Cape Breton Road

by D. R. MacDonald

  Innis cut in behind the old garage and stood listening, his back pressed against the weathered shingles. Why couldn’t a guy they called Moneybags build himself a good garage, protect that sweet machine inside? All oiled motion, that Caddy, a car that swam. Innis was shivering as he came up through the hatch and set out searching the house, moving through it confidently now, switching the flashlight off when he passed a window. What if the man didn’t keep any keys here? Maybe someone else looked after them. But the old Captain, God bless him, had to be nothing if not neat, adept at hiding things from sight. Innis spent a little time in the obvious places, whipping drawers open and shut, rooting under linen. The flashlight flared in the glass doors of a tall cabinet. There, inside the third from the left of a nice row of brass-hook-hung mugs with different sailing ships on each, sat a nest of keys, among them two with a Cadillac logo. Yes.

  Cracks and seams of moonlight scored the earthy darkness of the garage, caressing the car’s black finish. Damn, he liked that short rear deck, the classic lines. Seville. Best looker Cadillac ever made, as far he was concerned. The key slid into the lock smoothly and he laughed as he inhaled the leathery smell and eased himself behind the wheel. But the ignition switch lit nothing on the dash. Battery. Stowed. He found it on a small wall bench plugged into a trickle charger, a half-inch box wrench lying beside it for the cable nuts. Captain MacQueen, always at the ready, gear within reach. Innis dropped the battery into the engine compartment, connected the cables. Even the engine was clean. When he turned it over, the squawk of the starter seemed disturbingly loud and he sat for a while before he tried again, his heart going hard. But who would hear it? Only this house and the priest’s on the Wharf Road. The third go the engine caught, ran rough for a little and then idled quietly. He revved it but not high. Couldn’t run it for long, even in a garage peppered with holes, but he knew how smoothly it would respond on the road, how it would carry him. Tank was almost on full. Before anybody discovered the empty garage, he could be miles away west, a few days’ driving if he slipped out of here late at night, an hour and a half and he’d be off the island, across the Strait of Canso, go all night with the radio and just enough weed to make the road interesting, stop for doughnuts and coke when the munchies hit. He’d head out across those long, half-deserted Canadian highways where you could pull over and piss in the trees and nobody’s headlights would pick you out, there would be only the silence of the endless woods and your own trickle and steam, the car idling on the shoulder, waiting to carry you as far as you wanted to go, and as you pulled away, the lights might sweep across a pulpwood road cut into the trees and it would chill you, imagining the dark woods and monotonous labor and being trapped in that kind of life. And no borders to cross but provincial ones, no cold customs officials looking him over grimly like he was a serial killer with a razor hidden in his shoe. He could ditch it maybe near Toronto, push it in a river somewhere, sell it even, cheap and quick, and start living again, city living. But he could not push his imagination into the blurry regions of this vision, he pulled back from its necessary details into the simple certainty of his plan: the plants were in the ground, growing this very minute. When the earth warmed up, they’d flourish there in the woods, flower, bring him profit. Then he could leave the way he wanted.

  Smelling exhaust, he turned off the ignition. A gentle wind had risen, rustling the big poplar. He’d have to do this fast, get out quick and button her up.

  The old doors, sagging on their hinges, dragged in the dirt as he pushed each one open wide. Then he backed out slowly, the space was narrow, and left the engine running without lights while he closed the garage. A quick look around and he jumped behind the wheel. Lights, reverse, ease out, into drive, and away, calmly, no rush, laying no rubber. The Seville took the road smoothly, for a stored car, accelerated without a miss. At the Ferry Road he turned west toward The Head. His breath fogged the windshield, he was breathing hard like he’d been running and he rubbed the glass with his fist. His brights picked out animal eyes at the roadside and he dimmed quickly. No unnecessary attention, please, don’t look like you’re running off with somebody else’s car, headlights screaming down the road. Just a loan. Hey, he’d earned it, he’d paid his dues here and no one could tell him different. The brakes were a bit soft, and the steering wheel off a couple degrees, he’d have thought that would have bugged the Captain, fussy guy. But everything else was cool. Let Starr and Claire have the Lada, that old lunchbox. He was wired, had to settle down, too long since he’d driven a vehicle like this, though North St. Aubin was hardly a network of dangerous streets. It was not a town or even a village, but a community in the manner of the Highlands, Dan Rory had told him, a run of farms, in its original makeup, on a long single road, it never had the focus of a village, no center, no collection of shops, just two churches, a store, a fire hall, and in the old days, a forge here, a grist mill there, for a town you went elsewhere, but we were all held together just the same, he said.

