No Great Mischief (14 page)

On the way home on that hot afternoon and early evening we were all taken with the changes in our lives and with our near and distant pasts.

“It is true,” said my grandfather after we had been travelling for about an hour. “I found it in the library in Halifax.”

“What?” asked Grandpa.

“Wolfe and the Highlanders at Quebec, on the Plains of Abraham. He was just using them against the French. He was suspicious of them and probably would have been satisfied if the French had killed them all. Just using them for his own goals, for as long as they might last.”

“But,” said Grandpa, “didn’t you tell me once that it was a French-speaking MacDonald who got them past the sentries? And that he was first up the cliff with the other Highlanders, that they pulled themselves up by grasping the roots of the twisted trees? Didn’t you tell me that?”

“Yes,” said my grandfather. “
First up the cliff
. Wolfe was still below in the boat. Think about it.”

“They were first because they were the best,” said Grandpa stoutly. “I think of them as winning Canada for
us
. They learned that at Culloden.”

“At Culloden they were on the
other side,”
said Grandfather in near exasperation. “MacDonald fought
against
Wolfe. Then he went to Paris. That’s where he learned his French. Then he was given a pardon so that he could fight
for
the British Army. He fought against Wolfe at Culloden and then fought for him years later at Quebec. Perhaps you can’t blame Wolfe for being suspicious under the circumstances. He had a memory like other men. Still MacDonald died fighting
for
the British Army, not
against
it. And one doesn’t like to think of people giving their best, even their lives, under deceptive circumstances.”

“No one knows all the thoughts of those men,” said Grandpa philosophically.

“No,” said Grandfather, “but some men do leave records of their thoughts. Wolfe referred to the Highlanders as his secret enemy and once, speaking of recruiting them as soldiers in a letter to his friend Captain Rickson, he made the cynical comment, ‘No great mischief if they fall.’ ”

“Speaking of wars,” said Grandma, who had remained silent throughout the conversation, “I got this letter from my sister in San Francisco the morning we left. But in all the excitement I forgot about it.”

Taking a letter from her purse, she began to read:

“Dear Catherine and Alexander:

Received your last letter and, as usual, we were very glad to get it. We were glad to learn that you were keeping well and looking forward to your trip to Halifax to attend Alexander’s graduation (or
gille beag ruadh
, as you have always called him). Very pleased also that his sister Catherine is graduating in Alberta. It is too bad that you could not attend her graduation as well, but we cannot be in two places at the one time, as we all know. Those children must be a source of great satisfaction to you both.

I am sure you were glad to see the other boys as well on their return from Peru. It is too bad that they could not stop off in San Francisco to see us, but we understand the complications of air tickets and immigration and all the rest of it. Maybe sometime. I hope they are doing well in Ontario. Speaking of Ontario, our
own grandson Alexander has received his draft notice, which means that they want him for Vietnam. He does not want to go and now we don’t want him to go either. We supported the war under that
nice
President Kennedy, but it seems different now. Calum says he does not trust Lyndon Johnson’s eyes and that we at home here are not being told the truth and that the people over there (Vietnam) only want their own country for themselves. Anyway, there is a great deal of confusion over the war here now and many protests as you probably know from the newspapers and television and many of our young people are going to Canada.

If you could give us the address of your boys in Ontario and write to them, maybe they would help him. ‘Blood is thicker than water,’ as the old saying goes and you know we would do the same for you.

Both of us are keeping well, although we are not getting any younger. I must close this now and make a cup of tea. It is too bad that you could not be here to join us. Calum says that if you were here we would have something stronger than tea. He says that in retirement he is going to start to make homebrew in the basement, so I guess the old habits die hard.

All our love and
Beannachd leibh
,

     Your fond brother and sister,

     Calum and Sarah.”

“Write them and tell them, ‘Yes,’ ” said Grandpa without a moment’s hesitation. “The boys will do it. They will help him there in Ontario.
Gille beag ruadh
here will tell them” he said, tapping me on the shoulder. “We have given you the best life we
could. From the day you came to spend the night with us when you were three right through until now.”

