Cape Breton Road (26 page)

“So?” Starr was sipping black coffee, black as his look. Innis had stumbled downstairs, surprised to find him at the table, ignoring the phone.

“I was supposed to go with him. I have to do it, I said I would.”

Starr took another thoughtful sip, watched him. There was
a small black cut on his cheekbone and a swelling over his eye. Innis shifted the receiver in case Dan Rory could hear his heart.

“You asking my permission or something? That’s a first,” Starr said. In the window behind him white mist had lowered the mountain ridge to a flat line.

“Look, I don’t know what I’m in for here, Starr. I don’t want to embarrass anybody. I been to church maybe six times in my life.”

“You ought to go more often. They talk about right and wrong there. But this is the service for you, b’y. You won’t understand a goddamn word of it.”

“You’re the one who should be going, not me.”

“My Gaelic’s not good enough. It’s for the old folks.”

“Like me?”

“Like you. Can you handle it? I thought you’d be shagged out till noon.”

“I didn’t drink a bottle of rum.”

“I don’t see how that matters.” Starr drew slowly on a cigarette, squinting through the smoke. “The princess still sleeping?”

“How would I know? It’s not my bed she sleeps in.”

“Well now, I’m glad to hear that. I was worried. Tell Dan Rory you’ll be up at the mailbox, wearing my necktie with the hangman’s knot, and the worst sport coat I can find you.”

IF INNIS HAD
any prayer in him, it was please God, no rain, he didn’t want the church with rain, he should have insisted Starr come instead of him, Look, you phony, dropping Gaelic when you don’t want me to know what you’re saying, this is your kind of church, not mine, but there it was, rain steady and oppressive,
streaming from the steep roof of the white-shingled church, people ducking for the front door, huddling in the vestibule, nodding and exchanging a few quick words as they shook out an umbrella or a hat. They’d been deprived of the social gathering out front where, Dan Rory said, the older folks liked to meet before the service, some had come miles away for this, and Innis felt maybe the rain was better after all—he’d been spared the introductions, And who’s this young man with you, Dan Rory, no, is it Munro Corbett’s boy, well, well, and you’re liking it here, are you, sure, not like Boston, but less rush and fuss, eh?

With Starr, there might be plenty fuss and rush this day. Innis was worried, leaving Claire, not sure yet just how she felt or what his uncle knew or what he’d throw at her when she came down to the kitchen. Would they have it out, him not even there? But what could his uncle know? Innis and Claire had separated on the path to the dance hall, returned from different directions, she back into the music, Innis out at the cars, feeling tired in a lovely and powerful way Starr might even have smelled on him when he came out of the trees, Jesus, where the hell were you two? Two? Innis had said, I went off for a piss. Starr, fresh from a fistfight that had been broken up, put his face close to Innis’s and said, there’s a lot more than pissing going on here tonight.

Innis inched along behind Dan Rory, the old man halting nearly every step to greet someone in a husky whisper or clasp a hand while he talked. They fell in and out of Gaelic, hitting points of reference that English didn’t seem to touch, and Innis was sure some of it bore on him, this lanky youth in bad clothes. Did they think him a grandson or what? Finlay, up ahead, or Dan Rory would explain. He shouldn’t have come,
his head was back with Claire, he was unsure where and how he would take up with her after last night, what daylight would do to them, but he had to get alone with her to find out, away from Starr. Innis looked at his wrists thrust out the sleeves of a coat Starr must have hidden away to humiliate him in, some kind of polyester fleck like seat covers in a cocktail lounge, and a tie with tiny red horseshoes on it. Dan Rory leaned into yet another pew, huddling in a little circle of Gaelic while Innis waited, his cheeks flushed, there for all to see and whisper about, oh Jesus, he’d have to go through it all when this was over, Who, who,
Co his thu?
, whose are you? Why couldn’t they just sit down? But he couldn’t tug the old man’s coattail, these exchanges meant too much, the old folks craning their necks, checking out who was still in the aisles, the knock of a cane, the squeak of shoes, the labored sigh as someone found his seat, coughs and murmurs and the slick sound of raincoats coming off. Further down sat a girl, a young woman, her blonde hair fanning almost white down her back, bent into a hymnal, she was a wonderful distraction, the grey glass window light on her hair, he wanted to slip in next to her, hey, what’s with you here, all these old folks, are we in the same boat, you and me? Maybe she knew Gaelic, there were young people who did, determined to carry it forward, Finlay said, more up west than here. That would seem sexy to Innis, hearing her talk that tongue, asking her words, interesting words, since he’d heard it only from older people, Dan Rory and Finlay exchanging a private line or two, sometimes Starr on the telephone. Maybe she would sing when the time came, if they sang hymns in Gaelic. Listening to the radio in a car with her she might be ordinary, but here in church, as
Dan Rory directed Innis into the pew behind her, she seemed beautiful, mysterious. An old man in a brown suit scooched over to let him sit, taking in a good glance through his fogged lenses. Then Dan Rory settled his long body against the pew back. Only laughter will save us, Starr had said once. He wasn’t laughing this morning. Was Claire up now? She’d had a lot of wine. Innis had wanted to see her first, blowzy with sleep, that incredible hair that nothing could muss enough to make her look plain. But Starr would see her first. Starr, you bastard. What do I do now?

