Lauchlin of the Bad Heart

by D. R. MacDonald

  THIRTEEN

  LAUCHLIN jerked awake, slumped in a parlour chair, his mouth dry from snoring. A table lamp was lit. Behind it, the front field, washed by a new moon, was still. He wasn’t sure what had woken him, if anything, he couldn’t pick up a sound from the road, but he felt logy, unrested, and for a few moments he’d thought he was waking for school, that he had to get ready to teach, and then that deep-grained routine was jarred, broken by something that lay back in his consciousness: the dark, damp weight of the sea cave. And here he was, cobwebbed and cotton-mouthed, staring out a window. Tena had returned but he had not seen her yet. During the days of her absence he drank more than usual late in the evenings. A thin, languid fog coiled slowly through the trees at the road, and towed a half-remembered song into his mind. “John O’ Dreams” was it called? “Yield up the darkness to old John O’Dreams…Sleep is a river, flow on forever…and for your boatman, choose old John O’Dreams.”

  What could he believe about dreams, those sideshows in the circus of life, anything? They distorted, exaggerated, played the surreal upon the obvious, maybe forced you sometimes to examine your waking life. Whether there was any truth in their elaborate fantasies, illogical dramas, insane sequences he could not say, but who could dismiss their power? The Mi’kmaq never questioned it—in their tales, dreams moved fluidly within the worlds of myth and actuality, one no less real than the other. Fantasies, desires, wishes were equally real and unreal. It was all there, no line of separation. In the woods, the sky, in everything they did, thought, imagined, all was continuity. For a few moments when he first awoke, the night field was dream too, the rags of fog.

  He left the house, inhaling deeply the misty air as he walked down to the road. You’d get some wild drivers along here weekends, half-cut and back and forth from the cottages, but at this hour quiet, just about nobody. The streetlamp shot smoky shadows behind him. He’d been a boy when the road was first lit, relieving the pitch-dark country nights but changing too the feeling of night, reading a landscape lit, if at all, by moon, by muted overcast, by the midnight flow of ice, of snow. Evening primroses. Bits of yellow along the ditch. The easy peace of country, the sheer silence of its night. As if the noisy machinery of the world had shut down, nothing bad for you could be working in a dark, fragrant silence like this, the cool stars diffused with fog. Did Tena miss a night sky? He could ask her that now, maybe, it would bring her closer if he knew. Did her dreams, like those of the Mi’kmaq, infuse her waking, walking, everything? She saw so differently, didn’t she, she had to find the right words. She would be asleep now, she and Clement. In their house, safe. He started down the road, beyond the streetlamp’s lemony light, and, feeling the air, chugged a few yards, hands fisted, before he fell back to a walk. There was no sound but a mosquito humming at his ear, hoping for blood.

  Up ahead through the fog there came a faint huffing of breath, but steady. Someone running? Not even Jamie Campbell would train at this hour. And then the metallic buzz of a dry chain, and he knew it had to be a bicycle. He saw the bobbing helmet first, a vague white in the dark, grey air, perched ill-fitting on a head, and then the hunched, swaying shoulders of the rider. As surprised by the cyclist as the cyclist by him, Lauchlin blurted out something between whoa and hello as the rider pumped past him a few metres away and maybe grunted back, hard to tell, his mouth strained wide, twisted, he was pretty winded by the sound of him. A kid late for home maybe, not crazy about being seen, he didn’t return Lauchlin’s wave but suddenly rose off the seat, breathing in a kind of groan, and picked up a little speed like he wanted quick distance between Lauchlin and himself, shoulders rocking, head weaving, on through the cool sodium haze of the streetlight and away into the dark, leaving just the zing zing zing of a chain in need of oil.

  In the resuming silence, Lauchlin turned back toward the hill. The cyclist might pop up in gossip in the morning, who he belonged to along the road. Imagine at that hour, so-and-so’s boy sneaking home on a bicycle. Lauchlin climbed slowly to the house, listening to his own breathing, a little faster than it had been. His mother was asleep, she slept well, she wouldn’t ask him why he’d been outside, what he might have seen there.

