Cape Breton Road

by D. R. MacDonald

  4

  “CLAIRE, THAT’S INNIS. The Backwoodsman from Boston.”

  “That’s me,” Innis said, flashing the peace sign. “Hello.” The kitchen killed the last of his high but enough of it lingered to ride with his uncle’s mood. He was sweating and a bit lightheaded from the long walk up and there was surely a better time to meet this woman sitting at the table, her high cheekbones rouged with winter air, her eyes dark, bright with cold. She looked at him with a calm frankness, taking him in, then she smiled.

  “Hello, Innis.”

  “Sorry the kitchen was cool. I got sidetracked.”

  “Innis spends a lot of time on sidetracks,” Starr said, spearing a stove lid with a lifter. Innis had to smile, slightly: that was true, he did, but he didn’t like his uncle saying it. Starr clanged the poker around in the stove hole and fire flared up. He slammed the lid back in place. “Listen, Claire’s staying here for a while.”

  “A short while,” Claire put in. She seemed to suspect that Innis would not be thrilled. She was right: another person crashing here, someone else who might open that attic door on a whim.

  “Sure,” Innis said. “Fine. I’m just a boarder myself.”

  “She’s had some trouble,” Starr said, “with an ex-boyfriend, ex-partner. Whatever he is, the bastard hit her. Look at this.” He gently lifted her chin, so the ceiling light caught a dark welt along the edge of her eye.

  “Nothing serious,” she said, taking his hand away with equal gentleness. “He’s sorry already. He’d never laid a hand on me before.”

  “He won’t get another chance, and that’s a fact,” Starr said, grabbing a green wool scarf off the wall hook. He wound it round his neck, tucking the ends behind the lapels of a black wool sportcoat that had seen some wear, but never in the daytime that Innis could remember, and the scarf was a new touch, a little rakish for Starr, who favored blinding-white shirts, soaked in bleach you could smell in the kitchen sink on Saturdays, he ironed them himself with great seriousness, cursing and kissing his fingers as he slowly steamed out the wrinkles. He’d been to the barber too, his wavy grey hair smoothly groomed, shiny with barber’s oil. Maybe she enhanced him somehow, this Claire, but he looked handsome in a rough-edged way and Innis, still warmed by the weed, almost told him so, but he’d learned to rein back his tongue at those very moments when effusiveness or embarrassing affection seized him: he usually regretted it when he came down. Even so, there was an air of elopement about Starr and this Claire, as if he’d brought a bride home for Innis’s approval, his blessing, here on the other side of the threshold, because he came with the house now. But no: that was stoned-think, so don’t say anything unnecessary.

  Starr leaned close to her, talking low. “Okay, now, I’m going back there to get your things. Better give me your keys. You say your suitcases were already packed?”

  “Two, in the hallway. He kicked one open, kicked the stuff around. Don’t bother about it. But Starr, if Russ is there? Just forget it, all right?”

  “Does he own a gun?”

  “I don’t think so. He never said so. But please …”

  “Please? Yes, that’s what I’ll tell him if he’s there, You like to hit women? Try me instead. Please, I’d like that, I would.”

  “Starr Corbett to the rescue,” Innis said.

  “You should know, Tiny Tim.”

  Innis felt heat rise to his face. “Come on, Starr,” he said, touching his hair. “It’s shorter than when I came.”

  What had Starr told her about him? Any of the truth? If he had, there was no chance for harmony here. “He thinks I’m a hippie, Claire. He’s never met one, of course.”

  “Like hell.” Starr pulled on leather gloves and smacked a fist into one palm and then the other. “We had a house full of them down the road, MacLeans’ old place. They squatted there, they set up shop. Vietnam War scared them up here like a flock of chickens, but we didn’t give much of a damn for a while. Then one afternoon Alec Grant’s coming along in his car and one walks right in front of him crossing the road, all dreamy looking, naked as a peeled egg. Now, a woman, Alec wouldn’t have cared so much. But a longhaired hippie with a big beard, his ass hanging out, no thank you. A few of us went up there and helped them leave.”

