No Great Mischief (10 page)

If we were there in the windy days of fall, and if the wind were off the sea, we would run down to the
Calum Ruadh’s
Point and engage in contests to see who could remain standing in the wind’s force the longest. If we faced the sea, the wind would blow our breath back within us as the spray from the water on the rocks rose and covered us and
Calum Ruadh’s
gravestone with glistening drops, and we would have to avert our heads and gasp for air or throw ourselves on our stomachs and breathe with our mouths pressed against the flattened grass or the cranberry vines or the creeping tendrils of wet moss. If the wind were off the land, we would not be allowed to go, for fear that a sudden gust might lift and carry us over the point and dash us down to the shining boulders or out to fall into the wind-whipped sea, which was always brown and angry in its state of agitation.

After such storms, the face of the cliff would be changed, although ever so slightly. Bits of rock would have fallen because of the waves’ pounding, and small sections of the seams of clay and shale would also have been washed into the sea. Only the hardest promontories of pure stone seemed to remain constant, but if one looked closely one could see changes in them also. A new smoothness born of a new wearing, or small pockmarks on
new surfaces where previously there were none. The cliff was moving inland, slowly but steadily, while
Calum Ruadh
‘s grave seemed to be moving out towards its edge.

Gradually, it seemed, my sister went less frequently to the house of our older brothers. It is always hard to notice change when you are in its midst, especially as a child. Perhaps in the same way that one does not notice the change the sea inflicts upon the cliff until the morning following the storm. In retrospect, it seems the change was as much due to their perception of her and her own changes as to any other factor. A certain uneasiness at the development of her own small femininity in the midst of their masculine lives. Almost as if they became more unsure as we all grew older. As if their lives and the environment surrounding it were good enough for them but not for her.

Perhaps they were embarrassed by the fact that the bathroom was a bucket or sometimes not even that; that in the hot summer nights, after drinking beer, they would raise their upstairs windows and urinate down the outside clapboard walls of their silent house, the steam rising upwards to meet them from the dark. Embarrassed by the fact that they slept with loaded rifles under their beds, and on nights when the moon shone with its full brightness, they would kneel or crouch by their opened windows, straining to sight the antlers of the deer who moved across the silent fields towards their beleaguered garden. They would lean forward from their windows, straining to see along the blue-grey barrels of their rifles which glinted in the moonlight, straining to get the antlered head in line with the rifle’s sights by the light of
Lochran àigh nam bochd
, the Gaelic phrase for the moon, “the lamp of the poor.”

And if the shot were true, they would race down the stairs, fastening their trousers as they ran, and gather their long-bladed knives from the waiting kitchen table. Out in the field, lit by the “lamp of the poor,” they would cut the throat of the still-thrashing deer so that the blood would run free and not taint or ruin the valuable meat. They would work quickly and efficiently, disembowelling and skinning and cutting the carcass into quarters, their knives flashing in and out of the body’s cavities, severing the grey ropes of the intestines and separating the still-shuddering redness of the heart. Later they would pack the meat within buckets and lower it into the well as a means of basic refrigeration, pulling it up by wet ropes when it was needed, but ever aware that it would not last for very long.

My brothers were embarrassed, in my sister’s presence, by the silver-grey rooster energetically servicing the members of his harem, pressing their beaks towards the dust, it seemed, whether they liked it or not, and by the slavering, moaning bull mounting the cow as she offered herself to him in the yard.

And they were embarrassed at mealtimes, embarrassed by the cups without handles and by the fact that they sometimes ate standing up, spearing the half-boiled potatoes out of the bubbling pot upon the stove and sometimes peeling them with the same knives they used to bleed the deer’s throat or to cut the rope and twine of their fishing gear. Embarrassed by the flies and by the dishes waiting too long in the dishpan to be washed.

