“Well,” she said, getting up and downing her drink. “I guess there’s no fun here. I just wanted to say hello.”
“Yes,” he said. “Well, thank you.”
She lurched towards the door and he wondered if he should open it for her or if that would be too rash.
But she opened it herself.
“Well,” she said as she went out into the yard. “You know where I’m at.”
“Yes,” he said, gaining confidence from her departing back, “I know where you are.”
Now on this morning in April half a century later, he looked out his window at the eagles flying by. They were going down into the valley to hunt, leaving their nest with their four precious eggs for the briefest time. Then he recognized the sound of a truck’s motor. He recognized it before it entered the yard, in the way his wife had once recognized the individual sound of his horses’ bells. The truck was muddy and splattered, not merely from this spring trip up the mountain but from a sort of residual dirt perhaps from the previous fall. It belonged to his married granddaughter who had been christened Sarah but preferred to be known as Sal. She wheeled her truck into the yard, getting out of it inches from his door and almost before it had stopped. She wore her hair in a ponytail, although she seemed too old for that, and her tight-fitting jeans were slipped inside her husband’s rubber boots. He was always slightly surprised at her ability to chew gum and smoke cigarettes at the same time and was reminded of that now as she came through his door, her lipstick leaving a red ring around her cigarette as she removed it from her mouth and flicked it out into the yard. She wore a tight-fitting T-shirt with the words “I’m Busted” across her chest.
“Hi, Archibald,” she said, sitting in the chair nearest the window.
“Hi,” he said.
“What’s new?”
“Oh, nothing much,” he replied, and then after a pause, “Would you like some tea?”
“Okay,” she said. “No milk. I’m watching my figure.”
“Mmmm,” he said.
He looked at her from the distance of his years, trying to find within her some flashes of his wife or even of himself. She was attractive in her way, with her dark eyes and ready mouth, although shorter than either he or his wife.
“Had two phone calls,” she said.
“Oh,” he said, always feeling a bit guilty that he had no telephone and that messages had to be left with others farther down the mountain.
“One is from a guy who wants to buy your mare. You’re still interested in selling?”
“Yes, I guess so.”
“The other is about Gaelic singing. They want us to sing in Halifax this summer. This is the year of ‘Scots Around the World.’ All kinds of people will be there, even some of the Royal Family. We’ll be there for a week. They haven’t decided on the pay yet but it’ll be okay and they’ll pay our accommodation and our transportation.”
“Oh,” he said, becoming interested and cautious at the same time. “What do you mean by us?”
“ Us. You know, the family. They want twenty of us. There’ll be a few days of rehearsal there and then some concerts and we’ll be on television. I can hardly wait. I have to do lots of shopping in Halifax and it will be a chance to sleep in without Tom bothering me. We won’t even have to be at the theatre or studio or whatever until noon.” She lit another cigarette.
“What do they want us to sing?” he asked.
“Oh, who cares?” she said. “It’s the trip that’s important. Some of the old songs. They’re coming to audition us or something in two or three weeks. We’ll sing Fear A’ Bhata or something,” she said, and butting her cigarette on her saucer and laying her gum beside it on the table, she began to sing in a clear, powerful voice:
Fhir a’ bhata, na ho ro eile,
Fhir a’ bhata, na ho ro eile,
Fhira’ bhata, na ho ro eile,
Mho shoraidh slan leat ’s gach ait’ an teid thu
Is tric mi ’sealltainn o ’n chnoca ’s airde
Dh’jheuch am faic mi fear a’ bhata,
An tig thu ’n diugh, no ’n tig thu ’maireach;
’S mur tig thu idir, gur truagh a tha mi.
Only when she sang did she remind him somewhat of his wife, and again he felt the hope that she might reach that standard of excellence.
“You’re singing it too fast” he said cautiously when she had finished. “But it is good. You’re singing it like a milling song. It’s supposed to be a lament for a loved one that’s lost.”
He sang it himself slowly, stressing the distinction of each syllable.
She seemed interested for a while, listening intently before replacing her gum and lighting another cigarette, then tossing the still-lighted match into the stove.
“Do you know what the words mean?” he said when he had finished.
“No,” she said. “Neither will anybody else. I just make the noises. I’ve been hearing the things since I was two. I know how they go. I’m not dumb, you know.”
“Who else are they asking?” he said, partially out of interest and partially to change the subject and avoid confrontation.
“I don’t know. They said they’d get back to us later. All they wanted to know now was if we were interested. The man about the mare will be up later. I got to go now.”
She was out of the door almost immediately, turning her truck in a spray of gravel that flicked against his house, the small stones pinging against his windowpane. A muddied bumper sticker read: “If you’re horny, honk your horn.”
He was reminded, as he often was, of Cora, who had been dead now for some fifteen years and who had married another man within a year of her visit to him with her open proposal. And he was touched that his granddaughter should seem so much like his brother’s wife instead of like his own.
