Tories criticize J. Clyde Nunn because he lives in Antigonish, and Rod MacLean because, they say, he’s homely. But they keep getting elected.
And October 30, 1956, was no exception. Even though Mr. Stanfield’s Tories ended twenty-three years of Liberal government in Nova Scotia, they couldn’t crack Inverness County.
A very bad sign of things to come, my Tory women said, shaking their heads.
Then, shortly after Mr. Stanfield was sworn in as premier of the province, a big company in Sweden, called Stora Kopparberg, confirmed that it was interested in building a pulp mill in the Strait of Canso area.
And the Liberals were saying, “Ah, well. The politicians don’t have much to do with it in the long run. And better the Swedes anyway. The Americans already own too much of Nova Scotia.”
One afternoon in December I was on my way to pick up my papers at Mrs. Lew’s and strike out to the north on my bicycle. It was raining slightly and cold. As I passed Robert Morrison’s Esso station, I saw a familiar car at the gas pumps. It was the Malones.
I hadn’t been seeing much of Billy. For much of the summer he was away, back visiting relatives in Lower Woods Harbour, and when he returned he had his cousin Roger Nickerson with him, and they seemed to be busy doing things together a lot of the time. I had the paper route, which was an interruption every summer day, though I took a break for a couple of weeks—in Dingwall at my Uncle Joe’s place, hanging around with my cousin Lester Donohue. It was fun, but I kind of lost touch with my friend Billy Malone. Then, when school started, I was busy with grade nine.
And there, suddenly, was the Malones’ car at the gas pumps. Mr. Malone was standing beside it, and he was dressed up. When I approached the car, I could see that it was so full of bags and boxes that I almost missed Billy and his sister, Phyllis, jammed into the back seat, looking very small.
Billy saw me and rolled down the window and just stared at me, without saying anything. He had a sad expression on his face.
His father was smiling and came over with his hand out. I shook it.
“Bill,” he called out. “Come here and say goodbye.” Goodbye?
“The job is finished here now,” Mr. Malone said. “We’re heading back home.”
“Home? I thought this was home.”
Mr. Malone laughed. “It feels like home,” he said. “And we’ll always come back for visits and whatnot. But home is down the south shore.”
South Shoah.
And I realized I’d forgotten that they weren’t from here, and, now that the causeway was completed, there was no reason for them to stay. I suddenly felt very small too.
Then Billy was standing there beside his tall, gaunt father, who always reminded me of those fathers in the comic books or in the movies, with his warm smile and his pipe.
“I guess I’ll be seeing you,” Billy said.
“I guess,” I said.
“Maybe I’ll write.”
“Okay,” I said. “You write first because you know the address here.”
“Okay,” he said.
But he never did.
The last I saw of him, he was looking back from the car as they headed down the new road, past the new tourist information bureau, towards the new bridge over the new canal that our fathers helped to build. And it was a strange feeling, watching them disappear over the new causeway that everybody thought would be mostly for bringing new people here—not for sending them away.
I really didn’t expect him home for Christmas because the finances were obviously in bad shape when he left. But he came home and the cheer was strong. You’d hear them talking about how we were finally getting back on our feet, with the teaching job and the fact that he’d been making some good bonus pay at Tilt Cove.
I had a small pile of letters with windows stashed away, but when he took them his face didn’t get the heavy expression that I expected. He winked.
I got a .22 for Christmas, and at some point over the holiday we visited the mountain to check on the old folks. We took the new rifle, to try it out on some rabbits. I’d never hunted rabbits before. It was time to learn to do it properly, now that I had my own rifle.
It was the usual visit. Wall-to-wall Gaelic, with Grandma doing ninety percent of the talking.
As usual, I sat there watching and listening. Grandma looked, I realized, like photographs I’ve seen in National Geographic—pictures taken of people who live on remote islands in the North Atlantic; old women with long dresses and shawls, their white hair blowing in the wind.
She had clear blue eyes and a bony face, and when she spoke in her own language the opinions flew like sparks. You could easily believe she had special powers. I wondered how you’d go about persuading her to put them to work for you. I guess that, at the very least, you’d have to speak to her in Gaelic.
And then I had the strangest feeling. It is a feeling I often get on the mountain when I hear the wind struggling and sighing in the trees. And the fact that it is Christmas now makes me realize that this feeling has something to do with a Christmas long ago.
I’ve always loved going to the mountain. How my cousins there are always laughing and carrying on, and their mother never seems to notice, no matter how rowdy we get, inside or outside. And how, in summertime, you can run forever through the cool woods, your feet springing back from the rubbery moss, and the tree limbs dense as a roof above. Crashing over Rough Brook, shoes soaked and pants wet to the knees, but not concerned because they’ll dry before anybody notices. And anyway, it’s only water. John Dan’s Mae chuckling and saying, “You only have to worry about getting wet if you’re made of sugar.”
What I couldn’t explain was the dark feeling that would come over me without warning from time to time when I was there, as at this very moment. Sitting listening to them talking seriously in Gaelic, while the stove snaps and cracks and hisses.
