Road Ends (27 page)

For the two years he taught us, our geography classes included history, art, philosophy, politics, religion—just about everything, an education in the fullest sense of the word. He started off by introducing us to the countries of the Mediterranean and by way of illustration brought in a selection of his own photographs for us to see. I was stunned by them. The photographs themselves
were extraordinary, but more than that, I’d never imagined such astonishing places existed. When we were dismissed at the end of the day I went back to his classroom and asked if I could look at the photographs again while he was tidying up. The next day he brought in several of his own books on art and architecture and said I could borrow them.

I hid them under my bed. I wasn’t afraid my younger sisters would get hold of them, I was afraid my father would.

I’m sure Mr. Sabatini guessed that things were not good at home. I remember him telling me that he’d been flung into jail once in some foreign port and to keep himself from despair he would call up in his mind the wonderful places he had still not seen, and plan the order in which he would visit them when he got out. It can’t have been mere chance that he told me that.

It would be an exaggeration to say that he changed my life but he certainly made the one I had more bearable. He gave me something to dream about, something to strive for. I’ll never achieve it now but just having the dream was valuable. It has broadened what has otherwise been a very narrow life.

Here’s an ironic thing: after all my dreams of travelling the world I am the only one of my siblings still in the North. Alan and Harry live on adjoining farms in Manitoba. They married sisters and have at least a dozen children between them. Margaret married a Toronto man and seems quite happy down there. They have four children. My other sisters are dotted across the country. Margaret’s the only good letter-writer in the family. She keeps the rest of us up to date.

One way or another this has been quite a night. I was sitting here at my desk, thinking about Mr. Sabatini, when the door of my study opened and there stood Emily in the doorway.

She was looking … I’m not sure how to describe it. She was looking unlike herself. For a start she wasn’t holding the baby, and Emily looks incomplete without a baby, but more than that she looked wide awake and much more focused than usual, rather as she did for a moment a few days ago when I went up to speak to her about Tom.

Before I could speak she said, “Edward, what did I do wrong?”

Her voice was unsteady but she asked the question with such directness that I was taken aback.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

She said, “I must have done something wrong but I don’t know what it was. I’ve never known. You never said.”

I said, “Emily, what are you talking about? I don’t know what you’re referring to.”

“You and me,” she said. “You used to love me and then you didn’t, and I don’t know what I did wrong.”

She wasn’t crying but her lips were trembling. I felt the most crushing sense of shame. I stood up quickly and went around the desk and stood for a moment, uncertain, and then put my arms around her. I don’t tend to do that sort of thing but I couldn’t think what else to do.

She gave a little start but she didn’t pull back, just stood with her head bowed, her forehead not quite touching my shoulder.

I said, “You didn’t do anything wrong, Emily. I’m sorry. It wasn’t your fault. None of it was your fault. It was mine.”

We stood for a minute like that. I didn’t know what else to say, so I said again that I was sorry.

“It’s all right,” she whispered. “It doesn’t matter.”

That made me feel even worse—her saying it didn’t matter. As if her life didn’t matter. Or as if she assumed I would think that.

I said, “Yes, it does. It does matter. I’m sorry,” knowing that repeating those trite words couldn’t make anything right.

After a moment she stepped back and looked up at me and said, “I want to go back to bed.”

“All right,” I said. “I’ll come up with you.”

I followed her upstairs. The baby—Dominic—was asleep in a tangle of bedding, his mouth making those involuntary sucking motions Mother Nature has programmed into them.

Emily looked up at me anxiously.

“What is it?” I said.

“I only want to go to sleep. By myself.”

“That’s fine,” I said, somewhat stiffly. “That’s what I thought you meant.” I have never insisted on “relations.” I’ve left it to her to make the advances.

I went back downstairs, still with this terrible weight of shame. I didn’t know what to do with myself. I didn’t want to read; I didn’t want to think. I went into the entrance hall and pulled on my outdoor clothing and went out into the dark. I walked fast into town.

Walking from one end of Struan to the other takes less than ten minutes. If you kept walking south and east eventually you would hit civilization; if you kept walking north and west you would hit Crow Lake, where the road comes to an end. In either case you’d freeze to death long before you got there. When I reached the gas station at the far northern end of town I turned around and walked home.

