“Doc Fedder’s passed away,” I said.
“God rest his soul,” Lauchie said.
Emily looked worried. I felt the weight of yet a new loss, the loss of an old friend descend on me.
After sitting in a stunned moment of silence, I said, “Maybe it’s the occasion for a drink, after all.” And with that I phoned Billy Sheehan in Margaree, who said he’d be right over. Twenty minutes later, Billy drove up in a new camper van and when he got out he looked like he had just come from a business office. He arrived with a case of his own shine that he’d “officially” stopped producing.
“John Alex, I didn’t think you were much of a drinking man.”
“I’m not, Billy, but there are occasions. I’ve got my brother here now for a visit.”
“You and Lauchie are talking again?”
“We’re brothers, aren’t we?”
“Well said. I’ll toast to that.”
Emily looked on warily as Billy unscrewed the lid on a recycled bottle of what once was Bacardi rum. He took a small sampling straight from the bottle and passed it to me. I reached for some glasses and poured one for Lauchie and one for me. It was just a taste but it was all of fire.
Emily walked towards us and addressed Billy. “Do you ever see Brian?”
“The lad living in the hermit’s place, right? Yes, I see him sometimes coming down to the store for supplies and sometimes standing by the side of the road with his signs. He had a little trouble with one of the boys hauling logs out of the woods. He’s the father, right?”
There was an awkward silence but Em did not answer yes or no.
Instead, Billy shrugged and offered up what he knew. “Your Brian is a sweet boy, I bet, but he has a way of getting everyone angry at him with his protesting and preaching and whatnot. I guess it’s as noble a cause as any to save the forest, but I think living alone in the woods is getting him a bit bent.”
Emily looked worried. Then she faded from the room and when she was out of earshot, I said to Billy, “Did you hear that old Doc Fedder has passed on?”
Billy nodded. “I did and I had to console Liddy myself. She’s still with the association, you know. It was a sad thing, but he’s had his share of the enjoyment in life, one must admit.”
“Still,” Lauchie said, taking the tiniest of sips, “it’s a loss of a good man. Dr. Fedder never turned away a patient.”
Billy leaned forward. “Liddy said he still had a hard-on when he died. The Viagra. It’s all about the meds these days.”
There was silence after that. No one quite knew what to say.
After a bit, I said to Billy, “No need to leave all that good liquor. I’m sure one bottle will do the job. How much I owe you?”
“There’s no charge to you, John Alex. Not a cent. And if you don’t mind, I’d rather not be driving a case of good shine about with alcohol on my breath. Someone might get the wrong impression. I get these little lectures from Reginald now and again about how times are changing. Drinkin’ and drivin’ and all that. Frenchie Leblanc even says the association should get some funding to help educate the public. He’d like to see ICSES billboards and radio announcements. That sort of thing.”
“Rightly so,” I said. “Thanks for coming, Billy.”
“My pleasure.” He took a final look at Lauchie and I think he realized for the first time that Lauchie would not be around much longer. But he didn’t say anything. Just smiled and left.
Lauchie had only taken a few sips but I could tell the rum was doing him some good. As for myself, I felt a flash of hotness in my head and decided to leave off with the tasting for now. Emily re-emerged from her room and it looked like she might have been crying.
“Tell me about your Brian,” Lauchie said to her.
“I think I love him,” Em said. “He cares so much about everything. That’s partly why I love him but it’s just so hard to live with. He wants to help. He wants to make things right. But he doesn’t know how. Maybe no one does.”
“Brian’s a fine lad,” I replied. “A bit passionate with his causes is all.”
“I miss him,” she said.
“Maybe we should invite him to come over,” I added. “All of us could have a big sit-down dinner.”
Suddenly Emily smiled.
“I’ll drive up there tomorrow,” I said. “I’ll bring him down for a visit.”
Emily looked at me sitting with my brother. “No,” she said. “The weather. You out there traipsing in the woods. I can’t let you do that.”
