Each Man's Son

by Hugh Maclennan

  “He did what he could, Mollie. No man can do more than that whateffer now. The paper said he wass the better man till he got so tired. I ha? been tired my ownself and I know how it feels.”

  Mr. MacIvor said, “Yes, indeed, Mollie, the paper said he did good. The crowd could not believe it, he stood on his feet so long.”

  Then Alan heard his mother say, “To think that thousands of people paid money to see such a thing!”

  There was a long silence, and Alan could hear the rocking chair creak as Angus the Barraman moved back and forth in it.

  “Now perhaps Archie will come home,” Mrs. MacDonald said.

  “Yes, indeed,” said Mr. MacIvor, “and for Alan it whill be a fine thing to ha? his father with him again. The other night I prayed to God that Archie might win, but if I had stopped to think I would not ha? prayed, for if he won he would not come home at all.”

  Alan heard his mother speak again, her voice sounding a wild note that scared him. “Four years, Mr. MacIvor. Four years Alan and I have been alone here. I wrote him a letter to Trenton, but now he will not answer it. Four years! Each time his picture is in the papers I must burn it so Alan will not see what they have done to his face. It is awful, those men he is with. I knew they were awful, and the doctor himself says there are no words for them. It is those men who have changed him.”

  “Indeed,” said Angus the Barraman, “when my brother wass home from Chicago last year he told me there iss bad people in the States. There iss people so bad he hass been there ten years already and he does not know yet how bad they iss. There iss good ones too, and Chicago iss a fine city, but the bad ones in Chicago iss real buggers.”

  There was another silence. Then Mr. MacIvor said, “Holy Chesus, but Red Whillie MacIsaac whill be mad today. He lost two dollars on it.”

  “And where whould Red Whillie be getting the two dollars to lose?”

  “He took it owt of the old woman’s stocking the night before last, and he bet it before he could spend it, moreoffer.”

  Somebody got up and a chair moved. The voices blurred and Alan realized as he heard more feet moving that more neighbors had come in the back door. It was like the wake the day after Mr. O’Connor died. He went back to the parlor and closed the door, and after about an hour he heard the people leaving. When it was quiet again his mother came to him, and this time he was too frightened to ask her any questions at all.

  “Run out and play,” she said. “I’m not feeling well today and I will have to lie down.”

  Alan did as he was told and went out to the road, but when he saw some of the other boys in the row playing in the field, he knew he didn’t want to hear whatever they might say. All he could think of now was his father and what might have happened to him last night. He wished his mother would tell him everything and not say he was too young to understand. The doctor had answered every question he had asked. Alan decided to go up the road to the colliery property. From where he stood outside the wire he could see the Newfoundlanders breaking up coal on the ground and the tipples working and the little pit engine shunting the cars around. When the whistles blew for twelve o’clock he saw Mr. Camire come out of one of the sheds and cross the yard. He turned away, not sure whether he liked Mr. Camire or not, and went back down the road to his own house.

  The house was empty, and this was the strangest thing of all today. His mother always worked on her rugs in the morning and the moment the whistle blew she got up and prepared their dinner. He wandered from one room to the other wondering where she was and what had happened to her and remembered somebody saying that when bad luck came it never stopped with one person but spread like the smallpox. She had said she was not feeling well and was going to lie down. Perhaps when he was away she had become so sick they had taken her off? It might even be like the time Mrs. Jim Jack MacFarlane had been sick and the black wagon from the hospital came up to the door and Dr. Ainslie stood by while a pair of men in white carried her out of the house. Mrs. MacFarlane had never come back again.

  In sudden panic he ran outside and trotted up the row. The boys had disappeared. Then he went back the way he had come, hoping his mother might return. He saw nobody. At this hour all the women were busy inside giving their children a midday meal and the men were still in the mine, eating from their black pails. At last he saw old Mrs. MacCuish who lived alone, sitting with gaunt knees on her own doorstep. He stopped to speak to her, even though his mother had told him that Mrs. MacCuish had been queer ever since her husband’s death.

