The Unlikely Redemption of John Alexander MacNeil

by Lesley Choyce

  “Or perhaps not,” Lauchie said.

  After the MacNaughtons left, soft snow fell that afternoon and a quiet settled over our house. Emily sat by the fire reading from our stack of books about childbirth and infancy. Emily had remained undaunted by her parents’ visit, but I was beginning to realize that eventually she might want to move away from here like so many other young people. The thought saddened me and collected with all the other sadness in my life until it became a great weight that pulled me into sleep.

  The snow continued into the next day and then the sun came out towards evening. Emily slept through much of that day and I soon realized she had been up with Lauchie much of the night while I had been sleeping unaware. I fed Lauchie and tidied him, but he did not seem to want to talk at all until he had watched the sun setting through the frosted window. I already knew the vigil for this evening and the long night ahead would be mine. But I was tired and there were shadows in the room that troubled me. I waited for Eva to appear but she did not. My father was there, however, and it took an amazing amount of mental strength to force him back into the walls. I thought I heard him whispering that he had “come to help,” but I didn’t trust him. And for good reason.

  When you are old, they say, you “see” things differently. For me, maybe, those visions were the manifestations of my past. The shadow that I thought was my father troubled me most and I worried that he could still do us some harm — not really caring if it was harm to me or even Lauchie. But I worried for Emily.

  Lauchie’s breathing was ragged. When he spoke, he had a calmness in his voice, though. “That was my last sunset, John Alex. And a fine one it was. After all that snow too. How’d you manage it?”

  “It took some doing,” I said.

  “You saw him too, didn’t you?”

  “Saw who? Jesus in the setting sun?”

  “No. In the corner. Just a minute ago. I saw you staring and I was awake. I looked and saw him. Our father. All dressed up as if he were going to church.”

  “I saw something in the shadows. Something that could have been our father, I suppose. But look at us, two old senile men with imaginations we can’t control and a past we can’t bury.”

  “But if I’m going to die, I most certainly don’t want to wake up wherever and find I’m with my bastard of a father.”

  “That would be a bit of a disappointment, I can understand that. What exactly are you hoping for then, Lauchie? Perhaps I can make some proper arrangements.”

  Lauchie had a touch of fever, I could tell, and there was pain. I gave him a sip from the shot glass. “I’d been working up a list of things I’d like to see on the other side, but it all seemed like a game of fantasy. The palm trees, the beautiful young women. I even had myself winning the lottery if you can believe that.”

  “Why would you be wanting to win the lottery in heaven?”

  “What makes you think I’ll end up in heaven?”

  “Well, Lauchie, wherever you end up, I want you to send me some kind of postcard so I can plan ahead myself for whatever awaits us.”

  “That I’ll do. But in case there is no postal service where I’m going, I want to give you this, John Alex. This is my expectation of the good place I will end up — if the powers that be are kind to me and not in a punishing mood. Close your eyes, if you will.”

  “Eyes closed.”

  “It’s you and me. We’re just boys and the old man has just beat the crap out of us — no, out of you — for something I did. I had let go of the bucket and the rope and they are both at the bottom of the well. But you took the blame. After he beats you, you tell me to follow you. It’s summer on the beach in Inverary and we’re running away. And you’re not even mad at me. We have our shirts off and we begin to run harder. You’re faster than me but you slow down so I’m not left behind. We head towards Broad Cove and then climb up the headland and look out across the Gulf all the way to Prince Edward Island. I feel free and alive. And I know that whatever happens you’ll take care of me. You say we might steal a boat and row all the way to P.E.I. You tell me all kinds of lies of what it will be like there — how the summers seem to last forever, how the fish are thick in the sea and a family will take us in to live with them.”

  I listened to Lauchie’s tale but had little recollection of that day. I remembered thinking about running away. I remembered something about the bucket falling into the well. But we really had not gone all that far from home. It had been an event of little consequence to me. None of this would I say. “You think when you die, you’ll end up on Prince Edward Island?”

  “No. I didn’t mean that. It was the freedom I felt there with you. And the safety, I guess. And the possibility of a new life. But I don’t remember why we went back home. I remember there were raspberries on the headland. And we ate them. I can still remember the taste.”

  “Raspberries,” I said out loud. And now I did remember that day. But I also recalled how I was feeling: angry at my brother and hating my father and my life for being so unfair. And even now, it seemed, that Lauchie would be able walk away from it all and I would remain behind to accept whatever punishment lay ahead.

  It was these dark thoughts that allowed my father to return to the room. A strange perverse notion came over me: I wanted to get a good honest look at him. I wanted to see if there was anything “real” about him. I wanted to test this apparition by allowing him to come closer to us.

  Lauchie’s eyes were nearly shut and he was whispering something. “I can’t remember,” he said. “I can’t remember why we didn’t just run away. Why didn’t we steal that boat and row to Prince Edward Island?”

  I was looking at my father now, still a young man, still carrying in his face the pride and self-importance of his youth. He was hovering above Lauchie now, as if curious or intent on listening to his breathing.

  “We had to go home for our mother, Lauchie,” I said. “We realized we couldn’t leave her alone with him.”