FATHER WELENGA CALLED THAT evening to find out about Lauchie. I invited him out for dinner for the next day and then was so bold as to ask him if he might go visit Brian at the hermit’s house and lure him out of the woods for the day.
“I’d be delighted for an excuse to walk into the Margaree forest again. The exercise will do me considerable good.”
AND SO IT CAME to pass that Emily and I pooled our culinary talents to create quite a meal — a kind of family reunion. Father Welenga arrived at two o’clock the next day. It was a very cold day but clear. The clergyman had hiked far into the woods and found Brian alone in his cabin reading a book by David Suzuki. It had taken some coaxing to bring the boy here. At first he looked nervous, paranoid even. Too much time alone with his thoughts. He accepted a shot of moonshine and then a second. Father Welenga had poured himself a much larger dose and found it to be “stronger than sacrament wine.” Emily abstained, of course. Lauchie, more pale and more gaunt than the day before if such thing were possible, took tiny sips.
Emily and I were well suited to working together in the kitchen. There were frozen peas and corn from my summer garden. The potatoes were roasted with garlic. Emily conjured a dubious-looking “meatloaf” she had made from dried lentils and an assortment of herbs and spices. Father Welenga had said a prayer to begin the meal, blessed the food and blessed us all.
Lauchie and I were shocked at how good a meatless meatloaf could be. He could eat very little and had the bad habit of referring to our fine meal as his “last supper.” Brian was looser now, less guarded and more casual. He and Father Welenga got going on the issue of what living things have souls and what do not.
“Do you think a turtle has a soul, Father Welenga?” he asked.
“Where I come from, it is believed to have a soul.”
“What about a mosquito?”
“Funny that you should ask that. In Cameroon, the mosquito is considered quite a powerful spirit.”
“Why would that be, Father?” Lauchie asked.
“Because mosquitoes carry malaria. Now, in my country, we know which plants can provide the medicine to prevent malaria or to cure it, but when the Europeans first came to our country, the mosquitoes loved their tender skin. Because the white men thought we were savages, they did not think our cures could possibly work. So in their stubbornness they often died. The Europeans wanted to rule our country and take our riches — even our trees — but the tiny mosquito made it very hard for them to survive the rainy seasons. We thought of them as our protectors. The mosquito, in the end, could not save us, but they tried. So I would like to think it has a soul.”
It went like that, this odd dinner conversation, until Lauchie grew tired and we put him to bed in my room.
After that, Emily said she needed to lie down in her room for a few minutes and left. Brian stayed seated, looking a bit abandoned, while Father Welenga and I washed the dishes and scrubbed the pots. When we were finished, Father Welenga said he’d like to visit privately with Lauchie for a while and he went into the bedroom and closed the door. I appreciated very much that he would give my brother the last rites even though Lauchie was not a Catholic.
Soon Emily emerged from her room and almost guiltily asked if Brian could stay the night. With her.
I looked to Father Welenga, curious to see how he would react. His smile revealed only
compassion.
“Yes,” I said. “He can stay as long as he likes.” In a way, I felt, dare I say, almost jealous. I had grown accustomed to having Em all to myself as a companion. But I knew she needed more. She looked to Father Welenga.
“The two of you are blessed,” was all he had to say about things. Emily kissed me lightly in the check and Father Welenga on the forehead.
When the door had closed, Father Welenga and I were alone at the kitchen table. He poured from the Bacardi bottle into his own glass as I listened to the hissing sound of a piece of damp wood in the wood stove.
“John Alex,” he said, “you have a lot of responsibility here. You must be a very brave man to have taken on so much at this point in your life. I am trying to see in what way I can help you. I sense there are storm clouds ahead for you. Where do you get your strength?”
“A belief that whatever happens, we must go on. We must get on with our lives.”
“There is much wisdom in that. And here you have taken your brother in. And forgiven him?”
“Yes.”
“Who taught you this, your own father?”