The man who came to buy the mare was totally unlike any other horse buyer he had ever seen. He came in a suit and in an elaborate car and spoke in an accent that was difficult to identify. He was accompanied by Carver, who was apparently his guide, a violent young man in his thirties from the other side of the mountain. Carver’s not-unhandsome face was marred by a series of raised grey scars and his upper lip had been thickened as a result of a fight in which someone had swung a logging chain into his mouth, an action which had also cost him his most obvious teeth. He wore his wallet on a chain hooked to his belt and scuffed his heavy lumberman’s boots on the cardboard in Archibald’s porch before entering the kitchen. He was by the window and rolled a cigarette while the horse buyer talked to Archibald.
“How old is the mare?”
“Five,” said Archibald.
“Has she ever had a colt?”
“Why, yes,” said Archibald, puzzled by the question. Usually buyers asked if the horse would work single or double or something about its disposition or its legs or chest. Or if it would work in snow or eat enough to sustain a heavy work schedule.
“Do you think she could have another colt?” he asked.
“Why, I suppose,” he said, almost annoyed, “if she had a stallion.”
“No problem,” said the man.
“But,” said Archibald, driven by his old honesty, “she has never worked. I have not been in the woods that much lately and I always used the old mare, her mother, before she died. I planned to train her but never got around to it. She’s more like a pet. She probably will work, though. They’ve always worked. It’s in the stock. I’ve had them all my life.” He stopped, almost embarrassed at having to apologize for his horses and for himself.
“Okay,” said the man. “No problem. She has had a colt, though?”
“Look,” said Carver from his seat near the window, snuffing out his cigarette between his callused thumb and forefinger, “he already told you that. I told you this man don’t lie.”
“Okay,” said the man, taking out his chequebook.
“Don’t you want to see her first?” asked Archibald.
“No, it’s okay,” the man said. “I
believe you.”
“He wants nine hundred dollars,” said Carver. “She’s a young mare.”
“Okay,” said the man, to Archibald’s amazement. He had been hopeful of perhaps seven hundred dollars or even less since she had never worked.
“You’ll take her down in your truck later?” the man said to Carver.
“Right on!” said Carver and they left, the man driving with a peculiar caution as if he had never been off pavement before and was afraid that the woods might swallow him.
After they left, Archibald went out to his barn to talk to the mare. He led her out to the brook to drink, then to the door of the house where she waited while he went in and rummaged for some bread to offer her as a farewell treat. She was young and strong and splendid and he was somehow disappointed that the buyer had not at least seen her so that he could appreciate her excellent qualities.
Shortly after noon Carver drove his truck into the yard. “Do you want a beer?” he said to Archibald, motioning towards the open case on the seat beside him.
“No, I don’t think so,” Archibald said. “We may as well get this over with.”
“Okay,” said Carver. “Do you want to lead her on?”
“No, it’s okay,” said Archibald. “She’ll go with anybody.”
“Yeah,” said Carver. “Perhaps that’s a good way to be.”
They went into the barn. In spite of what he had said, Archibald found himself going up beside the mare and untying the rope and leading her out into the afternoon sun which reflected on her dappled shining coat. Carver backed his truck up to a small incline beside the barn and lowered the tailgate. Then Archibald handed him the rope and watched as she followed him willingly into the truck.
“This is the last of all them nice horses you had up here, eh?” said Carver after he had tied the rope and swung down from the truck.
“Yes” said Archibald, “the last.”
“I guess you hauled a lot of wood with them horses. I heard guys talking, older guys who worked with you in the camps.”
“Oh, yes,” said Archibald.
“I heard guys say you and your brother could cut seven cords of pulp a day with a crosscut saw, haul it and stack it.”
“Oh, yes,” he said. “Some days we could. Days seemed longer then,” he added with a smile.
“Christ, we’re lucky to get seven with a power saw unless we’re in a real good stand,” said Carver, pulling up his trousers and starting to roll a cigarette. “Your timber here on your own land is as good as ever, they say.”
“Yes,” he said. “It’s pretty good.”
“ ‘That Archibald,’ they say, ‘no one knows where he gets all them logs, hauls them out with them horses and doesn’t seem to disturb anything. Year after year. Treats the mountain as if it were a garden.’ ”
“Mmmm,” he said.
“Not like now, eh? We just cut ’em all down. Go in with heavy equipment, tree farmers and loaders and do it all in a day, to hell with tomorrow.”
“Yes,” said Archibald. “I’ve noticed.”
“You don’t want to sell?” asked Carver.
“No,” he said. “Not yet.”
“I just thought … since you were letting your mare go. No work for the mare, no work for you.”
“Oh, she’ll probably work somewhere,” he said. “I’m not so sure about myself.”
“Nah, she won’t work,” said Carver. “They want her for birth control pills.”
“For what?” said Archibald.
“This guy says, I don’t know if it’s true, that there’s this farm outside of Montreal that’s connected to a lab or something. Anyway, they’ve got all these mares there and they keep them bred all the time and they use their water for birth control pills.”
It seemed so preposterous that Archibald was not sure how to react. He scrutinized Carver’s scarred yet open face, looking for a hint, some kind of touch, but he could find nothing.
“Yeah,” said Carver. “They keep the mares pregnant all the time so the women won’t be.”