“Yes,” said Grandma, “I will write to them as soon as I get home. And you can write to your brothers in Ontario. They are our grandchildren too, but you are our own
gille beag ruadh.”

The sun continued to hang and burn in the sky as we travelled homeward through Pictou County. Near the Pictou County line my uncle tapped my shoulder and pointed out the window.

“There’s Barney’s River,” he said. “In 1938 your father and I came to work in the woods here. There were other people from the
clann Chalum Ruaidh
working in the camp and they sent word that there was work, but to bring our own axes as those in the camp were not sharpened well enough. It was in December and when we got off the train at Barney’s River Station it was night and the snow was deep and I still remember how cold it was.

“The camp was about twelve miles in there,” he said, gesturing with his hand at the receding hardwood hills, “and we started to walk in, hoping that we were following the right trail. It was one of those nights which was so cold that you could hear the trees exploding with the frost. Splitting open with a sound like gunshots. But we could see our way because of the whiteness of the snow and the full moon, the
Lochran àigh nam bochd
, ‘the lamp of the poor.’ Sometimes we would sing songs to keep ourselves company and regulate our walking to keep time with the songs, like in a march. And then we came over a hill and there was the camp beneath us. I remember that there were moose in the yard, looking for bits of hay around the doors of the barn where the horses were kept. When we came down, they just looked at us and hardly moved at all. They were more hungry than they were
afraid. We opened the barn door and threw them some hay, threw it out on the snow, and then we went to sleep on the hay in the barn ourselves. It was warm because of the heat given off by the horses and we could hear the horses’ movements, their stompings and turnings and the rubbing of their necks on the mangers, even while we were asleep.

“We started work the next morning and we stayed until the end of March, until it was time to get ready for fishing. Going to work with the stars in the sky and coming back under the stars as well – cutting the stands of hardwood for a dollar a day.”

He paused and smiled briefly. “After we received our pay and before we returned to Cape Breton we went on the train to Truro. The streets were still covered with snow. There were no public taverns in Truro at the time, so we bought a little bottle for ourselves. We did not know where to drink it, so we went down a side street. There was a house with an outside staircase leading to the second floor. We went under the staircase to have our drink. Just as we were putting the bottle to our lips a woman came out on the upstairs landing and saw us standing beneath her. ‘Get out of there,’ she shouted ‘or I will call the police right this minute!’

Your father said “
Pog mo thon,”
assuming she would not know Gaelic.

‘Oh, you dears,’ she said. ‘Come in and have supper.’ She was part of
Clann Chalum Ruaidh
, and was both surprised and overjoyed to hear someone speaking Gaelic in Truro – regardless of what was actually said. When her husband came home he was as nice as could be, and we stayed for supper and then went to bed. I remember how white and clean the sheets were after what we
were used to in the lumber camps. For years afterwards we used to send them a Christmas card, but then one year the card was returned. I guess they must have moved. Your father used to say ‘It’s not very often, you can say “kiss my rear end,” and get a splendid supper and a bed with clean sheets in return.’

“Another time,” he said, “we were in a lumber camp that was filled with rats. Before going to bed we used to take two or three loaves of bread and throw chunks of the bread on the floor, so the rats would not try to eat us in our beds.

“You know,” he said, stopping suddenly and placing his hand upon my shoulder as I drove, “I missed and still miss your father a great deal. I was with him longer than he was able to be with you, and Grandpa and Grandma here knew him in still a different way. Perhaps,” he said after a pause, “it’s just the same sadness in different packages.”

“Oh well,” said Grandma, “we should be grateful for what we’ve had. Some people never see their parents at all, and some men do not even know that they have children in the world.”

“I have never gotten over that,” said my grandfather quietly. “Not knowing whether my father ever knew that he might be responsible for me, or someone like me. I think it would have made a difference.”