I laughed. “You’re way off, my friend.”
“Then who?”
“My wife.”
“The one who hovers near you like an angel to watch out for you?”
“Yes, but she was not always an angel. Still, I loved her with all my heart and I still do.”
“Then you have learned one of the greatest lessons — to forgive everyone for their sins. Just like Jesus did.” Father Welenga had a gentle glow about him. The spirits — from the glass and from elsewhere — I reckoned. There was a potent mix of religious beliefs, the protective spirit of insects and jungle trees and the love of God in him. “Is there anyone at all you have not forgiven?”
“Yes, Father. There is someone.”
“Then you must tell me.”
TWENTY-SEVEN
FATHER WELENGA SAT BACK in his chair and remained silent as he heard my confession.
Eva and I could have stayed on the farm and sustained ourselves. It was not so bad that there would be no children. It was a sadness that hovered over us, but we knew we could get on with our lives. But the wages were up again at the mines and I learned I could fight my fears and it felt good to bring home a regular paycheque. I bought things for her.
Then some of the Inverary miners went off to work in the asbestos mines of Quebec and they returned in big shiny cars. They had cash to spend on everyone and anyone at the tavern. They held outdoor parties and roasted whole pigs. A few had come home with French Canadian women. Women wearing jewellery and expensive clothes.
Looking back, it doesn’t seem like such a great temptation. But at the time it was. I was trying to fill up a hollow place in my life. A void. Eva and I still loved each other deeply but it did not seem to be enough. I had only planned to mine coal in Inverary for two, possibly three years and save my money. Then quit and use what I’d earned to improve the farm and be a farmer for the rest of my days.
But the pay was much better in Quebec. And the work didn’t sound so bad. All it meant was a year in St. Simone. Living in company housing — like the Red Rows of Inverary — but in a province where English was the second language and where we were not really made to feel welcome.
I believed, however, that one year working in the asbestos mines would be enough and we would return home.
It was hateful work. The fibre and dust of asbestos was worse than coal. Each night, Eva would wash the day’s accumulation out of my work clothes. She did this as did all the wives around St. Simone. I can still see her scrubbing my shirts and pants in the big utility sink in our dark basement. She never complained.
And then eight months after were living there, eight months of missing Cape Breton and cursing my bad decision, Eva began to cough. All of the doctors in the community knew what the asbestos did to the miners — and to their families — but they were paid a handsome fee not to reveal the true cause of the illnesses that occurred in St. Simone.
Years later, everyone would understand what asbestos could do to your lungs. But I had known miners all my life. Many had no ill effects at all even after years of working underground. But that was coal and this was asbestos.
I would cough too until the tiny threads and fibres would come up in my phlegm and we miners would spit all the time. We didn’t think much of it. But all Eva did was wash my work clothes. And in doing so she breathed asbestos in her lungs. And it took her down.
The doctors kept their silence. It was suggested we move back home. I had no idea what was ailing her. But I knew I had made a mistake. I knew there was something about living in that mining town that was destroying her health.
We moved home to our farm and hoped to start over again. Everything I had saved went into the medical bills. She died within a year of us leaving St. Simone. The Cape Breton doctors too understood about the effects of asbestos but they said it was me who should have gotten sick, not her. It must have been something else.
A darkness fell over me for a long time. I blamed myself, but even then I did not know the full truth.
When Ruth MacPherson returned home from St. Simone, her husband dead from lung disease after years of mining asbestos, she cornered me on Main Street and told me how sorry she was for the death of my wife. Ruth and Eva had been friends. She had been there longer than many. But now her husband was gone and all she wanted was to live out the rest of her days in Inverary.
“All the older women who grew up in St. Simone knew about it,” she said. “But they kept it quiet.” There were bonuses each Christmas unless someone broke the code of silence. The asbestos from the husbands’ clothes was as deadly in the laundry room, she said, as it was in the mine. It was what killed Eva. I’m sure it had killed other wives of miners as well.
