The Channel Shore

by Charles Bruce

  Grant started to speak, to fall into the careless casual banter, and closed his mouth. He had no heart for it. He lapsed into a frowning abstraction, started to speak again, and stopped trimming to listen. Someone else was coming down the hauling-road.

  He said, “Maybe you better scamper, Anna.”

  She shook her head. “No; I like it here.”

  James came into the clearing briskly. He was carrying a cross-cut saw in the crook of one arm. Grant glanced at Anna. If she was flustered she didn’t show it.

  James nodded politely to her.

  “Good evening, Anna.”

  His glance and nod included Bill. He said to Grant, “Chopping is slow work. I thought I might give you a hand, for an hour or so.” He turned back to Anna, “How is your father?”

  “Oh, pretty well, Mr. Marshall,” Anna said. “I’ll tell him you were asking.”

  James nodded. Grant sensed that both Bill and Anna were a little afraid of Uncle James, made uneasy by the studied manner, the precise speech. In that moment Grant was suddenly impatient with all of them, Anna and Bill and Uncle James; angered by the uneasiness their presence here together caused him.

  Anna glanced at Bill, stood up and brushed her skirt. “Well . . . Good night, then, Mr. Marshall. Good-bye for now, Grant . . . Bill, you coming? If there’s nothing else you’ve got to do, it’s time we milked.”

  James said, “While the two of us are here we might as well get at a few of the bigger ones. It might be as well to figure on some of the best stuff for lumber, don’t you think, Grant?”

  “Yes, I s’pose so.” Grant spoke noncommittally. He could never really tell what James had in mind. Now a whole series of pictures came to him. Lumber ... He had told himself that some time soon he should be thinking of lumber, of getting the stuff out for a house . . . planking, sill-logs, shingle-junks. In his own mind this had never gone beyond the thought that some time he would do it; he had never discussed with James the matter of beginning on his own. Was this what James was thinking of? Or was it merely conversation, or the natural inclination of a shrewd woodsman not to waste big straight stuff as firewood or box-logs?

  James measured a spruce with his eye and chopped a notch. They eased the cross-cut saw through the bark behind and above the notch, and began to saw.

  When the tree crashed, Grant again went to work at the trimming while James rested contemplatively on a stump. After a little he rose leisurely and measured off the butt log along the trunk and nicked the bark for the saw-stroke. When they had completed the cut, Grant began to knock off the under-branches which had held it horizontal while they sawed.

  James stood nearby, leaning on the saw. After a little he said, casually, “Grant . . . Are you . . . You are interested in Anna Gordon?”

  Grant felt a knot untie in his mind. He came out with it flatly.

  “I’m very fond of her, sir.”

  He was not quite sure what he hoped for. Perhaps a laugh, a kindly, “Well, good luck!” But that was beyond hoping.

  James nodded. He said nothing for a moment. When Grant had finished trimming the butt James began to move toward another spruce. His voice, as he walked, seemed to carry a severe regret; what he said was a blend of intimacy and stilted rhetoric.

  “It’s too bad, that. Too bad that things so often make it impossible for us to follow ... to do what we would like ... to follow our inclinations. Impossible for you ...” He shook his head. “For anything except perhaps friendship . . . But that is what we know, from experience. Difference in outlook, religion, thought—”

  He was notching the tree a foot from the ground. He straightened and said, “I’ve seen six or seven mixed marriages in the last thirty years along the Shore, Grant. They failed. All failed. Nothing left but remorse.”

  He motioned Grant to bring the saw round behind the tree. As he bent down and reached for the handle, he said, “These things are—well, hard. But you must know—you must have realized that the way to avoid involvement”—he amended the sentence—”to avoid pain . . . is to avoid the person ... to avoid meeting her. When you can’t—”

  The saw bit into spruce. When the tree had fallen, James waited until Grant had begun to trim. Then he said, “You’re young, Grant. You’re very young. Pain—the pain will pass. There will be someone ... There will be a woman who can share your life, your home—the home you’re making.”

