Lauchlin of the Bad Heart

by D. R. MacDonald

  She rose from the bed and moved slowly past him, touching her way, the back of his chair, the small desk, a table lamp, the television, as if she were finding her way out. She stopped at the window, pinching the curtain in her fingers. “How could I say? It might have turned out different, that’s all. I don’t know.”

  “Who else would have made sense out of what I saw, Tena?”

  “Someone,” she said.

  “Someone? God, I suppose. Maybe my grandfather, he had the taiseacht, maybe him, oh, if I could have seen Cooper with the kind of eye Grandad had, I’d have come to your house and woken you in your bed, said, Listen to me, I’ve had this vision about a man clear on the other side of the water making his way along the mountain, I saw his light, and after he crosses the bridge, he will turn down this road, it’s you he’s coming for. You’d have thought me out of my head of course, Clement would have thought I was mad.”

  “Not if you’d told us what you had really seen, a man on a bicycle and he looked like Clement’s partner, heading this way. You didn’t need any second sight for that, first sight would have done. Clement would have listened, he was ready to expect anything from that man. Wouldn’t we have sat down and tried to figure out what he was up to?”

  “But you see, he eluded me, I didn’t know who he looked like or who he might be. Doesn’t a man have a right to look foolish on a bicycle, even at night? I had no idea where he was coming from or going to. I could have aimed at the Slios the strongest binoculars in the world, Tena, I wouldn’t have seen anything useful that night, not a man on a bicycle, pumping over that rough road. Jesus, I can feel him over there right now, every night in my bed, see him weaving through that mountainside while all of us slept, but I can’t stop him.”

  “But you woke up. You did see him.”

  He had lost her. He could see himself transforming in her mind, inept, clumsy, a deceiver of himself, of her. He had wanted to give her the truth, but he wasn’t sure what it was, never had been. He thought desperately, irrationally, that if she could only see his face, he might have a chance.

  “I don’t know what to say, Tena. I can’t think clearly anymore.”

  “Me, and Lightning Lauchlin,” she said, her back to him. She gave a sad little laugh. “Alone in a motel. What would people think?”

  “What they want to think, Tena. Like always.”

  “Oh, my.” She wiped at her eyes with the edge of the curtain and when she turned around there were no tears. “I won’t see myself wither and wrinkle. That’s a plus for any woman, I guess. Oh, I’ll feel it all right.” She pressed her fingers to her cheekbones. “No anxious gazing in the mirror though.” She returned to the bed and lay down, composing herself on her back.

  “Were you dangerous in the ring?” she said, her eyes fixed on the ceiling.

  “Not dangerous enough, I’m afraid, in or out of it.”

  She seemed to consider that. “Do you have a woman in your life? I never asked you that. I don’t know why.”

  He wanted to say, In a way I had you, for a while. “Yes,” he said. “I do.”

  “What is she like? You never mentioned her.”

  “She doesn’t live here. She…there’s no one like her.”

  Tena patted the bedspread beside her. “Come and lie here next to me, Lauchlin. You don’t have to say anything more.”

  “Are you sure that’s what you want?”

  “I’m sure. Come.”

  Awkwardly, heavily, he arranged himself beside her, his hands folded on his chest. They lay side by side without touching as if placed there separately. The room was growing dimmer. “I can’t be here alone all night,” she said to the ceiling. “I don’t know what I was thinking of.” He could feel her turning toward him. “Hold me, Lauchlin.” She relaxed against him, her head on his shoulder, he smelled her hair, the soap she’d washed with, felt her breathing rise and fall in his ear as she eased into sleep, he was grateful she could sleep, and that he had helped her there.

  What was he holding, what life was this, what substance? Were he to lift her, would he feel in his arms what was essentially her, the weight of her being? He was embracing her yearnings, which now he could not even guess, her terrors, her love, and though the love was not for him, it was there, he was privileged to be near it.

  SHE WOKE, SAT UP QUICKLY, her breath held, her eyes straining.

  “I’m here, Tena,” he said, leaning forward in the chair.

