Island (49 page)

“After the clearances,” said his friend the shepherd, “there were not many people left. Most of them were gone to Canada or America or Australia. Most of our young men now are in the war or in Glasgow, some in the south of England. But I am here,” he added rolling a stem of heather between his fingers, “working for an estate and looking after sheep that are not my own. But the dog is mine.”

It was late in the afternoon of his final day and he stood with the shepherd and his ever-watchful dog observing the distant grazing sheep.

He had loved the beautiful dog and his fellows, admired their highly developed intelligence and their eagerness to please. “I will show you how to breed them,” said the shepherd. “They will be with you until the end.”

After the war he returned with the determined gratitude of those who have survived. With his father’s help he cleared yet another field which extended to the ocean’s edge. They invested in better cattle and sheep. His friend, the shepherd, sent him a detailed breeding chart for the development of border collies. He sent for pups and, as they matured, endeavoured to keep them in pens during the breeding season so that they might maintain their specialness. His wife shared all of his enthusiasms and never complained, even when as newlyweds they moved into his father’s house. His widowed father was respectful of their privacy and gave them the bedroom he had once shared
with his wife and journeyed to the upstairs bedroom which his own father had inhabited as an older man.

“Things will get better,” said his father. “We are going forward. Maybe next year we will get a bigger boat.”

Sometimes in the evenings he would look across the ocean, imagining he could see the point of Ardnamurchan and beyond. Sometimes he would try to explain the Highland landscape to his father and his wife, though never mentioning his experiences in the trenches.

On this day when he emerged from his bed, he looked out the window at the rooftops of the houses he had helped build for his two sons in what seemed like another lifetime. He had merely given them the land and had not bothered to draw up deeds to decide if or where his property ended and theirs began. They had all been enthusiastic about the younger men’s approaching marriages; all of them interested in “going forward” and doing the best they could. He had not thought of boundaries or borders until his second son’s death eight years ago. His strong athletic son breaking his neck in a fall from his rooftop while trying to clean his chimney. It had seemed so bizarre and unexpected as he, like most parents, had not expected to outlive his children. There was no will, nor title to the deceased man’s house, as none of them had, originally, thought such documentation to be important. In a fit of delayed guilt he had drawn up a deed so that his daughter-in-law might have title to her house and to a block of surrounding land. As he had not anticipated his son’s death, neither had he anticipated that his daughter-in-law would fall in love with someone else
and move to Halifax, selling her property to a surly summer couple who erected a seven-foot privacy fence and kept a sullen pitbull who paced restlessly behind it. He had not been in the house he helped to build since the changing of the land.

He looked in the direction of his son John’s house and felt like calling him up and asking him to visit but felt that it was too early and that the younger man, perhaps, needed to stay in bed. He felt great sympathy for John, whom he saw now as a harried middle-aged man. He had helped him finance a large boat in order to be competitive, but the fish quotas had changed and now the boat sat idle, unable to be of use and unable to be sold. For the past two seasons, John had been in Leamington, Ontario, fishing with the Portuguese fishermen he had once known off the coast of Newfoundland; fishing Lake Erie for pickerel and bass, perch and smelt; sleeping in a small room on Erie Street with a pull-out couch and a hot plate. The crying gulls followed the boats of Lake Erie too, John said, but they were a different species.

He felt sorrow for John and his family, watching the older children become, he thought, more unruly and their mother more tight-lipped and worn down. He tried to be involved without being intrusive, well aware that a father-in-law was not a husband. John was currently home to celebrate his wife’s birthday, having driven 1,500 miles without pausing to sleep.

He spoke to the dog in Gaelic as he proceeded to put on his clothes. “S’e
thu fhein a tha tapaidh
(It is yourself that’s smart),” he said. He had always spoken to the dog and his predecessors in Gaelic, thinking it somehow preserved a link with his own and
his animal’s ancestral past. He knew that people were amused and impressed by his “bilingual dog,” as they persisted in calling him. He looked now at the dog’s eagerness and felt a twinge of sadness for the unused potential the dog represented. He was, he felt, somewhat like John’s unused expensive boat, except that he was vitally and intensely alive. He felt somehow that he had denied the dog his heritage by no longer keeping sheep or livestock of any kind, with the exception of a few scattered hens.