The old guy beside him leaned forward quickly as the minister ascended to the pulpit, a little rumpled in his black robe. He plopped a Bible down and spread his elbows as if he were at a windowsill. Dan Rory said he was a retired minister, originally from lonely St. Kilda fifty miles out in the Atlantic beyond the Hebrides, he’d been evacuated to other parts of Scotland off that isolated island with the last of St. Kildans in the 1920s, so an island man too, what was it with these island men. A part-time chaplain in a British Columbia prison now, he’d once had a church up the North Shore when they all had the Gaelic at home, Dan Rory said, no English until school, and He was
Dia
before He was God. The man looked rough and ready, that nose had been busted. Thick grey hair, boyish, unkempt over his forehead. He didn’t seem to be preaching when he began to speak, it was more like conversation, just talking to these people, a few of them from his old church. A nod, a faint smile. The language washed over Innis, it hadn’t the schoolteacher edge Starr gave to it, Famous Gaelic Sayings to Inflict on Your Nephew or snatches of nasty comment he didn’t want you to hear, though Innis could tell when
it was raunchy. The minister’s voice was gentle, almost bemused. If he had fire in him, he must have burned it out earlier, having preached in English at another church this morning. No, he was here for them, the old people, and they for him. Innis fixed his eyes on the long blonde hair in front of him, sometimes he believed he could put his thoughts into someone else’s head if he concentrated exceptionally hard and wanted to tap into their mind bad enough, so he let an intimate wish drift toward the blonde, nothing dirty, just frank and cool desire, he still had momentum from last night when everything with Claire seemed to occur in some smooth and natural sequence toward a sweet combustion. But the girl was not picking up his silent signals, she was listening intently to the minister, chin lifted, though maybe, like Innis, not to the words themselves.

Then Innis too perked up: the minister had switched to his burred English to welcome visitors who hadn’t the Gaelic, and then he referred to “the men downstairs” who would lead the sacred singing of the Psalms. Below the pulpit sat a row of eleven men, in dark suits that might have had a shine in the seat some of them, facing the congregation. They had the bearing of Sundays, long Sundays, so it looked. It wasn’t that they were all so old, not as old as Dan Rory, and a couple not much older than Starr, but to Innis there was something ancient about them, strange in their privileged solemnity, plain, without vestments, hands folded around black books in their laps. These men were all from down north, Finlay said on the drive over, where good Gaelic speakers were still found, though almost gone on St. Aubin, and this no doubt the last generation of “good and tone” Precentors, no young Gaelic
voices coming along trained or inclined to take their places, and why anyway since a Gaelic service like this was only a rare event now, a piece of our churchgoing past.

The Precentors stood up, a line of uneven heights and postures, and the lead Precentor put out the first lines,
Arduicheam thu, mo Dhia, ’s mo Rìgh, d’aim beannaicheam gu bràth
, the other men picking it up on the last word, repeating the line, carrying through, and then the leader soloed out another line, continuing the pattern. This was the traditional way, the old way of The Fathers, Dan Rory said, the way your grandfather did it. The men drew out their wavering intonations, unsweetened by any youthful or feminine sounds, to Innis a dirge, slow, unmelodious, not even an organ swell in the background, no adornments or flourishes, unlike the robed, roundmouthed choirs he had heard in those Easter churches back home singing hymns with the enthusiasm of a glee club. Dan Rory’s lips were moving silently, Och, those fellas, they learned the precenting tunes with their ear and their heart, he’d told him, and you’d never hear this in a cathedral. Innis thought that was likely as the lead Precentor held the final dour note until his tenor faded away, the minister gazing down at the men gratefully while they took their seats, coughing and clearing their voices.

