The Long Stretch (14 page)

The only time the priest had ever been at the house was one winter Grandpa got the flu. We were sure he was gone so somebody called the priest. I remember Ma meeting him at the door with a lit candle. Them hurrying upstairs quietly, the candle flickering. Me, Aunt Jessie, and Sextus on our knees in the kitchen. Grandpa surprised everybody by recovering. After that he was always joking that he’d had more of the sacraments than anybody else in the house. All but one of the seven.

“Only one left is Holy Orders,” he’d say.

“Never too late for that one,” someone would inevitably reply.

“Only thing holding me back is getting rid of the old woman,” he’d say, winking at Grandma. Everybody would laugh.

The priest came more than a few times that fall. He’d just walk in after the first time, like any old visitor. No candles or formalities. Usually just wearing a sweater or a jacket. I’d never hear what they were talking about. They’d be down in
the living room. Ma would get out of bed for it, so it was important. The old man would be home for that. I’d take off with the truck.

For the longest time the only one who said anything to me was Aunt Jessie. One night we were playing cards at her place and she put her hand down all of a sudden, looking at me. Here it comes, I felt.

“You’re all right, are you, Johnny?”

“Yes,” I said. You always knew, when they called you Johnny.

“They’ll get through it, you know,” she said.

“Who?”

“Your ma and dad,” she said, picking up her cards.

“What’s the matter with them?”

“Ach,” she said, studying her hand. “Couples go through little problems now and then. It happens to the best of them.”

“You and Uncle Jack never have any problems.”

“Ha,” she said. “He’s never around long enough.”

“It was good,” he says, “you and the old man having each other. After Uncle Sandy.”

“You don’t think of it like that. But I suppose.”

“I had nobody…when everything went to ratshit for me.” He’s swishing the drink in his hand. Not noticing me at all. “When my old man pops off. Later. And. Well, you know where I turned. Not that it’s any excuse.”

“Consider yourself lucky,” I say.

“You know I actually picked up the phone once to call you. After she pulled the bung on me. To ask you…how long before you start to feel normal again. Is it a year? Two years?
Then I thought, What the Christ do you think you’re doing? And started to laugh.” A big smile.

“She gave you a pretty good run for your money,” I say. Feeling giddy.

I remember the house being cold all the time. And damp. As if life had stopped. Which was ridiculous. The old people, Grandma and Grandpa, pitched in like they were setting up housekeeping for the first time. And Jessie was around, trying to keep things normal. Except that her being there so much wasn’t normal. And the priest wasn’t normal. And the old people acting like a young couple wasn’t normal.

Then I had a great insight. What’s the worst thing that can happen? One of them moves out. Him. So what would be so bad about that? So people would talk. So weren’t they probably wagging their tongues off already? Any change would be for the better. Of course I was wrong there.

My only real friend then was Effie, and she was distracted. By boys with big cars. With duck’s-arse haircuts. Sextus and Duncan were away in university. Caught up in new lives. As September limped by, my feelings about the Swede’s wife started to change. Boy crush wearing thin. The light dawning. My only claim to fame in her eyes was looking like my father.

I saw her with her husband a couple of times and they looked like they were on their honeymoon. What are these people all about, anyway?

“Stop looking at me like that,” he says suddenly.

“Like what?”

“Like you’re the only fucking person in the world who ever went through hard times.”

“I’m not—”

“Don’t think we didn’t know. We heard all about the detox and the rest of it. Don’t think we didn’t…agonize.”

The storm thumps the house again.

“I’d rather not relive it,” I say.

He jumps to his feet. We’re standing face to face.

“For fuck sake give me something.”

“Okay,” I say.

Who cares anymore?

I was tempted to become a spy. You get that way. Heading to town one night for a burger, I saw the big car on the Trans-Canada. Pulled a quick U-ey and followed it. Caught up and sure enough it was the Swede’s and there were two people in the front. The old man was supposed to be at work. Something about the new substation. Said he’d be late. Maybe sleep at the shop. I knew it was him but I didn’t have the stomach to follow when they turned up Rhodena Road toward Ceiteag’s. I turned and went to town, knowing somehow Ma would know and that eventually, inevitably, they’d be up all night for another marathon harangue. Urgent talking. Quick footsteps. Then the sickening smashing when he wore down. At about that moment I started hating her.

Maybe I should have followed them. Maybe that was what caused me to spy on Effie.

