting on the mower hauling on the reins and shouting “Hoo, haw, head up there, Nellie.” And the machine rattles and the long spiked blade, slung on one side of the mower at ground level, slashes through the dense hay, leaving it in neat prostrate swaths. My job last summer was to walk along behind the mowing machine with a pitchfork, turning the swath as I went.
Sometimes Little Ian would be allowed to ride on the mower with the reins in his hands while his uncle walked behind with me or just watched. When I asked to try driving the mowing machine, they said it was too dangerous.
On day two we’d turn the hay again. Then they’d hitch Nellie to the raking machine, and she’d drag it along the swaths, gathering the hay in long windrows. Ian often got to drive the raking machine as well because, his uncle and everybody else said, he is as strong as a man. They’re always calling him “a great little worker.”
Then we’d take our forks and bunch the windrows into haycocks shaped like thimbles. And Nellie would be hitched to a truck wagon, and the hay gathered up to be stored in the haymow of Big Ian’s barn. Little Ian could heave a whole haycock with one pitch of the fork, but when I’d try, half of it would fall back in my face.
Then you’d be struggling in the mow just to keep from getting buried, distributing the hay and tramping it down, watching for dampness, because everybody knows that wet hay causes fires, and a barn fire is a disaster. You’d be soaked in sweat, with the hayseeds glued to your neck and back, and even in your underwear. And afterwards, everybody would gather around the big hand pump. Big Ian would pump icy water into a dipper, and we’d all take our turns. A bottle of buttermilk was hanging on a rope in the well, and they’d pass it around. Buttermilk makes me gag, but Little Ian would swallow i
t down just like the men did, and it would leave a thin white mustache on his upper lip. And they’d be going on about what an able little man he was.
After the haymaking, we’d spend the rest of the summer just wandering around barefooted, wearing nothing but shorts. We’d burn to a crisp at first and go to bed slathered in Noxzema. Then, in a few days, we’d be brown, and the sun wouldn’t bother us any more. We’d spend long afternoons swimming in the cove or off the old coal pier, gathering up empty beer and pop bottles along the roadside and taking them to Mrs. Lew, who ran a canteen and paid a few pennies for each. And when we had fifty cents, we’d walk or hitchhike to Rocky Hazel’s theatre in town, where a movie cost thirty-five cents, and a couple of bars of toffee or chocolate used up the rest.
Then, in the fall of last year, the Malones moved in, and we got the sense that everything was different. The changes that everyone has been talking about now seemed real.
The Malones speak with a different accent, a little bit like Americans. For shore they say shoah. Mrs. Malone says theyah for there. Mr. and Mrs. Malone always seem to be in good cheer. He smokes a pipe and doesn’t drink, and speaks to us as if we’re grown-ups. Billy says he’s from a smaller place than here, but he dresses like the city boys I see in magazines and comic books and movies. He has jeans and a denim jacket, and they fit perfectly. When I’m not wearing shorts, I wear overalls or jeans that never seem to fit properly. I want to ask where his clothes come from, but fear it will only draw attention to my own. I’d love to have a denim jacket.
Most of all, the Malones remind me of the families I read about. They are always nice to one another. Mrs. Malone is generous with the cookies and makes jokes and calls Billy and me “the turd birds.” Billy and Phyllis never fight. Mr. Malone puffs his pipe and always seems interested in what we’re up to.
Billy has large sad eyes and a serious expression. But in more than a year I’ve never seen him upset, and now we’re together most of the time. I’ve shown him all the best places I know—Happy Jack’s Lake, and the swimming hole in the middle of the cove, and the waterfall out back. Together we hang around the construction work near the railway station, watching the drillers and the large machines moving about, running and hiding when a siren sounds to warn of a blast. Sheltered underneath a building or behind a rock, we imagine we are in a war, with artillery coming in.
When they were in the Captain’s house, rocks from the blasting for the new railway line would come almost into their yard.
Once Billy asked how come Jackie Nick and I don’t have fathers. I explained that I have one, but he often works away. Billy was impressed when I told him that when he works away, he does what the drillers do and even sets off underground explosions with dynamite. And I could tell Billy was wondering how come he isn’t working on the causeway project like everybody else. One of the things I like most about Billy: he knows what not to ask.
Right now he’s driving a truck at the canal for T.C. Gorman, because that way he thinks he’s his own boss. That is what he says.
We talk about the work we’ll do some day. Billy wants to be like his father, running large construction machines like bulldozers and cranes. Or maybe a fisherman like his relatives back home. First I told him that I was going to be like my father, a hard-rock miner, and he thought that was a great idea. Then, when I knew him better, I told him the truth: that I plan to be a priest when I grow up. He just stared at me, as if he didn’t understand. Not like Jackie Nicholson, who would have said something ignorant. Other than my mother, Billy is the only one I’ve told. I find it interesting that my mother stared at me the same way Billy did, with the same dubious expression. The Malones are Protestants, after all.
“That would be wonderful,” she declared, but her face indicated doubt.
There is no doubt in my mind. I’ve even started to make my own rosary out of dynamite wire, of which there is no shortage in the village now. I am making little knots in the thin red wire, ten per decade, with one in-between for the “Glory Be to the Father.”