  The road ran close to the water, past cottages clinging to a piece of shore land, lit with summer residents or weekenders, but at The Head where it turned southward there was nothing at first between him and the beach but a strip of shingle, the hills of Cape Breton Island clear and dark across the moonlit water, green places he did not know and did not intend to know, just a light here and there, and the lights of a little town, a cluster of excitement at this distance, to his eyes now it might as well be Boston, whatever it was a long journey by car across the bridge and over the mountain, but direct by boat or by ice the way they used to go when the roads were poor and seasonal, terrible mud, Starr said, and the heavy snows. The paved road ended, the dirt smooth and graded at first, then trees closed in and it turned rough, crisscrossed by little gullies of water, baring rocks. He braked for ruts, groaning at every muddy splash resounding in the wheel wells. No damage, please. Mud spray was bad enough. The road narrowed and he swore, he’d expected the good road would take him clear around The Head to Southside St. Aubin, all he’d need now was a patch of mud bad enough to mire him. He didn’t dare turn back. This was the pace of horse and wagon. He wanted to move, bust out. God. Dense woods right to the roadside.

  A skinny driveway dropped away into trees, so fast out of sight he couldn’t spot the house, just a mailbox. Summer places probably, no door he’d want to knock on in any case. Hi, look, sorry to bother you but I got this stolen Cadillac up there and I need to get it out of the mud quick, could I use your phone? Jesus, headlights coming his way, barely two lanes. Innis slowed even more, straddling the ditch edge as the headlights glared anonymously toward him, the stupid bastard had his brights on. Shit, talk about getting a good look. Innis averted his face as the vehicle passed by, near enough to touch, and assumed the shape of a pickup, mudspattered, the guy must live along here somewhere, no other reason to be on this goddamn road unless you were crazy enough to take a Cadillac down it. He caught glimmers of water through the lower trees, the road widened, he passed a deep field and a good house at the back of it where the land sloped away to the water, Innis knew there was water below the way the light came up behind it. He hit pavement again and picked up speed, it was like taking a deep breath, tires centrifuging mud until they cleared it and the car whispered cleanly again. He relaxed a little, tilted the electric seat back, lowered it, made room for his legs. No breakdowns please, pulled over on the shoulder with a wheel jacked up while anyone driving by could get a good gawk at him wrestling with a spare. This car had been idle for months, no telling what might balk. Moisture in the wiring, the gas. He gave it more gas, the grades and curves were gentle. A long farm unfolded on both sides of the road, up the hill and down toward the water, a prosperous spread, nothing like it on the north side. The water a good way below the road. St. Georges Channel, deep water there, Starr said, eight, nine hundred feet. A car passed him in the opposite direction, fine, it sped out of sight, but when another pulled up close behind, he slowed enough to let it pass. In Boston he had n
ever worried who saw him in a good car as long it wasn’t the alerted police, but now everyone he encountered tightened him up and he felt like he should get off the highway, not cruise on it. After all, this was not his flight out of here, he was not heading off from St. Aubin, from Cape Breton Island, from Nova Scotia, not yet. Everyone who set eyes on this car was a threat, he was exposed, might as well be driving a tractor-trailer. This was not a kick after all, not the high he had hoped for. All he wanted now was to get this car out of sight.