  “Oh! Lauchlin. You’re still here.”

  “I am, yes.”

  She lay back on the pillow. “All that day he was lying there, under our own trees.” There was a quaver in her voice. “He was there all the time, while you and me were talking in the house.” She brushed at her eyes. “I’m so tired, Lauchlin, deep-down tired.”

  “Go back to sleep. Please. Here.” He removed her shoes tenderly and set them on the rug. He turned the bedclothes back and helped her under them, then switched off the bathroom light. “I’ll be here in the chair. You sleep now. I’m not tired at all.” That was not true, he was, in his very marrow, but he did sit in the chair the rest of the night as awake as he would ever be, watching her murmur and turn in her sleep. Sometimes a tractor-trailer passed on the highway, geared down for the bridge. A late car arrived and someone’s key scratched at the lock next door. There were muted voices, the scrape of hangers, running water, then silence. Travellers? Lovers? Man and wife? When Tena woke, she would not need him anymore. She would not want to hear him read to her, there was no book that would make her glad for his voice. As I left the Teampull wind came up again cooling my face, no trees to temper it, Lauch, to break it. Wind singing all night, wind slammed a door shut so hard yesterday it could have cut my arm off, wind through the roofless chapel, wind driving the sheep to shelter under our parlour window, two dark birds sheltering behind a fencepost, preening, wind thrilling the buttercups across the road, so yellow in the grey day, the snags of fleece trembling in fence wire and bushes, wind about the house, like an engine revving up, down, driving slow, faster, circling in and away, all around the world, blowing no doubt in St. Aubin right now, carrying us back, down through the meadow behind the house, rattling your very windows, my brother.

  TWENTY-TWO

  THE afternoon that Lauchlin knelt at Tena’s garden, an October wind raced cold out of the east, funnelling dry leaves into the air. Gravid, dove-grey clouds grew longer above the mountain. The poplar saplings, scrapping for space in the old pasture, had shot higher, lank and rustling, like a neglected cornfield. Brittle hollyhocks swayed, their stalks bent or broken. He twisted a leaf from a dead herb, brought it crushed and savoury to his nose. The taste stayed with him as he walked. He prodded with his foot a bit of machinery in the high grass, some piece of the portable mill stowed in the shut barn. The pickup truck was gone, sold. The rusty bicycle still lay in weeds under an apple tree, its twigs already nuzzled by deer. He didn’t go as far as where Clement had been hidden for a day, but he knew the blood was long since lost in autumn colour, browned into the earth under a damp mat of leaves.

  The prosecution of Cooper was inching its way toward trial. Tena would return for it, but not to this house, and only as long as she had to. I have to start over, again, she told him on the phone from the Valley, and I’ll do it here where I came from. Rumours were that the house would be sold but no steps had been taken, and no one aware of its recent history seemed anxious to occupy it. If they came now, the solemn, curtained windows would put them off, the rain-dusted panes, the gap-toothed shingles. But if they turned away toward the water, trees swept resplendently across the mountain, scarlet, golden, yellowing toward winter, and they might want to live here anyway, house or no house, that’s what this country could do to you. In his jacket pocket was an unopened letter from Morag. There had been no word from her about engagement or marriage or the man who took her to Greece, no words at all since she’d left. No matter what her message now, he would write her back, he’d want to tell her first, Morag,
I need to see you again, no matter what, I’m sorry I didn’t get up there before you left, too much came down on me. I’ve done some travelling of my own, and I’m not finished.

  They would have to be words that mattered as never before, and he would try to find them.

  Suppose he had gone with Frank to Harris, and come back better, like his brother, in some good if indefinable way? He would write to Frank too. He’d been composing a letter in his mind, there were things to tell him. Lauchlin drove back to the store.

  It was long dark by the time he closed up. The road was quiet, not a car in half an hour. The cottagers were thinning out as the days grew colder. There had been odd nights, if fog came down, when he walked to the road, up beyond the streetlamp’s citron light and back, but nothing that surprised him ever came out of the misty air, nothing that would give him another chance.

  If. The word could torture you forever.

