The Unlikely Redemption of John Alexander MacNeil

by Lesley Choyce

  Sheila looked dead serious now. “Well, John Alex, don’t go preaching about the old ways to me. I know the old ways were not always the best ways. There’s a right and a wrong way to go about breast-feeding and you do your homework along with the girl here. Have you been keeping up with those pregnancy books you’ve been taking out?”

  “I’ve read some. Seems to make everything sound so bloody complex.”

  “I was trained as a nurse and practised for ten years. I attended to plenty of babies taking their first gulp of oxygen. Bringing a human life into the world by way of a woman’s womb is complicated. You don’t think so, go read up on the mortality rate of women in labour from those fabled days gone by. ”

  I stood silently and I could tell Sheila felt like she’d lectured a bit too hard. And there was no way she could have known about what Eva and I had gone through. I guess she just thought she had embarrassed me again.

  The inside of the converted school bus felt like a cocoon. There were books on all the walls, reminding me of the firewood stacked in my dining room to get us through the winter. Books and hardwood would get us through the winter. And a whole lot of luck.

  Sheila pointed to a shelf in the back. “Emily, go back there to the reserve shelf. You’ll find the Lamaze book and a couple of books like you were looking for — the philosophy stuff. And there’s a pamphlet there, dear, about a kind of correspondence course you can do at home, a university course at Mount Saint Vincent University. I can sign you up if you like.”

  “But I haven’t graduated high school. I’m not even in school this year.”

  “I know, dear. But it doesn’t matter. I know some people there. If you can do the reading and take the tests at home, you can be in the course.”

  Emily walked to the back of the bus and, for the first time, I noticed that she was walking funny. The baby growing inside her was pushing out her belly and she walked more slowly, slightly side to side to compensate for the weight.

  “I’m a little worried sometimes,” I said to Sheila. “About her.”

  She peered past me to see that Em was out of hearing range. Then she did a funny thing, a motherly thing. She licked her hand and ran it across my hair, patting it down and putting it in place. After that she brushed my shoulder with the palm of her hand, brushing off dandruff, I suppose. I felt like a little boy. And I could smell the sweetness of her breath and of herself as she leaned to me again and whispered, “John Alex, how strong are you?”

  “Physically?”

  “No. The other thing. How capable are you to handle trouble?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Jesus, John Alex. How long have I known you?”

  “A long time.”

  “And in that time, I’ve grown to admire you. All those editorials, all those times you stood up for your neighbours and stood up for yourself. All the tough stuff you’ve been through and always still kicking. Good God, if you could bottle that and pass it around, you could fix half the broken things in this sorry-ass world.”

  “I guess I should take that as a compliment.”

  “You bloody hell should. But I don’t know about this. I too am worried for you both.”

  “Because of the baby, you mean?” I was both confused by whatever warning she was offering up but also bolstered by the flattery. “Hell, I’ll breast-feed the kid myself if I have to,” I said, feeling it necessary to lighten things.

  She held my shoulders tight, a hand on each, but kept me close enough so that it was like she was speaking the words directly into my mouth. “John Alex, I trust you could deliver that child on your own and cut the umbilical cord with your teeth if you had to. It’s not that. But I’ve heard the talk in the town.”

  “Talk can’t hurt me.”

  “I know that. But one of these days, I fear you’ll find yourself in a rising tide. You won’t be able to hold it back on your own. You’ll need allies. Books and librarians won’t be enough. Things are likely to get legal. Emily knows this. Have you two discussed this?”

  “Well, I’m not sure I know what you mean.”

  “Sit down, John Alex.”

  So I sat down before her and suddenly something very important from the two missing months came back to me. The phone calls. The visits with Father Welenga and Dr. Fedder. Emily’s parents and the social worker’s visit.

  SEVENTEEN

  IT HAD BEEN OVER a month ago. I could see it dimly at first and then it came into focus. I followed a path in my mind that began with remembering yesterday, then last week, then the weeks before. Somewhere in the past there was summer. The girl had come to live with me. We bought chickens. Her companionship had made my life richer. I became attuned to her needs, her pregnancy. We had become family, the two of us. I stopped living in the past. I lived for the day that was. The sun would rise and it would set in the evening and I would feel the completeness of it all.

  There were gaps. And Emily must have been helping me cope with those empty pockets of time. But the memory was never fully lost. Things wandered back into my mind or they were coaxed back as Sheila had done. And as the memories returned, I knew I had reason to worry about Emily and reason to worry about me.

  Walking out of the bookmobile, each of us with an armload of books, we loaded them into the car and then headed down the Inverary sidewalk. I understood why one part of my mind had tried to erase some events. Here in Inverary, I realized, people were watching us. Some had strong opinions about what was appropriate and what was not. Phone calls had been made. Enquiries concerning Emily and myself.

