The Long Stretch (15 page)

That’s what they figured. He came along not paying attention. Fell in. Rifle went off. Boom.

You’d never have expected something like that could happen to Sandy Gillis. A veteran of the war. Slogged all the way through France. Battle of the Scheldt. Lots of action in Holland. An experienced hunter. Like an Indian, he was. But then you’d never have expected him to take a flask with him hunting either. He loved a dram, but never when he was hunting. Drinking and guns don’t mix, he always told me, and that is what they were all saying at the wake. But there it was, beside him. The little brown paper bag with the empty bottle inside. A pint. Golden Diamond. The receipt said Thursday evening. You could still get a pint of rum for about $2.50 then.

The other thing they were saying was that it was completely unlike Sandy Gillis to have had a bullet in the chamber, unless of course he saw something. Was getting ready to shoot. In any event, they figured he fell in, landed on a rock in the bottom of the old cellar, the rifle under him. The force of the fall broke the stock, right at the hand grip, caused the thing to fire. The bullet went in under his chin and right out the top. A frigging mess.

“When I came home for the long weekend in October, Thanks-giving, everything seemed just fine,” he says.

“It was.”

“Ma told me they went to the masquerade dance in Glendale.”

“They won a prize.”

“That should have been a sign.”

“Of what? “I say.

“Uncharacteristic behaviour. A sign of trouble.”

“Don’t get started,” I say.

“No point avoiding it.”

“Just don’t.”

“John, the evidence was there. He even broke off the rifle-stock so it would fit between his lap and his chin—”

“It was an accident.”

“Christ, I can’t believe this.”

“I’m just not going to discuss it with you.”

“Why the fuck not?”

“Because I already know what you think,” I say finally. Getting my chance. Hanging on to myself. “I already fucking know what you think. Myself and the whole goddamned world.”

“Ahhhh
Jeesus,
” he says. Sounding just like my old man. Getting up, clattering the chair. Walking impatiently over to the sink. Leaning, looking like he’s going to throw up. Then turning.

“I wrote that with respect. Get it? Respect. For Uncle Sandy. Okay?”

Now he’s leaning on the table.

“So it hurt you. So it scandalized the countryside. But it was pretty close to the truth. The truth that Uncle Sandy was a
good, honourable man. No matter what went on with the Swede’s wife. No matter what happened out at Ceiteag’s.”

“It’s all bullshit,” I say. Quietly. The way Uncle Jack would have.

“Right,” he says. “Fine. You think what you want.”

We had a wake at the house. For three days. Had to take the window out of the living room to get the coffin in. The kitchen and the old pantry were packed with women the whole time. People all over the place, telling stories. Stayed around the clock. And every couple of hours, gathering in the living room, flickering with candles. Kneeling in front of that closed and silent mahogany box. Saying the rosary, over and over.

And people watching the Kennedy things on TV. The body coming back to Washington. The big hearse through the lined streets.

“They were almost the same age,” Ma said. Her face white and still.

“They had the exact same birthday. Him and our Sandy.”

Isn’t that something.

And them both wounded in the war.

You think.

And the little fellow’s name is John too.

I never thought of that.

You know, Mary looked a lot like Jackie when she was younger. She still does. Mary won’t be single long. Will you, Mary?

She could smile.

Uncle Jack was home from Newfoundland. Lots who came
were his friends. Miners. With big thick sloped shoulders, coming in slowly, the way miners walk. Carefully. From always walking in the dark.

“Sorry for your trouble,” they’d say, thick hands gentle and slow.

“Yes,” Jack would say.

“And where are you now?”

“Tilt Cove.”

“And is there much going on?”

“Going to be some new stuff in the spring. Talking about a second shaft.”

“I suppose they’ll be looking for people.”

“Get in touch with me after.”

“Anybody with you from here?”

“The Beaton boys from West Mabou. Charlie Angus from Loch Lomond. Philip MacPhail. From River Denys.”

“Charlie Angus?”

“Yeah, he’s there. Same as ever.”

“And poor Philip.”

“Okay. Good of you to come.”

“Jesus. Sorry for your trouble.”

“I know.”

Uncle Jack was drinking vodka most of the time. I found six pints of it buried in the dresser drawer where I kept my underwear. Once when I came into my room he was sitting on my bed drinking out of one of the bottles.

I sat down beside him.