  He was not sleepy but he washed his face in the bathroom, undressed. In bed, he listened to a car passing fast. It nagged at him, that fella wobbling by on two wheels, he’d never make wherever he was going, a car could come at him on a curve and send him into the trees. Had he been drinking? Lauchlin lay awake, concerned. He wasn’t sure why he should be, it was not his business. He sat up to listen. Nothing but the lofty hoots of a barred owl somewhere up the backwoods, poplar leaves whispering like water. Wanting sleep, he turned on his side. His eyes rested on the dark old gloves hanging from the dresser mirror.

  A boxing ring, absurdly small, how could two men manoeuvre in this murky light, dirty, unfamiliar, locked in a clinch, his face mashed in sweat, he can’t get a glimpse of his opponent, his own fists, untaped, gloveless, feel impossibly heavy, and that seems funny, he laughs, Mano de Piedra, Roberto Durán, Fists of Stone, he cannot raise them, cannot throw a punch, and they both lumber back and forth, as if they agreed this desperate embrace were necessary, their only defence against something unnameable beyond the sagging ropes, in that darkness and silence, no crowd but something terrifyingly vague threatens them, is gathering against them, and when he wakes with a drowning gasp, his sheet is cool with sweat, his heart in his tongue. He sat up sucking in breath as the dream’s concreteness, its urgent sensuousness, ebbed into the unease he’d gone to sleep with.

  He got up and stretched out on the cool floor, clasping his hands behind his head. He lay still for a few seconds before the sit-ups, letting the dream drain away, then he bent into himself and back, again and again with soft grunts, back and up, whispering out the numbers, until the rhythm of his exertion became a welcome trance, his abdominals tightening, then burning, his eyes rocking blindly from ceiling to floor, he lost the count but pushed on until the last one barely got him upright. He sat, breathing hard, aware of his pounding pulse. His watch said 3:51.

  The cyclist had been wearing just trousers and a loose shirt, not biking gear. It occurred to Lauchlin now that he’d seen not a kid but a man.

  He towelled off and dressed. So as not to wake his mother, he let the truck roll to the bottom of the driveway before he started the engine, then he turned down the road, his mind raw and furzy, fog throwing streamers at his headlight beams. A grown man, and a bit wide-arsed at that, on a bike, on a foggy night? Be lucky not to break his neck. He drove slowly west all the way to Wharf Road, checking the ditches on both sides. Then he turned back.

  Coming on Clement’s mailbox he slowed down on impulse, pulling into the driveway just high enough to see the dim stern of the fish van behind the house, as always. The motion light above the barn door was on but anything could trigger that, a deer, a dog. Maybe Clement was up already, the sky was greying, there was a lamp in the kitchen but maybe they left it on all night, Clement burned more lights now, as if a well-lit house might help Tena find her way. Lauchlin thought he might tap on the back door, just mention what he’d seen, but he had never stopped here at an hour like this, and somehow he couldn’t do it now, make small talk with Clement over a cup of coffee. Tena wouldn’t be awake this early, and if she were she might not like him there at that vulnerable hour, I don’t jump into a morning, she’d told him, I have to feel my way. The old-timers had never cared what hour you showed up, any of the older women along here, whoever knocked at the back door or when, they’d ask him in, Johanna would, they never used to lock their doors at all. But those women were not blind, and they still wouldn’t believe, some of them, that the city had come into the country. And what would he tell Clement anyway, that he just dropped in to say some man went past him in the dark on a bicycle and it seemed a little queer to him? Clement would laugh, as well he might. But Lauchlin stayed there in the driveway a while longer, engine idling. The yard, the barn, the crowding woods,
all quiet. Just crows waking in their rookery further down, letting the world know.

  THE FOG THINNED AWAY but the morning remained oppressive and still. Customers were few, the summer people hunkered down in their cottages waiting out the damp gloom or staying in town. Lauchlin found himself staring at the box of Jamie’s chanterelles, sadly shrivelled and unsold, and he put them out of sight in the backroom. As the morning dragged on, he grew more restless, eager to see Tena, but Johanna could not relieve him because she had an old friend visiting and they were having dinner, and Shane was working just half the day. Last night kept swimming back through his mind, he couldn’t shake free of it, the cyclist appearing out of the dark, the startling sight of him passing, receding beyond the streetlight, the sounds of his chain fading away. Shane had wandered into the backroom. Lauchlin could hear him teasing the heavy bag.