  In mid-September I had taken Emily to Doc Fedder for a checkup. He himself did not seem all that well. He appeared listless. There were no jokes. He had no plans, he said, for any trips to Halifax. “Just a tad weary,” he said of his own health. I had sat alone in his waiting room reading an old issue of Popular Mechanics, an article about running automobiles on methane. As I understood it, you could capture the gases from a pile of cow manure in your own yard at home, compress the fumes and use them to drive the Cabot Trail if you were so inclined. If you were low on fuel, I wondered, could you just fart in the gas tank and then cruise on down the road?

  Emily came out of the doctor’s office and Shaky Fedder asked me to come in myself. “I’d like to give you a quick once-over, John Alex, just to see if in fact you are still one of the living.”

  Once he had closed the door behind us, he sat down behind his big old oak desk and rubbed his forehead. “Oh, John Alex, I’ve had a visit from the MacNaughtons and they asked me about you.”

  “That’s not a bad thing — for the girl’s parents to show some concern.”

  “Concern is one thing, but I’m not sure this is all good. I’m sure they were not the best nor the worst parents in the world, but they are deeply troubled. Their daughter is pregnant and in a small town, everyone knows.”

  “That they do. But there is nothing a body can do about that.”

  “They had decided that Emily should go away. But as you know she had different ideas. And they’re not too happy to think she’s up there in Deepvale with an old coot like you. Worse yet, that you two parade around town for their neighbours to see.”

  “Well, seems to me the girl wanted to stay home and her parents wouldn’t let her do that.”

  “ ’Tis true enough. Some parents care more about what the neighbours think than what’s good for their own daughter. They wanted to know about you. They said that some around here thought you were … well, not mentally competent.”

  “I see.”

  “John Alex, I told them you were the most sane and sound man I knew in this town and that I’d trust my own life to you. They had no right even being here asking, but I told them you were fit as a fiddle and that your credentials were impeccable. And then I ushered them the hell out of here. Makes me want to gag just thinking about them.”

 
“So that’s that,” I said.

  “No. I’m afraid it’s not going to stop there, my old friend. I expect they’ve already made some other enquiries with Social Services. Emily is still a sixteen-year-old girl. And somewhere down the road here there will be a child. You’re going to have a fight on your hands, I’m afraid.”

  “I’m not sure I understand. The girl’s own parents don’t want her in their house. They want to send her to some home for pregnant teenagers where she has no family. And they want the province to get involved — to do what?”

  “Maybe force her to do just that. Things can get pretty twisted around, you know that, John Alex.”

  I was thinking of myself just then. Thinking about losing Emily. Dr. Fedder saw my despair.

  “There’s some hope here, though. Now, I’ve been talking to Father Welenga. He thinks you are the closest thing to a saint we have around here. And the MacNaughtons are Catholics. They went to Father Welenga to get him on their side but he’s sharp. He’s looking out for you. And the girl. You’ve got allies, John Alex. But you’ve also got enemies. If the MacNaughtons or any other bastards think they can knock you down a peg or two, they’ll jump on this thing like a dog on a bone. My friend, you’ve never been shy with your own opinions or one to walk away from a fight. So you may be in for a rough ride. But I believe you can handle it.”

  FATHER WELENGA WAS IN his office watching Oprah on television when we arrived. He smiled broadly and asked us both to sit down. He kissed his fingers and touched them to the screen, to Oprah’s lips, before turning the TV off. “If I was not a priest, and if she would have me, I would marry that woman and live happily ever after,” he said.

  This made Emily look at me and laugh. I couldn’t help but betray Father Welenga with a smile of my own.

  “Where I come from, some men had several wives and that makes life very interesting for them. My own father had only one wife and he said that one was enough. When I told them I was going to be a priest and explained that I could never marry, my parents were very sad for me. And for themselves. Because it meant I would not give them any grandchildren. So they adopted two little children — orphans whose parents had died from AIDS. They are wonderful children who give my parents much happiness.”

  Father Welenga had a kind of aura about him — his smile, his easy manner. He was well liked by many in the community, but some still mistrusted him because he was a Black African man preaching the gospel to white Cape Bretoners. I expected the MacNaughtons were not in his fan club, but they would have recognized his authority.

  “My parents came to see you about me, didn’t they?” Em asked.

  “Yes. Lovely people, your parents.” Again, the smile. As if there was not a single problem in the world.

  “I have a feeling that they aren’t as pleasant as all that,” I said.

  “They want what they think is best for their daughter, but they are confused. I tried to set them straight.”

  “How did they react?” Em asked.

  “Hmm. That’s difficult to answer. They came to me hoping I would help them get their way, but I took them down a different path. I asked them to see into the future. To see their daughter two years from now with a healthy baby, to see themselves on perfectly wonderful terms with their daughter and to see themselves as happy grandparents.”

  “I bet that went over well,” Emily said.

  “They listened,” Father Welenga said, “but I could see something else going on here. I could see what was happening.”

  “And what would that be?” I asked, curious to hear Father Welenga’s interpretation.

  “Spiritual warfare,” he said. “Forces greater than us all. I don’t mean the devil or anything like that. But in this world there are spirits. In Cameroon we had names for them all — some benevolent, some not, some shifting from one side to the other. They were everywhere. And they are here too. Emily, your parents are good people but easily moved by fear and, I hate to say it, self-interest. They think what is good for them is good for you. And the spirits about us can use that to their end.”

