The Unlikely Redemption of John Alexander MacNeil

by Lesley Choyce

  After a few seconds it went away and the ringing returned. When I opened my eyes, Eva was standing beside me looking at me with deep concern. “John Alex, are you all right?” she asked just as it began snowing again while at the same time the sun broke through the clouds. I looked at her as she repeated my name. There were wet snowflakes in her hair that captured the sun and for the first time in what seemed like a very, very long time, I smiled.

  “YOU LOOKED LIKE YOU were lost,” Em said, as I walked inside and stamped the snow from my boots.

  “I’m okay,” I said. I tried very hard not to tell Em more than she needed to know. I didn’t want to scare her.

  “Where did you go?”

  “To feed the chickens.”

  “No, I mean on the way back here. You slowed down and then just stood there looking up at the sky.”

  I felt like I had been caught doing something wrong. I felt guilty. “I was just thinking about the past. You must do that sometimes.”

  “I try not to. Every time I do, I feel mad. I feel betrayed.”

  “Your parents?”

  “Yes. And Mark. Even Brian. And I find myself worrying about you.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “I keep thinking that this won’t work. Can’t work. And what if it’s the middle of the winter and I have no place to go?”

  “That won’t happen.”

  “But it may not be your fault. I have a feeling it’s going to happen.”

  “Spiritual warfare?”

  “Something like that.”

  I sat down at the kitchen table and ran a hand through my hair. It was quite long now, not as thick as in my youth but long for an old man. Some, I knew, would see this as a sign that I was a bit on the strange side. I looked at Em and saw how her worries were reshaping her face. I knew that this was not easy for her, but I had no magic to give her back her youth, her childhood. “Would you give me a haircut?” I asked suddenly.

  “A haircut?”

  “Yes. Right here in the kitchen. I will sit very still and you will take those scissors over there and trim the length of my hair.”

  “I like your hair.”

  “Thank you. But some would say an old man should pay attention to the way he looks.”

  “I didn’t think you worried about what people thought of you. I’ve read your editorials in the Pibroch, you know.”

  “I just would like you to cut my hair.”

  “I don’t think you should trust me around scissors. Better go to town and get the barber to do it.”

  “Please. Just make it shorter.” I held the scissors out to her — a big heavy pair of well-made scissors that Eva had used through all our married life for sewing and for housework. And for cutting each other’s hair. I kept them very sharp.

  She shrugged. “I’ll try,” she said. “Just don’t blame me if it’s a disaster.”

  But it was not a disaster. She used her own brush and comb and sometimes I felt her fingers tracing through my hair. I found great comfort and affirmation in the sound of the scissor blades coming together. I forced myself to not travel back to the past even though the sound of the scissors so close to my ear wanted to take me back to Eva. Em trimmed two inches off the back and said she was done. I swept the loose hair from the floor into a dustpan and then took it outside to toss into the light wind.

  “Why did you do that?”

  “For the birds,” I said. “It’s said they collect human hair for building their nests. I like the idea of my hair ending up as part of a nest somewhere in a tree.”

  “I thought they only did that in the spring.”

  “I don’t know. Do they?”

  A WARM SPELL ARRIVED and postponed winter. We had settled into quiet routines. Both of us read voraciously. We read the same books that we’d borrowed from the bookmobile, the ones Sheila had lent us on what she called “indefinite loan.” Books on pregnancy, babies and philosophy. It was an odd combination. Sometimes I was the one absorbed more in the pregnancy and child-rearing books while Emily read Plato or Descartes or dipped into philosophy texts written by men I had never heard of.

  “They all seem to be trying to come up with an explanation as to why things are the way they are,” Emily said as we sat near the warmth of the wood stove fire one evening when the frost came back to harden the yard.

  “As I was growing up, we never thought about such things. It was said God made it all the way it was and that was the end of it.”

  “Is it easier to believe that than to consider other possibilities?”

  “Yes, I think it is. I didn’t really start asking why about much of anything until Eva died.”