  I was unbuttoning my shirt as I spoke. I took it and my undershirt off as my father watched. And as Lauchie faded. My father now seemed very real. He looked me in the eyes and then at my arms and at my chest. His eyes focussed on the scars, still pale and visible after all these years. His gift to me.

  And that’s when he slowly backed away and I realized that his form was fading. It was as if he was delivering himself back into the wall.

  And then he was gone.

  “Yes,” Lauchie said, eyes still shut. “She was a sweet woman, our mother.”

  Lauchie drifted into sleep as I touched a scar on my arm and remembered Eva kissing it, trying to heal me of all the bad memories, and, in a way, succeeding. And I found myself wondering at how Lauchie’s memory of our childhood was so different from mine even though we had lived through so much of it together.

  I put my shirt back on and sat down in the chair beside the bed. I listened to Lauchie’s breathing and I waited for Eva to appear to me as I tried to stay awake. But she did not. I fell asleep and, in the night, Lauchie died.

  Emily woke me in the morning and took my hand to place on the cold forehead of my dead brother. “I’m sorry,” she said.

  “It’s okay. I think we finished our story together at just the right page.”

  TWENTY-NINE

  THE PIBROCH REPORTED WITH great dignity the deaths of both Dr. Fedder and Lauchie MacNeil. Father Welenga held a small ceremony for my brother and afterwards I carried the urn with his ashes up to that headland near Broad Cove where my brother and I had almost run away so long ago. It was bitter cold and I was alone, refusing to allow Emily to accompany me. In the end, I did not toss my brother’s ashes to the searing, bitter winds coming off the water. Instead, I stood silently until the tears came to my eyes and then I turned and went back down from the high ground to my car and cautiously drove the icy roads back to Deepvale. I decided I would keep Lauchie’s ashes with
me at home as a reminder to never hold a grudge again towards anyone. Ever.

  When I entered the house, it was very warm. Emily had become adept at starting the wood stove fire and keeping it stoked. I sat at the kitchen table and thumbed through the Pibroch again, pausing when I came to a story about an American pulp company named Morrison Paper that had just leased over a thousand acres of forest near Margaree and would soon begin clear-cutting the land. They had set up a small office in downtown Inverary and would be hiring local men for much of the work.

  A quiet settled into our lives. We had stockpiled food so we did not have to venture into town as often and test our courage on the icy roads. Father Welenga would call as did Sheila Leblanc to check up on us. Cheryl Hollis arrived on a Thursday and nearly put her little car in a ditch. She seemed flustered but regained her composure at our kitchen table where she opened her briefcase and took out some papers.

  “Everyone involved has agreed that yours is a sensitive case,” she said to Emily. “There are concerns for you and for the baby.” Cheryl was ignoring me as usual. I didn’t know what it was exactly — that she didn’t like me or didn’t trust me.

  “Tea?” I offered.

  She let down her guard. “Yes. Thank you. And by the way, John Alex, I’m sorry to hear about your brother.”

  “Thank you for saying so,” I said and poured some tea for her.

  “Emily, I need the due date,” Cheryl said, back to business.

  “April seventh. That’s what Dr. Fedder had said.”

  It could have been my mind playing tricks on me, but I had been certain the baby was to arrive in March, around the first day of spring.

  “Has any other doctor confirmed this?”

  “No. Just Dr. Fedder. He was my doctor. April seventh, give or take a day or two. He seemed quite certain.”

  Cheryl jotted down a note. “You’ll need another doctor.”

  “Sheila has recommended Dr. Delong. She’ll deliver the baby in the hospital in town.”

  “Good. And have you decided what you’ll do after the child is born?”

  “I’ve considered all the options and I haven’t decided.”

  “Your parents want you to give it up for adoption.”

  “I know.”

  “As you know, it may ultimately be up to the court. I personally feel it should be your decision, but what we need to find is some way to placate both parents and authorities. There is still considerable pressure to force you to move out of here and into an approved foster home until the birth.”

  “I refuse to do that,” Emily said. She looked scared. She was looking at me.

  “Understood. But I need to give them something. If they choose, they have the authority and means to act. Technically, you are a ward of the province.”

  “They can’t force me to do what they want.”

  “They can.”

  “Then I should go someplace else. Leave here and make sure no one would find me.” Defiance had returned. She was looking out the window. I wanted to say something but was feeling dizzy. I folded my hands in front of me.

  Cheryl was matter-of-fact and stern. “No one wants that to happen. That is not an option. You need to work with me on this.”

  “What am I supposed to do?”

  “Give me something I can offer them.”

  Emily looked at me now and we made direct eye contact. She knew she had hurt me by saying she might leave. “Tell them I want to stay here until the baby is due. Then I’ll go into the hospital and Dr. Delong will deliver the baby. Between now and then I will consider giving the child up for adoption as long as there is no interference with me staying here.”

  “That’s not exactly what they want to hear,” Cheryl said, taking notes again, “but it is something. As long as I can keep the dialogue going, I think we may be okay. As long as we can say you are considering options, this is good.”

  I got up to put another log on the fire.