  Innis squinted for signs of a road back to the north side, hit the brakes and backed up when his headlights caught a sign MACLEANS CROSS. Dirt road again but high, better, more clearings, some big fields, and what looked like a track for running horses. But very dark when the trees closed in again. Okay with him. He was crossing a high part of the island, surprisingly level for a long stretch, when there was a flicker of fur at the edge of his lights and immediately an ugly thump, low at the wheel well. He swerved too late, he stopped, leaped out, his heart thumping. Behind him the engine idled smoothly as he strained to make out the dark form on the road, an animal, yes, and then he heard someone calling further back in the dark, yelling a name. Innis slid back behind the wheel and screeched away, killing his lights until the road turned and descended, passing a house carved into the dense spruce and another before he reached Ferry Road and could make for the wharf again. He was sweating, the steering wheel was damp. He’d have to wipe everything, smear away every fingerprint. A dog. Jesus. Somebody’s dog.

  He drifted down the Wharf Road with his lights out and, after he opened the garage, steered the Seville inside faster than he’d backed it out and barred the doors. He stood in the dark listening. Then he quietly got back inside the car and touched the glow of the dashboard lighter to the tip of a joint. What a trip! If that person got the license, he was fucked. But the voice had been way down the road, they couldn’t have seen much. He jabbed the radio button past classical music, a pop station, somebody talking, then hit the sweet huskiness of the French DJ. What the hell was she saying? Could be anything, just dumb DJ jabber, but a hot voice nevertheless, he could take it in his hands almost, draw it into him. Claire had French blood in her, her mother’s side. Didn’t she murmur Innis in her fevered sleep? But she was out of her head that night, delirium didn’t count. She might have said Starr in the same voice, breathing it, puzzled or yearning, you couldn’t be sure. A small scar on her ribs. Details came to him. A beauty mole, a perfect daub above her breast. If she were here in this car, in the sealed warmth of exchanged breath, of moist lipstick, that faint, inverted, intimate whistle of pot smoke, shared and held, he could forget he had just killed a dog with another man’s car. Ash in the ashtray, singed paper, the sulfur of an extinguished match. The two of them, everything else shut out.

  He sat in the glow of the dashlights, recycling the smoke he had made. The DJ, she had cued a record, some rock band, but Innis preferred her voice to the music. Rock? The lyrics sounded goofy in French, dubbed, unreal. Maybe they were really singing about mushrooms or wine or cheese, not about funky love, about disappointment and anger and electric guitars. Okay, he would learn French, go live up in Cheticamp on the west coast of the big island or some other Acadian place in Cape Breton like L’Ardoise or Isle Madame, meet a different kind of people. Make himself over in a new language, take another name. The priest might have some advice on that, sure. And on some things Innis didn’t want advice on too. The priest. Where was Father Lesperance from? The man had a thirst. So what. Innis had a thirst too. How did a telephone get into a French rock song? Christ, the phone was ringing in the house! Radio, off! He sat rigid, each ring pounding in his ears. It was so loud he almost expected to hear someone answer it Hello? He tried to count the rings, was it three longs, a couple shorts? Then it stopped. He fell back on the seat, too weak to move. Phones rang simultaneously in every house, he still forgot that sometimes: you just listen for your ring, and he didn’t know MacQueen’s. But other people did, and it would’ve rung in their houses too and somebody might be saying right now, Wasn’t that Captain MacQueen’s ring, now who in the world would be ringing his number now, him still in Florida? Phones were bad enough at the best of times, they screamed for attention, they brought bad news, and Innis could count on both hands the times he had used one in St. Aubin. But it was the grass that gave him the fright, the phone just plugged into it like an electrical wire. Paranoia. Easy.

  He closed up the Caddy quietly, every click, and ran a rag over the door and hood where his greasy prints were visible after he took the battery out. With each disengaging step he dealt himself another alibi, in case in case, goddamn it, he couldn’t take anything for granted now, if they can send you across the border for good, Look, I work for Father Lesperance over the road there, I thought I saw a couple kids sneak under the house, I heard the car doors shutting, and the engine running and I thought, Jesus, what’s going on, I came in to check it out, I didn’t even know the Captain had a car. The keys enclosed in his fist, Innis returned them to the mug, made his way out, feeling along the short hall where the phone’s echo still hung, his flashlight was too dim now, useless. He pulled the back door behind him until the lock clicked and stood with his eyes closed under the enormous poplar, wind high in its leaves, their pale undersides rustling in the dark like water.

