The Long Stretch (8 page)

Here’s truth. Duncan and Effie, white-faced in their barely managed panic, tumbling through that door, gasping: “I think Uncle Sandy is going to kill Pa.”

They called him uncle too, though he wasn’t.

Ma, as always, calm. Drying her hands at the sink, barely turning, saying, “John, you and Duncan go over and take the truck home so they won’t go anywhere else.”

Duncan looking hopeless, not having a clue how to drive. Me knowing the theory, taking the keys like I knew more, the two of us sprinting over. Duncan speaking quickly: “They came home late. We had supper in the oven. We all sat down to eat. And Uncle Sandy shouted ‘Jeeeeesus!’ Flipped the table up on end and everything slid down and onto Papa.”

That was how it often started.

Duncan and I climb into a truck neither of us knows how to drive. I am too afraid to enjoy the look of helplessness in Duncan’s face as he watches me turn the key and start the engine, then put the truck in gear; then stall it, popping the clutch and giving too much acceleration. And the instant terror when we see a giant figure looming through a sudden splash of light, carrying a rifle.

Duncan and I dashing home and telling Ma and hearing her say, “That’s okay. I called the Mounties.”

Jesus Christ. The Mounties!

But the truth is that Ma looks half ready to murder me for telling her: “They’re saying Pa smashed the window out of the school porch.” Saying it like I heard it, with cautious levity, people looking at me askance in the schoolyard that day. Me looking askance at her.

“At the dance? Grabbed Paddy Fox by the throat and drove him through the window? Nearly took the eye out of him? You should see it. Looks like a big blood clot?”

Her face pink with shame. “Don’t you be listening to that. They just love to start stories.”

“But did he?”

“Just never mind!”

“But Paddy’s eye?”

“He could have got that anywhere…and good enough for him. The things he’ll be…Get away with you now. With that foolish talk about your own father.”

“We had a dog once. Effie, Duncan, and I. You must remember.”

“Called Sandy,” he says, smiling, “after Little Orphan Annie’s dog.”

“Do you remember what happened to it?”

He frowns for a moment, then says, “Killed by a car, I think he was.”

“No,” I say. “He was shot.”

“That’s right,” he says. “Now I remember. Some hunter.”

That’s what everybody thought. But the war hero killed him. I knew right away, when I found the corpse in the ditch, looking like a discarded cardboard box at first, the colour of winter-flattened hay after the snow goes. Thinking he was killed by a passing car but seeing, as Duncan picked him up, the large ragged black hole a bullet made. Then noticing my father, leaning against a fence post near the barn, the .303 resting on the top of the fence, half-covered by his arm. Remembrance Day ‘58. After Jack was gone.

Should I tell him this? Perhaps, for his own good.

“Everything goes to ratshit, sooner or later,” he says wearily.

To agree is to comply.

“Three guys, like brothers. Come the war, they become strangers…two of them like enemies, actually.” Turning then, and to the side of my face: “Four of us like family. Then…herself and Duncan, you and I. But no mysteries there, eh? No war.”

“That’s true,” I say.

“What, then?”

“It doesn’t matter,” I say. “Even ratshit goes away, in time.”

He laughs softly. “When was the last time you saw Duncan?”

“Must have been around Christmas,” I say. “Yes. He was over helping out the priest in Hawkesbury. I talked to him after midnight Mass.”

“So what do you talk about?” he asks.

“Not much. Work. A bit of politics. Getting older.”

“Did he ever give you his take on me and herself? The split?”

“He asks,” I say. “Now and then. Do I ever hear?” I look at him, questioning.

He grabs the bottle then and sloshes a splash of rum into my teacup.

“Easy,” I say.

“So Duncan still calls her Effie. No Faye there, eh!”

“Actually he never mentions her by name.”

He laughs and says, “No wonder.” Pours another splash before I can stop him. “I’m trying to get you pissed now,” he says. “Trying to corrupt you.”

“That’s not so difficult,” I say, moving my cup out of his reach.

“Because,” he says, “I’m working up to a confession here.”