  Emily looked puzzled. “I’m not sure I believe in spirits of any sort.”

  “In one regard, that may be good. If you don’t believe in them, if you are strong and believe in your own ability to shape your destiny, they may have no power over you at all. But your parents will be easily manipulated. And they will find many allies.”

  Father Welenga leaned forward and handed Em a rosary. “Do you remember how to use this?”

  “I guess,” she said. “But I was never very big on church stuff.”

  “That is okay with me. But try this. Just try it for yourself and maybe for your child. It can’t hurt.”

  “Sure. I’ll say the rosary to put me to sleep.”

  “That would be excellent.”

  Then the priest opened another drawer and leaned towards me. He held out his closed hand and I put my own hand towards him. Into it he placed a small carved wooden spider. It was both beautiful and startling. “They say this is for protection. Very few spiders are harmful unless you are a wasp or a moth. Where I come from, spiders are good spirits and they watch out for us.”

  I was thinking of the spider webs full of morning dew in my back field. I was imagining the way the sunlight was captured and held there, a thing of great beauty, in the summers.

  Father Welenga seemed to have noticed that the artefact had triggered something. “What do you see, John Alex?”

  “I see sunlight.” I had turned my head and was looking at Em when I said it. She didn’t understand and gave me that puzzled look she had, the funny one with the downturn on both sides of her mouth and the wrinkled brow.

  “Sunlight,” Father Welenga repeated. “Good.”

  EIGHTEEN

  ON THE MORNING OF the first light snow, I discovered that a wild animal — a weasel or a fox perhaps — had killed and eaten one of the hens. It was a disturbing sight even though I’d certainly seen plenty of dead animals before. I felt what I always felt: the unfairness of it all. The other hens as well as Pierre Trudeau seemed unaffected by the tragedy and pecked at their corn as usual. I surveyed the barn and realized there were dozens of places an animal could get in here. Would the others die in the nights to come? I decided not to tell Emily. She was getting moody. Bad news, even something heard on the radio about a man falling from the Seal Island Bridge or a car accident in Ingonish, seemed to upset her.

  I had gotten into the habit of putting Father Welenga’s wooden spider in my shirt pocket when I awoke each morning. I took it out now and perched it on an old square-headed rusty nail that protruded from the wall. Perhaps it would protect the chickens. If I felt the need for it, I would know where to find it. I gathered eight eggs into a plastic pail and returned to the house.

  It was only a dusting of snow, but the air was so different and the sky was brooding. As I was walking across the yard to the barn, I returned all too vividly to a school day from my past. When I say this, I do not mean I remembered it. I mean I was there.

  Something terrible had happened at home. I was maybe nine years old. My father was yelling at my brother and I kept saying, “It wasn’t his fault!” I don’t know what had triggered my father’s tantrum, but it could have been anything or nothing at all. I remember being hit hard on the side of the head with his hand. I fell to the floor and my ear was ringing. I realized I could not hear out of it. The hearing did not return until later that day. I didn’t cry. I was so used to this. It seemed so familiar and at that point in my life I think I still believed that this was the way all fathers treated their sons.

  And I never considered the fact that when my father got angry — even if he got angry with Lauchie — he ended up hitting me, not him.

  But then that was all part of why my brother was called Lucky.

  As I walked from the barn to my back door, I had travelle
d back there and then to that rutted laneway of my troubled past, walking to school. I was deaf in one ear except for the continual ringing that would not go away. My clothes were ragged, although they were freshly washed by my mother, who always made sure we were clean. My shoes let in the cold and the light dusting of snow on the hard ground reminded me there were colder, harder days ahead. I don’t know why Lauchie was not beside me, but I think it was because he had chosen to walk up ahead with some other friends of his. He had a way of sloughing off the bad times while I carried the gloom like stone baggage when I went out into the world.

  The walk seemed longer than usual. The weight of the stones even heavier than times before. I was not aware of the word “pessimism,” but I was the quintessential pessimist, this boy of nine. I expected bad things to happen and they did. It was a highly predictable world I lived in.

  As my fingers and toes grew colder, I shuffled along and tried to focus on something other than what had just occurred at home. I tried and failed to stop hating my father. And I felt guilty for it.

  I was closer to school now and there were other children walking to school as well. They were laughing and joking. The snow and the dark sky did not seem to bother them at all. It was almost as if they were beings of an entirely different species from myself. It was the laughter especially that made them so different. Some may have been laughing at me. I could never tell because I was always afraid to look up and see what they were doing, for fear that this was true.

  As I was walking by a rather decrepit-looking house, the door opened and a girl walked out. It was Eva and I had known her, or at least known of her, ever since I started school. But she lived here in town and I lived out in the sticks and that had made us citizens of two very different childhood nations. I must have stopped just then because the ringing in my injured ear gave way to a sharp pain. I closed my eyes and held my head.