The minister put on blackrimmed spectacles, surveyed the congregation once over the tops of them, and began to read from his
Biobull
, putting more feeling into it than Innis had sensed in the Psalms. Innis was watching the girl’s long, slender fingers comb slowly through her hair when Dan Rory nudged him and placed an open Bible on Innis’s lap, tapping the passage in English the minister was reading in Gaelic. Innis nodded, dropped his eyes dutifully to the page. Job, it said in
the upper corner, and okay he would pretend to follow, and then he did read in case Dan Rory asked him about it later, the minister’s voice moving behind these words, rising and falling: For there is hope of a tree, if it be cut down, that it will sprout again, and that the tender branch thereof will not cease. Though the root thereof wax old in the earth, and the stock thereof die in the ground, yet through the scent of water it will bud, and bring forth boughs like a plant. But man dieth, and wasteth away, yea, man giveth up the ghost, and where is he? As the waters fail from the sea, and the flood decayeth and drieth up, so man lieth down, and riseth not: till the heavens be no more, they shall not awake, nor be raised out of their sleep. Oh that thou wouldst hide me.… The minister had stopped and Innis looked up to see him pull his glasses off and tuck them away as he moved into the sermon, his Gaelic soft and easy, almost casual. If that passage he’d read was a grim note, it didn’t sound like it now. Innis handed back the Bible to Dan Rory, smiling thanks, but the old man was absorbed in the words from the pulpit, savoring them, his eyes shut. Rain streamed faintly down the grey translucent windows, gothic but without stained glass color in the light. The church had warmed, the air had a humid scent of damp clothing. Innis’s eyelids drooped but he jerked them open, fingering the small cut on his kneecap to stay awake. Afterward Claire had joked, we don’t even have a cigarette, either of us. Innis couldn’t stop touching her, tracing her face, her body, he wanted to call it all up in his fingertips later, like now, brushing sand from her skin, from the curve of her back. Did you hear Starr? he’d said, I thought he might find us down here, and she’d said she wasn’t worried, he was just some noise up in the
woods, but he must never know about this. Innis said, what will he suspect? Anything he wants, she said, suspicion has its own joys, doesn’t it. They dressed slowly, dreamily, it seemed to Innis now. They didn’t talk much, the stars were gauzing over with high clouds. The mood was broken by the thrum of a gypsum freighter moving up the strait and they lingered until they saw its running lights and its wake hissed along the shore, and Innis kissed her again, and perhaps, recalling it now, his lips were more eager than hers, more hungry.…

The Precentors were standing, clearing their pipes for another Psalm, but this time the congregation, still seated, joined them as another Precentor led, a man with sandy grey hair who ignored the Psalm book in his hand, putting out the long slow line and the worshippers picked it up and sang it back, and the volume rose now with all the added voices, old voices gathering strength. But there was something else: they had begun to rock slowly, almost imperceptibly, as they sang, Dan Rory too, and the others around him, even the girl slightly, she could not resist, Innis himself could barely hold back when he detected a slow tapping that soon turned into a measured thump of hidden Sunday shoes, at first only here and there as if some were shy or it had been so long they had to be roused to it, no hand clapping or wailing or crying out, only this diffident thumping of feet out of sight, marking the beat, to Innis it was the rhythm of his axe, of his tree felling, this cadence of their singing. It echoed something deep in them that went a long way back, this foot beat, he could feel it even though he didn’t know what it was and his foot was going, if lightly, discreetly, after all this was beyond him, before his time. These people did not rock in trances or weep
on their knees, this was the only passion you’d see from them in this holy house, this was their opening up, rocking in the cradle of the old tongue. There were two more Psalms before the eleven men, eyes high and hymnals closed, brought the singing to an end, and the minister delivered a benediction in Gaelic,
Deanamaid urnaigh
, surely the last one some of them would ever hear from a pulpit.