Once I hurt Ma. I blurted out: “I’m going to talk to that damned Swede.” I knew his name by then. Erik Sandgren. Knew the posh house up back of the pond.

Ma’s face was white. Her mouth and eyes perfect zeros.

“You just mind your place, young fellow.”

She had a dishtowel in her hand and she slapped the table with it. Now it seems almost a comical gesture. But it didn’t seem funny then. Her words were white hot.

“There’s nothing that you need to be concerned about, young man.”

Young man?

“Good enough,” I shouted, and headed for the door. Nothing for me to worry about? Dandy. Screw it all.

Whatever was going on, I guess I was a beneficiary. In a sick way. The truck was practically mine. I’d be on the road all the time. Liberated from the cold ugly house. But it was a queer kind of freedom.

If I did venture into the drive-in for a burger, I’d pull my cap down over my eyes and try to avoid looking at anybody. I’d go to the dances early but I’d stay outside in the truck, where I could see everything. A lot of guys popping the trunk-lids, finding their bottles, passing them back and forth with great joy and loud laughing.

Near the end of September on a warm Friday night, listening to the music from the Creignish hall. A fight exploded at the rear of a nearby car where a group of Judiquers were drinking. Two guys pounding at each other, slipping and sliding on the gravel like cows on ice, one getting the worst of it, stumbling toward the pavement backward, then down in a tangle of arms
and legs. The other straddles him, smashing at his face. Then the flash of a dome light from a large car near them and my father materializes. And in one swift motion snatches the guy on top to his feet.

The guy turns, fist up. Sees who it is and instantly opens his hands, hold them flat out in front of him.

Pa leads him away. The other fellow stirs and sits up. It all happened in no more than a minute. Then panic sets in and I start the truck and roar away, sending a shower of gravel skittering along the pavement behind.

Wishing the stones were bullets. Penetrating car doors. People’s skulls.

Maybe Pa recognized his own truck. But never said anything to me. Big surprise!

“One night I put the kid, Sandy, in the car and we drive right across the city. Found the Irishman’s place on the Kingsway. Walked in on them. They were in the middle of a nice candlelit dinner. Not sure what I expected. Maybe catch them in the act. Anyway, there I am, holding the kid by the hand. She goes apeshit. The kid goes apeshit.” Shaking his head. “I remember the wood. Fancy panelling. And books. And they had their wine in a fucking crystal decanter.”

Then near Hallowe’en, Pa was home more often. Sitting in the dining room with the paper. Until bedtime. Everything quiet. Grandpa would listen to the fiddle music program in the
evenings at 6:45 with his ear right up against the radio. Ma and I’d watch TV with hardly any sound. Everybody seemed normally tense again.

Then Ma started bugging him to go to a masquerade dance with her over in Glendale. A dance? He’d be more likely to go to church than to a dance. Hated dances, he’d say when I’d be going. Can’t see people wasting their energy jumping around to music, he’d say. People want to burn off energy, I’ve got a woodpile out beside the house. That’s the place to burn off excess energy.

Excess? There’s a queer word.

I of course never mentioned the night I saw him outside the hall in Creignish. Not that he was dancing there. But it was a dance. Then, on the day of the Hallowe’en masquerade, he just announced that they were going. He even dressed up, like a scarecrow. He had fake arms stuck out from his shoulders and a big wad of hay under his hat. And a mask. They won a prize and people nearly died of surprise when they took their masks off. Sandy Gillis and the wife.

Look for yourself.

Well I’ll be goddamned. He must be ossified.

He looks sober.

It was the only time I ever saw them going out together in my seventeen years.

“People ask me,” he says. “Would you ever tie the knot again.” Half laughing. Shaking his head. “Only thing I want from a woman you don’t have to get married for. You’ve got a right to ask why I had to fuck up your life before I discovered marriage wasn’t my cuppa.”

“I couldn’t care less,” I say steadily.

“We wrote to each other,” he says.

All the letters she wrote to me are suddenly in my mind. Everything starts with letters. Ends with letters.

“The letters got intense,” he says. “But compared with the kinds of relationships I was used to, it was sort of…pure. I thought it was just little Effie, Little Orphan Annie like always. Childhood chum. But she was…reaching out to me.

“And when we saw each other here, when the old man…with all the conflict, me and the old man, and the whole unresolved mess with Uncle Sandy from back in ’63. And it was clear from the letters things weren’t the best with you two.”