  “Hippies don’t fight,” Innis said. “That wouldn’t be hard.”

  “You’re right, it wasn’t. But they weren’t all peaceful, I can tell you that. You have any work to do or you just goofing off? I haven’t seen the color of your money lately.”

  “I’m owed some, and there’s a priest with a cottage needs fixing up, down by the old wharf.”

  “A priest? That should bring a bundle. Claire, there’s rum in the cupboard, dear. Innis, show her. You need a drink, girl. I’m off.” He opened the back door but stopped as if something had just occurred to him. He looked back at Innis. “None for you, though. You don’t drink.”

  “Right on, Uncle. I wouldn’t touch it. Those your Lada racing gloves?”

  “You’re too damn saucy. And don’t call me Uncle.” He gave Claire a wave and closed the door. Innis sighed but didn’t move while the Lada revved and revved and clattered off up the driveway. Then he sat at the table, pulling his parka open. “Hot,” he said. He smiled at Claire who was lighting a cigarette. She blew smoke at the ceiling, revealing a pretty throat, elegant and muscular.

  “The hair thing’s a big deal with him, is it?” she said. “Lord, when I was your age I’d have given a lot for long straight hair.”

  “Why?” Innis said. “Your hair is beautiful.” It reminded him of crows’ black, the way light caught their wings.

  She smiled. “Listen, I’m not moving in. Just lying low for a week or two.”

  “I’ll be out of here by maybe September myself. At the latest.”

  “You don’t like it here?”

  She had seen most of her thirties, and places beyond Starr, beyond Cape Breton, Innis guessed. She didn’t look like any woman he had seen here, not up close, not on the street, in The Mines or Sydney either. She knew she was attractive, he could tell, but it wasn’t an issue with her.

  “What I like about here I can’t explain,” Innis said. “Anyway, it isn’t enough.”

  “A young man like you, he wants to get away, sure. I came out from Ontario with my boyfriend, the one Starr is not going to meet up with, I hope. He bought a hundred acres to raise trotters on.”

  “Where?”

  “Here on St. Aubin, down at Black Rock.”

  “Never been there.”

  “Cliffs at the back of his place, the ocean’s right there. I almost said our place. It was his project, but it took a lot of my money.”

  “Money in horses.”

  “Not for him, not for Russ. It was a dream of his.”

  “Is that bad?”

  “Not if your feet are on the ground. His money is gone too, along with some other things.”

  “Bummer.”

  “He didn’t take it too well. I wouldn’t mind a little of that rum?”

  “Hey. Sorry.” He had the rum out fast and a glass, sighting it at the light to see if he’d washed it. “Anything with it?”

  “Water and ice. Is it decent rum?”

  “Captain Morgan.”

  “Jesus.”

  “Starr’s not fussy. If it gets him toasted …”

  “I’m raising his tastes. He’ll take a good bottle of wine now, if you can find one.”

  “I suppose it must be the boonies here, compared to Ontario. Toronto?”

  “Close. I was an air hostess. But no, Cape Breton is beautiful. You’d be surprised what you can find here, if good wine isn’t one of them. Sydney’s not Boston, of course, is it.”

  “Not what I’ve seen of it, and that isn’t much. I don’t tool around a lot.”

  “Why?”

  “No wheels.”

  “That must be a real handicap, living out here. Starr won’t lend you his?”

  “That rattletrap? I’d rather
hitch. Hot in here, isn’t it?” Innis flung off his parka and checked the stove damper. “Starr tell you anything about me?” he said, his back to her.

  “A little. You’re his nephew, after all. But I don’t know why you came up here from Boston. You can tell me about yourself. I’ll listen.”

  “I’ve led a boring life. The good stuff’s all ahead of me, is the way I look at it. Come on, I’ll show you around.”

