Cape Breton Road

by D. R. MacDonald

  “I’m going down to the priest’s,” Innis said when he’d cleaned up.

  Dan Rory was hunched over his record player. There was the probing scrape of a needle until he cued another 78 and said without looking around: “There’s something I’d like you to do with me, Innis.” He settled back into his rocker, nodding to the strains of a fiddle, a piano pounding out behind it.

  “With you?”

  “There’s to be a Gaelic service, down at St. James Church, not many miles from here.”

  Church? The old guy could forget that. The priest never laid that trip on him and he liked him for it, collar and all he didn’t Jesus and Mary him. “I don’t go to church,” Innis said.

  “Your uncle doesn’t take you, and he doesn’t take himself anymore, so that’s no business of mine. I want you to come with me to a Gaelic service. It’s a rare thing now, hard to find a man of the cloth who can do it, but we’ll have a minister visiting. He used to have a church down the North Shore, a lot of Gaelic speakers there in those days, still are more than a few. I want you to be there. That’s all I’m asking. Your grandfather, he was one of The Men in the Knox Church. He shone, he was fluent.”

  “I wouldn’t know what to do.”

  “Sit and listen.”

  “I don’t understand a word of that.”

  “This might be the last Gaelic service on St. Aubin, ever. Listen to it. There’s more to listening than words.”

  “Don’t have a coat, or a tie either.”

  “I’ll phone you up,” Dan Rory said, turning back to his music, which was nothing you’d hear in a church, more a dance. “When the time comes.”

  The fog was coming down so fast he didn’t want to hitch to Father Lesperance’s, though he’d rather go there than home. He ran for a spurt, splashing through springwater crisscrossing the road. He sidarmed pebbles into roadside birches showing their first miserly buds. A car passed him and then a pickup stopped, a GMC rotting out from under the old guy at the wheel. He was heading for a tavern in The Mines, his jaw clenched upon the drinks he’d had already, too intent on steering to talk, studying the road as if it were coming head-on, his old grey fedora cocked over his squint like a salute, saucy. “Struck a deer here once,” he said. “Look.” He shoved his hat brim up briefly, revealing a red scar high on his forehead. “Came through the windshield like a horse.”

  “Wreck your truck?”

  “Wrecked me. Couldn’t even eat the meat. See that house? You can’t, too much woods now, it’s back in the rear. Last man in there he run a flower shop. Glace Bay, somewhere. Planted oh, maybe two, three hundred daffodil, up the hill behind his kitchen. Came up nice but one night, one night the deer came down, ate every goddamn one of them. Moon out and all. Trimmed them right to the dirt.”

  “He should’ve slept outside, scared them off.”

  “Wasn’t the type to sleep outside. Who is? The deer know it. They’re not dumb, they just get hungry like the rest of us.”

  As he pulled up at Starr’s mailbox, steering the truck in slowly as a boat, the man stared at the name for a few seconds. “That one still chasing skirts?”

  “No, he’s almost done with that. He’ll be done altogether pretty soon.”

  Innis was a few steps down the driveway before he noticed her car, near the toolshed. He stopped. Fog had moved up from the shore and stood white in the back field, dense, drifting over the car, the buildings. A light upstairs, and in the parlor. What he’d heard last night had shook his fantasies hard. Some of them. Awkward to be alone with her now. He’d flung himself out the door this morning, sullen and obvious. Ice. Because ice was what he’d used on his mother and she on him, not yelling, not arguments, not explaining up-front, just day after day of silence, not heat but cold. Why couldn’t he have been better about this? Claire didn’t have to know he cared, he’d acted like a kid. All right, she’d fucked Starr next to his wall. Did he think they didn’t do it in the house, ever? But she’d been careful about that before, he’d thought it mattered to her to keep it private, keep it clear of him.

  He did not want to go into the house, not without a little help from his friends. He patted his shirt pocket. The barn, no more than a dim shadow in the pale fog, was not appealing, that musty cavern. He dragged a finger along Claire’s car, through a film of moisture. A drab Ford, just wheels to get her from here to there. He’d never have stolen it, anywhere, dead desperate. But he slipped inside, closing the door with a quiet thump. She had long legs but not as long as his, he pushed the seat back, settling in. A smell of solvent in his clothes. On his knees in the toxic fume of that bathroom he’d gotten jittery, panicky almost, breathing fast like he’d been running, and he’d jammed Mohney’s letter in his jeans, sorry he’d received it, it yanked him back to Watertown. And now he was facing church, in Gaelic? Sorry, Dan Rory, no, can’t do it, I’ll never be in the mood, not even a Thai stick would get me there. Or maybe he would just disappear that Sunday morning, up in the woods. He teased a crushed cigarette from the ashtray and touched the cork tip with his tongue—yep, lipstick. Hers. The dash lighter gathered its glow, a tremble of electricity in his fingers. It popped quietly from its socket, the red coil mirrored in the windshield as he drew it to the tip of the joint. In a car. Jesus. You turn a key, you hit the road. Summer was coming, the fog would lift, sun would heat everything. Maybe his grandfather had felt this excitement in the spring, restless to work seed into the ground, his oats and potatoes and whatever other stuff he raised. But to his grandfather it was not an urge to be gone from here but to dig further in, deeper and deeper every time he turned the sod. That’s what scared Innis in the old photos along the wall: people so rooted, their destinations so fixed, bound by an island within an island, Sunday stiff, in sepia tones, staring into time. Had they ever known a real city? Yet it came to him in one of those moments of stoned clarity, sighting along the hood of a stationary car, that he was afraid of the coming summer, of its openness, its energy, all the desires flooding back.