  Cheryl was suddenly on her feet. “John Alex, you’re doing a good job here. But you need to keep in mind how things appear to others. This is a small community. People are aware of comings and goings.”

  “I’m not sure what you mean.”

  “Brian has been to visit.”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “And Billy Sheehan?”

  “Well, he heard about my sick brother.”

  Cheryl looked apologetic. “I know. I’m sorry. I just want you both to be careful so nothing can be used against you.”

  I felt like a guilty child. “Understood.”

  Cheryl put on her coat and gloves. “I’m off to Port Isaac. There’s a boy accused of stealing a truckload of cigarettes. They were all in his parents’ basement. Imagine. His parents claimed they didn’t know they were there — dozens of cases of smokes. The boy says he doesn’t know how they got there. Funny, eh? This is what I went to law school for. Oh well.” The oh well seemed to say it all. “You two be good,” she said and left.

  When the door closed, Em began to head off to her room to lie down.

  “Emily,” I said, “I thought you told me the baby was due sometime in March.”

  “It is,” she said. “March twentieth or twenty-first.”

  “You told Cheryl it was in April.”

  “I know. It gives me some options.”

  “But we need to be prepared — you and me — for March, right?”

  “Yes. We need to be prepared.”

  “But as soon as we show up at the hospital, they will know.”

  “John Alex, I’ve been reading about home births. It’s quite common in England. I’ve already talked to your friend Sheila. She was a nurse, remember. And trained as a midwife, although I believe she gave it up when the government started interfering.”

  “You are thinking about having the baby here?”

  “Yes.”

  “But what if something goes wrong?”

  “Sheila will know what to do. She said she’s delivered dozens of babies. But she also believes I’m not due until April. I don’t want anyone knowing the real date but you and me.”

  “What about Dr. Delong?”

  “I haven’t talked to Dr. Delong. I got her name out of the phone book. But I never contacted her. I lied. Sorry.” She smiled a soft sad smile. “It will be okay, John Alex. Everything will turn out fine.”

  She walked to me and kissed me on the cheek.

  TOGETHER, EMILY AND I read every one of those books on childbirth faithfully and even quizzed each other in the strangest ways. Here I was, now fluent in so many intimate details about a woman’s reproductive system and about the mysteries of childbirth. Nutrition for a pregnant woman was now one of my areas of expertise as were the particulars of physical exercise and even the training of the Kegel muscles of a woman’s interior. Emily seemed to see nothing vulgar in it all and I adjusted to the nature of our discussions, even at mealtimes.

  Sheila came to join us for Sunday dinner into the dark days of the end of January and the discussions were even more frank than anyone could have expected for kitchen talk in a home at the end of a back road in Deepvale.

  “John Alex, did you cook this all yourself?” she asked.

  “Yes.”

  “It’s excellent. You’re a good cook. Every woman should have a man like you.”

  I think I must have blushed just then. I’d been cooking for myself for years, of course, but never took much interest in it. But when I realized Emily needed the proper diet for nurturing a fetus, I had become something of a pregnancy gourmet. I wanted to ask Sheila more about her youthful crush on me. I wanted to know exactly how she felt about me now. I guess I needed that in some way. But I could never bring myself to ask. All I knew was that she cared for me and I trusted her. And I knew she would be there for us when we needed her. And I dreamed about her s
ometimes in the night. I could see her in her bookmobile, arranging books on the shelves and smiling a big, lovely broad smile whenever I arrived to check out books.

  THIRTY

  A STEADY DIET OF reading books on natural childbirth, nutrition for pregnant women and breast-feeding is an odd thing for an old man. But I absorbed all there was to absorb and returned to the bookmobile on those Thursdays when the winter weather allowed for Sheila to provide me with the next allotment. Sometimes Emily went with me, sometimes she stayed home and napped. On those occasions, Sheila flirted with me and lifted my spirits. We discussed the home birth and she admitted she was nervous about all this but if I was there to help her, she would be there for us. I had her work phone number, her cell phone and her home number. We would find her when the time came.

  OF MY OWN PERSONAL library of books, I had an odd assortment gathered piecemeal from yard sales and second-hand bookstores over the years. Why I pulled down The Way to Succeed on that February afternoon, I do not know. The author was W. M. Thayer, and I could not tell you the date it was published since it appeared only as the Roman numeral MDCCCXCI. I had dipped into it dozens of times before and found Thayer to be annoyingly pompous and opinionated but on occasion insightful. “It is clear, then,” the author propounded, “that true self-reliance is in no way related to self-conceit, but it is that manly confidence in one’s ability to make his way in the world that awakens admiration.”

  I read the line out loud to Emily. She had become accustomed to this and would look up and respond if she felt it deserved a response. “Manly confidence?” she questioned. I quite understood by the inflection of her voice what she was thinking.

  “It is an old book. I think he assumed that women were meant to cultivate grace and beauty. Men needed confidence and dignity.”

  “Let me see that book.”

  I handed it to her and she held it to her face. “It smells very old. I love the smell of old books. My grandmother read to me from very old children’s books when I was young. This is the same smell.”