I just stare into his face.

“My being here,” he says, “wasn’t the big coincidence I made it out to be.” Watching me carefully. “Actually docked late yesterday. Stayed with the old woman in her little apartment in
Judique last night. Sorry I lied,” he says. “Just. I wasn’t ready for it. When you popped up like that. Kind of panicked.” Smiles. “Quite an evening we had, Ma and me,” he says. “Spent half the night talking about things.”

“What things?” I say.

“We talked through a lot of stuff, Ma and me,” he says. “A lot of stuff we haven’t got into yet…you and I.”

I can’t avoid the ripple of annoyance. Not about the silly lie. Compared to all the others he’s invented, this one’s pitiful. My annoyance is based on this: he has caused another shift in my scaled-down, manageable world with its tiny population. What will he do next? Sleep with Millie? I wouldn’t put it past him. At least to try. But then, he’ll never know about Millie. Not many do. Not even Jessie.

For a while in the early seventies, Jessie knew everything about me. In a few days, both our lives were reinvented by the same disasters: Jack going to his grave and Effie and Sextus running off together. That bonded us for a couple of years. Then, in early 1972 she swallowed a lot of pride and reservations and visited Toronto, presumably to see her grandchild.

“What do you think?” she asked me.

“Looks like a baby,” I said, handing the pictures back.

“In the flesh,” she said, “she’s the spit of yourself.”

Then seemed to be staring at me, waiting.

I just laughed.

It took me longer to move on. Which is why I became progressively more crazy over the course of about five years. Until I discovered AA and Millie. Haven’t seen much of Jessie since.

“Everything changes,” she told me once. “From the minute we’re born.”

Uncle Jack’s life changed the way a soft stone changes under the corrosive stroking of the wind. Mine changed in a single afternoon, in November 1963, the way a bottle changes dropped upon a stone floor. Then, in 1964, I went away with Jack. Looking for another change, hoping to become him.

It never happened. I got distracted. Aunt Jessie always said she saw it starting. Claimed it made her apprehensive, right from day one.

Christmas 1964. Jack and I came home from Newfoundland, from the mine in Tilt Cove where we’d been working. He’d been there for years by then. I’d been there for eight months. Jack was frightened flying, so we had to get drunk first. “A couple of rivets to hold the courage together,” he’d say. It took about a dozen. Nine o’clock in the morning. We flew from La Scie to Springdale in a seaplane. Car to Badger. Train to Port aux Basques. I can’t remember the boat over Cabot Strait. Or getting home.

By that Christmas, home was changing radically. Just Ma and Grandma at home by then. Pa gone more than a year. And Aunt Jessie out from Hastings at least once every day, checking. I had been away only a short time and I could see the differences. Grandpa was gone by then too, practically lost in the darker longer shadow left by my father. They were fading fast. Nothing but women left on the Long Stretch. If you didn’t count Angus.

Christmas ‘64 was on a Friday. We got home sometime in the afternoon of the Sunday before. Had a nap. Effie came
over in the evening. I couldn’t believe how she’d grown up over the summer.

And she threw her arms around me. Right there. In front of Ma. Grandma too. Right around my neck. Standing on her toes. Didn’t kiss me or anything. But her cool face against mine. I half jumped. And the smell. Some kind of cologne that went right to the core.

That was the beginning of it.

It still feels weird, just remembering. Her clinging to you. The tone of voice, the energy, the fullness in your arms, against your body, all strike edgy sparks at the base of all sensations. But in your head she is innocence and vulnerability. Little Effie. Orphan Annie. Nine months older than you are, but still the little sister, looking for the safety of a sibling. How could I have known, when she folded those long arms around my neck, pressed her cheek to mine? This was no embrace. This was a collision. Needs crashing up against each other.

My first trip away was in ‘64. And my first trip back, Christmas. The old man was gone, and you could feel his absence. And Squint MacDougall was hanging around. Another war vet. Served overseas with Angus MacAskill. Made you uneasy, the way he’d look at you. But there was Effie.

I can’t believe she’s changed her name to Faye.

