Great Cape Breton Storytelling

by Great Cape Breton Storytelling (epub)

  The tragedies vary, but not the love of them. My old friend, Marcel Boudreau, has six sons. One of them works in Ottawa. One is a doctor. Another runs the saw mill at Margaree Forks. Another has a big fishing boat in Cheticamp and makes more money than you can imagine. The fifth is a great fiddler. They are all busy, successful men. Their houses are full of comings and goings. Marcel has their pictures hanging on the wall. Pictures of his boys graduating, pictures of the boys getting married, pictures of the grandchildren, but who does he talk about? It’s always the youngest, Daniel, the one who ran away. I can see Marcel now. He will sigh and look at the faded picture of Daniel in the surplice of an altar boy. Then he will say, “but Daniel was the smartest.” Then he will sigh again, and say, “even Father Aucoin said he was the smartest.”

  Marcel blames himself, that’s who he grieves over, the youngest. Daniel was only five when his mother died. He never got over her death. He didn’t fit in at the Presbytery. He and Father Aucoin didn’t get along. Daniel could never do anything right. It was comical, really, because they were alike as two peas in a pod. I could see Daniel being exactly the same type of priest as Father Aucoin. Daniel was the only person I ever saw who could correct my cousin at the piano and live to tell the tale.

  Marcel blames himself. He blames himself for the boy and he blames himself for his wife’s death. Those are the two stones Marcel wears in his shoes and he’s been so busy polishing them all these years, he’s never had time to remarry. He’ll never admit this, but after Marie died, he decided if God wasn’t going to put Marcel Boudreau into Purgatory right away, then he’d do the job for him. So there he was, a tall, strapping man with dark hair and a flashing smile, alone. He cooked his own meals. Went to church by himself. I’d be a rich man today if I’d received a dollar for every time a woman said to me, “I’d like to meet Marcel Boudreau.”

  Of course, it’s natural to grieve. Who wouldn’t? Marie was wise and beautiful. I loved her myself. But people die before their time, it happens. If it didn’t there would be no widows and who would need a matchmaker?

  I arranged three marriages for Peter Delaney before he was twenty-five. He was twenty when he married the first time. His first wife caught pneumonia and died six months after they were married. They barely had time to get acquainted. A year later, I fixed him up with a young woman from Chimney Corners. A Scottish girl. Just as Gaelic as the day is long. Her family lived way up in the hills. She scarcely had a word of French or English.

  She had seen Peter when he was driving the taxi from Cheticamp to Baddeck and taken a shine to him. I couldn’t see how it was going to work out myself. She spoke Gaelic and Peter spoke French, but it didn’t seem to bother them at all. Peter liked her right off and they lived happily ever after. Except happily ever after turned out to be pretty short. She died with their first child. The baby died too. So there was Peter, all of twenty-three years, married twice and nothing to show for it.

  I lost track of him after that and I think for a time he lost track of himself. Anyway, he surfaced a few years later and I fixed him up with Monique Poirier from Grand Etang. This time, it took. They had a dozen kids and Peter became what Father Aucoin used to call a pillar of the community. He worked so hard, I’m surprised he ever had time to make kids.

  But what do I remember? What does Philibert the Matchmaker remember? Not Monique Poirier and her twelve, happy children, no, not a bit of it. I remember the second wife. She had freckles and reddish hair. She was what the Scots call “a bonnie girl.” She was waiting for me at her father’s house. All she had was a sailor’s canvas bag. She kissed her parents goodbye as if she were walking around the corner instead of down the mountainside to meet her new husband. When I walked down the mountain with her to meet Peter, she would not stop chattering. She was as full of life as one can be. I only understood half of what she said, but that didn’t stop her. She was sure my few words of Gaelic were the equal of a whole dictionary.

  I often think of that Scottish girl. Sometimes, I dream about her. I can see her clear as clear. It’s not sensible, I know, but I blame myself. If I hadn’t mentioned the Scottish girl to Peter Delaney, he would not have noticed her, and if he hadn’t noticed her, they wouldn’t have gotten married.