“And exactly who, then, is it that you have not forgiven?” Father Welenga asked, his eyes staring straight at me with utmost concern.
“Myself,” I said. “I have not forgiven myself.”
TWENTY-EIGHT
BRIAN LEFT THE NEXT day, kissing Emily in the front yard before walking down the driveway. I offered to drive him back to Margaree but he declined. He still had an anger about him, a restlessness and something else I could not quite pin down. I had the feeling that he was one of those men wedded to a cause. The cause could change periodically but his fervour to the idea of winning some battle would not. In some ways, I wished that Emily did not still care for him.
After a relatively quiet couple of days, Cheryl phoned to say that Emily’s parents would come to visit. The court had approved this but not any further action regarding Emily.
I hid the case of moonshine in the barn with the chickens and helped Em clean up the house. Lauchie slept most of the time but, on occasion, woke with a fever and I’d cool him with a wet cloth, give him a sip of the only painkiller we had in the house and then Em would sing in the Gaelic for him until he fell back asleep.
An mo thùras don iar ’s leam bu mhiannach a bhi
Far bheil àilleachd nan eathar dol fo sgéith sa chuan sios,
Creag Dhearg ’s e fo bhlàth faileadh cùbhraidh cho saor
Air a’ bheinn ud as àird ’san Eilean Dorcha.
Eilean òige mo ghràidh ’s tut tha tàladh mo chridh ’
Is mi seòladh bhon Obain ’s a dol seachad Tiridh
Bi mi glacadh a dh ’ aithghearr gach mais a tha ’ gam dhith
’S bi mi fhìn air ais a-rithist ’ san Eilean Dorcha
SEVERAL TIMES I SPOKE to Lauchie about checking in to the hospital but he’d have none of it. “I know I’m a burden,” he would say, “but I won’t be around long.”
Edgar MacNaughton hugged his daughter but his wife did not. They sat at the kitchen table with Em and I elected to do some chores in the barn. Lauchie had been asleep but he awoke during t
heir visit and it was Edgar who came to get me from the barn.
“Jesus, man, your brother is dying. What is he doing here with you?”
“He had no place else to go and refuses to go to the hospital.”
“John Alex, this is crazy. My daughter is here. She’s going to have a baby and you have a sick man like that under the same roof. This is insane.”
“He is my brother. Emily is your daughter. We all have responsibilities to our families. I suppose you will report this and it will … look bad. I suppose you will do this but I have no choice.”
“Then convince Emily to go with us.”
The smell of a barn full of chickens in the winter is not a pleasant one, but there is something about the ammoniac scent that does clear the senses. “Emily has chosen to stay here. You had tried to convince her to go away — to hide and have the baby in secret. And she has chosen not to do that.”
Edgar hung his head and looked at the straw on the floor. The rooster walked up to him and pecked at his shoe. “My wife, Gail, she is obsessed about some things. She seems unwilling to accept this — everything about the pregnancy. What can I do?”
“Let your daughter determine her present and her future.”
I walked back to the house and past the glare of Gail MacNaughton in my kitchen where she sat stern and silent while her daughter attended to Lauchie. She couldn’t help but notice her give Lauchie a shot glass of the moonshine from the Bacardi’s bottle by the bed. I relieved Emily and sat by Lauchie’s side. She closed the door as she left the room.
“I always had such good timing,” Lauchie said. “Always showed up at the right time, seemed to be in the right place. Now look at me.”
“Hell,” I said. “Look at us all.”
“Emily’s an angel. How’d you suppose that woman out there had a child like that?”
“You caught a glimpse of Gail MacNaughton, did you?”
“I did and it caught me off guard. A hateful thing she is.”
“Oh, she hates me all right. But what you’re seeing in her is more fear than hate, I suppose, as it always is. Perhaps someday mother and daughter will make up and laugh about all this.”
The Unlikely Redemption of John Alexander MacNeil Page 17