We just sat there.

The last evening, the night before the funeral, the Swede came with his wife. The house got very quiet. A lot of the men there worked at the mill. He was dressed in a suit coming in.
Herself was wearing a navy blue long coat and she had a red silky scarf at the neck. Pinned by a little tulip brooch. And a little navy hat on. She didn’t look at all like any other time I’d seen her. She looked plain. The hair looked dull and damp. There were bluish crescents below her eyes. No lipstick. And she looked unbelievably sad.

They talked briefly to Ma. Shook my hand. Her eyes were scanning my face, and we nodded at each other. I was remembering the other times I’d seen that face, with its smile and mysterious signals. Ma was overly polite to them. As if the bishop had docked.

Then they went down to the living room together, arm in arm. And they stood there in front of the coffin. Not kneeling or blessing themselves or anything. Just standing there. I was watching from behind. She was hanging on to her husband’s arm. Her head actually turned toward his shoulder as if she was going to lean her face into it.

Then they turned and came out. They put their names in the visitors’ book and on their way by they stopped in front of us and shook hands again. I noticed that Sandgren took Ma’s hand between both of his and he said to her with a little bit of an accent, “He was a good man, Mr. Gillis.”

Ma nodded but she was staring at the Swede’s wife, trying to say something, or hold something back.

The Swede’s wife said: “I come from Holland. My home was Zutphen. Your poor husband. When we spoke. He told me there are people here. Van Zutphens. I hope to meet them. One day.”

Ma said, “My husband was there. In the war.”

“Yes,” the Swede’s wife said. “I knew. I remember the Canadians. I was a girl. But I remember.” Her cheeks were pink and the eyes flashed, and I think her quick sorrow bumped Ma a
little off balance because she then took the Swede’s wife’s hand and said simply, “I’m glad you came.”

“Maybe we can talk sometime,” the Swede’s wife said.

“Maybe,” Ma replied.

“My name is Annie,” she said. “Annie van Ryk.”

“Yes,” said Ma. “It was nice meeting you.”

Like it was all over.

There was a wet streak from the corner of the Swede’s wife’s eye. She turned to her husband and quietly said, “We should go now.”

Squint was eyeballing them both, sitting at the kitchen table where I’m sitting now, an odd twist to his face. As they were leaving, he was saying to nobody in particular, out of the side of his mouth: “Good thing the
fuamhair
wasn’t here for that.”

Here’s what Millie told me years later, sitting in my car on top of Creignish Mountain, looking out over St. Georges Bay.

How sometime in the early summer of 1963 the Swede’s wife arrived at her parents’ farm over near Dundee, on the shores of the west bay of the Bras d’Or lakes. Had a big visit with the old people. Talking Dutch. Millie doesn’t speak Dutch even though she was born over there and learned it first. She gave it up when she started school. Resented all the reminders: You people don’t know how good you’ve got it here; you don’t know what hunger is; you don’t know what being occupied by monsters was like; never mind you were little, you didn’t know; we protected you.

After the woman left they told Millie she was somebody from home. That she grew up in a place that had been liberated by
Canadians; met some of them; boys from Nova Scotia; one named Gillis; was just curious.

Millie said: “I remember my father saying he told her, ‘Good luck. Half the people here seem to be named Gillis. Or MacDonald.’ Poppa figured she’d had a crush on somebody named that, in the war. You don’t think it could have been?”

I can remember the sorrow that moved through me then, toward the fire ditch. But feeling none of the relief he’d promised.

My horoscope, November 27, 1963:
Time ripe for basic changes. Express hopes, ambitions. Check with authorities. Follow expert advice. Continue to be optimistic. Associate due to offer encouragement.

The funeral is a blur. Sounds of clinking from blazers heavy with medals dangling from coloured bits of ribbon. Legion men from Amherst. And Sydney. Old North Novies. Burying one of their own. The Swede and the wife didn’t come.

I see people lining the street all the way to the cemetery but that couldn’t be. Nobody ever lines the street for a funeral procession here. I’m getting mixed up with the other one. In Washington. There was a piper, I know that. The same one Angus had, nine or ten years later. He played “Flowers of the Forest.” Uncle Jack was standing in front of me at the graveside and when the piper started I saw his shoulders jerking. Ma held her fist under her nose the whole time. The only one you could see actually weeping was Sextus. I came close though when the piper played “MacCrimmon’s Lament” as we walked away from the grave, leaving Legion men to fill it in. Grandma was snivelling by then. Ma actually moving like a slow march. Feet stiff.

