“There’s something I have to tell you.”
“What?” she said.
“The dog.”
“What dog?”
“Sandy. I think my father shot him.”
“Everybody knew that,” she said quietly.
Everybody.
She kissed me softly on the forehead. Then shoved her hands through my hair.
“Enough about the past,” she said. “If that’s the worst you’ll ever have to confess…”
And we went to our separate and chilly little rooms.
You could hear Grandma snoring.
3
The next day Uncle Jack and I drove to Ontario in Jack’s car. Straight through to Sudbury, taking turns at the wheel. Blew through Ottawa in the middle of the night. Parliament Hill lit up like a carnival. Made Sudbury in thirty hours. Stayed with somebody Jack knew from Flin Flon, contracting then at Inco.
There was nothing in Sudbury. Inco wasn’t hiring. MacIsaac made some kind of excuse. Suggested Paddy Harrison and a new shaft somewhere. Pretty vague, Jack said afterwards. Giving us the brushoff. Dropped by Falconbridge. Nothing.
“Where to now?” I asked.
“Flatten her for Toronto,” Jack said.
On the way down to Toronto we got drunk in the car on cheap Ontario beer, and Uncle Jack was figuring it was really because he was too old.
“Forty-four isn’t old,” I said.
Coughing on the drag of his cigarette. “Lately I feel a hundred and forty-four.”
“You should quit that,” I said.
“I s’pose,” he said, eyeing the cigarette. But the face was saying why bother.
We were heading for Toronto because we heard there was work driving a tunnel there for a subway. Coming back into the kitchen, Sextus shuts the door carefully behind him.
“Jesus, it’s cold out there,” he says.
“I thought you got lost,” I say. I pour tea.
The mood lighter now. Everything cooled off. Like the weather.
“I walked down to the end of the lane—you can’t see MacAskill’s old place anymore,” he says. “Was thinking about the old man. How he ended up. In the kitchen of that place. With Angus for company. The old cocksucker not even aware that there was a dead man in front of him.
“Then there was poor Uncle Sandy,” he adds.
Oblivious to my silent withdrawal.
“Everything linked together,” he says. “The three of them. This queer symmetry in the way they lived. And died. Here’s to them,” he says.
I raise my cup.
In Toronto, the contractor on the tunnel job had a shift boss from Glencoe. Jack called him on the phone. We arranged to meet him at a tavern called the Rondun, in Parkdale. We hit the place about five in the afternoon. Everybody there looked like from home. “We’re going to like Toronto,” Jack said, winking. A lot of local fellows drinking there. Ironworkers from Mabou. Miners from Inverness. Tunnel men from Judique, with stories from places with names like Amos and Wawa and Flin Flon. Places I heard about in Tilt Cove. Wasn’t long before we were both pretty full.
In the can, a MacIsaac from Port Hood said out of the side of his mouth I could probably get something with the ironworkers at the new TD Centre. Whatever that was. “You look like you could climb,” he said.
I gave it a second and a half of thought, then said, “Nah…the old fellow and I are partners. We’re looking for work underground.”
Toronto was something else. We stayed in a run-down hotel not far from the tavern.
Going to bed, I was looking at a newspaper. On page three there was a story and on the top, the name A. Sextus Gillis.
“Cripes, Jack,” I said. “Look at this.”
“Well, well,” he said. “He’s moving up in the world.”
“We’ll call the paper in the morning,” I said. “Go see him.”
Jack had his big paw on my shoulder, standing on one foot shaking off his shoe.
“Nohoho,” he said. “Wouldn’t want to bother the young fellow at his new job.”
Then put the light out. Jack always took his pants off in the dark.
“He’d shit if we showed up,” I said.
Jack laughed and laughed. “I imagine he would,” he said.
Next morning, when Beaton took us down to the subway job, I knew somehow there would be nothing. Something about Toronto. The clamour of noise seemed to be saying: You two don’t belong here.