  A buzz, enough toke to get him inside and to his room, past Claire. A few civil words, a joke, lighten things up. You’re not a wounded teenager. Give it up, Innis. He liked the smell of cars that women drove, they were full of their anger, their perfume, the furious smoke of their cigarettes, he could feel their hips in the seat cushion under him, share the tapes flung in the glove compartment, and the one sticking out of the tape player when she parked he would start it right there where she’d left off and let the music conjure her even if he didn’t care for it, let it take him down the road as if she were still there with him. Then he would light up a joint and fly. He kept the windows up. He wanted the feeling of car: a shut-in warmth of exchanged breath, smoke and lipstick. Ashtray of stubbed butts, singed paper, gum, the sulfur of an extinguished match. The car’s deep metallic quietness. No one ever knew what talk he was making with himself.

  He got out of her car, tasting fog, its cool vapor. He was shivering, his jacket too light, too optimistic for the day, shirtsleeve weather in Boston now, but he knew it wasn’t just the air.

  “Is that you, Innis?”

  He stopped in the hall at the door to the parlor. She was sitting on the sofa, wrapped in a brown flannel bathrobe that belonged to Starr. She had laid a fire in the old fireplace Starr almost never used.

  “I’m surprised to see you, this time of day,” Innis said, rubbing his callused hands, harder than he needed to. It was like meeting her all over again. “You’re not sick, I hope?”

  “I think you’re a little sarcastic.”

  “Me? Never.”

  “Don’t go up to the bathroom yet, it’s dripping steam. I couldn’t face work, I couldn’t get up for it. You have a good day?”

  “I made a few bucks. Keep Starr happy, I guess.”

  “Is that important, keeping Starr happy?”

  “You’d know more about that than I do.”

  “Don’t be mean. You’re too young to be mean like that. He’s treated me good, not eve
ryone has.”

  “How about me?” He stood with his palms to the fire. “How did I treat you?”

  Claire leaned toward the fire, her face flushed from the bath. “Like you’re a little afraid of me maybe. I’m not sure what you are afraid of, so I shouldn’t say that. I know you heard us through the wall. I’m sorry for that, terribly. I realized it too late. But you knew already. Hearing us had nothing to do with the truth.”

  A log snapped, shifted, sparks whirled up the chimney. She was wearing the wide headband he’d seen in her dresser drawer, lemon yellow against her black hair. Heat came into his face as he recalled the panties he took, pushed way back in his drawer where he’d discovered them one morning, puzzled and excited for a few moments, as if he’d slipped them off a woman and completely forgotten.

  “And that night you were sick? Was I afraid that night?”

  “Doesn’t matter if you were. You looked after me.”

  “And Starr had to be an asshole about it.”

  “I straightened him out on that, like I said.”

  “I’m not sure you did, Claire. He was sending me a message last night, wasn’t he? A little knee in the balls.”

  “He couldn’t sleep and he came in my room. Some things just happen, they’re not planned. Russ showed up where I work yesterday. It wasn’t pleasant. I don’t want Starr involved with him. I was edgy last night, I needed … I was selfish, okay. I forgot you were there.”

  “Thanks. This fireplace is a little smoky. You notice?”

  “I felt like a fire. It’s dying down anyway.”

  “As long as he doesn’t blame it on me.” Innis sat on the floor, leaning back on his elbows so he could warm his feet. “In the barn that time, I liked it with you, up there in the old hay. I want you to know that. Jesus, it’s been some winter. Hasn’t it? In Boston daffodils would be up by now. No deer to eat them either. My mother planted a bunch in a little backyard we had for awhile. And rosebushes. She was always on me to help her look after them but I didn’t care about plants and flowers, that was for old folks. I remember spring, the smell of the ground and the grass. Everything goes to your head in May.” He was tired and a little sleepy from the fire. For now, he wanted to feel nothing of his uncle in the house. Never had he sat here with Claire as if Starr were not due in any second, or already in. Her legs, sheened from bathing, were level with his eyes and gave off a scent of powder. In the weak window light her eyes seemed darker, larger. Parlor gloom, he’d felt it before. A room once set aside for guests, Starr said, visitors and Sunday-comers, the minister, deacons like his father, relatives dressed for solemn gossip on that God-driven day. “You look terrific, by the way,” he said.

  “In this?” She tugged at the robe’s lapels. “Thanks anyway, Innis, dear. I’m glad to be away from work. Some plaid-pants politician didn’t like the color of the car we rented for him yesterday. What a fuss. And Russ on top of that. Maybe I’m not cut out for dealing with the public anymore. Or my private affairs in public.”