And then it’s as if I’ve fallen asleep and am dreaming. And there’s an abandoned truck, nose buried in the bushes. A deep rut in a wood road, with a small spruce growing in the tread tracks. A sawdust pile, flattened by time and weather, slabs and trimmings interlaced with weeds, almost out of sight.
And there is a sound, as if the forest sobs. And there is no other sound. And then a chill.
I am on the mountain, but it is still the early autumn. The hills rising gently around us are blinding reds and yellows and flaming orange. The air is moist and cool and smells of earth. There is a truck, and now I can recall that my father named it Leapin’ Lena, and every time he mentions it I want to laugh. But now he’s handing the keys to Leapin’ Lena to another, older man. He had a horse for working in the woods. The horse’s name is Tony. My grandfather is standing near the gate at the end of the hill below his house, and he is holding Tony by the bridle.
Behind them the mill is silent. There is a tangled pile of long, thin spears of wood that they call edgings. There is a small mountain of slabs, which can be used for firewood. A sawdust pile, in which my cousins and I would leap and roll and become hopelessly covered in the itching, scratching particles of wood, looms over the silent circular saw.
I see my father climb into a car with other men. The car drives away. The older man walks to the front of Leapin’ Lena and starts the engine with a crank. My grandfather speaks to Tony, who tosses his head, then turns, and they walk off up the hill towards the house.
This is what they call the past. I struggle back, into the present. Into the dingy kitchen, with the winter sulking in the hills outside. And now I strain to understand the droning Gaelic conversation. Maybe something in it will help me to see the future. The name Stanfield comes up a lot. My father is smoking a cigarette, carefully placing the ashes in the cuff of his trousers. He has one leg balanced across a knee. Grandpa Dougald is at the corner of the table picking at his fingers. He has a floppy woollen cap on his bald head.
I stand. Nobody notices. I walk out to the porch, where I can still smell the faint sour smells of milk from the time when they
kept a cream separator there. Old coats and caps are hanging on nails driven into the wooden walls. I pick up my new .22, which is leaning in a corner, and walk outside, admiring the smooth shining wooden stock and dull black barrel.
Near the barn I pause. A crow squawks, lifting off from a corner of the barn roof. “One crow, sorrow,” my mother always says. Just like her mother.
The past returns. It is another Christmas. There is snow. It is my mother’s birthday, but she is unhappy. She has been unhappy for some time now. I first noticed the sadness on a morning before the snow when I found her in the yard in a housecoat watching the sunrise, holding a fist with a clenched handkerchief to her face.
When I asked her what was wrong, she said, “Nothing.”
But though I was only, maybe, four, I remembered. Leapin’ Lena driving off, and Grandpa Dougald leading Tony to the barn. And me, lost and invisible in the sadness of the adults. And my father saying nothing, just getting into a car with the other men. And then they drove away.
“You go back inside,” my mother says. “I’ll only be another minute. We’ll make some porridge.”
And we did.
That night her friends came by—William and Anita, Elsie, Roberta, Laidlaw—and they had a small flask. There was music on the radio, and they turned it up. A person had to celebrate a birthday, no matter what.
It was also Christmas. A week before, I’d seen the notice from the post office. There was a large Christmas parcel at the railway station—a large catalogue order. There is always a large catalogue order just before Christmas—COD—which means cash on delivery. And sometime, shortly after the cash is delivered to the station master, the order comes home. The door to the living room is locked, but you can see through the keyhole that there is an unopened package inside. And you know that although all the good things of Christmas come from God and Santa Claus, sometimes They use the post office and the CNR and Eaton’s or Simpsons to make the good things happen.
But that year when I peeked through the keyhole a week after the notice came, the parcel wasn’t there.
Now it is her birthday, which falls ten days before Christmas. The happy music plays. The voices become louder and merrier. I hear the rare sound of laughter. Then there is a crash, the sound of breaking glass, then silence, followed by the murmur of regretful voices. No sounds of anger.
I peer down from The Hole near the chimney, which passes through my room. Someone is apologizing for breaking something. My mother, happy now, is saying, “It really doesn’t matter…honestly.”
But you can tell the party is over. They are in their coats, gathered at the door. But one hangs back. The man named Laidlaw hovers near the table.
Then he leaves too, and when he is gone I see the twenty-dollar bill he left behind.
The next day I got the mail at Mr. Clough’s. There must have been a hundred Christmas cards. My mother was flipping through them anxiously, and then there was an envelope that was not a Christmas card.
“Thank God,” she said, laughing.
“What is it?” I asked.
“The baby bonus,” she said.
Now there was the baby bonus and the twenty-dollar bill. And when I checked the keyhole two days later, there was the parcel in the corner of the locked parlour.
We had our Christmas. We had a tree and got to Mass. There were gifts and there was turkey. But there was something missing. Somehow I knew I wasn’t supposed to ask when or if my father would be home.
And then it was the New Year, and there was still no mention of the missing man.