  You would think I would have learned, but I didn’t. If the Pope could be infallible, so could Philibert the Matchmaker. I’m sure I gave as much advice around the kitchen table as my cousin ever did in his confessional. The only difference was, instead of saying penance, you had to give me a few pennies; that was your penance; pennies for Philibert, Hail Marys for Father Aucoin.

  Bah! That was a long time ago. I don’t give advice any longer. I’ve retired. If you want to collect stones in your shoes, then you can place them by yourself. You don’t need my help. I’m not like my cousin. May he rest in peace. I have no magic formula that’s going to get anyone to heaven.

  Yes, a smart man, sure enough. There was no one who could play the organ like Father Aucoin, but I’m not sure he knew shit from shinola. Ah, don’t get your knickers in a twist. He’s my cousin and I’ll say what I want about him. I did to his face so why shouldn’t I now, now he’s gone?

  Sure, sure, I know he did good things, more than most people know. I didn’t find out myself until he died that he gave two thousand dollars to get the Credit Union started. And the Credit Union was the start of the Fishermen’s Co-op and just about everything else in the village. But I know where he got the money. He got it from his brother. His brother would send him money from time to time for this and that. I was there once when he got a cheque to buy himself a car. It was a cheque for three hundred dollars. I’d never seen that much money before; it made quite an impression. I remember Father Aucoin laughing when he read the letter. He said to me, “How can I buy a car when half of my parishioners can barely put shoes on their children’s feet?”

  Easy as pie, I told him. Your brother sent you the money for a car, buy a car, that was my advice. I was ready to go to Halifax and get him a Chevy.

  My sainted cousin also did more harm than most people know. I used to spend half my time trying to patch up his blunders. Sometimes I could and sometimes I couldn’t. Remember the time, he preached against Dulcine Leblanc for not “avoiding the occasion for sin”?

  Let me tell you, that wasn’t pretty. There she was, completely alone in the world. Her brothers and sisters had all moved away. Her parents who were ancient and without two pennies to their name died leaving her nothing but a harbour shack and my good cousin got her fired from her job at the hospital in Cheticamp. It was the only job she ever had in the village. That was a wonderful thing, let me tell you. Just wonderful. No one would talk to her. She lived alone for months on a few people’s charity. Finally, in the dead of winter, William Doucet was obliged to drive her to Inverness and put her on the train for Boston with nothing but one cardboard suitcase and a few dollars in her pocket. I could have throttled my sainted cousin.

  Another time, I was invited to a house not far from here and found this young man beside himself with rage and despair. He’d fallen in love with a young widow from Cheticamp and had asked her to marry him. She had agreed. I had nothing to do with it. The two had met and fallen in love all by themselves. This is a constant surprise to me, the way people decide that they are in love. It seems the most arbitrary thing in the world. One day, they’re walking along minding their own business, the next day, they’re in love.

  Anyway, the two of them had fallen in love and the young man had gone off happily to see Father Aucoin to arrange for the reading of the banns. Well, he finds my good cousin teaching some child how to hammer out her scales and he waits patiently in the kitchen for the lesson to end. Eventually, the priest appears. The young man explains that he has found the love-of-his-life and he would like Father Aucoin to read the banns at High Mass.

  My cousin agrees immediately, for the young man is from a fine family. Father Aucoin knows
him well and would put him firmly on the improving side of the parish register.

  “And what is the name of the girl?” asks my cousin with his fountain pen cocked, ready to record her pedigree in the parish register.

  The young man tells Father Aucoin her name and explains that she is a young widow who lives just over the parish line in Cheticamp with three small children.

  The pen freezes in my cousin’s hand. His lips tighten. His eyes narrow. Father Aucoin is not pleased. He looks away from the young man. Puts his fountain pen down on the desk. He begins to drum his fingers lightly against his knees. A sure sign that he is displeased. Finally, Father Aucoin tells the young man in the voice he reserves for God.