  “Where is my mother?”

  The old woman stared at him and narrowed her eyes. “And how would I be knowing where she iss?” She put her hand to the small of her back and got groaning to her feet. “Come here, boy!”

  Alan approached cautiously, and the old woman looked down at him with her gaunt face set in bitter lines.

  “So she went away and left you with nothing to eat, did she?”

  “Yes, but she didn’t mean to.”

  “Heh! What makes you so sure of that? Come inside with me now.”

  Alan stood in the doorway and looked about. It was dark and dirty and it smelled of the old woman.

  “Is my mother sick?”

  “Body and soul, that iss what I say, body and soul! But I am a Christian. Would I be telling what I know of her to a little child?” She pushed a chair towards the kitchen table. “You sit on that and be quiet.”

  She took a bottle of molasses from a shelf and screwed off the top. Then she lifted a dirty plate from the sink, wiped it with her apron and set it in front of him. She picked up a loaf of bread and cut two slices, both very thin.

  “There!” she said. “Say your grace and eat that.”

  Alan shivered as he sat down and picked up the bread. It was stale and there were little marks of mold at the corners. But before he could touch it the old woman cackled at him.

  “Say your grace before you put that fud into your mouth or it whill poison you.”

  Alan looked at her wide-eyed, frightened and puzzled.

  “Heh!” she cried at him. “And what else would I be expecting but this? You do not know your grace whateffer. Now then, you will say it after me.” She fixed her narrow eyes on his. “‘Most merciful God’–go on, say it now!”

  “Most merciful God,” Alan repeated.

  “I am a misserable sinner and I know I whill be damned.”

  “I am a miserable sinner and I know I will be damned.”

  “But I thank Thee for this fud.”

  “But I thank Thee for this food.”

  “And for Thy efferlasting mercy.”

  “And for Thy everlasting mercy.”

  “Now then,” the old woman said, “you can eat and it whill not poison you. Pour out the molasses. Pour it out good and wipe the staff of life in it.”

  Alan did as he was told, but when he tasted the thick brown syrup he could hardly bear to swallow it, for it was not like the creamy molasses his mother gave him. It was full of crusty lumps and the moldy bread was dank and sour.

  The old woman kept staring at him. “Iss what I ha? in my house not good enough for the likes of you?”

  Alan did not know how to answer, but as she continued to stare he murmured that it was very nice.

  “It iss blessed by the good God,” said Mrs. MacCuish, “and that iss more than can be said for the bread where you come from.”

  Alan forced himself to eat the two slices while the old woman stood on the other side of the table watching him with compressed lips. When he had finished he looked around for a cloth to wipe his fingers.

  “Lick them,” the old woman said. “Hass nobody told you it iss a sin to waste fud?”

  Alan licked his fingers and held them stiffly in front of him for fear of smearing his pants. “What is sin, Mrs. MacCuish?”

  “Aha–and what else whould I be expecting? So she did not tell you, eh? She iss one of the ones that say to themselves in their vanity there iss no hell, but her sins whill find her
owt, don’t you worry over that. Be sure your sin whill find you owt–that iss the words of the Good Book. And you whill find owt it iss true on the day when the sheep are parted from the goats. Sin!” the old woman went on. “What are you your ownself but a lump of it whateffer? And the time whill come when you whill pay, and when you whill remember everything you ha? done, but then it whill be too late whateffer.”

  Alan licked his fingers again. “Do you think my mother is home now?”

  “How whould I be knowing if the Lord did make up Hiss mind He had stood her as long as He could? Go and see for yourself if she iss home. I whould not be knowing.”

  Alan went to the door with his head hanging and the old woman following him.

  “Now you ha? had my fud you whill come again?”

  Frightened still, he murmured, “Yes, thank you, Mrs. MacCuish.”