  It was a studied speech and carefully done. Merging in Grant’s mind with the sense of surprise that Uncle James had known the way his heart was turning, was a kind of bafflement. There was nothing in that speech he could take hold of and prove wrong. Nothing he could meet solidly and deny.

  As he trimmed the spruce, his hands going through accustomed motions that needed no thought, he was desolate and alone, his mind plagued by the puzzle of what it was—failing the laugh and the voiced “Good luck!”—the puzzle of what it was his heart had hoped for.

  10

  They began to build the machinery shed on Tuesday. A hundred sheds along the shore rested their sleepers on wooden posts or low walls of loose stone, but that was not James’s way. This was to be a building based on concrete, which would continue to take the weight of carts and trucks for years after he was gone.

  For two days the four of them mixed gravel, sand and cement and poured the grey slush into foundation forms. It was hard work, and welcome; for Grant there was satisfaction in it. He had never handled concrete; he got from it the same small sense of achievement, a new thing learned, that he had felt in boyhood when James first let him lay shingles, and later when he had sawed out the frame of a screen door on a mitre-box.

  It was curious that this satisfaction could exist in one compartment of his mind while the rest of it was dark with worry and a growing fear.

  On the Monday evening when he had walked back up the road from the clearing, wordless beside James, he would not have considered it possible that a day or two later he would be able to go on for hours, his hands and mind concerned almost wholly with concrete and wood, and find a kind of goodness in it.

  But this was so. It was only in the evenings that the shadow drew in to flood the senses. Even then, he was not fully engulfed. It was as if he were aware that the darkness was there, but stood and moved at the edge of it, watching from no more than the corner of an eye.

  His full glance was turned backward in the old sweet habit, thinking of Anna, the girl, and of the hours they had spent together, with others and alone.

  He found that he could not go to The Place in the evenings. Something in the thought of it set the shadow rolling and brought it close; the thing men feel for towns, streets, houses, where they have known shame or the betrayal of a thing loved.

  Instead he began to spend the evening time in James’s lower pasture, pulling and piling with his hands the small seedling spruce that continually encroach in that country unless the land is grazed by sheep.

  There, alone, leisurely busy at work that took no thought, he let his mind go back. Anna, on the beach, laughing down from the soaring swing; Anna on the veranda at Grahams’, glancing at him across Stewart’s bent back; Anna, on the rock opposite The Place . . .

  Through two or three of these evenings he refused to admit in thought that it was not the same. It was not until Friday night that he really faced the truth. Always before he had been able to live again in memory the moments he had spent with her. He could not do it now.

  The quiet sense of something sweet and continuing, the feeling of fulfilment and eagerness that had always come to him in these small journeys back and forth in time . . . They were no longer there.

  There was nothing now in dreams. What he must have was the sight and touch of her, the knowledge that she was there, the sight of the Gordon house and fields, if that was the best he could do . . .

  The words echoed thinly in his mind—to avoid involvement . . . to avoid
pain . . . to avoid meeting her . . . And even while he planned his small strategy he was bothered by a furtive dissatisfaction, a shadow of guilt, the guilt of evasion.

  Well, he had to see her.

  He and James had worked on the framework of the shed that day while Fred and Will stretched wire along fence posts at the bottom of the lower field. After supper Grant sat idle in the kitchen instead of going down the field toward the pasture to pull brush. Now and then he closed his hands and felt the soreness where spruce needles had pricked, between patches toughened by years of pitchfork, axe and scythe handle. He thought indifferently that the army hadn’t softened him, not even his hands. He was good and tough.

  Jane was moving about the room fussily. She opened the stove door with a lifter and put a stick or two on the dying fire, to keep, as she said, the edge off the chill. Fred and Will were at the barn and James in the downstairs bedroom with the door open; Grant could hear the opening and closing of a bureau drawer.

  He said, “You wouldn’t be wanting anything from Katen’s, would you, Aunt Jane? Thought I might take a walk.”

  Jane said, “No-o-, I don’t think so; we’re not short of anything you could get at Katen’s.” She spoke the name with a slight cast of unconscious contempt. There was no malice in it, nor objection. She was merely expressing a casual opinion of Felix Katen and his sons and their reputation.

