No Great Mischief (27 page)

“I looked at Fern Pickard lying at my feet and took three or four careful steps backwards. He got up carefully and took three or four steps backwards as well. Both of us were afraid to turn our backs on the other. We spat on the ground and continued to move away. When we were a dozen steps from each other, he turned and walked towards the camp gates where the security guard apparently had been watching us. ‘This isn’t over,’ he said as he turned, speaking in clearer English than I thought he had.

“That afternoon someone came and said they needed a man to clean the sump. Alexander was well rested and he needed the money from the extra shift. When the ore bucket came down and decapitated him, the hoistman said he had been given the wrong signal or had misunderstood the signal. He was a young hoistman and had difficulty expressing himself in English. When we came back after the funeral, I went to look for him, but he had quit and returned to Quebec.

“I never told anyone about hitting Fern Picard in the mouth that day. Later we realized that all of our crew were on the surface and probably sleeping when whoever it was came for Alexander. The only people working were Fern Picard and his crew. If Alexander had asked me, I would have told him not to go, but he probably didn’t want to wake me. I would have told him that under the circumstances, and on that day, it was best for him ‘to stick with his own blood,’ as Grandma used to say.”

My brother turned towards me. His palms were slipping from perspiring on the steering wheel and he took a soiled handkerchief from his pocket and tried to wipe them dry.

“A lot was happening,” he said, “on your graduation day.”

“Poor Grandma,” he continued, “she always used to say, ‘You’ll get used to almost anything except a nail in your shoe.’ Perhaps she was wrong. Anyway, I’m having a hard time getting used to this. Or else this is the nail in my shoe.”

He looked in the rear-view mirror above the swinging dice. “Now what?” he said.

I looked over my shoulder. Beyond the bobbing head of the plastic brown dog, the police cruiser’s headlights rose and fell in concert with the undulations of the road. The rooflights flashed in rhythm on the shimmering metallic roof, which seemed to send its heat waves back in the direction of the sun.

We pulled over to the shoulder of the road. The police officer approached the driver’s side of our car. “Can I see your driver’s licence and your registration and proof of insurance?” he asked.

He looked at the car with disapproval. “The licence plates on this car are expired,” he said. “We’re tired of you guys from Quebec driving these old cars on Ontario’s highways.”

We looked in the glove compartment, but there was no registration. The makeup bag with the pink-handled comb was stuffed at the back of the compartment, but there was nothing more.

The officer looked at my brother’s licence. “What are you doing driving a Quebec car with a Nova Scotia driver’s licence?” he asked. “Where is the car’s registration? Maybe you stole this car?”

“If I was going to steal a car,” said Calum, “I’d steal a better one than this.”

“Will you step outside of your car, please,” said the officer. “Will you open the trunk?”

We both got out of the car. I noticed the officer’s name tag read Paul Belanger.

The trunk of the car contained two tire irons but no tire. There were two or three empty oil cans and an old ripped checkered shirt which I remembered seeing Marcel wear. There was also a pair of worn gloves and a length of chains. In one corner there was a soiled and crumpled bill from a garage near Temiskaming which bore Marcel’s name and address. The bill was for a second-hand replacement radiator.

“Is this the owner of the car’s address?” asked Paul Belanger, looking first at the bill and then at my brother.

“Yes, it is,” I said.

“I’m not talking to you, sir,” he said. “I’m talking to the driver of the vehicle.”

He took the bill and my brother’s licence and walked back to the cruiser with its flashing lights.

“You can wait in your car,” he said over his shoulder. “This may take a little while.”

When he came back he walked around the car, noting its worn tires and scrutinizing the meandering crack across its windshield. He returned to his cruiser once more. When he came back the second time he handed my brother what seemed like a sheaf of summonses or tickets. He told Calum to read them carefully.

When we resumed our journey he followed us for what seemed like a very long time. We drove very slowly and noticed, for the first time, that the speedometer was also broken. When the cruiser roared past us my brother took the sheaf of papers, crumpled them into a ball, and threw them out the window.

When we arrived at the Sudbury airport we realized how tired we were. We had slept very little in the past two days, and our heads kept dropping forward. We tried to fortify ourselves with coffee, but it turned brackish within our mouths. We went to the washroom and splashed water on our faces. When we looked in the mirror we remembered that we had not shaved. Our eyes were bloodshot and our arms burned from the sun. We splashed water on the backs of our necks and ran our dripping fingers through the black and redness of our hair.

When the passengers came off the plane we watched them carefully. Although we had never seen this Alexander MacDonald before, there was no doubt in our minds concerning recognition. “There he is,” we said simultaneously. He had shoulder-length red hair and wore a buckskin jacket. He looked like a young Willie Nelson and he extended his hand when he saw us approaching.

He seemed as tired as we were, as we went to retrieve his luggage at the baggage carousel. He had two duffel bags and a metal footlocker guarded by an iron hasp and a combination lock. We carried the luggage to the car. “Not much of a car,” he said, although his tone was non-committal. “Beggars can’t be choosers,” said Calum, also non-committal. He sounded, for a moment, like Grandma, falling back into the familiarity of cliché.

“Here, you drive for the first part,” said my brother, tossing the keys in my direction. “We have to hurry up. We have to go on shift in a few hours.”

He eased himself into the back seat while our new companion took the front.

Outside of Sudbury the rocky landscape stretched on either
side as we journeyed to the west and towards the descending sun.

“Pretty barren around here,” said our cousin. “It looks like photographs of the moon.”

“Any port in a storm,” said Calum. He paused for a second. “ ‘When you have to go there, they have to take you in,’ ” he added. “Isn’t that from a poem of some kind?” he asked, directing his eyes towards me via the rear-view mirror.