  HE WAS GLAD to see Starr’s house slowly come into view, pitch dark and empty, the high moon over it, and Starr wouldn’t be there asking him where he’d been this late, walking. He was exhausted, footsore, thinking of the dead dog, he hated killing an animal like that but Christ it shot out of the dark, what could he do. Over an hour it had taken him to cover this road, scrambling for cover at the first sign of headlights, like a strafed refugee. The rest of the time it was the scuff of his feet, his breathing, a little humming and muttering to himself until the pot faded and he was merely tired, even the utility pole lights seemed unusually bright as he trotted to get beyond their reach. A buck had snorted up in dark trees, loud, driving Innis into the ditch until he heard the thump and crash of its departure. People used to walk here all the time in the old days, nothing at all to hoof it in the dark for miles, Starr said, setting out in search for a ceilidh or a kitchen racket or any sort of drop-in fun, through fields, woods, whatever, nobody thought twice about distance, it was a kind of walking that didn’t exist anymore. Innis was only pounding along the shoulder of a paved road, straightest way home now, no shortcuts, he didn’t know any. He should have been at the wheel of a car, not running away from one. Maybe Claire and his uncle had found a dance up there somewhere. She had to be a hell of a dancer, didn’t she, with those long smooth legs? Do you dance, Innis? she might say. No. Yes. On the dance floor of my head. Too tired to think about it. Farming was hard work, this kind, trekking way up in the woods. Harder yet on the nerves. The Caddy was supposed to be … what? Recreation? What a joke. The woods below the house had merged in darkness with water and mountain. The mountain was a mountain of sleep, a long, reclining, quiet mountain, hushed by its forest.

  Too weary to bathe, he gulped down two glasses of water and stripped, toppling onto his bed. What a downer, the whole evening, flattening someone’s dog and running off, they’d want to string him up if they found him, and why not, he deserved it. Couldn’t sleep, his head teeming, his feet burning as if he had a fever. Should he tie salt codfish to them? That’s what Granny would have done. Would she have a salve for his heel blister, for his heart? He realized that he was weeping, he could not believe the sobs that broke from him, he couldn’t swallow them, keep them down. Then he gave in to it, let self-pity and anger wash over him, who would hear it after all, it was just between him and himself, the boy and the man.

  Soon it passed into rueful laughter, man oh man he had fucked things up. But his plants were in, they were in the ground! From inside the pillowslip he pulled out the stolen panties, fingering the silken material. A scent of dried flowers, the sachet Claire kept in her drawer. He should put
them back, this minute, this was nuts. Starr has her. You have her underwear. He went to her room and stuffed them back in the dresser, took a long, thoughtful piss, and then fell into sleep.

  Loud moonlight, cold and clean, pulled him awake. In those first moments its light was fused with a cry that terrified him, fixed him to his bed. Where was it? Outdoors, not in. From the wooded gully just west of the house? In the crazy turmoil of his mind he thought it might be the dog, it had dragged itself here somehow to torment him, but no no, that road was a few miles away and this was no sound a dog could make. Like a shriek and a yowl entwining, tortured, urgent, pitched more to nightmare than waking. It rose again, raw and terrible. Was it killing, or being killed? Animal, but what? Something you couldn’t shoot, couldn’t kill, could you? It had come too far, he had no measure for it. He lay there stiff, his heart flayed by the sound, gripped by nothing else until it stopped. His ears ached with listening. There was no other noise, nothing of a creature. The silence seemed stunned by the moonlight spilling over his body, the deep woods sweeping away into night.

  The utter wildness of what he had heard had numbed his hands and legs but under his ceiling light the room took on its familiar cast. He went from room to room switching on lights, and finally the television, whose foolish and misshapen images calmed him. Bolder now, afraid but fascinated, he went outside and swept a flashlight across the dark field, lurching along like a drunk. Nothing, nothing different: the stolid spruce and white birches of the gully, the spindly willows. The old stone pile glittered dimly with broken glass. Not a stalk of weed or grass or bush moved. There was nothing in those trees he should fear, yet the hideous cry of some animal had gutted him. “Hey!” he yelled. “I didn’t mean it! It was an accident!” His voice was small, nothing. The tiniest bird would have been louder. He turned the beam toward the gully, the summer gurgle of the brook. But there was nothing there.