Now his eyes are full and I am mesmerized.

“Jesus. I just. I was like a teenager.”

“It isn’t important,” I say.

Knowing that Effie was drawn to me once not just because of my needs but in an even bigger way, her own…she would reach out, again. And why not to him? He was big and famous and he could see things and explain things. And give her things and take her away. That was probably the big attraction. Take her away.

Who knows what the Swede’s wife had in mind. Or what the old man might have done. Maybe just gone away. Like everybody else.

“It was only when I wrote about it…or, not about it, but something based on it. That I realized.”

“I read your fucking book,” I say, wearily.

“Never mind the book.”

November 11, 1963. He and Angus went to town that day, as usual. Alone. Don’t remember how I got there. Watched the parade alone. Saw them and their comrades marching by in their berets and clinking medals. And afterwards there was the usual retreat to the Legion. Then to MacAskill’s, with their bottles. It was all routine by then.

But he surprised us. Came home early. Looked like he’d been sick. Ashen face. Almost as if he’d been weeping. We just stared at him, Ma and me.

“What the fuck are you looking at?” he said.

Then went down to the living room. Sat in the big chair without taking off his coat.

It was the only time I saw Ma flare at him.

“I’m wondering why you came home at all,” she said, “if it’s just to sit there like a zombie.”

I said to myself, Here it comes.

But he just made a strange sound, almost like a sob. He went to bed soon after that. But that was how he stayed until the end. Speaking to nobody. Coming straight home after work, disappearing up to their room. No more absences.

It was like that for eleven days.

Till the day they killed Kennedy.

Not nearly as much wind. Some rain on the day. But a tempest in the memory.

The voice has become flat. Stripped of feeling. Out of consideration?
Out of fear? I take the bottle and pour into my teacup. Perhaps it will calm me. Maybe restore the good feeling you always remember from other times.

“I’m in Halifax, boarding up on the north end of Windsor Street, near the Forum,” he says. “It was Atlantic Bowl weekend, but I forgot. And I forgot Duncan was coming up from Antigonish. St. F.X. was in the bowl game, as usual.” He sips thoughtfully. “And I remember I was studying for a quiz, listening to a little radio. Guy breaks in. I think it was about three o’clock. A Friday afternoon. Says, ‘We take you now to Dallas.’ Wow. It was tough studying after that. I made a pot of tea. On my hotplate.”

He looks at me, waiting.

“What do you remember?” he asks.

“Nothing.”

Except maybe that in the morning Pa had gone hunting. I jokingly said I should take the day off school, go with him. We were all worrying by then about his mood. Something dangerous and new. But going hunting almost seemed normal.

He smiled at me. That’s what I remember.

“I guess it was about five that afternoon,” he says. “The phone rings at the boarding house. It was Duncan. Calling from the Lord Nelson. Fuck. I forgot I was supposed to meet him there.

“‘Did you hear about Kennedy?’ he says.

“‘Christ yes,’ I say. ‘Who do you think did it?’

“‘Some Protestant,’ he says. I can’t help laughing.”

What else do I remember? There was a dance that night. In Creignish. The regular Friday night. Buddy MacMaster playing,
as usual. There had been talk that Father Donald was going to call it off. Out of respect for the president, who was a Catholic. But they went ahead with it and everybody was talking about Kennedy. I was there. Actually inside, standing at the back. Listening to the music, feeling okay in spite of Kennedy.

I’d left home about eight o’clock and Ma was kind of concerned that Pa hadn’t come back from hunting. A short time back you’d have automatically thought: The Legion. But he hadn’t been going there lately. Not since the eleventh. Probably over at Angus’s place. But there had been no sign of Angus lately either. Not since the eleventh. No matter what you thought, there were some things that you’d just never do. You’d never call looking for him. I used to say to Ma, “Why don’t you call the power commission, or the Legion, or the tavern and see if he’s there?” And she’d just roll her eyes. You didn’t do that with him. Not ever.

Effie was at the dance with a gang. Driving by her place, I almost went in to ask if she wanted a ride. The latest boyfriend had gone back to Ontario by then. But of course there were lots of boyfriends and I could tell she’d left for the dance already. The only light was in the kitchen. In any case I wouldn’t want to run into the old man if he was in there. I could imagine them sitting there. Himself and Angus. Talking about God knows what. Probably drinking wine.

Sure enough Effie was at the dance ahead of me. And I could tell there were a few guys with the eye on her already. Sniffing and circling. She asked me to dance with her once and I did, though I wasn’t very good at it.