  “What were you cut out for, would you say?”

  “Who knows? I had the looks to be an airline stewardess, so that’s what I did. It could be fun at times, exciting, and I got around, I saw a lot of places. I met a man, and then another man. I came here with one who thought cheap land and good horses would get him a lot of money. Big mistake.”

  “Mistakes aren’t final.”

  “Some are. Yours aren’t. You’re young.”

  “What would you know about my mistakes?”

  “Don’t get testy. It’s nothing to me how you got to this house. Is it?”

  “He told you about me, didn’t he, that son of a bitch. Who else, I wonder.”

  “Hey, easy, dear. Me living here, it would’ve come out sooner or later. Don’t worry about it. What am I going to do, put it in the Post? Come on.” She reached for his face but he pulled away. He got up and stood at the window.

  “I hate this place. Ass-end of nowhere. I can’t make it to September, Claire. I’ll have to split, I know it. Jesus, we might as well be in the Arctic here. I can’t even get the damn things in the ground. I have to start my life all over again, okay, but it won’t be in North St. Aubin. I’m a Canadian after all, it turns out, not an American. I don’t even know what a Canadian is.”

  Claire came up behind him and put her arms around him gently. “Innis, dear, you have all kinds of time. You can’t know how valuable that is. Don’t be hasty. I’ve seen a lot of that.”

  He didn’t want to move or say anything that would release her embrace, motherly though it was. Wasn’t it? In the field above the house an old cherry tree was still without blossoms. The road had disappeared, he couldn’t see the mailbox, the air looked like old cotton. Beyond that slowly flowing mist there could be anything, things you wanted, things you didn’t. He hardly breathed. “Smoke some weed with me,” he whispered.

  “Now?” She laughed, stepping back from him. “In the afternoon? Right here? It’ll leave a smell.”

  “Only for a bit. Starr wouldn’t know it from woodsmoke.”

  “Don’t be so sure. Well … we’d best not do it in the front window, eh? There’s probably enough talk as it is.”

  “Who’d see us now? We’re a little island, lost in fog. An island in an island in an island.”

  They sat on the sofa, Innis patting his shirt pocket as much to soften his heartbeat as to find the roach. Smoking with a woman like Claire? Nothing better, no one could tell him different. Starr didn’t have a clue. Booze made you stupid, it bruised your brain.

  “A clip would help,” he said.

  “This do?” She handed him a hairpin from her headband and he wedged the roach into it and held it out to her.

  “There’s a few good hits in that,” he said, delighted to see it in her fingers.

  He struck a wooden match on a fireplace brick and watched her lips seek the stubby cigarette, her eyes closing tight as the flame shrunk and flared.

  “Nice,” she said.

  He plucked it from her hand and drew deeply, lipstick in the smoke. They exchanged it solemnly until he pinched out the last hot bit. Somewhere upstairs the wind had got in and a curtain flapped.

  “I left the bathroom window open,” she said. “I should close it.”

  “Nah. Let it go.”

  They were suddenly quiet, inside themselves. Innis didn’t care about Starr, or his shop that was so absurd it was beautiful, and Starr was in it now. Claire took his hand and turned it open. He watched her fingers as she slowly traced its lines and calluses, then closed it.

  “After I was sick this time, I felt old,” she said. “I saw what it might be like, needing people to look after you. That scared me a little. I have no family left.”

  “God, you’re hardly old. And family isn’t everything.”

  “I’m older than you.” Her eyes were shiny as she gazed into the flickers of fire, low and blue. She tucked her knees up, gathering the skirt of the robe under them. Innis took her hand and turned it over as she had done his.

  “Let’s see,” he said, “how old Old Claire is. Jesus, will you look at that.” He skimmed his fingers over her skin, in circles, barely touching. “Withered up, poor girl. There’s a crease, and there.” He did not want to release her hand or look at her face. “Yeah, she’s a right old crone, this one.”

  “Watch yourself, son,” she said, patting his cheek. “Just like a man, serving up the compliments. I don’t go for flattery.”

  “You know all about men, I guess. Me and Starr and the rest.”

  “I should know something. Shouldn’t I?”

  Innis slid down from the sofa and stretched out on the rug. “Did you get wild dreams while you had that fever? When I was a kid I got them. I was afraid to fall asleep when I was sick. Everything would grow huge and rush up close to my face. I’d see maybe a horse looking in my window. Awake I would’ve liked a horse at the window, but not sleeping.”

  Claire reached for his ponytail and tugged it. �
��Did you kiss me while I was out?”

  “Out where?”

  “Out of my head that night, did you kiss me or something?”

  Innis stroked the worn bristles of the rug. He looked at the stuffed sofa, the ceiling light fixture shadowed with flies. He had never been stoned in the parlor. In the kitchen the sink tap dripped. Starr had told him to put a washer on it but now it was pattering out a tune in cold dishwater. Starr would not come back this afternoon. There was nothing of him in the chemistry of this room except her question: Innis could lie, easily and quickly, and that kept him from fearing it. But maybe that was not what she wanted.