Beaton took us to see the super. A New Brunswicker. Remembered Jack from Niagara Falls. But had no openings. Maybe in a week or two. Fellas were always moving around.
Jack looked at me, and I at him, and he said, “Thanks, anyway.”
When we left Toronto, we drove all the way along Bloor Street and out Kingston Road, everything thinning out as we progressed eastward. Jack looking tense.
“Look,” Jack said. “Christ. There’s the Scarboro Foreign Missions.”
Bunch of fancy brick buildings in a field near the lake.
“Sure we could go down there and get some frigging feed,” he said. “All the money the wife’s poured into that place. Well. Well. That’s what it looks like.”
Of course we kept on going. Took forever. Watching the map, turning northward at Napanee.
“A few miles further on is where the Pen is,” Jack said. Kingston Pen. “Fair share of people I could visit there.” And laughed.
“We’ll give ‘er a miss for today.”
Heading for Quebec then. Beaton had given us a name there. Cousin of his, underground captain in a place called Bachelor Lake. Coniagas Mine. Base metals and silver. Assured us that if there was nothing there the cousin’ll know somebody in Chibougamau, a hundred miles or so farther up the line.
“Getting near Santa’s country,” Jack laughed.
And, Beaton had said, there’s something starting in Matagami Lake. You’ll get something. Somewhere.
Whacked the roof of the car with his big thick hand and we were off.
We spent a weekend in Val-d’Or on the way to Bachelor Lake. In a hotel. Six bucks a night. Imagine. There was a tavern in the basement. We spent Saturday afternoon and evening there. Jack went off to bed early. A pretty girl named Scotty talked to me. Told me she was a prostitute. Just like that. Came right out with it. Had a husband, working underground in Cadillac. Am I interested?
She had a heavy Scottish accent. Maybe, I said. How much? Ten bucks. She asked if I had a room in the place. I did but Jack was in it. Could always get another one. Yes, wouldn’t kill me to blow another six bucks plus the ten for her. Figured, I guess it’s about time. After hearing so much about it in Tilt Cove. And I still hadn’t even considered anything with Effie. So why not? Rehearsal time.
Just as we were about to leave, Jack staggered in and sat down again. Sizing her up, tuned in to her accent. Started asking her where she was from in Scotland!
Peterhead, she said.
Never heard of it, said Jack. Bheil Gaidhlig agad? Asking her if she could speak Gaelic! Soon she excused herself and left, laughing at us.
Some things Uncle Jack didn’t have a clue about.
Bachelor Lake. The middle of nowhere. Tilt Cove without the ocean. In a nearby lumber camp, the inmates were worse than us. And an Indian settlement, but they avoided us. You could expect trouble any time the communities made contact. Lumbermen and Indians. Miners and lumbermen. Indians and miners. At each other’s throats if there was booze around, which there always was.
There was a little French place called Miquelon about twenty miles away. I remember it only because there’s an island with the same name near Newfoundland. There was a ramshackle roadhouse there. Sold booze and had a jukebox. You’d go out there now and then, looking for excitement. Hookers from Val-d’Or or Chibougamau would set up shop out there now and then.
I think mostly of blackflies and unreal sunsets. Just getting from the headframe to Ikey Ferris’s beer hall, you’d be half eaten.
Jack would say: “Blackflies
so bad they sit on the limbs of the trees, then fly down and bite a hunk out of you. Then fly back up and eat it.”
Everybody laughing. Even the French guys. Even after they’d heard it a hundred times.
Sun set late in the north, but you’d always go out to watch. The drizzle of blood from a bruised sky.
4
“You’ve changed things a lot since she was here,” Sextus says.
“Yes.”
“So how long did she live here before you guys, you know…”
“Got married?”
“Yeah,” he says.
“I don’t know. Couple of years.”
Ma went out to Squint’s spring ’65. Then herself moved in here. Early summer.