  Whenever I mentioned the death of Eva, Emily knew me well enough to change the subject. But reading the books about pregnancy and childbirth, I was beginning to understand things that had never occurred to me about the human body, about a woman’s body. In the past, it had been simply a total mystery to a man. A wonderful mystery, in a way but, unless you were a doctor, a husband would know next to nothing about what went on with a woman’s monthly cycle or her pregnancy and childbirth. It was a strange and sometimes frightening miracle, all of it. And sometimes things went wrong.

  Em pointed to the books sitting by me. “You probably know more about breast-feeding than any man in Cape Breton.”

  I believe I blushed. “These authors seem to think it is a subject of very great importance. I’m beginning to see why. But the first time I saw a woman breast-feed in public, I was shocked. Now it’s starting to make perfectly good sense to me. Imagine that for so many years such a natural thing was considered to be unacceptable, even unnatural.”

  “John Alex, you’re starting to sound like a feminist.”

  “Now there’s a term that was never applied to me before.”

  “But I think it fits.”

  “Just don’t tell anyone, please. It will be written up in the Pibroch by Devon MacQuarrie if we’re not careful.”

  “It’s nothing to be ashamed of.”

  “Let’s be quiet about it all the same.”

  FATHER WELENGA’S WOODEN SPIDER charm seemed to have kept the predators away, for none of the other chickens died. But there were fewer eggs through the colder, damper days. The MacNaughtons phoned on occasion and I moved into another room while Em argued with them over the phone. I was surprised that they never drove out here and wondered what I would say or do if they did. I envisioned her father as a man who saw the world in black and white and was perturbed when things went grey.

  “He’s afraid of you, John Alex. He thinks you are a crazy old man, possibly one with a shotgun in your closet to greet unwanted visitors.”

  “And your mother?”

  “She keeps saying I will come to my senses and then they will drive me to that place in Halifax. She keeps asking me what I think it will be like to be, in her terms, ‘an unwed teenage mother.’ ”

  “What do you tell her?”

  “I tell her that I think it will be the biggest challenge of my life.”

  “And of mine as well. Now that I’ve read these books, I can see that it is a very complicated business.”

  “I don’t know if I want to go to a hospital.”

  A tremor of fear rolled through me. I shook my head. “You must go to a hospital. You must have everything possible available to you.”

  “But in the books — some talk about home birth and give so many reasons to avoid going to the hospital. We could find a midwife.”

  Emily now saw how shaken I was. “It’s okay, John Alex. I’ll go to the hospital. I’m still pretty scared about the whole thing myself. Despite all the books. It’s just that … once I’m at the hospital …” Her voice trailed off. “What I mean is that I’m afraid of hospitals. I’m really scared of them.”

  But I don’t think that is wha
t she meant. She had now planted a new fear in my mind: once she was in the hospital, once she had her baby, they might find good reasons to prevent her from returning here.

  NINETEEN

  I WOULD NEVER HAVE gone down to the tavern except that we needed the firewood. I guess I was keeping the house much warmer than ever before. We’d used up three-fourths of the supply I’d prepared for the winter and I didn’t want to wait for it to run out.

  I’d given up on using chainsaws and relied on Vinegar McCallum for several years now for my supply. Vin would deliver a truckload of maple to me, already cut into chunks. I’d split them in the backyard like I’d done most of my life and stay warm all winter — outside splitting or inside burning.

  But there was still a long winter ahead and my fingers stung from the cold as I fed the chickens in the mornings, reminding me of colder days to come. I’d never had to call Vin a second time before. When I phoned, Vin’s wife, Doreen, said, “Himself is down at the tavern. If you want to find him, he’ll be there.”

  “ ’Tis only three in the afternoon,” I noted.

  “Well, there you have it,” she summed up the situation.

  This didn’t sound like the Vin I knew at all. “Is he … all right?”

  “Oh, it’s not the drink if that’s what you’re thinking. It’s the damn video gambling machines. He’s good and hooked.”