  Despite the way he felt, Grant grinned inwardly. There was a kind of unspoken friendliness between himself and Jane.

  He rose and stepped out on the back porch and glanced around for a sight of Fred and Will, and heard James come out behind him. James said, “If you’re going down the road, why don’t you take the light buggy? Give Polo a run. We could use a bag of cracked corn, also.” James felt in his pocket for his leather drawstring bag.

  Grant said, “All right,” and added, “That’ll be great.” Thought- fulness of this kind was unusual in Uncle James. He glanced at the bearded face soberly as the money was counted out. James was smiling bleakly but for a flying second Grant caught in his eyes the flash of softness.

  The effect of the moment stayed with him as he harnessed the black gelding and drove out through the field gate to the road, even though he thought he could see what James’s motives were. Kindness, after laying down the law. For three nights, as he plucked the tiny spruce in the pasture, Grant had half-expected James to join him there, had half hoped he would talk to him again, reopen the conversation in the clearing. But James had not come.

  James thought it was all over, Grant supposed. Nothing more to be said . . . But, there was that kindness . . . The power of Polo’s track-horse gait communicated itself to him through the shafts, the traces, the buggy’s moving frame. Good form, good legs, an easy mouth. He thought: we ought to put him in the trots at Copeland. For a little his mind was almost empty of the purpose which had led him to build up, in casual conversation, the idea of a trip down the road to Katen’s.

  A walk to Katen’s, planned to appear unplantied. He grinned to himself. Uncle James’s offer of Polo had made it almost an expedition. The responsibility of a horse and rig cut down his freedom of action, but it was almost worth it to feel Polo stepping out.

  Past The Place, and Grahams’. Grant held the horse in a little, abreast of Stewart Gordon’s. From the corner of his eye he could see the grey house, the front stained with streaks of worn-off whitewash, and the apple trees. He resisted the impulse to bring the gelding down to a walk, to let his glance run over the place slowly, finding in the house, the barn, the yard, the warmth of things touched by a person loved.

  He was passing Vangie Murphy’s when he saw her. She turned at the sound of the horse’s hooves just as he looked up, and waited on the shoulder of the road.

  She was laughing as he pulled up beside her. “You and your rubber-tired buggies ... A person could get run down and never know it.”

  Grant said, “Get in here, Anna. I’m just going down to Katen’s.”

  She said, “So’m I.”

  It was still there. The laughter, the warmth, the lightness. Still there, when Anna was there. For the moment he put away the worry and uncertainty and the shadow of fear. He handed the reins to Anna and leaned back. She glanced at him with a smile that was half delighted giggle.

  As usual, Bill and Dan Graham were squatted on the grass in front of the store. Through the open door Grant could see Felix squinting through his glasses at the brass bar of the counter scales. He was weighing out tea for Mrs. Clem Wilmot. Grant felt a quick annoyance. Hat Wilmot would hang around on the chance of a lift up the road.

  The white light of a mantle lamp flooded the store and overflowed to the grassy margin of the road. It was early dusk and the evening was luminous, but Felix liked a lot of light.

  Lon came out of the house on the knoll and halted on the veranda, hands in pockets. As Grant hitched Polo to the rack the tone of Aunt Jane’s voice came back to him. The tone Mrs. Graham or Christine Currie might use—regretfully, for they were more tolerant than some you could think of—about Lon’s latest spree: “Well, of course they’re not even good Catholics.” As he walked into the store behind Anna he wondered whether Mrs. Josie Gordon ever said of—well, of Clem Wilmot, perhaps: “Well, he’s not even a good Protestant.”

  Religion. An odd thing. You were born with it, like politics, but it was beyond argument. Without much bearing on the way you got along with people, but as much a part of living as work and sleep.

  Good Catholics and good Protestants . . . Bad Catholics and bad Protestants . . . Perhaps the difference grew from thinking of people not as people but as groups, the best tainted by the worst.