“What could the man do?” said Grandpa. “He was young and it was not his fault that he was killed. He did not plan on things turning out the way they did. If he didn’t know about your life he didn’t know about his own death either – unless perhaps he saw it coming, and by then it was too late.”

“Once when I was a child,” said my grandfather, “I was being teased by the other children and I went to ask my mother a
question. I don’t even know what the question was and probably didn’t then. Something inarticulate about the circumstances of my conception and why I was different. She slapped me so hard that she knocked me almost halfway across the room. ‘Don’t ever ask me anything like that again!’ she said. ‘Don’t you see that I have enough trouble with you as it is?’ So that was the end of that conversation – if you could call it that. She became a bitter woman, my mother, and perhaps you cannot blame her. She didn’t have an easy life.”

“No, she didn’t” said Grandma. “Under the circumstances she probably did the best she could.”

“Perhaps. I have always missed not having a picture of him,” said my grandfather. “An image of him in my mind. I am of the age now when I might well be a great-grandfather myself, but I am still looking for him. When I shave in the morning, even this past morning in Halifax, I look into the mirror and try to find him in my face, in my eyebrows or in the slant of my jaw or in my cheekbones – but then we all look quite a bit alike. But the one time in my life that I was drunk, I saw him in the mirror. I went to the sink to splash water on my face and when I looked up into the mirror he was standing there behind me. He had reddish hair and a reddish moustache and he was younger than I was at the time. Strange to see your father as younger than you are yourself. I turned around as quickly as I could, but I slipped on the water on the floor and fell and hit my head. When I got up I was still groggy and he was gone. It so unnerved me that I was never drunk again, but I have worn this moustache ever since.” He paused and touched the moustache with his right hand.

“And one other time, the night after my wife died, he came where I was sleeping and it was probably a dream. He came and stood beside the bed and he had on long woollen underwear, like Stanfields, the kind you would wear in a lumber camp in the winter. And he bent down and put his hand upon my shoulder. ‘Look after the little girl,’ he said, ‘and each of you will then be less alone.’ ”

The sun shone down upon the moving car, but the hottest part of the day was over. We were all silent for a while as the miles slipped past us and beneath us. And then we began to climb the Havre Boucher hill and the signs began to announce our closeness to Cape Breton. But before the climb and the signs we could see Cape Breton lying blue and green across the water before us and to our left.

“No more sad stories,” said Grandpa. “Let’s sing some songs.”

And then we all began to sing:

shouting out the names of the places as far as we could see them strung out along the coast; trying to change what was perhaps intended as a lament into a song of happiness and joy at our own homecoming.

Whenever our voices wavered or hesitated at the beginning of a new verse, we would turn to my grandfather and he would
lead us clearly and without ever faltering. Again, as with his playing of the violin, it came almost as a renewed surprise – the fact that he was seldom associated with singing but still could do it so well.

“You never make a mistake,” said Grandma to him after the song was done.

“I try hard not to,” he said. “I try to do the best I can.”

We crossed the Canso Causeway. When the front wheels of the car touched Cape Breton, Grandpa said, “Thank Christ to be home again. Nothing bad can happen to us now.”

We still had an hour’s drive or perhaps more along the coast, but it was obvious that Grandpa already considered himself in “God’s country,” or “our own country,” as he called it. Reaching into his inside coat pocket, he pulled out a bottle of whisky he had apparently purchased in Halifax and, rolling down the half-open window, he wound up like a baseball pitcher and threw the cork as far as he could out into the waving grass beyond the road.

“We will damn well
have
to drink all of this now,” he said, raising the bottle triumphantly above his head. “When I was a young man,” he continued enthusiastically, buoyed up by his own good spirits, “when we would come home in the spring from working in the woods, I would get a hard-on as soon as my feet touched the ground of Cape Breton. Yes sir, it would snap right up to attention at the front of my pants. I couldn’t hold it down. We had buttons on our trousers then,” he added helpfully. “It was before they began to use zippers.”