I knew there was no point in going to bed, so I went into the kitchen and got myself a bowl of cornflakes, more for something to do than because I was hungry. I took it into my study thinking that I’d look through one of the books on Rome while I ate, but I found I didn’t want to think about Rome. I ate the cornflakes staring at my desk. When I’d finished I decided to go through the few remaining scraps of Mother’s diaries. I felt so terrible already that I thought nothing I found there could make me feel worse.

In the end, only one of the entries was complete enough to make any sense, and Mother’s writing was so shaky that in some
places I couldn’t make it out at all, but it reported an incident I remember only too clearly. I can date it exactly because Mother wrote it in the margins of a page torn from the
Temiskaming Speaker
and the date is still legible—18th September 1934. I would have been twelve.

The next bit is indecipherable but at the bottom of the page there are several more lines.

I sat until after midnight, reading and rereading those lines. I don’t know how to deal with them. I don’t even know what to feel.

CHAPTER TWELVE

Struan, March 1969

Eleven inches of snow in one dump. Marcel took it personally; in a fit of fury he drove the snowplough just that little bit too fast and the heavy snow shooting off the end of the plough created a vortex, a mini tornado, and demolished six road signs in the blink of an eye.

“Rip’ ’em right off der posts,” Marcel raged. “Now I gotta go an’ put ’em up agin, gonna take me a week. I piss on it! I piss on dis goddam’ snow!” and he unzipped his pants and did so.

On Crow Lake Road there was an exposed stretch where the wind played tricks, scooping snow into fantastical shapes on one side, scouring it down to bare ice on the other. Tom was heading home at the end of his shift when a truck in a hurry overtook the plough, hit a patch of ice, went into a spin and shot off into the bush. Tom stopped the plough so fast it was a miracle he didn’t leave the road himself. He leapt out and ran down the track left by the truck, cursing as he went. The truck’s driver was cursing too—Tom could hear him as he came up, so at least that
meant he was okay. He was trying to get out, but the truck had embedded itself in deep snow and he couldn’t get the door open. Tom shovelled the snow away with his hands. It was heavy work and he was panting by the time he was done.

“Thanks,” the driver said as he climbed out, but he sounded madder than hell. “Thanks very much, but God damn it!”

“You okay?” Tom asked, still breathless.

“Yeah, but I’m gonna be late! I have to meet this guy …” The man stopped, recognizing Tom at the same moment Tom recognized him—the man who’d rescued him from the coleslaw at Harper’s restaurant. “Hi,” the man said, calming down a little. “Didn’t realize you drove the plough. Thanks for stopping.”

“That’s okay,” Tom said. To anyone else he would have said, “What do you think you’re doing going that fast on a road like this?” but he owed the guy. “Want a tow out?”

The man looked at his watch and shook his head. “Thanks, but it’d take too long. Could I hitch a lift? I’ll get it towed out later.”

“Sure.”

“Just gotta get some stuff from the truck.”

The sign on the truck said, “Luke’s Rustic Furniture.” The man—Luke, presumably—disappeared inside the cab and reappeared with a large cardboard box. “Samples,” he said. “And they’re not broken, so that’s something. This is great of you. I appreciate it.”

The hurry, it turned out, was because he had an appointment with the boss of the hotel/hunting lodge that was being built out along the lakeshore. He was hoping to get the contract to make the furniture for the lodge.

“The boss-guy phoned from Toronto first thing this morning,” the man said when they were under way. He was cradling the box of samples on his lap. “Said he was going to take advantage of the weather and fly up for the day. He’s got some people to talk to, said would I like to meet him for lunch and discuss
things. I heard the plane fly over about an hour ago, so he’s here.”

He looked across at Tom. “I’m Luke Morrison, by the way. And thanks again.”

“Tom Cartwright,” Tom said. “No problem.”

That was it for a couple of miles. Luke sat in silence, seemingly mesmerized by the plume of snow streaming off the blade of the plough. It was hypnotic, Tom knew: he’d had to train himself not to look at it.