  “Catholic people ... the Gordons and the Katens . . .” Well, the Gordons weren’t much like the Katens. Except of course for Anse.

  This passed through his mind quickly, the sum of previous unconscious thinking; and as he saw Anna there, greeting Hat Wilmot, it related itself to her. A difference you couldn’t understand but had to accept. Anna ... he tried to apply it to her, and could find nothing, no difference of look or speech or manner, that would have told him, She’s a Catholic. No outward thing. An inner thing, then. For it was there.

  The thought drifted in his mind as young Bill and Dan came into the store and up to the counter to turn in their empty pop bottles.

  Hat Wilmot turned from Anna to Grant and spoke to the world generally: “Well, look who we’ve got here.”

  Grant hoped he could keep the dislike out of his face. Hat Wilmot. Hat was a woman in her early thirties, and so considered herself at home among either the girls or the middle-aged women. Four or five months from now she would be presenting Clem with a child, and this fact was embarrassingly obvious. Hat carried herself with a kind of pleased ostentation while her tongue travelled the Channel Shore.

  Her voice now was all pleased surprise; but in her eyes, the pursed set of her lips, a little special implication sparkled and sang. She saw us get here, all right, Grant thought. The fact of Anna Gordon and Grant Marshall buggy-riding together was worth speculation and comment. Something of the pleasure she would take in this, tomorrow or next day, was obvious in her greeting.

  “Handsome couple, aren’t we, Hat?” Anna said. Under her hand as she leaned on the counter she made a face at Grant. He felt it in his blood like a tide, the warmth of her presence; the personal softening for him of the look she wore for everyone. But this private happiness was tempered by irritation at Hat Wilmot’s smirk, her gossiping voice—and a slowly-realized irritation at Anna for being smart, for making fun of Hat in that way.

  He said, “Good evening, Mrs. Wilmot,” and turned to Felix. “Can I get a bag of cracked corn, Mr. Katen? . . . Don’t bother, I’ll lug it out myself.”

  He went to the rear of the store and got the bag of feed and swung it to a shoulder. As he carried it out to the buggy his annoyance was transferred to himself, annoyance at his i
rritation with Anna for being flip to Hat Wilmot. It was just that Hat- well, her tongue was dangerous. He stowed the feed in the fly.

  The chore was done now; he could go back and hang around the store, say hello to people from The Rocks and The Head if they came in, and be with Anna for a while in their peculiar personal isolation.

  He turned and found that she had sauntered out behind him to the hitching rail and stood now smoothing Polo’s neck. She said, “He’s a nice animal, Grant . . . Aren’t you, Polo?”

  “Yes, he’s a good road horse. Friendly and easy to handle,” and with a touch of pride, “and pretty fast.”

  “I’d like to go for a drive, Grant.”

  “Would you?” He hesitated. “I guess, a lift when I go up the road—that’ll have to do for tonight, Anna. Anything more’d look, well—it’d look—kind of conspicuous.” He added, ‘You know Hat Wilmot.”

  Anna said, “Hat? Sure ... But who cares? What’s that matter?” She turned to him, teasing, “I don’t care who gets a look at us. Do you?”

  Puzzlement shadowed the laughing provocation in her face.

  “By gosh, Grant... I believe you do””No. No. Don’t talk that way, Anna. It’s just—”

  “Never mind.” She rubbed Polo’s nose and said regretfully, “All right. No drive. I’ll take that lift home, though. Any time you say.”

  “All right,” Grant said. “I’ll just see if Mrs. Wilmot’s ready. S’pose I’ll have to offer her a chance up.”

  Anna threw her head back and whooped with laughter. She recovered and spoke quietly, with suppressed amusement.

  “You’ve sure got yourself mixed up, haven’t you? . . . With a mess of women . . . You should’ve brought the two-seated buggy, Grant, to handle the traffic. No. I don’t feel much like bouncin’ around on Hat’s knee ... Or takin’ her on mine.” She eyed him, head slightly tilted. “And I s’pose you wouldn’t dare hold me on yours. I’ll run along, Grant.”