“Seems to me Christmas ’66 you spent at our place. Or some of it,” he says, winking.
“She was here,” I say. “I couldn’t very well.”
“Absolutely,” he says. “No shacking up in those days.”
Grandma was gone by then.
According to the letters, Effie and Grandma were getting along great. “She wants to talk Gaelic all the time,” she wrote. “It’s nice. Makes me think of Mom though I hardly remember her now.” She can call her mother Mom because she never knew her. If she’d known her longer it would be more natural. Like Ma or Mama. She was free of Angus but, according to the letters, he was dropping in unexpectedly from time to time. Always sober, she assured me. “Seems to have cleaned up his act a little bit. Grandma has a good effect on him. He’s afraid of her. Like everybody else. But she has a heart like you wouldn’t believe. She always insists he eat with us when he’s here. Duncan doing well in the Sem.”
Things become a blur after the summer of ’65. Jack and I in Bachelor Lake. The drinking became habitual there. Not a problem, at least not compared to most of the other fellows there. Not like later. But looking back from now, Jack and I, pretty well every day, after work. And on weekends, a lot.
Millie has this theory: In some people, the life spirit dominates; in others, it’s the death spirit. Or they alternate. Then one day the death spirit says, “Enough.” “Then she pulls the plug,” says Millie.
Looking back on those days in Bachelor Lake, I can see the death spirit already taking hold of Uncle Jack. The way she claimed my old man. Only Angus seemed exempted from her attentions.
Effie wrote: “I think something happened during the war. Something that involved them, together. There are different stories. I talk to your grandma about how different they were after. She said they were just ‘dear boys’ going away. Friends with everybody. Then they came back, friends with nobody, except, eventually, when we moved over here, each other. I think Duncan knows more than he lets on.”
That letter was one of the things I got rid of after she left. I’ve never told her what I know.
Another letter. Late ’65, I think: “He landed here again the other night, drunk. Grandma put the run on him. Living with Grandma is so great. I think it’s the first time I can remember feeling safe.”
She had that right. Grandma made you feel safe. I think now Grandma was the only reason I survived with my head in one piece for as long as I did. She was tough and direct. Except for the clothes, she even had a mannish look. The way people get when they age naturally, men and women blending into one neutral gender. Like weathered hardwood. You didn’t mess with Grandma. Hard, she was. Yet you’d never be afraid of her.
Grandma once talked to me about when Ma and Pa got together, when he came home from the war. They were going out a bit before the war.
“They’d come home from the mines. You’d think they were from Boston, the clothes on them. On the go all the time. Hardly see a hair of them one end of the visit to the other. Except for the meals. It was like feeding the army.”
Ma said: “Before the war, they’d be at the dances. And we’d see them around. They were pretty conspicuous. The latest styles. Had an old car. We’d get a ride home. It was nothing serious.
“Then when he came home for good, after the war, I came up from Judique for the party in the hall. Everybody had heard Sandy’d been shot. Coming home. We were all curious. We expected everything to be like before. The old Sandy, full of fun and teasing. Then when I saw him, I just got this feeling. He was pretty frail for a while. Then he’d come to the house, all the way down to Judique. And, well, I don’t know. We just eventually decided.”
I figured it out once that Ma and the old man had to get married because of me. She felt sorry for him. One thing leads to another. Before you know it there’s a bun in the oven. Those things don’t matter anymore but I suppose it was a bit tricky back then. You’d never ask her about something like that. Hard to imagine them the way they were. Especially my father. God forgive me, but it’s easier to picture her and Squint.
“Do you think you’d ever do it again?” he asks.
“Do what?”
“Tie the knot.”
“Ho-ho-ho,” I say.
Had this conversation with Millie once and she told me we’d be damned fools and I agreed.
“Sometimes I envy those who can,” he says. “I’m like yourself. Shouldn’t even have done it the first time. But there you are.”
He can think that if he wants to.