“How did you get here?” I asked.

“A ride,” she said. Tipping her head to one side.

“I guess the old fellow is at your place,” I said.

“Your father?”

“Yes.”

“No.”

I should have been worried then, but I was distracted by the tilt of her face. Not that worrying would have made any difference.

She said: “You’re good. You must have been practising.”

I knew it wasn’t true. But that raised interesting possibilities. And as the last set started, I spotted a grade eleven girl from Long Point on the sidelines. Asked her to dance and she said yes. Halfway through the third figure, I asked her if I could drive her home. She looked at me with a half-dubious expression, then laughed and said, “I suppose.”

Holy mother of God.

“We got pretty ripped that night. Drunk college students everywhere. Next day there was a minute’s silence for Kennedy before the game. I think about half the St. F.X. team were Americans. Good Catholic boys from Maine and Boston. Duncan was saying he hadn’t seen so much emotion in the St. F.X. crowd since the Cuban missile crisis the year before. Them worrying then that poor Kennedy was going to start a nuclear war. Little did they know that the poor fellow had already started the war in Vietnam. Where half of them would end up in a few years anyway. Jesus.”

Settling into the truck, after the dance, I was trying to find something on the radio. Nothing but serious music. Classical.

“Awful about Kennedy,” she said.

“I know,” I said.

Wondering where he might have got to if he wasn’t with Angus.

“How are you finding grade twelve?” she asked.

The way Uncle Jack put it: “He was like a frigging Indian in the woods. Never a sound. Some fellows would be blabbing and drinking rum. Shooting at anything that moved. Not him. He’d go in with one or two bullets and he’d have them coming back if he didn’t get something. He was real at home in the woods. Serious about hunting, Sandy.”

I discovered later he’d taken a pint of rum with him that day.

“After the football game I had to go back to the boarding house. To get money or something. Anyway, there’s a message to call home. So I do. Thinking maybe one of the old people. Ma answers, making some small talk at first. But I can tell something is wrong. Then I figure it’s the old man. Something in the mine. In Tilt Cove then. I never thought for a minute Uncle Sandy.”

Driving away from the dance, in the truck, for God’s sake, she was sitting away over by the passenger door. Usually they’re in the middle, close. So how does that happen? Do they just come over? Are you supposed to drag them over? How do you do that?

“So how are you finding it? Grade eleven,” I said.

“Good,” she said. And went silent again.

“Buddy was playing pretty good tonight,” I said.

“Yeah,” she said. “But I wish he’d get a guitar player or something. Or play records once in a while. They do that some places now. For round dancing.”

“Yes.”

“I like round dancing. The slow stuff. Now and then.”

This sounded like a beginning. Intimate disclosures coming out.

“Do you want to go for a drive somewhere?” I asked. Meaning park somewhere.

The classical music grew on you. It was slow, at least. Some of it had a nice melody.

“I have to go right home,” she said quickly.

We were passing the end of the Creignish wharf road and I could see taillights going down there slowly. Cars going down to park. Whitecaps flashing on the dark seashore.

“Sure,” I said.

“Ma says, ‘By any chance you haven’t been in touch with your uncle this weekend?’

“I thought she said Duncan and I said, ‘Yes, we were just at the football game.’

“She says, ‘Football game?’ Surprised like.

“I said, ‘Yeah, St. F.X. won.’

“She says, ‘I mean your
Uncle.
Sandy.’

“‘Sandy?’ I say.”

Down her lane, up to the darkened house. I stopped, turned out the headlights, and cut the engine. But left the key on accessories. The music continued. Then I put my arm on the back of the seat. My hand came close to her left shoulder. I guessed they must just haul them over at this point. But my arm was frozen.

She said, “I’ll have to go in.”

“Sure,” I said, jumping out my side. Then she slid across, under the wheel and out behind me. Hey. She could have used her own door. But she used mine. A signal of some kind. So I walked with her to the door.

“I hope they didn’t lock me out,” she said.

I hoped they had, but said: “They should put a key someplace. Just in case.”

She laughed and said: “Usually we don’t even lock the door. But we’ve been locking it lately. A lot of new people around.”

“That’s for sure,” I said.

She turned the knob and the door opened.

“Well,” she said. Half questioningly. Hand still on the knob, holding the door half opened.