  She was taller than he thought, tall as Starr anyway, her long black sweater cinched at the waist in a wide lavender belt. Innis directed her into the hall, flipping on the light so he could point out the old photographs, making up names if he couldn’t recall what Starr had told him, “But that’s my mother’s father with one of his pals, out on the town, I guess, see the bowler hat in his hand? My mother’s dad, he was a bricklayer, in the steel mill in Sydney mostly, bricking the furnaces.” “He’s handsome,” Claire said, and Innis wanted to tell her, People think I look like him. “This is the parlor,” he said, “the furniture’s old as hell, most of it. I guess my great-uncle made the tables, the beds and dressers upstairs, a good carpenter, like my grandfather. The rockers are his, the pine cupboard. People here flung a lot of stuff in the fire, Starr says, they thought it was dreary, they wanted new things, especially after the war, you know? But the folks hung on to it in this house. It’s dreary all right, that old dark varnish.” “Not really,” she said, “they’re antiques now. They have the atmosphere of another time, that’s all. Sometimes atmosphere is everything.” She ran her finger across the mantle of the fireplace and held it up to him, smiling. “Okay, okay,” he said, “we’re behind in our dusting. The fireplace is always cold, Starr doesn’t use it. That TV is something, isn’t it? I think my grandfather built it.”

  Innis let her go ahead of him up the stairs, watching her hips move under her wool skirt, her expensive leather boots allowing him just a glimpse of her leg. Too much to hope that his uncle would get held up and he’d have this woman to entertain into the evening. Maybe this Russ guy would be more than Starr bargained for, a real tussle, the Mounties would be called in.… He moved ahead of her, turning on lights. He showed her the bathroom first. “This was a little bedroom once, until the plumbing came in. Starr has lots of outhouse tales. You know, how rugged it was, the slop bucket and all that, chamberpots, cold water.” She shivered. “It is cold up here. Big quilts, I hope.” “Trunkfuls. Here’s the spare bedroom. I’ll do the bed up for you, I know where the sheets are. Unless, I mean …” He had passed Starr’s bedroom without a word even though the door was wide open, the bed neatly made. He didn’t even want to consider that she and Starr might share it, yet he felt like a hostelkeeper or somebody’s dad, steering her to the safe bedroom, next to his own. But she touched his arm to put him at ease. “This room will do fine. A big tree out the window. And wallpaper!” “I hate it,” he said, “but it’s not as bad as mine.” He pointed her to the next room. “Look.”

  “Oh,” she said. “You draw.”

  Innis stayed in the doorway while Claire went from sketch to sketch, peering close, then leaning back. “Nice, you’re very good. That old man’s face, terrific. Who is he?”

  “Old guy up the road. He’s about a hundred years old. I put the army cap on him, with the feather. He didn’t pose that way, I just did him from memory. Dan Rory MacRitchie.” He watched her long slender fingers drift absently over the glass shade of his lamp, his radio, the feathers in a cracked vase. A woman in his room. Too much. “Sometime I’ll draw you, since you’re going to be around.”

  “I’d like that. But flatter me if you can.”

  “Piece of cake.”

  “Good God, are you a hunter?” She reached up to touch the deer skull. “That’s gruesome.”

  “He’s like a pal now, I can’t go to sleep without him. I don’t hunt, I found him in the woods.”

  At the head of the stairs she paused by a closed door. “Another bedroom?”

  “God, no. The attic, full of junk. I mean, to the rafters. Just step in the door and you’re filthy.”

  She stared at it until Innis felt his heart pick up. For a few moments he had the urge to tell her everything, to open it and show her there was something in there that was only his. Instead he reached out and rattled the knob. “See? Locked. Hey, you haven’t seen the little corner cellar where they used to store their food.”

  “Maybe I’ll skip that, Innis, for now.”

  “If you hear cracking and groaning, by the way, it’s not me, it’s the foundation. Unmortared stones.”

  “I should call my old number. I don’t know what’s going on over there.”

  “Don’t reveal any secrets. There’s always about six dozen locals tuning in.”

  She laughed. “The same in Black Rock. I’m used to it.”