  “I think you should reconsider. You deserve better.”

  The young man is so shocked he can barely muster the voice to protest. All he can hear are the words, “I think you should reconsider. You deserve better.”

  There is a long, long silence in the room. For the young man, it feels like he has been plunged to the bottom of the pond and is having trouble surfacing.

  When my cousin sees that he has shocked the young man, he explains, “I’ve met this woman. She can barely read. She was married at eighteen. She’s had children like a rabbit. She’s older than you are. Let her find someone more suitable to her station in life.”

  The young man left the Presbytery as if someone had shot him. Here was the man who had taught him catechism; the man he had served as an altar boy; whom he regarded as highly as his own father, telling him that the woman he wished to marry was not suitable to his station in life.

  I found the young man a day or so later in the most terrible despair. His parents did not know what to do. One minute, he was shedding tears of rage at Father Aucoin and the next he was feeling ashamed of himself for falling in love with a woman “beneath his station in life.” After all, Father Aucoin was a man who knows.

  In those days I was sure that Father Aucoin did not know everything. So I told the lad as delicately as possible, for the young man was in an excited state, that my good cousin didn’t know shit from shinola, and furthermore that the love-of-his-life was an exceptionally fine woman and he should get himself to Cheticamp as quickly as possible, marry the lady at St. Pierre, not here at de la Mer, and live happily ever after.

  Which is exactly what he did. They got married in Cheticamp and had three more children. A happier, more saintly family would be hard to find. That was one of my successes.

  Marcel Boudreau, on the other hand, I count as a failure. He eventually became a stone in my shoe. No matter what I said. No matter how many times I visited Marcel was determined to be inconsolable.

  He had decided that his wife’s death was his fault and therefore he should be punished. In a way, he was right. Marie Boudreau died of TB and too many babies. She had eight children in eight years, six lived and two died. It wore her out.

  Yes, yes, I know it takes two people to make a baby, but there are ways to control how many babies you make and neither Marcel or Dr. Seveau had the guts to go against the Gospel according to Father Aucoin, that’s the long and short of it. Sure, I blame Marcel. I blame Dr. Seveau too. He had about as much fibre as wet grass.

  Anyway, it was all very sad. Marie died at thirty-two. Thirty-two! And Marcel carried out his own trial, was his own prosecutor, judge and jury, convicted himself and never slept with another woman. That was his punishment.

  Two wrongs never make a right and they didn’t this time either. After Marie died, I’m sure that the boy must have felt some of his father’s anger at the church and himself. I think the older boys understood, but not Daniel. When I took him to the Presbytery to be the priest’s boy, I thought he would grow out of it. I was sure he would get along with Father Aucoin just as his older brother had, but it didn’t work out. The anger stayed and set down roots in the boy’s soul.

  In the end we all get condemned for some crime or other. My cousin thought we all could be saints. I’m convinced we’re all criminals. I don’t know exactly what I’ve been convicted of, God knows there’s enough to choose from, but I know what my punishment is, I’ve been condemned to glimpse heaven. Fortunately, it’s not playing a harp somewhere beyond the clouds.

  Heaven was walking down the mountainside with the young Scottish girl. The snow was brilliant, white and light cascading around us with every step. The sky was so blue that you could feel the colour. Lights sparkled in the auburn hair of the Scottish girl. Her voice was the most wonderful music I have ever heard. It was so courageous, so filled with cheery determination to make a great success of her life. I still dream about that day.

  I fell in love with the idea of life as it can be, but never is, as it is held out to us and is denied us. I was allowed for a few short moments to feel with my entire heart and then I was released to go back to my ordinary life. Yes, I fell in love with her, but not in the way you imagine, because I knew that it was as futile an affection as my cousin’s infatuation with the Bible.