One day, at noon, my small sister said, “Don’t you have a tablecloth here?” and again, “Don’t you have any napkins?” I remember the eyes of the youngest of my older brothers clouding over at her questions as if he were saying to himself, “If
mother were here now, she would know what to do.” Feeling inadequate, perhaps, in what he perceived as a feminine situation and perhaps remembering his mother in a way in which my sister and I did not. Remembering her interest in order and cleanliness. “You are the only person I know who goes around looking in other people’s ears,” he had said grumpily to her that morning before they set off across the ice and when she was making her final inspection. More final, it turned out, than was then realized, for she was never again to look into the cavities of the ears of anyone.

Because there was no wharf on the shore off which my brothers fished, their boat had to be dragged onto the rocks above the high-water mark when the day was done. It also had to be pushed into the water when the day began, and sometimes they would be up to their knees or even their waists before the boat would have enough water to float free of the strand without grounding its prow upon the rocky bottom. After the final shove, they would clamber over the bow or even the sides, if the boat had begun to turn, and they would grasp the oars and pole or row themselves out farther until it was safe to kick their engine into life. Eventually they built themselves a primitive skidway of creosoted timber, which they coated with grease and which made both the launching and the landing considerably easier. On the shore, beside the skidway, they kept a horse collar and a set of harnesses and a whipple tree and a chain. And each morning, when they set out, they took with them a can of oats with a tightly secured lid which they placed within the bow of the boat.

When their day on the water was done and as they approached the shore, my oldest brother, Calum, would stand forward in the bow and, placing the fingers of his right hand within his mouth, emit two piercing whistles. And the mare, Christy, although often grazing almost a mile away with the other horses, would raise her head and toss her mane and come galloping down towards the shore, sending the small rocks and flecks of turf flying before her eager hooves.

And after the engine was shut off, and as the boat glided silently towards the land, its wake spreading out in a widening V behind it, she would wait, nickering and tossing her head and lifting her front hooves impatiently in the water curling upon the shore. “Ah, Christy,” he would say,
“M’eudail bheag
,” and he would jump over the bow and come towards her, holding the oats before him like an ancient trader proffering goods to the individual who waited upon the land. And as she nuzzled the oats, he would pat her neck and croon into her mane, a mixture of Gaelic and English syllables – almost as if he were courting and she were the object of his strong affections. And then he would put the collar on her neck, followed by the harness, and hook the chain into the steel ring which he had drilled into the boat’s prow. And, again, responding to his whistle, she would leap forward and, in a scrabble of flying rocks, haul the boat up the greased skidway and to the safety which lay beyond the water’s reach. And then he would pull the harness off and pat her some more while she rubbed her strong head up and down against his chest, and then she would go off to join her fellows while he and his brothers walked towards home.

And I remember a day when I had accompanied them on the water and everything had seemed to go wrong. It had been cold and raining and the engine seemed to sputter and cough because of what was perceived as water in the gas and the carburetor had to be checked and the gas lines blown free while the boat rocked randomly at the mercy of the waves. The buoys were adrift and the ropes seemed to become fouled and tangled with a perverse spirit all their own. And the left side of Calum’s face was swollen and throbbing because of the broken and infected molar which had been pulsating there for days. It was a Saturday morning and I had received a ride to their house on Friday evening and had begged to go with them in the boat on the following morning. They had not been expecting me and were reluctant to take me because of the unpleasant weather but uneasy too about leaving me in their house alone. I had finally been allowed to accompany them and my responsibility was to take the oats for Christy. Now as the boat finally neared the shore I realized I had forgotten it. We had been rushed in the morning and everyone had been so occupied with the day’s problems that its absence had gone unnoticed. I did not say anything. It had been a miserable day and I longed for the comfort of my grandparents’ house and my microscope and my stamp collection and the radio and the possibility of playing chess with my sister. I had made more than one mistake, it seemed, but I still did not say anything.