Many of the neighbouring farms no longer maintained fences, and the keeping of livestock had become almost impossible. Sometimes the dog would fall into a herding position behind the annoyed hens or even younger grandchildren, stimulated by what he was born to do. He was aware also of the dog’s sexual frustration, aware that he was eager to breed and eager to herd and eager to please, always looking at him with his hopeful brown eyes, constantly seeking direction. Sometimes the dog accompanied him in the passenger seat of his pickup truck, looking out the window at the passing landscape, his excitement quickening if he happened to view livestock on the distant hills.

The dog had been with him when he had backed out of the Co-op parking lot into the fender of an approaching car. While assessing the damage he had overheard someone say, “He is too old to be driving. He’s always preoccupied. The dog would be a better driver.” He had gone for a driver’s test and passed it with flying colours. “I wish I had your reflexes,” said the examiner.

He and the dog had just gone outside to the morning sun when the pickup truck drove into the yard. Although he was
temporarily surprised, he recognized the young driver as one of a series of “clear-cutters” who yearned for the spruce trees that had gradually reclaimed the field he had once cleared as a younger man. He was torn between sympathy for the young clear-cutters, who were ambitious and attempting to make a living, and annoyance at their rapaciousness. They would option a parcel of land and cut everything in sight, taking the valuable logs and pulp and leaving a desolation of stumpage and slashed limbs and inferior wood behind. They worked rapidly with their heavy power equipment, sometimes leaving behind trenches the height of a man. They would pay owners such as himself a percentage of the cordage.

The young man identified himself through a Gaelic patronymic, adding helpfully, “I’m your cousin.”

He was annoyed by the young man’s brashness, recalling that he had a particular reputation for leaving disaster behind him and not being overly forthright in his cordage payments.

“I may as well log off your wood,” he said. “It will be good for you and good for me. May as well log it off before the damn tourists get everything.”

The tourists were a sore point with some people. They had begun to flood into what they saw as prime recreation area, marvelling at the pristine water and the unpolluted air. Many of them were from the New England area and an increasing number from Europe. They slept late and often complained about the whine of the clear-cutters’ saws. In the summer the clear-cutters often began their work at four in the morning in order to avoid the extremes of the summer’s heat. Some of the tourists had
taken pictures of the carnage left behind by the clear-cutters and had them published in environmental magazines.

“I’m just trying to make a living,” said the young man. “This isn’t my recreational area. This is my home. Yours too.” He felt a wave of sympathy for the young man, recognizing familiar echoes within his speech.

“What about it?” continued his visitor. “Soon the tourists and the Government will have everything. Look what happened to the fishing. Look at your salmon nets. Look at the Park to the north. We’ll all be living in a wilderness area before we know it.”

He was surprised that the young man knew about his salmon nets. For generations they had set the delicate, beautiful nets, and they had been a promise for his sons. They had fished under the threat that the Government would eliminate such customs as theirs because it was thought to be more beneficial if their few salmon entered the mainland rivers for the benefit of the summer anglers. And the rumours had proven, eventually, to be true.

He winced also at the thought of “the Park.” Located farther north, it seemed to travel like a slow-moving glacier, claiming more and more land to be used as hiking trails and wilderness areas, while the families in its path worried about eviction notices.

“People like you and me,” said the young man, “are no match for the Government and the tourists.”

“I’ll think about it,” he said, trying to be polite in the face of growing frustration.

“Think all you like,” said the young man. “Thinking doesn’t change facts. Here’s my card,” he said, offering a white rectangle which he drew from his shirt pocket.

“Never mind the card,” he said. “I’ll know where to find you.”