“Women are funny,” he says. “You first meet them, the sun rises on you. Can do no wrong. A fellow gets high on it. I swear…Then after you live with them for a while you realize you’re like anybody else. Familiarity and contempt. The two faces of matrimony.”
He lights another smoke.
“The trick is to get out before they get needy. That’s when everything gets sticky. Start looking for a relationship. That’s the big word now. Relationship.”
5
Then Grandma died.
Uncle Jack was coming along the drift. You could tell it was him by the light. Low. Hand-carried. And he always moved slowly and deliberately. No mistaking Uncle Jack. Accustomed to walking around in the dark. Spoke briefly to my partner, Proulx, a Frenchman who didn’t have much English. Signalled me to follow him for a bit. I did.
“Grandma’s gone,” he said.
“I shouldn’t have been surprised, that time I came home for Grandma’s funeral. I knew for sure Effie had something in mind for you.”
“Right,” I say. Uncomfortable.
“Struck me funny at first,” he says. “Off-putting. Like if you heard about a guy having a fling with your sister. Then I got a good look at her. Dolled up at the wake. She was really fond of you…You should never doubt that.”
“Hardly worth talking about now,” I say.
“In all the talking we’ve done, herself and me, she’s never said a negative thing about you. You’ve gotta believe that.”
I badly wanted to go to Grandma’s funeral.
“So I suppose I should go along too,” I said to Uncle Jack. “Poor Grandma.” Thinking of Effie.
“I don’t think so,” Jack said. “We’re way behind here. Counting on you and Prunes there to drive another couple of hundred feet in the next two weeks. You two manage that and you can get a good break at Christmas.”
“It surprised me, the way she’d become one of the family already. If there had been any doubt in my mind…But you came at Christmas. That would have been ’66.”
He’s waiting for me to respond.
“You stayed at our place a lot,” he says. “For appearances.”
I feel the heat in my face.
“Didn’t fool anybody, of course,” he says, smiling softly. “Creeping in at daylight. You kept forgetting that creaky stair. Fifth from the top. I had that one cased for years. Ma knew when you were getting in. You rascal.” He’s smiling broadly.
“Ma figured it looked queer for Effie to stay on in the house after Grandma. But they decided it should be up to you. And of course your ma, Aunt Mary, thought she should stay. Keep the pipes from freezing. Don’t remember you raising any objection.”
“There were other factors,” I say.
; “I betcha,” he says. “She kept your pipes from freezing that Christmas.”
That’s all he can think about.
I told myself I was protecting her from Angus.
“He sneaks around over here too,” she said to me.
“I’d like to catch him at it.”
You wouldn’t think we were talking about her father.
“If it isn’t too much trouble for you,” I said, “I think we’d all appreciate it—me and Ma anyway—if you’d stay on here. At least until the summer.”
Of course come summer ’67 we were talking about getting married.
“Women are fundamentally needy,” Sextus says. “Of course you can’t say that anymore in mixed company. Even a lot of guys will get all huffy if you talk like that. Sensitive types. Make me want to barf. Women aren’t happy unless things are changing.”
“There are lots of good women,” I say. Thinking of Grandma. Ma. Jessie. Millie. Lots more good ones than the other kind, in my experience.
“Only woman you can live with is a woman who likes things the way they are. Or who’s got enough clout to change things.”
“You’re over my head,” I say.
“Not when you think about it.” He splashes more rum in his glass. “It only takes one frustrated woman to make a cock-up of everything.”
The first person I told we were thinking about getting married was Jack. Still in Bachelor Lake. Past the two-year mark by 1967.
“Thinking of tying the knot,” I said.
He got that look on his face. Same one that came over him every time her name came up.
“Well, that’s great,” he said, fishing for his pack of smokes. “When?”
“Next summer,” I said.
“Fellow’ll have to start getting ready for that.”
Not asking when I’d be leaving.
Weeks later he asked: “You got a date yet?”
The Long Stretch Page 10