As the boat approached the shore, the engine which had been so troublesome all day was shut off and Calum went to the prow and uttered two shrill whistles. We could not see any horses, but assumed they were standing in the trees as they sometimes did to take shelter from the rain. He whistled again and then she
appeared, silhouetted in the rain high above the
Calum Ruadh’s
Point. And then she came galloping down to meet us. Once, her hind legs slipped sideways on the rain-drenched footing, leaving a brown skidmark on the wet greenness of the grass, but she recovered quickly and came hurtling headlong down towards us.

“Where’s the goddamn oats?” he said as he prepared to go over the side to meet her. My omission was suddenly noticeable to all.

“Jesus Christ,” he said. “As if there hasn’t been enough wrong with this goddamn day, and now this.” And he seized me by the front of my jacket and lifted me with my feet dangling above the side of the boat as I looked into his enraged and swollen face. I had the temporary sensation that he might fling me overboard.

“Put him down,” said my other brothers in chorus even as I said, “But it’s okay. She comes anyway.”

“It’s
not
okay,” he shouted, shaking me so that my teeth rattled. “She comes because it’s part of the bargain. She depends on us to do the right thing.” And then he more or less let me fall into the bottom of the boat. And it was difficult to know whether I had been rejected or released.

“Jesus Christ,” he said, putting his hand to his jaw. “This is killing me.” And then he reached forward to the box of tools he had been using too much all morning in an attempt to solve the engine’s problems. Taking the grease-stained and gasoline-smelling pliers in his right hand, he thrust them into his mouth and twisted even as he pulled. There was the sharpened shudder one associates with the fingernail upon the blackboard except it was more screamingly intense. And perhaps it was caused by the steel on the tooth but more likely by the tooth grinding on the
bone of its foundation. Twice he twisted and jerked his head sideways even as he leaned it in the opposite direction and the blood and pus began to run down the contours of his jaw and down his neck to vanish within the hair upon his chest. But in spite of the strength of his hand, the loosened and bloodied tooth held firm within its place.

By this time the boat was drifting sideways towards the rocky shore where Christy waited impatiently, tossing her head in the falling rain and nickering for our landing. We had to shake ourselves like people coming out of a mesmerizing trance to reach for the oars and to redirect our bow towards the land. Calum went over the side, although he had no oats, and Christy came down to meet him and nuzzled his extended palm, which was all he had to offer. And he patted her neck and crooned to her as always, even as he wiped his bloodied hands on her wet and glistening mane. And then he harnessed her as usual. But instead of hooking the chain into the boat’s ring he asked for a length of rope which he fastened to its end. And to the other end of the rope he fastened a length of light but tensile line and, climbing back into the boat, tied the line somehow around his tooth.

“Hold me down,” he said to his brothers. And when Christy heard the whistle, she bunched her shoulders and sprang forward as she was used to, without knowing she was tied to a man instead of to a boat. When her weight hit him, his head and the upper part of his body snapped forward but his brothers had braced their feet and set their shoulders and they held him firm as the yellowed infected tooth flew out and over the
bow and rolled at the end of its line like a white and yellow seashell in the waters of the shore. It seemed very flimsy now in proportion to the pain that it had cost, and Christy stopped and looked over her shoulder the way she did when the chain had not been hooked properly to the boat’s ring or a piece of her harness had become disconnected or broken. She had felt little or no weight at all.

“Thank Christ,” he said, reaching over the side and scooping up handfuls of salt water which he splashed into his bleeding mouth, rinsing and spitting and coughing. “I was not angry at you,
‘ille bhig ruaidh
,” he said, turning to me. “It was my tooth that was bothering me.” There was a cut on his lower lip where the line had sliced through at the zinging moment of tautness. It seemed to bleed with a bright clear redness all its own.

On Monday morning my office will be filled, as it was on Friday, with those who want to be more beautiful. Some are children whose parents have made their appointments for them. Some are referrals made by friends and colleagues who practise the more basic forms of dentistry. Others have sought me out from considerable distances in the hope that I might give them what they want and think they need.