  “Heh! Don’t try to lie to me. You whill not come unless you ha? to.”

  The moment Alan reached the sidewalk he began to run, but when he reached home the house was still empty, so he walked out into the sunshine again. This time he saw somebody he liked. Mrs. MacDonald was walking up the road with a basket on her arm and she smiled as he ran towards her.

  “Whell now, and aren’t you the silly boy fretting yourself like that, when all your mother iss doing iss in to the store to market?”

  He looked up at the woman’s ruddy, smiling face and there was no fear. The fear had lifted from his shoulders and gone sailing up to the sky like a kite. Then Mrs. MacDonald began to laugh and he laughed with her and the laughter was wonderful even though she was making fun of him a little. He ran off down the road and over the bridge, climbed the slope on the far side and turned off into the woods near the doctor’s house. He walked through the firs and birches and down the slope of the interval to the doctor’s brook, and there he sat on a stone watching the pouring water and wondering where it all came from. Tadpoles flickered along the bottom of a shallow near the brink and he caught one and held it in his hand but it struggled so much he knew it was frightened, so he dropped it back into the water and was glad to see it scuttle away. A man with shaggy hair under a broken-peaked cap came along the uneven path carrying a bundle with a stick thrust through the loop where the ends of the cloth were knotted. He looked at Alan speculatively, put one hand on the side of his nose and blew a jet of matter to the ground, scratched his behind and passed without a word. A dog came out of the underbrush and nuzzled against Alan’s legs, but after a time the dog went off to follow the man. The boy took off his shoes and put his feet into the water. It was warm, not sharp and challenging like the water of the sea, but warm and soft, and he remembered it was not fit to drink because chemicals had poisoned it. With his feet in the flowing water, his chin in his hands and his elbows on his knees, he sat there on a flat stone and tried to think.

  About one thing there was no doubt at all. Things had gone very badly with his father in the States and now perhaps he would never come home. If he was a prize fighter, as the boys said he was, then he must have been beaten in a fight. But why was that so bad he wouldn’t come home? And why was his mother so ashamed? Maybe she would talk to him about his father now, and he could stop trying to keep her from knowing that he understood what a prize fighter was. She always looked so frightened whenever he almost gave it away, and he hated to see her afraid of anything. But he wanted very badly to talk to someone about his father and find out what awful thing had happened to him in the States.

  Then he remembered Dr. Ainslie. Yesterday in Louisburg the doctor had answered every question he had asked. Perhaps if he went up the hill to the doctor’s house, the doctor would tell him what the prize was for a fighter and what happened to you if you lost it. The doctor knew everything and did not think he was too young to understand what older people said.

  Alan dried his feet on the grass and put on his socks and shoes. When he climbed the bank and came out through the break of the trees the doctor’s house stood there before him big and alone, and he thought how important and different the doctor was to live in a house like that. An empty buggy with the shafts on the ground stood on the gravel in front of the surgery door, but the horse was not in sight. He crossed the gravel and circled the buggy, but there was no sight or sound of anyone, so he turned back and made his way through the brush at the edge of the woods.

  He couldn’t think what to do next until he remembered the spring in the woods which his mother said had the sweetest water in the world. He found the path leading to it and walked along silently over a carpet of brown pine needles until he came to the place where the spring bubbled out of a gnarl of roots and stones that made a small pool with dead leaves on the bottom. He lay on his stomach and stared into the spring and watched his own face. He smiled and the water smiled back at him. He tried to look tough and the water moved underneath and he thought it made him look tough, too. Then a squirrel ran along a branch of the soft maple over his head and he could see its movements in the water. After the squirrel had gone he put his mouth down to the surface of the water and tried to suck it in, but the water was so cold it hurt his teeth.

  He thought about his mother again and wondered why she was afraid. He continued to lie on his stomach watching the sky upside down in the water. He heard an angry shout, but it seemed to be a long way off and he paid no attention until he heard it again, much nearer. So he scrambled to his feet and ran back along the path to the edge of the wood where the gravel began on the doctor’s drive and then he stopped and hid behind a wild cherry bush and watched.