  “I thought you gave that up for love,” he said from the doorway.

  “Naw, Lauch.” He cocked his fist and gave the bag a hard right hand. “The love gave me up. She’s got a boyfriend at school.”

  “At least you know. Right?”

  “Show me some more bag sometime, eh, Lauch? I’ll draw the guy’s face on it.”

  “That’s it, work it out here, not on him. Shane, you ever see anybody on this road riding a bike late at night? Not a kid, but somebody older.”

  “Older? Never.”

  “Ever hear of anyone riding on the road, late? A man?”

  “Why? He’d be lucky to survive.”

  “It doesn’t matter.” Maybe it had been an older kid, out late, he just hadn’t seen him clearly. “No law against it anyway.”

  “People do some queer things in the summer. Jamie Campbell was out there one night, doing his miles. Doesn’t he ever sleep?”

  “Jamie runs at night? How late?”

  “After midnight I saw him, on the Calabash. He’s focused, that boy.”

  “That’s what it takes. He’s won some races.”

  “Lauch, there’s a gym started up in The Mines, kind of a boxing club? You know anything about it?”

  “Is that so? I don’t.”

  “I’m going to join, start boxing. Serious.”

  “Real training?”

  “Three or four days a week, more if I take to it, if the trainer thinks I’ve got some talent, you know?”

  “This isn’t just a whim, a rebound?”

  Shane winged a few hooks into the bag before he replied. “Nope. I want to do this.”

  “Okay. Once you get going with it, I’ll show you what I can.”

  “Thanks, Lauch. That’d be great.”

  After the mail car stopped at the road box, Lauchlin went to it as he usually did, expecting nothing but the same noisy flyers and packets, and so was cheered to see among the junk a thick brown envelope from his brother, addressed to him in Frank’s neat, schoolish hand, along with a postcard for Johanna, a sunset view of the Black Cuillins on the Isle of Skye. Out of sight behind the store, he sat on the back steps and opened it, a fat letter, by God, pages, heft, and a few photos to boot.

  Stornaway, Isle of Lewis

  Dear Lauch,

  Rain-whipped night, can’t sleep, my body clock’s haywire. Late and still no proper darkness. In a B&B, a Mrs. MacKillop’s, right religious, Bible pictures on the wall. Genial enough till she caught a whiff of whisky on me, no drinking in the house, says she. Certainly not, says I, wouldn’t dream of it. I’m under the gaze of a serene Jesus. I’m wondering if these Hebrideans didn’t end up with the wrong religion. One with bright festivals might have served us better, Mardi Gras or Carnaval, drink and sex without the weary guilt, that grey spiritual hangover. Then again, if religion can’t deal with guilt, what’s it good for, Brother? I’m setting off for Harris in the morning. When I told Mrs. MacK where I’d be staying she said, That’s a dead village. Oh people still live in it, but it’s no thriving, says The MacKillop. Well, I wanted to get beyond time anyway, says I, if maybe not so far as all that, dead, I mean. She’ll be glad to see the back of me, my kind of talk. Ah, a semblance of darkness at last. A tot of whisky, then sleep.