  I think my sainted cousin received the same punishment with his vocation. He never talked about it, but I am sure that when he was a young man, the door was opened for him and he was allowed for a few seconds to get a brief glimpse of heaven. And he spent the rest of his life scrambling to pry the door back open; the punishment for my cousin was the harder he pried, the harder he prayed, the farther away heaven got, until in the end his heart gave out with trying.

  I’ve never been quite sure whether he was magnificently stupid or just more courageous than I. He would not admit defeat, not for a second. He would have died first and in the end, I guess, he did. He was only fifty-three. So many people leaned on him that sometimes I think he did stupid things from nothing more than fatigue. He had no wife. No one to help sustain him except the circulars from the Bishop which always said the same thing, “buck up, pray more and stay away from Credit Unions.” He felt remorse. I know that. He felt remorse about Ducline Leblanc. He knew he’d done an evil thing, but he was trapped by his vision just as surely as I was trapped by mine.

  I miss my cousin. There’s no one to go to war against now.

  Douglas Arthur Brown

  The Epistle

  It was the spring my father didn’t return home.

  He had installed us on the Island of Cape Breton in the town of Glace Bay. For as many winters as I could remember (perhaps seven at most) my parents and I had boarded in the compound of the iron ore mine in Labrador from August to April. My mother kept active working in the communal kitchen preparing morning and evening meals; my father worked the back shift and slept during the days. To get away from the compound, my father and some of the other men went into town on Friday evenings, often not returning until an hour or so before he had to report to work on Sunday night, sometimes more drunk than sober. My mother and I never left the compound.

  I played with the other children and received an eclectic education from a retired nurse known as Teacher. She was a miner’s widow who stayed on at the compound year-round to school the children and mend their skinned knees.

  Each spring we returned to Antigonish. We spent every spring and summer with my grandmother there. That would be my mother’s mother. I never met my grandparents on my father’s side of the family. We didn’t see much of my father during those summers. He often took a tattered army tent and pitched it along one of his secret fishing ponds. Occasionally, on a Saturday, he returned home for the day to stock up on provisions and was off again Sunday before morning Mass. Once or twice during those months he’d also show up midweek, take a bath and catch the rail-liner to Halifax to see to business matters for the coming winter. Business matters is what my mother called it, my grandmother had other names for it, none of which I could ever make out when she muttered them under her breath. These words seemed to embarrass my mother; she’d just look down at a broken piece of linoleum on the floor. My father would leave us, reeking of
Vitalis and return a few days later smelling of beer, a little unsteady on his feet. He’d sleep off the rest of the afternoon and return to his fishing holes after supper.

  My mother was too busy caring for my cantankerous old grandmother to notice the absences of my father. Granny never smiled, she was bony, and her hair net left deep purple folds in her forehead. She was prone to tears, often muttered to herself, and during those rare moments when she was lucid, she bullied my mother or boxed my ears.

  “If it wasn’t for that old windbag, we might be making big money in the diamond mines and living in South Africa driving around in a Mercedes,” my father often said. At other times it would be Costa Rica or Australia. Always, it was far away from wherever we were at the moment and that was usually under Granny’s roof. When my father graced us with his brief stays, I’d often find him standing outside smoking a cigarette he rolled himself.

  “Trouble with your mother, kid, is that she should’ve been a nurse. One of them nun nurses that just loves misery.”

  These were our summers. That is, until the summer Granny died and the house was sold to a family who could afford to buy it. My grandmother had only been renting and we were asked to vacate the premises within ten days. The landlord, in lieu of my grandmother’s many years of delinquent rent payments, requisitioned her meagre collection of furniture.

  My father placed a call to Labrador to hear if we could arrive earlier than planned that year. It was a long distance call and my father shouted into the receiver. He kept glancing at me during the telephone conversation, nodding his head like a woodpecker as he responded to the voice on the other end. When he hung up he informed my mother that Teacher, the miner’s wife I mentioned earlier, had also died. They couldn’t find a replacement and the iron ore company wasn’t accepting miners with school-aged children that season. My father punctuated this recap of the telephone con-versation with a backhand across my head.