“What do they do with the colts?” said Archibald, thinking that he might try a question for a change.
“I dunno,” said Carver. “He didn’t say. I guess they just throw them away. Got to go now,” he said, swinging into the cab of his truck, “and take her down the mountain. I think he’s almost got a boxcar of these mares, or a transport truck. In two days she’ll be outside Montreal and they’ll get her a stallion and that’ll be it.”
The truck roared into action and moved from the incline near the barn. Archibald had been closer to it than he thought and was forced to step out of the way. As it passed, Carver rolled down the window and shouted, “Hey, Archibald, do you sing anymore?”
“Not so much,” he said.
“Got to talk to you about that sometime,” he said above the engine’s roar and then he and the truck and the splendid mare left the yard to begin their switchbacked journey down the mountain.
For a long time Archibald did not know what to do. He felt somehow betrayed by forces he could not control. The image of his mare beneath the weight of successive and different stallions came to his mind but the most haunting image was that of the dead colts which Carver had described as being “thrown away.” He imagined them as the many dead unwanted animals he had seen thrown out on the manure piles behind the barns, their skulls smashed in by blows from axes. He doubted that there was anything like that outside of Montreal and he doubted – or wanted to doubt – somehow more than he could what Carver had said. But he had no way to verify the facts or disprove them, and the images persisted. He thought, as he always did at times of loss, of his wife. And then of the pale, still body of his quiet and unbreathing son, with the intricate blue veins winding like the map lines of roads and rivers upon his fragile, delicate skull. Both wife and son gone from him, taken in the winter’s snow. And he felt somehow that he might cry.
He looked up to the sound of the whooshing eagles’ wings. They were flying up the mountain, almost wavering in their flight. Like weary commuters trying to make it home. He had watched them through the long winter as they were forced to fly farther and farther in search of food and open water. He had noticed the dullness of their feathers and the dimming lustre in their intense green eyes. Now, and he was not sure if perhaps it was his eyesight or his angle of vision, the female’s wing tips seemed almost to graze the bare branches of the trees as if she might falter and fall. And then the male who had gone on ahead turned and came back, gliding on the wind with his wings outstretched, trying to conserve what little energy he had left. He passed so close to Archibald that he could see, or imagined that he could see, the desperate fear in his fierce, defiant eyes. He was so intent on his mission that he paid little attention to Archibald, circling beside his mate until their wing tips almost touched. She seemed to gain strength from his presence and almost to lunge with her wings, like a desperate swimmer on her final lap, and they continued together up the mountain. In the dampness of the late spring Archibald feared, as perhaps did they, for the future of their potential young.
He had seen the eagles in other seasons and circumstances. He had seen the male seize a branch in his powerful talons and soar towards the sky in the sheer exuberance of his power and strength; had seen him snap the branch in two (in the way a strong man might snap a kindling across his knee), letting the two sections fall towards the earth before plummeting after one or the other and snatching it from the air; wheeling and somersaulting and flipping the branch in front of him and swooping under it again and again until, tired of the game, he let it fall to earth.
And he had seen them in the aerial courtship of their mating; had seen them feinting and swerving high above the mountain, outlined against the sky. Had seen them come together, and with talons locked, fall cartwheeling over and over for what seemed like hundreds of feet down towards the land. Separating and braking, like lucky parachutists, at the last minute and gliding individually and parallel to the
earth before starting their ascent once more.
The folklorists were always impressed by the bald eagles.
“How long have they been here?” the first group asked.
“Forever, I guess,” had been his answer.
And after doing research they had returned and said, “Yes, Cape Breton is the largest nesting area on the eastern seaboard north of Florida. And the largest east of the Rockies. It’s funny, hardly anybody knows they’re here.”
“Oh, some people do,” Archibald said with a smile.
“It’s only because they don’t use pesticides or herbicides in the forest industry,” the folklorists said. “If they start, the eagles will be gone. There are hardly any nests anymore in New Brunswick or in Maine.”
“Mmmm,” he said.
In the days that followed they tried to prepare for the “singing” in Halifax. They had several practices, most of them at Sal’s because she had talked to the producer and had become the contact person and also because she seemed to want to go the most. They managed to gather a number of people of varying talent, some more reluctant than others. One or two of the practices were held at Archibald’s. The number in the group varied. It expanded sometimes to as many as thirty, including various in-laws and friends of in-laws and people who simply had little else to do on a given evening. Throughout it all, Archibald tried to maintain control and to do it in “his way,” which meant enunciating the words clearly and singing the exact number of verses in the proper order. Sometimes the attention of the younger people wandered and the evenings deteriorated quite early and rapidly, with people drifting off into little knots to gossip or tell jokes or to drink what was in Archibald’s opinion too much. As the pressures of the spring season increased and many of the men left logging to fish or work upon their land, there were fewer and fewer male voices at the practice sessions. Sometimes the men joked about this and the future make-up of the group.
“Do you think you’ll be able to handle all these women by yourself in Halifax, Archibald?” someone might ask, although not really asking the question of him.
As Birds Bring Forth the Sun Page 10