  “That doesn’t sound like Vin.”

  “Well, you go try and talk some sense into him.”

  “I need to see him about firewood.”

  “He’ll be there in that dark room towards the back of the place. Look for the zombie who hasn’t shaved in three days and that’ll be Vin.”

  “WHERE ARE YOU OFF to?” Em asked as I put on my coat and boots.

  “The tavern,” I said, deciding not to give the reason right then. I was curious to see how she’d react.

  She raised her eyebrows but said not a word. I studied that look on her face and in it I saw the daughter that I never had as well as my mother and my dead wife. All and one and all in the same. Caring, judgemental concern from all three.

  “Would you like to join me?”

  “No,” she said. “Can you imagine the two of us waltzing in there?”

  “The jaws would drop.”

  “They would.”

  “It’s okay. I’m going to find Vin McCallum. It’s about the firewood. Vin’s down there playing video lottery games, his wife says. If I want the wood, apparently I’ll have to pry his hand off the machine.”

  “The old guy we got the chickens from?”

  “Yes. We all have our weaknesses, I suppose.”

  “What’s the world coming to?” she said, which was odd, because that was my phrase for so many of life’s mysteries.

  I WORE MY GLASSES when I drove. The world was grey all around me. An insipid dullness had swept over Cape Breton. The sky was a low, heavy lint curtain above my head. Wisps of snow but nothing accumulating. My car seemed to know its way to town and I thanked it with genuine gratitude.

  The tavern smelled of stale beer as it should, and there was a sparse sampling of lonely men with unshaven chins and some vague interest in what was on the TV screen — a golf game being played on a bright green plain of grass. I let my eyes adjust to the light and walked towards the noise of the games in the back. The waiter, who I did not recognize, eyed me with suspicion as he dried a beer glass with a small towel. My boots were sticking to the floor as I walked.

  Sure enough, Vin was hunched over a machine. The look in his eyes frightened me. It was a look of — what? Lust was the only word that came to my mind. There was almost something sexual about it.

  “Ya winning?” I asked.

  He paused and looked at me as if I’d just caught him doing something terrible. “John Alex. Never expected to see you here.”

  “I could say the same.”

  “Aw, fuck,” Vin said. “An old farmer gets tired of hanging out with cows and chickens sometimes.”

  “This stuff any fun?”

  “Oh sure,” he said, turning back to the screen and pushing the “spin” button. “It’s great fun feeding your money to a machine. Quite the thrill really.”

  “How much you lose?”

  “Oh, I’m down now but it all comes back eventually. My plan is to recoup my losses and then get out. I just have to see it through.”

  “Good plan,” I said, looking around in the gloom, “although I think the hens and cows are better company.”

  “Sometimes a man just gets tired of the smell of all that manure.” He paused again and opened his wallet and stared at a couple of tens inside.

  “Can I buy you a beer?” I asked.

  “How about a coffee?”

  “Sure. They have coffee here?”

  “Tastes like dirt but they claim it’s coffee.”

  “I was wondering if I could get another load of firewood,” I said as he reluctantly gave up on the video machine and we went to sit down beneath the dart board. I ordered two cups of coffee and there was an awkward couple of minutes of silence until it arrived.

  Vinegar rubbed his fingers through his thinning hair and stared into the dark pool of his black coffee. “Holy Mother of Christ,” he said out loud.

  “What?”

  “You burned up all that wood already?”

  “Most of it.”

  Then he changed the subject. “This is what a man comes to, isn’t it? Holed up here, spilling every goddamn cent I earned.”

  “I was wondering what the attraction was. You were looking like you were having such a grand time, I thought I might take it up myself.”

  That at least drew a snort of a laugh. “You think I lost my marbles?”

  “I think we all lost our marbles.”

  Vin looked up at me briefly and then hung his head, studied his thumb as he rubbed it on his index finger. “Ever feel hollowed out, John Alex? Ever feel like you are just the walking empty shell of someone you once were?”