The truck left in what seemed like a hail of small rocks.

He had wanted to say something like, “When I was your age, I was in the trenches,” but it seemed like something an old man might say, and, perhaps, it would not matter very much.

He was still deep in troubled thought and looking at the ground when he became aware of John’s approach. He had walked quietly across the field that separated their houses.

“Hello,” he said with a start when John appeared suddenly before him. “He wants to buy the wood,” he added by way of explaining his recent visitor.

“Yes,” said his son, “I recognized the truck.”

They were silent for a while, moving the pebbles of the driveway with their shoes, uncomfortable with their private and communal thoughts to the extent that they were almost relieved when the bright new car came rapidly but quietly up the driveway. Both of them recognized the casually dressed real estate salesman, although they did not know the more formally dressed couple in the back seat.

“Hi,” said the salesman, stepping out of the car and extending his hand in what seemed like a single motion. “These people are looking for land with ocean frontage,” he said. “We have driven forty miles and seen nothing they like as well as yours. They are from Germany,” he said, dropping his voice, “but they speak perfect English.”

“Oh, it’s not for sale,” he heard himself say.

“You shouldn’t say that until you know what they’re willing to pay,” said the real estate agent. “They say there is no land like this for sale anywhere in Europe.”

He found himself amazed for the second time in the still-early day. He recognized that the real estate agent operated on commission, but was not really certain why that should annoy him.

The German couple emerged from the car. They shook hands very formally. “Nice day,” said the man, while his wife smiled pleasantly. “Very nice land,” he continued. “Runs down to the ocean?”

“Yes,” he said, “runs down to the ocean.”

The couple smiled and then walked a few yards away and began to converse in German.

John tapped him on the shoulder and beckoned to him. They, in turn, moved a few yards away, and it took a few seconds before he realized John was talking to him in Gaelic. “You could ask them if they want the wood,” he said. “If you were to sell, maybe you could sell the wood first and then the land later.”

He was startled by what seemed like a family betrayal. They continued to speak uncomfortably in Gaelic while a short distance away the couple continued to converse in German. The real estate agent stood listlessly between them while the July sun contributed to the perspiration forming on his brow. He looked slightly irritated at being banished to what seemed like a state of unilingual loneliness.

“Ask them if they’re interested in the wood,” said John, moving toward the real estate agent and speaking in English. He explained his issue in low tones and the real estate agent conveyed the information to the couple, who spoke enthusiastically to one another in German.

The real estate agent came back, seemingly impressed by his role as interpretive negotiator. “They don’t care about the
wood,” he said. “They say it just blocks the view of the ocean. You can do what you want with it. They wouldn’t take possession until next spring and you can do anything you want with it until then. They will offer a very good price.”

The German gentleman approached and smiled. “Very nice land,” he repeated. Then he added, “Not very many people around here.”

“No,” he heard himself say, “not any more. A lot of them gone to the States. A lot of the younger people gone to Halifax or southern Ontario.”

“Oh yes,” said the man. “Nice and quiet.”

He was aware of the presence of John beside him.

“I’ll have to think about it,” he said.

“Sure,” said the real estate agent and handed him his card, “but the sooner the better.”

The Germans smiled and shook his hand. “Very nice land,” the man repeated. “Hope to hear from you soon.”

They got into the car and waved as they departed.

“Not telling you what to do,” said John, “but I’ve spent almost my whole life here, too. You always said, ‘We have to go forward’ and ‘Things will get better.’ Maybe if this worked out I could stay here with my wife and children for a while.” He stood uncertainly for a moment, uncomfortable in his father’s presence. Finally, he said, “Well, I have to go now. Good-bye.
Sin e ged tha
(That’s the way it is).”

“Yes,” he said, “good-bye.
Sin e ged tha.”

“It is going to be hot today,” he said to himself, “as hot as that day we visited Condon’s Woollen Mill.” But then he remembered that Condon’s Woollen Mill no longer existed.