“It’s from a poem by Robert Frost,” said our cousin. “It’s called ‘The Death of the Hired Man.’ ”

I drove back as rapidly as I dared. Without the speedometer to guide me, I glanced frequently above the swinging dice and beyond the bobbing dog, hoping that I would not see the flashing lights of Paul Belanger or one of his fellow patrollers of the road. My companions’ heads tilted gradually towards their chests and soon they were both snoring softly.

When we left Highway 17, my brother woke with a start. “Sorry I slept so long,” he said. “Here, I’ll drive the rest of the way.” We exchanged places. Our companion slept on. His red hair fell forward from his shoulder and his left hand lay limply on the soiled upholstery of the car’s seat. We noticed that he wore a Celtic ring upon his finger. The never-ending circle.

When we arrived back at the camp we left the car in the parking lot and my brother handed me the keys. Each of us carried a piece of luggage past the security guard’s post. He was reading a paperback novel when we approached, and his shift was nearing its end.

“Been to Sudbury,” said Calum. “This is our new man. He’ll have his identification in the morning.
Cousin agam fhein,”
he added with a smile. The security guard waved us in.

On the path to our bunkhouse we met Marcel Gingras. “
Bonjour
,” he said, “
comment ça va?
”

“Why don’t you speak English?” said our cousin. “This is North America.”

Both Marcel and I raised our eyebrows.
“Merci,”
I said, tossing him his keys.

Calum had gone on ahead and we followed him to the bunkhouse. Our crew was ready to work their shift and were waiting impatiently. They had ordered our lunch cans for us and after brief introductions we were on our way. I told the new Alexander MacDonald he could sleep in my bed for the night and we would make other arrangements in the morning. He seemed grateful. He stuffed his footlocker and his duffel bags under the bunk and lay down, still clothed, upon the blankets.

The night seemed long because both Calum and I had slept little during the past two days, and sometimes our heavy steel-toed boots stumbled against the rocks and the yellow-hissing hoses which snaked behind us. The incessant hammering of steel on stone seemed to vibrate within our throbbing heads and sometimes I would rest my hand against the walls of rock to forestall the bouts of dizziness. The rest of the crew, however, were well rested and shouldered more than their burden. We waved to each other above the clamour. When we raised our hands to wave, the water within our gloves ran down to the bends of our elbows.

The next morning we were bleary, but Alexander MacDonald was rested. We found among our luggage and assorted papers the pinkish-brown employment card that had belonged to the red-haired Alexander MacDonald. It was more
fragile than the current plastic S.I.N. cards, but the numbers were still intact. Calum took the card to the timekeeper. “This man will be working with us tomorrow,” he said.

Whether Renco Development knew the difference or cared did not seem terribly important. “Sometimes, to them,” said Calum, “we all look the same, and I guess we do. As long as the work goes forward.”

We also found the security pass of the red-haired Alexander MacDonald, which allowed our new man to pass freely in and out of the gates.

It was somehow as if the red-haired Alexander MacDonald had merely gone on a short vacation and had now returned to resume his appointed tasks. Perhaps that was how it would appear on a company payroll. Someone might ask, “Wasn’t this man here a few months ago? Maybe something happened to him, but now he has returned? ”

More than fifteen hundred miles away the body of the red-haired Alexander MacDonald lay silently beneath the gentle earth. On the last day of his life he had been deeper in the earth than he now reposed in death. In the darkness of his oak casket, perhaps, his severed head lay quietly beside him. By now the hopeful spring vegetation had given way to that of summer and his parents had, no doubt, planted flowers on the brown mud beneath his cross.

His ongoing documentation took on a life beyond his actual existence. It seemed as if a part of his life continued to go forth, as the hair and the fingernails of the dead continue to grow, beyond the cessation of their host. It was almost as if the new Alexander MacDonald was the beneficiary of a certain kind of
gift. A gift from a dead donor who shared the same blood group and was colour-compatible, although the two had never met. A gift which might allow an extended life for each of them. An extended life, though false, allowing each of them to go forward. Not for a long journey. Just for a while.

“The people of Glencoe,” said my sister once in her modernistic house in Calgary, “believed that when the herring came they were led by a king. When they were scooping up the silver bounty they were always on the lookout for the king of the herring because they did not want to harm him. They thought of him as a friend who was bringing them food and perhaps saving them from starvation. They believed that if they kept their trust in him, he would return each year and continue to be their benefactor. It seemed to work for a long, long time.”

She paused and looked through her magnificent picture window at the city spread out before her, it seemed, like a painting in the sun.

“Grandfather told me that story once,” she continued. “And then he asked, ‘What do you think of that?’

“ ‘I don’t know,’ I said, ‘I like the part about believing in the king – even if he was just a herring.’ I was perhaps in Grade 7 or 8. Grandma had sent me over to his house with some cookies.
Grandfather smiled and even laughed a little and poured me a glass of milk.

“ ‘Think of it from the point of view of the other herring,’ he said. ‘They were really being betrayed by him. He was leading them to their deaths and they probably didn’t realize it until it was too late.’

“I didn’t like the picture nearly as much once he told me that. It was as if I had to think too much.”

“Perhaps the herring should have thought more,” I said.

“The herring,” said my sister, “were following patterns as old as time. To me they flow above and beyond whatever we think of as thought. To me they are governed by the moon. And they are faithful in their force. There was an old Gaelic song that Grandma used to sing that was composed when the people were leaving Scotland. There was a line in it which said, ‘The birds will be back but we will not be back,’ or something like that. Do you remember it?”