“Ma told me then. He’d gone hunting the day before. Never came back. Big search on. Said she was really grasping, calling me. But I should know anyway. He’d been acting strange. Maybe he went to Halifax.

“‘Where’s Angus?’ I asked. ‘Right here,’ she said. Then I figured: This is peculiar.

“After I hung up, Duncan and I decided to drive down right then and there. Once of the priests at the university had loaned him a car to go to the game.”

I could tell just by the way she was standing that she expected something. So I carefully put my arms around her waist. She closed her eyes and started to turn her face a little to one side. But I then pressed my mouth against her warm dry lips. She accepted. Then moved her head gently around, working the kiss, thrusting just a little. There was a little bristle under her nose. Then I could feel the softness of her body leaning on me. Then she pulled back and said, “I better go in.”

“Yes.”

I remember driving home thinking: That was pretty easy.

When I got home the Mounties were in the yard and a bunch of other cars. Some guys from the power commission. West Bay Road fellows from the pulp mill. But it was too late to go looking.

They asked me if I ever went hunting with him.

No, I said.

Did I know any of his places?

Well, I said. He often goes up back of Creignish Mountain, around the old Shimon Angus place.

No, somebody said. That’s too far. He went on foot. He’ll be out somewhere around Sugar Camp or Queensville.

So that’s where we spent Saturday.

“I never really took it serious, until I got here,” he says. “Jesus, the commotion. Cars and trucks lined up along the road. The house full of people. The old lady in control. Poor Aunt Mary in pretty bad shape. I think that was the end of Grandpa, that night.”

Tramping through the woods all day Saturday, I couldn’t help thinking of the girl in Long Point. Figuring the next time I’d know what to do. There was a regular Saturday dance down near Port Hood. At Neilie MacDonald’s. Should have made a date to go to that. All the time suspecting this was a waste of time. Nothing could have happened to electric man. Sandy the Lineman. A frigging Indian in the woods. Shot in his big thick head in the war and survived that. Could take on any four people and they wouldn’t lay a hand on him. Probably holed up somewhere with a crock. But also with a rifle. What if he broke his own rule about hunting and drinking? Then the Swede’s wife crept into my mind. And I kept seeing him getting into that big car. Maybe they just took off. For Halifax. Or Sweden. Who knows? The old man always made the world seem small. So maybe that was it. They were gone. And we were wasting all this time. Time better used making plans for tonight and the one from Long Point. And wasting the time of all these people. Pulp mill guys. Linemen. Mounties. Christ Jesus. Knowing that all these people would add the futile stupid search to the rest of the stories about Sandy the Stickman. The Fugitive. It was embarrassing, seeing all the people who were spending their Saturday trudging around the woods. Half the fucking Legion here. We’d pay for it. Bastard. Leaving me to face this.

Then you’d think about Kennedy. Everybody talking about that.

Of course the real reason we were wasting our time was because we were looking in the wrong place.

It was other hunters who found him. Two fellows from Louisdale who didn’t even know about the search that was under way down near Queensville. They were hunting up back of Creignish Mountain, a couple of miles to the northeast, at Ceiteag Alasdair’s.

It was Sunday.

“Everything changed then.”

“I guess so,” I say, pouring a little more rum into my cup.

“Where were you when you heard?” he asks.

“I think everybody was at Mass when they found him.”

The priest prayed for him and Kennedy together even though we didn’t know Pa was dead. Hearing their names together, I felt panic. Wanted to jump out and shout at Father Hughie: What the fuck do you think you’re doing?

“We got in late from Halifax. We had to stop in Antigonish, tell the priest we were taking his car down here. Then when we get out here, herself meets me on the doorstep. Says they found him. Fuuuck.”

Ceiteag Alasdair. An old woman from another time. Stamped her name and character on a patch of woods up in the mountains. By natural selection, her name had overwhelmed the memory of any man who might ever have been part of her life. There were women like that. Henrietta Maclnnis. Her
descendants were known as Henny’s, no matter who their fathers were. Ciorstaidh Maclntyre. Her descendants were known as the Ciorsti’s. No matter who their fathers were. And Ceiteag Alasdair. Talk about women’s liberation. They’re like spruce trees, women like that. Indestructible.

All that was left of Ceiteag’s life was a small cellar, crowded by bushes that bore lush berries in the summer but exposed in the winter, at least until the snow came and filled it up. It was lined with careful fieldstones. About ten feet square and you’d hardly notice it. Until you were into it.