My aunt finally had to go to Antigonish to see a lawyer to deal with the well driller. On the way over, somebody asked me what I planned to do when I grow up, but I didn’t want to mention mining or the priesthood, so I said I was thinking of becoming a lawyer. Everybody laughed. The woman driving the car said I’d be making a terrible mistake because lawyers are all crooks.
I felt better knowing that nobody would ever say a thing like that about priests or hard-rock miners.
There was no grand announcement when my father moved back home. He just arrived home one weekend driving a three-ton truck. I heard it before I saw it, the big blue truck he bought from Danny Shaw in Stirling, whining up the Victoria Line. Then it turned onto our lane and stopped beside our barn. The door opened, and my father climbed out, looking serious.
First I thought he’d borrowed it, but I could tell by the look on his face, as he parked it near the barn, that it was his. And then he went into the barn carrying the large canvas duffel bag in which he keeps his mining gear, and I realized that he was home for good.
It was shocking, in a way. This was what I had prayed for—not for myself, but for him and the women. I’d been praying for something that would prevent the sadness in the pantry and the quiet conversations late at night, and the tired look on his face when he’d sit on the doorstep with his arm around the dog before he’d go away. I’d been praying for something that would achieve what I, even though they all say I am the man of the house when he’s away, could never do—make something complete that is actually missing an important part.
Now the circle was closed, and it felt as though I’d made a deal with God. Ever since the mission, I’ve been praying that he’ll find a way to stay. Not for my sake; just for my mother and himself. And I’ve decided to become a priest, and my mother seems to think that maybe I haven’t really thought it all the way through. But what, really, is there to think about?
The causeway was a third of the way across when he finally moved home. For months, along with the sirens and the blasting for the new roads and railway, you could hear the constant hammering of piledrivers building cofferdams on either end of where the canal is going to be. A cofferdam is like a tongue-and-groove wall, except it’s made of iron and the pieces are hammered vertically into the floor of the strait. There are two of these walls at each end of where the canal will be. In-between the walls they dump fill from the hole they’re digging for the canal. The cofferdams hold the water of the strait back while they dig.
That was one of the things my father did with the truck at first—hauling the fill for the cofferdams. Working “behind the iron curtain,” he’d say, and everyone would smile.
A piledriver going all the time can get on your nerves, but eventually it ended, and they started erecting forms for the concrete that would form the walls of the new canal. And that was when Dan Rory really got busy. The company doing the canal work is T.C. Gorman, and the boss’s name is Romeo Larocque. The Larocques live beside the Catholic Church in town. I see them every Sunday, the whole family just walking across the road to Mass. I believe there is some significance to the fact that Mr. Larocque is boss of the canal job and lives practically in the Catholic Church, and my father finally has a truck and a job that lets him live at home for a change.
Sundays we go to church in the truck and, because there isn’t room for everyone in the cab, I get to ride on the back, hanging on high up there and seeing everything, and the wind tearing my hair apart.
Lately, listening at The Hole, I hear them talking about the Trans-Canada Highway, a road that will eventually cross the entire country from the Pacific to the Atlantic. It might not ever have got to Cape Breton, because everybody seems to think that Canada ends at Halifax. But with Newfoundland now part of the country, Canada and the new road will have to end up in St. John’s. The only way to get to St. John’s is through Cape Breton. And when the causeway is completed, the only way to get through Cape Breton will
be through our village.
The Trans-Canada Highway, according to what I can figure from listening to them, will cross the causeway and hook up with the Victoria Line behind the church. It is why Phemie MacKinnon’s old house is empty, looking shabby and defeated. Soon they’ll probably just burn it down, like Nicholsons’. What about Angus Walker’s house? I wonder. What about old Sinclair’s? What about the school?
“That’s what was in the paper,” my father said. “It says the new road goes behind the church. It makes sense when you think about it.”
And it also makes sense that, if the place grows the way everybody expects it to, we’re going to need a new school, anyway, to accommodate all the new people who will move here to live.
You get sad seeing what they’re tearing down or burning. But then you think of all the new things coming, and it’s like thinking about Christmas.
One of the first new people, even before the Malones, was a Hungarian. His name is John Suto, and he is old but very friendly. Now that I know him I can call him Old John, the way the construction workers do. He’s in charge of the Gorman construction camp and is always fixing something or sweeping floors. He isn’t like older people here who never seem to notice you until you get in their way. He’s like Mr. Malone, in the way he looks at you and sees you and hears you when you talk to him.
Gorman’s new construction camp is in what used to be an empty field, near the old MacMillan place where the cow continued to find enough peace and quiet and grass to pass her days until just recently. They built the camp in the spring of ’53 and, by the summer, it was full of workmen.
It was while passing by, looking for the cow, that I realized the men in the camp drink a lot of beer. They often drop the empties out the bunkhouse windows. I could easily fill a burlap bag, especially after a weekend. One evening, as I gathered bottles, I realized I was being watched. And there was Old John, standing with his arms folded and a serious look on his face.
Causeway: A Passage From Innocence Page 14