The hardest days were afterwards.

Ma at the wake. Comforted knowing that when all these people in the packed house were whispering they were talking about her qualities. But I could tell.

And Effie. The way she’d take my hand whenever she came close. She knew too. That the majority of these people needed more. Accidental death wasn’t good enough. Sandy the war hero who got shot serving his country, now killed falling into Ceiteag Alasdair’s old cellar? Not likely. Not Sandy. Not when you put it together with what people were saying about the Swede’s wife. Not when you knew he had that streak in him anyway. Accidents like the one that killed Sandy the Lineman were in competition with the TV stories. There had to be more to it. Drama. Romance for certain. That’s how gossip starts.

And the Kennedy stuff on TV was a perfect background. Our little spectacle drew significance and drama from it.

When Effie came up to me she’d take my arm and squeeze it a little. Getting my full attention. God, she was getting good looking. Seventeen. No more Little Orphan Annie.

“It’ll be all right,” she’d say.

After midnight, when the place would thin out, Sextus and Duncan and Angus and Squint and a few others would sit around the kitchen table drinking rum. Uncle Jack would be gone by then. Jessie taking him away gently. Him staggering a little bit. Everybody wondering.

And the day of the funeral, somebody from the power commission came early with an industrial vacuum cleaner and did the whole house. So when the undertaker came and took the coffin out it was as if none of it had happened.

Of course it rained and after the funeral half of them came back for tea and drinks again and stayed late into the evening. Made a mess of the place all over again. But it was different.
The mourning was over, even if the grief wasn’t. The old man was gone. Mostly everybody talked about Kennedy. And Oswald. Squint being an old sniper explaining how Oswald did it. Three shots. You had to be real fast. Rifle was bolt action. He was good, Oswald. Well trained, obviously. And Angus saying how Ruby should get a medal. But he shouldn’t have shot him. Should have cut his fucking guts out.

It was the one time I felt a bond with Angus. Went out for air once and saw him leaning against the house, like taking a leak. But when he turned and spoke you could tell he’d been bawling.

Effie was the first to tell me Sextus had written a book about it. Years later.

“Guess who’s written a book?” she says.

“A book?” She laughs.

Me so surprised I never thought to ask what it was about. Of course I found out soon enough. The
Hawkesbury Sun
wrote it up. Big deal. Book about here by somebody from here. Never mind what was in it.

Sextus took me upstairs after the funeral and pulled a pint of vodka from an inside pocket. We were standing in the bathroom. You drank vodka if you didn’t want people to know. Jack did that too. All through the wake.

“I don’t know,” I said.

He uncapped the bottle and took a swallow. Made a face.

“Give it to me,” I said.

I gulped a mouthful. It burned my throat and stomach and I felt a sudden sweat and a lightness behind the eyes. “Not bad,” I said when I got my breath.

He was smiling.

Downstairs they were making jokes with Ma about being single again. And she was going along with them. Poor Ma. Wouldn’t want to make anybody feel bad even if they were being arseholes.

There was a lawyer there. A young fellow originally from down north somewhere. Doucet. Pa must have known him. He introduced himself and asked if he could see me alone for a minute.

Said he was a friend of Pa, and how sorry he was, etcetera, holding my hand in a steady grip longer than I was used to.

“You’re the man here now,” he said seriously.

I nodded.

“While I’m here,” he said, “I have something I have to show you. If it’s okay. I could always…”

“No,” I said. “That’s all right.”

He unfolded an official-looking paper. “Certificate of Death” was written on the top.

“Somebody had to witness this,” he said. It was signed by the Polish doctor in Hawkesbury. “I took the liberty.”

“Sure,” I said.

I read quickly. I saw the words “severe trauma” and “accidental gunshot wound.” There was a jumble of medical terminology.

I felt sick and grown-up at the same time. Handed him back the paper.

“This is just so you won’t be worrying about anything,” he said. “We can talk in a few days. You, your mother, and I. About the will. And the insurance.”

“Insurance,” I say.

“Of course,” he says, brow furrowed. “It was an accident.”

He winked and nodded his head quickly. Assuming I understood. But that didn’t matter.