  There was no answer at her old address but Starr was back just after dark, banging two suitcases through the back door, flushed, out of breath, highly pleased with himself and ready for talk. If anyone phones, he told Innis, we are not at home. He brought in sacks of groceries and sat at the table smoking cigarettes and drinking rum while Claire cooked them thick steaks and potatoes and peas on the big old stove instead of the smaller propane one, amused, Starr coaching her, You got to be a bit of a fireman, dear, to run that thing. Russ the ex-whatever had not been home after all, his car was gone, and Starr had gathered up the suitcases, one of them lying open in the yard, her underthings a scatter of color. Innis stayed out of the conversation, content with his meal, listening, cadging looks at Claire. He’d thought her eyes were dark brown but they were really an intense, inky blue.

  “My dad was a crackerjack farmer, Claire, you know,” Starr said. “Maybe we could get this place going again, you and me.”

  “What about Innis?” she said.

  “Innis is just passing through. He’s got other fish to fry, if he can hook them.”

  “Yep, I’m always on the move.” Innis tried to sound flippant but he was hurt. His uncle’s plans were fantasies anyway, so all the more reason to include him. “I need a city. A big city.”

  “Yeah,” Starr said. “One without cars in it.”

  Innis shot him a look but Starr, his hands working the air, had already forgotten, his scenario was expanding with each glass of rum as he gabbed away to Claire as if they were newlyweds. He would sell the old farm and move to British Columbia, good work and wages there, or he’d re-enlist in the navy, they had such good pensions now he could put in ten more years and be sitting pretty. He could get his license on the Great Lakes, the lakeboats needed men with his background, engineer types. Good money, but maybe he shouldn’t be away from home that long. No, he wanted to be here, he was sure they could make something of this land again. Hell, at the very least he would turn his woodlands over to silviculture, the government would kick in the money for that and he’d have an income steady as trees. Full circle, he was back on the farm, even ready to pull Innis into it.

  “My father ran this place almost alone. Him and his brother, Uncle Malcolm, they could make damn well anything they needed, iron or wood, b’y, they had their own forge. We could get into the swing of it, sure, we’ll bring the old orchard back, we’ll plow a few acres, get us a few cows, pigs, some laying hens, we have great water here. Sheep I don’t care for, though I know people who do. We could farm this, me and you. Eh, Innis? Couple strong lads like us? Claire behind us?” Their eyes met and for an instant Innis wanted to believe him, believe in some wild idea of work, of family, brown furrows trailing behind them, the clash of machinery, grain running through their fingers, their hungry talk in a hot kitchen at noon, hollyhocks under the window like he’d seen in a photo in the hall, someone calling them home, a woman like Claire in the house. “What would we grow?” Innis said, and Starr’s grin brought them back to earth. “You’d want to raise opium poppies or something along that line, eh?” and Innis, his mouth suddenly dry, smiled stupidly. Were his precious seeds waking, right over their heads?
/>   “Not me,” he said, turning away. “How about potatoes?”

  Innis rinsed dishes slowly in the sink. He did not want to leave Claire to his uncle, she looked wiped out, chin in her hand, smiling now and then by way of reply while Starr pulled his horizons back to the borders of his own land. “B.C.? It’s full of hippies. There’s not a speck of farmer in me or Innis either. Leave here? God, I joined the navy to get away from it. Then home I come and my dad dies sudden, before I figured anything out.” He laughed, there was a scrape of a match as he lit another Export. “Jesus, Claire, can you see me out there haying? You bringing me out a jar of spring water sweetened with oatmeal?”

  “Perhaps,” she said. “I wouldn’t know unless I tried it.”

  Surely she knew by now, after weeks of seeing him, how wound up Starr could get when the rum was in him, and of course her very presence fueled his main weakness: even on the work days of his life there was always just under the surface an urge to celebrate if there was a promise of a woman’s company. Innis had seen it before: a phone call, a coded conversation to thwart the eavesdroppers and Innis as well, and soon he was dressed and gone. But now she was here, at home, in his own place.

  “What about that silviculture you mentioned, Starr?” she said calmly. “All those acres of trees, and Innis to help you.”

  “I’m not growing wood for the goddamn government, them and their chemicals. Leave the trees like they are. They don’t need poisons. Right, Innis? He’s a wood rat. He knows. Been up above lately? Check the fuaran when you’re up there, the water’s a little slow.”