  Northton, South Harris

  I missed the Standing Stones of Callanish, the rain put me off, anyway I was a little dreary in the morning. But spotted a solitary stone on my way here, a tall leaning slab of rough granite between the road and the sea—the MacLeod Stone, as I learned later—aha! I could sense the antiquity of it under my hand. Weather broke, fresh wet sun, glistening grass. I was up, Brother, up. Not a drop since breakfast. Needed my wits, Jesus, single-track roads, you think the back roads of C.B. are bad. Round a curve and there’s an impudent sheep in your face. This whole village was cleared of its people in the 1840s, went to Cape Breton most of them. I’m in a tidy house, harled grey, thick stone walls. Can see out my window Toe Head and its high humped hill, the Chaipaval. A great couple hosting me, Calum and Marsail. I like to listen to their Gaelic on the phone, chatting with a neighbour. Chilly night, windy and damp, whisky and this peat fire warming my feet. A seagull just dipped past the window. Sheep huddle in a fenced field. I can see a woman far off struggling at a clothesline, her wash thrashes in the wind. We get the west wind square on, aye, Marsail says, it keeps my flowers low, you wish for a glisk of colour sometimes. And you, my brother? Colour? How’s the blind girl and you? Don’t get yourself blind as well. So late but good light yet.

  Next day.

  Shared my whisky with Calum and Marsail. I’m tired but rosy. A long hike to the sands. Marsail has a fine voice, sang verses of a Gaelic song. Jesus, I thought, that’s Brown-Haired Alan, and she said yes, Ailean Duinn. Tragic lovers, in this version, their bodies wash up in the Shiants, in the same spot. Our C.B. version is duller, not tragic. Things got altered in that Atlantic journey, not all for the good. Or is romance a tougher sell in C.B. ? Isn’t your hair brown, what’s left of it? No tragedies, I hope?

  There’s a tiny store down the village road, just the front room of a house, its name pulled me close to peer in the front window, “The We May Have It” said the sign, though chances looked quite good that they may not, a wonderful name anyway, suggest it to Momma for the store, or a motto for our little clan?

  A little girl in a red knit cap is passing by on a bicycle, red balloon tires, wavering and wobbling down the rough road. I am struck by the sight of her, a joy. Dead village? Nah. Dead MacLean? Half, maybe, but waking…

  I saw a dead sheep by the shore, seen others. A plague of rabbits Calum says, they ate so much grass this year the sheep were starved. Marsail says the bunnies’ll be gassed in their burrows pretty soon. I don’t like the sound of that. The sheep have to live, they say. Aye.

  More pages remained, taking him where he could not go. But Shane was calling him to the phone. He folded the letter away reluctantly and went inside. Because the place and the people in the letter were still with him, Tena’s voice registered before her words and sent a charge of intimacy through him, unexpected, as if the call had to do with Lauchlin and her and where they’d left off.

  “I said, I heard Clement leaving this morning, Lauchlin. Now I get a call from the fishery, he hasn’t shown up for work. Have you seen him?”

  The feeling she had aroused vanished. “Johanna might have,” he said, collecting himself against the worry he was hearing. “From the house, she usually does. He takes back roads sometimes, Tena, he could have broken down.” His assurances sounded rote to him, hollow.

  “They wanted to know what was up, was he sick or what. Well, I don’t know what is up with him, do I? They weren’t happy. I’m not either, not now.”

  “He can’t be far.”

  “Far where? He’d have called, Lauchlin. It’s almost noon, isn’t it?”

  “Do the Mounties know?”

  “I didn’t want to get frightened about it.”

  “Call them. Are you alone there?”

  “Lorna’s here. I’ll be fine, I’m okay. He told me last night he was worried about his mill, up there
off MacQuarrie’s Cross. Maybe he looked in on it on his way to work? Got a flat there or something? But it’s so late, Lauchlin. I was doing things in the house, ordinary things, then I realized I was waiting to hear from him.”

  “I’ll go up to the mill first, then I’ll do the roads he takes, as soon as I can get out of here. We’ll find him, Tena. You heard him leave, he’s out there.”

  After he hung up, Lauchlin calmly took gas money from Shane, slid it into the cash drawer, gave him change. There was no good reason for alarm, not yet. But his unease crept beyond Clement’s failure to show up for work: some great shift of attention seemed to have begun. He did not understand why he felt it or what it meant, only that somehow it was turning, turning.

  FOURTEEN

  UP into the backland Lauchlin drove, but without heart, urging himself along. Something small and dark, far in the back of his mind, was working its way grimly forward. Clement was not up here, he was sure of that, but he wanted to come anyway, up into woods, away. The wind was up and the morning’s fog was only wisps high in the trees.