New Year’s Eve we coasted on new sleighs until dark over by MacKinnons’. And when she came to take us home, she was trying to be cheerful. But the falling darkness seemed to be soaking into her expression.
I asked what was wrong, and she said New Year’s always made her sad. Another measure of time gone. No way of knowing what the next chunk of time will be like. Getting older and no further ahead. Nothing you have to be concerned about when you’re a child, she said, and yanked my arm, trying to start a game.
“Where’s Daddy,” my sister asked.
“We don’t know,” she said.
I examine the .22. It tells me that I am growing up, soon to be a man with choices. I think briefly of Old John and the choice he made. The choice to die. I feel a brief shudder. Nothing can be that bad. Nothing can be worse than the Christmas when he wasn’t with us. And he hasn’t missed one since.
I was by the edge of the trees, then, crouched to see beneath the bushes where the white of the rabbit’s winter coat would show up against the dusty brown of the underbrush. I didn’t hear my father come up behind me.
“What about over there,” he said quietly.
I looked. He was pointing off to my left and, just at the edge of the woods, where the snow tapered to a shard of ice, I saw the rabbit crouching.
I turned, cocked, and took aim. Fired. The rabbit turned his head and looked at me indifferently. Then he hopped a few yards into the bushes and stopped again. I flipped the bolt and thumbed another bullet into the firing chamber, cocked, took aim, and fired again. This time the rabbit didn’t move.
“Let me see those bullets,” my father said.
He examined one, then reached for the rifle, loaded it, cocked, and fired. The bullet snipped a small twig from a bush beside the rabbit’s head. This time he vanished in a blurry bound.
My father was examining the rifle barrel.
“Ah. There’s our problem,” he said.
What?
“The sights,” he said. “They aren’t lined up.”
Later, when I told my mother, she just smiled.
I asked about the smile—insisted there was something wrong with the new rifle. I, inexperienced, might miss a rabbit. My father never would.
“Unless he wanted to,” she said.
It was different after he went back. Somehow you knew you’d see him again before too long. But you also knew that, from now on, he would be a visitor. That would be okay. Not perfect, but better than nothing.
8
TED
His appearances always seemed to catch you by surprise. I suppose my mother knew when to expect him, but she’d usually keep the information to herself. The places he invariably found work weren’t exactly easy to get away from, so, at best, she’d be guessing if she said when he’d be coming home. But you always had a rough idea where he was and that, whenever the opportunity presented itself, he’d be home for as long as he could possibly extend the visit. The only time we had any real doubt about where he was or when he’d surface was after the first sawmill on the mountain.
Christmas and New Year got by that year with no word from him. Now that I’m older, I can see his point. He’d have left a lot of unsolved financial problems behind and probably figured it was best if the folks back home could truthfully tell people we had no idea where he was.
That time we got by on the goodwill of our neighbours and the line of credit at Mr. Clough’s. And, sure enough, he reappeared eventually. He’d been working like a dog in some remote part of Ontario, a hard-rock mine in a place with a name like Pickled Crow—something like that. Somewhere altogether off the map. But he’d been making good money there and was almost ready to start paying off some debts. And how is everybody anyway?
I don’t even want to try to guess what the answer might have been. This time, after what I call the causeway mill, there was no dramatic disappearing act. This time he just went away in the normal fashion. Packed his gear, hugs all around (including the dog), a bit of jokey advice about looking after things since I’m the man. Et cetera.
Then they loaded the duffel bag and a suitcase into the back of the car and headed for the railway station in town. I watched them drive away, wondering how long it would be this time.
It was all for the best, my mother said when she returned alone. We were in dire straits again financially. But it wouldn’t take him long to clean the slate now that he’d have a steady inco
me and with her teaching school full time.
With the cow gone, the chores were reduced. And now that the work on the canal was coming to an end, the paper business was hardly worth the effort I was putting into it.
I was in grade nine and finding the schoolwork pretty easy, having been eavesdropping on the course content since I was in grade six. My mother was impressed by my ready knowledge of the role of the machine gun in the conquest of Africa. But I was no longer paying as much attention to the subjects in the grade ahead of me. Too much emphasis on algebra and geometry, and an awful English grammar course that involved a book called Using Our Language. I’d sit there daydreaming about the possibility of skipping grade ten altogether. Or maybe actually going to boarding school at the monastery.
That, I presumed, would be determined by the availability of money—assuming you had to pay to go to school over there—and there was no guarantee that we’d be out of the hole by then.
There was another factor distracting me from academic matters. I was noticing subtle changes in people I’d known forever but never took very seriously—girls such as Sylvia and Ann and Isabel and Mabel. Suddenly they were not so much girls as some new species, taking on the appearance and shape and mannerisms of women, without actually turning into adults like your mother or grandmother. Not entirely a desirable development, I realized, because of the cruelty that seems to come so naturally to adolescent females when dealing with men and boys they see as being insignificant.
I knew and accepted that I, just by virtue of my age and lack of a car or driver’s licence, was about as insignificant as you could get.
Causeway: A Passage From Innocence Page 28