Uncle Jack was in a funk, just sitting around the house. Sextus was in Bermuda. Bermuda? Where was it, anyway?

“Down south.”

“You’re sure?”

“Yes. Way south. All black people, they say.”

“And what’s he doing there?”

“Him and a friend.”

“Friend?”

“Somebody from away.”

Duncan had decided to become a priest and spent the whole time in church, or staying at the glebe house. But there was Effie.

I laughed a lot. A new sensation. Everything she said was funny. And every time I’d laugh, she’d laugh at the sound of it. Everything around us was fresh. New building everywhere, new roads. From Port Hastings, looking down the strait, you could see tall stacks with smoke and steam billowing. The future taking hold. Full of promise.

Christmas Eve, Effie and I went to town to buy each other gifts. Coming home afterwards, sitting over on my side of the truck, she said: “You don’t
have
to go back there. To that Tilt Cove place.”

I didn’t answer. But she was right.

“It sounds so boring there. You could stay home. There’s work here now.”

“You never know,” I said. Wondering what Jack would think.

She’d finished school while I was away. Had a job. Working at a new motel that was almost on the site of the old community hall. The place she worked was called the Skye Motel. I laughed when I realized it was almost on the ashes of the place we burned.

On our third night out, coming home from a movie, she said to me: “Take me parking.” She slid across the seat, close to me, and slipped an arm behind my neck. “Come on,” she said. Her voice was strange. Low.

“Where do they usually go?” I asked, feeling hot.

“What,” she said, “you don’t know?”

I said, quickly, “I never had anybody out from here.”

“Well, it’s about time,” she said. And told me to drive down by the railway station and over to the old coal pier.

The station is gone now too.

I remember there would be half a dozen people on the platform when the train arrived each afternoon around five. People going nowhere, meeting nobody. Just there to feel the heat and power of the machine. Potential for change.

There was soft music murmuring from the radio. Bobby Darrin, voice like dark syrup.

I knoooow, beyond a doubt, youch, my heart…will lead me there.

“Used to play around here all the time, didn’t we,” I said.

Then she leaned into me, face very close.

My lover stands on golden saaaaands and watches the ships that go saaaailing…

“So let’s play around again,” she said, smiling gravely. Nose almost touching mine.

Before I could reply, her mouth was spread wetly upon mine.

Her kissing was enough to consume everything. Hauling the tongue out of me. Eyeballs. The breath from my lungs. Like nothing I’d ever imagined. All through my guts and groin. Almost abandonment. Could feel my arms responding as if automatically, my hands cupping her shoulderblades.

By the station platform, near the old coal pier, we were all over each other, gasping between the whispers. Car radio urging us on with slow suggestive music. Raw ecstasy mixed with the terrified knowledge that it will take an act of my own will to stop this magical flight.

I said: “I think we should go.”

She started to extract herself, lightly giggling. A white flash of bra and firm bulging flesh. Her fingers fumbled slowly with the buttons. Her face resumed its weary smile.

“That’s probably wise,” she said.

And we went home in silence, wondering what was happening.

Suddenly glad Sextus was away somewhere. And Duncan wrapped in his own anxieties. And our parents lost to us.

New Year’s Eve, the last day of 1964, Jack said: “Seen your half-ton on the road today but it couldn’t have been you at the wheel.”

“No? How come?”

“The driver had two heads.”

Trying to be funny, but the disapproval like a bruise.

She was almost as tall as I was, shoulders boyishly broad, giving her a deceptively flat-chested appearance. She wasn’t glamorous, but there was energy in her expression, starting with the eyes. It could make you nervous. What else? The down on her upper lip, soft as a breath. I think we found an excuse to be together every day and night that holiday. I remember there was a lot of snow and it was cold. But we’d find places to park the old man’s truck and we’d talk about things. Inevitably some emotion would blow up out of nowhere and one or the other of us would reach out and we’d fuse. Naturally as anything.

“Something made them both crazy,” she said. “Our fathers.”