  “Yeah, I’m familiar with that one. Been there, done that, as the kids say.”

  “But you got past it?”

  “More like it got past me. When Eva died, it was like I’d been run over by a truck. It took a long while to pick myself up.”

  “But I don’t even have a right to feel that way. I still got Doreen. She’s good to me. She don’t even say much about me being down here so often.”

  “Well, we all have a right to feel whatever way we feel. Take me. I feel old and foolish. Once I was young and foolish. One just evolved into the other.”

  “Takes a fool to know a fool, I guess.” I wasn’t fully sure what he meant by that, but he drained his coffee that correctly had tasted like dirt. Then he put his hands both full flat on the table and stood up with a sense of purpose. “John Alex, I’d just love to sit around here and shoot the shit with you, old buddy, but I got some cordwood I got to chunk up for my neighbour.” He looked at me — this time right in the eye. I saw the boy in him now. Shy, kind, easily hurt but trying to smile. “I’ll swing by day after tomorrow,” he said. “If you’re not home, should I just dump ’er in the front yard as usual?”

  “Sure. But I’ll be there. How much per cord will I owe you?”

  “Same as before. Three cords enough?”

  “Plenty.”

  He left so quickly that I didn’t quite know what to do with myself but sit there and finish my coffee. A man who had been drinking at the bar, his back to us, suddenly stood up and came walking towards me. He kicked back the chair Vin had been sitting in and dropped into it. There was nothing friendly about the way he did it. That’s when I recognized it was Edgar MacNaughton, Emily’s father. And he was drunk.

  “John Alex, ever since I’ve known of you, it always seemed like you believed you were better than anyone else.”

&
nbsp; “Not to my recollection, Edgar. My father did a good job of thrashing me as a boy and he said that it would keep me humble. It did, I believe. He’d be quite disappointed to think I turned out otherwise.”

  “Guess he didn’t beat you hard enough.”

  “Well, it seemed pretty hard at the time,” I said, trying to stay level. I remember the beatings well and they had succeeded. Around my father, at least, I had been humble and scared. But I wore the bruises he bestowed upon me with as much dignity as I could.

  “About my daughter,” he continued. “Seems like a bad idea to be interfering in a family’s personal affairs.”

  It was a guarded threat but one that fell on deaf ears. “Your daughter is a fine girl. I enjoy her company.”

  “It looks bad, her living there with you. My wife and I are thinking that she should be some place where she’d be better off.”

  “Seems to me that is the reason she is staying with me.”

  “We had things arranged for her to go to Halifax.”

  “I understand that. But apparently she didn’t want to go.”

  “A girl of sixteen doesn’t know what is good for her.”

  “She’s pretty darn smart, I would say. I think she knows what she wants. And needs.”

  “John Alex, I don’t want to argue with you. I’m trying to head off some trouble here.”

  “I already know that you’ve been talking to the priest. And to Social Services. And even the goddamn RCMP.”

  Edgar looked grim. “God, I hate to see it get all complicated.”

  “Edgar, it’s not really that complicated. The girl is going to have a baby. She said she couldn’t live at home. She came to stay with me. When the time comes we’ll go to the hospital.”

  “My wife is dead set that it won’t happen that way. She hates it that Emily is up there with you. And everyone in town knowing it. It’s tearing us apart.”

  “I’m sorry, for you, Edgar. I really am. Emily’s explained to me how her mother treated her. She didn’t say that much about you.”

  Edgar took the last sip of beer from his glass. “At first I thought it would be okay for Em to stay at home. I tried to assure my wife that we’d get past this. But then, I don’t know. Things just got kind of ugly between the two of them. She told us about the boy. I mean, we had thought it was Brian, not that we had much regard for him, but at least he was Emily’s boyfriend. When she told us about this boy Mark — that it was just a fling — we both lost it. Gail insisted she go to Halifax, have the baby and give it up for adoption. But Emily is damn pig-headed. Just like her mother.”