  Two men were running up the drive, panting heavily, one of them very small and the other very big, and he recognized them both. The small man was Levi the peddler and the big one was Red Willie MacIsaac. Levi was only a few paces ahead of Red Willie, but he had time to duck underneath the doctor’s buggy when he reached it, and there he crouched between the wheels, the whites of his eyes gleaming when he peered up. Red Willie drove at him with his boot, the biggest one Alan had ever seen. The whole of Red Willie was big and angry, and Alan remembered Angus the Barraman saying he would be mad today because he had lost two dollars. Then Alan remembered that it was on account of his father that Red Willie had lost the two dollars, and he hoped Red Willie would not see him. So he stood very still, watching.

  He could feel the fear that came out of little Levi’s white eyes. Red Willie was after him hard, going round and round the buggy, shouting and kicking underneath it, but each time his boot went out to strike, the peddler dodged behind the spokes of the wheels and crouched in a new position, looking up like a fox. Alan wondered what Levi had done to make the big man so angry, because he had heard his mother say that Levi was a nice little man. He watched Red Willie’s boot swing back once more and drive forward, and then he quailed as a roar of pain followed. But it was Red Willie who was roaring as he hopped up and down on one leg and held the injured foot in both his huge hands and shouted what he was going to do. It would be something special, for now Levi would have to pay extra for making Willie smash his shin against the wheel.

  And then suddenly the roaring stopped. The surgery door had opened and Mrs. Ainslie was standing at the top of the steps. One look at her told Alan that she was angry, too, and that her anger was much more important that Red Willie’s. Even the big man was afraid of it, for he took off his cap after he had dropped his injured foot and stood facing Mrs. Ainslie with the cap passing from right hand to left hand and back again.

  “It wass him that started it,” Red Willie said at last, pointing under the carriage with the cap.

  Mrs. Ainslie looked him up and down before she answered. “So you’re a bully as well as a drunkard! Why don’t you pick on someone your own size to fight with? And some other place to make so much noise?”

  Red Willie’s face turned as red as his hair and his huge lumbering body came erect with rage and injured pride.

  “You ha? known me all my life,” he said, and bent down with his hand held a foot from the grou
nd to show how small he had been when Mrs. Ainslie had first seen him, “and you whould say a thing like that against me, that I whould be fighting with a little bugger like that, under there!”

  “What else were you doing?”

  “I wass only trying to kick the guts owt of him.”

  “You were, indeed.”

  “And why not, when he says I cannot even beat Archie MacNeil any more, and him a broken-down fighter than can stand up to nobody any more. I’ll show him–as soon as Archie comes home.”

  Alan watched and listened intently, his mind bursting with what he was hearing. So his father was coming home! But what was a broken-down fighter? And could Red Willie really beat him? If he could, then his father wasn’t the strongest man in the world after all.

  Little Levi had sneaked out on the other side of the wagon and now was tiptoeing down the drive, looking over his shoulder as Red Willie still protested to the doctor’s wife. But she was watching little Levi, and finally she broke into a ringing laugh.

  “You overgrown child!” she said to the big man. “Now go on home. Your quarry’s reached the road.”

  Red Willie stared at her without comprehension and then her meaning began to inch into his mind. He turned to see the last of Levi as he disappeared in the direction of the mine.

  “You let him get away on me,” he muttered.

  Mrs. Ainslie stopped laughing. “Be on your way, MacIsaac. And thank your lucky stars the doctor wasn’t here when you put on that exhibition.”

  She turned and went back into the house and closed the surgery door, and Red Willie stood there like an ox. Then he put on his cap with both hands, pulled it down hard over his right ear, shoved his hands into his trousers pockets and slouched off. Halfway down the drive he saw a fair-sized stone and swung back his leg to kick it. The stone shot high and rang against a tree.