It was at Christmas ‘64 she introduced me to the worst of the demons. It came up casually. A weird joke. Her father’s nerves
were going, she said. A combination of the war and the drink. He’d wander around at night. Sometimes straight into her room.

“When he sleeps,” she said, “which isn’t very often, he has these nightmares. And he shouts out people’s names. Often your father’s. He’ll scream ‘Sandy’ at the top of his lungs. He seems to be terrified of the dark,” she said. “Just wanders around. Only sleeps when he flakes out. Then he wakes up angry.”

It was the night before Jack and I went back to Tilt Cove. Just after New Year’s. There was a party somewhere. She was invited. Had talked for days about going, taking me. Our first public appearance. A formal coupling of sorts. But when the time came, she just wanted to talk.

“Maybe if somebody talked to him,” I said. Grabbing my wrist tightly, she said: “Never. You’ve got to promise.”

“Maybe it has something to do with the old man’s problem. What drove him to—”

“No,” she said quickly. “I can tell you for a fact. He hasn’t a clue. I asked him a hundred times. About what he knew.”

“Okay, okay,” I said. “It’s just that he’s the only one left.”

“It doesn’t really matter,” she said. “What’s done is done.”

“You can’t help wondering, though,” I said.

In January I found Jack’s company disturbing. He seemed restless. Talking about heading out somewhere else. Had a bellyful of Tilt Cove. Never wanted to spend another winter in Newfoundland.

“Maybe we’ll head for Bermouda,” he said.

I laughed.

“Sure they could use a coupla good raisemen in Bermouda,” he said. “Good raisemen are hard to find. And shaftmen.”

Jack was famous in the shaft.

“But I don’t suppose there’s a lot going on in Bermuda,” I said, smiling. Knowing more about Bermuda than he did, thanks to the TV.

“We could always ask the Bermouda expert,” he said.

He didn’t even call at Christmas.

Christmas was a drag, he said. Didn’t even have a car. Sextus had demolished the Chev a month earlier. Home for a weekend visit. Somewhere down north, beyond Judique. Passing someone at a hundred miles an hour, the cars just nudged and he lost control. Ran a hundred yards in the ditch, then flipped. Lucky the snow was early. Two brothers from Port Hood killed in exactly the same kind of accident the summer before. Sextus and Duncan and a bunch from Hawkesbury, just touring around. Not a scratch on anybody.

It was easy to believe that Sextus was the cause of his anxiety. But that, of course, was not the whole story. Jack could see the future taking shape. Didn’t like it.

Train rattling over the long railway bridge at Grand Narrows, getting near North Sydney and the boat to Newfoundland.

Uncle Jack lost in the scenery. Mountains of snow. The air in the coach hot and sleepy, stinging from cigarette smoke.

“You’re dreaming about some place warm,” I said, keeping it going, hoping to engage him. Badly had to talk to someone. About bigger things than Bermuda.

No answer. Train sounds a noise trench between us.

“What about Arizona,” I said. “How about if we went there?” Knowing he’d worked there once, sinking a shaft with Paddy Harrison.

“What would you think of that? Going back.”

No reply.

“I’d be game,” I say.

The hair on the back of his neck is curly. He didn’t even get a haircut while he was home.

“Pat Bellefleur was saying the Congo,” I said. “They’re screaming for people.”

A shrug of the shoulders, meaningless from behind.

“It’s in Africa,” I said. “Hot.”

“Big place, Africa,” he said.

“I’m up for anything,” I said. Settling back in the seat, giving up on him. “Just let me know.” Feeling a queer restlessness.

I was equally reluctant to be going back to Tilt Cove. But for a different reason. I was planning ahead, to when I’d be back home again. I was overwhelmed by the complexity of what we had between us, Effie and me. My future paralyzed by the last night home. Out with Effie. Hearing her talk about her father. Who had been invisible to me so much of the time when he wasn’t being troublesome.

The Bermuda shaftman speaks.

“I hear MacIsaac is sinking a shaft in Sudbury,” he said as the train slowed down for Boisdale. “A fellow could always go there.”

“Sudbury has a nice climate,” I said.