  Lauchlin pressed the letter flat on the counter, just her handwriting on the envelope seemed like a gift and he would open it later when he was finished here, when he was ready. He turned on his stool and looked into the backroom at the shadow of the heavy bag. He stood for a few moments with his hand on his chest before he took from the desk drawer the new cotton tape. Slowly he wrapped each hand, wove the fresh white tape around tightly, over, under, flexing his hands when he was done, pulling on the gloves. Then he moved toward the bag, bringing up his fists, huffing through his nose, more misshapen than before, breathe, breathe, he slipped his feet into position and struck the bag sharp and hard, a punch you might have heard were you at the front door reaching for the handle, followed by another and another. He picked up the pace as the sweat came into him and his jaw tightened, and the bag swung in and out of the light, reeling, spinning, returning for another blow.

  P.S.

  Ideas, interviews & features

  About the author

  Author Biography

  D. R. MACDONALD was born in Cape Breton and was raised mostly in Ohio, with a stint in Maine during World War II. He recalls being a young boy in Boston when the war ended and the wild celebration in Belmont Square, men shinnying up lamp posts, car horns blaring. Years later, at Ohio University, MacDonald took his first steps as a writer, usually in the familiar idiom of authors such as Sherwood Anderson, Ernest Hemingway, and Wright Morris—writers with whom he identified because their Midwestern idiom was close to his. He was also drawn to Joseph Conrad’s sea-based stories because of his own experience working on Great Lakes ore freighters.

  D.R. MacDonald

  MacDonald was particularly taken with the writing of D. H. Lawrence: his intimate explorations of women and men, their contending passions and the peculiar energies of love. The ethnic flavour of Irish authors such as Frank O’Connor and Seán Ó Faoláin also struck a chord. Much later, Michael McLaverty’s feeling for the rhythms of country life and John McGahern’s insights into the complex workings of the heart resonated with his own concerns.

  After a year in London teaching at a boys’ preparatory school, MacDonald enrolled in graduate studies at Ohio State University, pursuing an M.A. while teaching full-time, writing when he could. After finishing his thesis on translations of Beowulf, he began a novel about a Great Lakes seaman examining his life and origins in Cape Breton, a place so formative in making him who he was. Two chapters of this manuscript earned MacDonald a Wallace Stegner Fellowship to Stanford University. He finished the novel there, and although it taught him valuable lessons about language and craft, and pulled Cape Breton into the centre of his fiction, he recognized that the protagonist he’d created could not carry the whole novel, an assessment some publishers agreed with. His writing moved to the periphery of his life, and when he resumed writing seriously several years later, he concentrated on short stories.

  MacDonald has always felt a deep respect for the compressive, lyric power of the short story genre. He bought land from a cousin on Boularderie Island, where he was born, and took up writing there in the summers. The Cape Breton he had been born in and was getting to know more year by year called up stories he wanted to tell. In that landscape and among those people, he found his voice.

  Every fall, MacDonald returned to teach at Stanford, but he continued to write short fiction at the same time. Being among writers affiliated with Stanford over the years—Wallace Stegner, John L’Heureux, Scott Turow, Raymond Carver, and Ron Hansen, among others—kept his standards high. MacDonald describes himself as a slow writer: “It takes time to get what I want on the page.” He was content to complete one very polished story a year.

  This dedication to meticulously crafted prose has earned him a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, two Pushcart Prizes, and an Ingram Merrill Award. His first short story collection, Eyestone, was published in 1989 and his first novel, Cape Breton Road, in 2001. He completed his second short story collection, All the Men Are Sleeping, in 2003. Lauchlin of the Bad Heart, his second novel, received much acclaim and was longlisted for the 2007 Scotiabank Giller Prize.

  MacDonald is currently at work on his third novel.

  About the book

  An Interview with D. R. MacDonald

  How did you conceive of the idea of Lauchlin’s doubly bad heart—a heart that has a congenital defect and that also renders him incapable of truly connecting with anyone?

  “I was fascinated by how a fated shortfall could affect a man’s life for years to come.”

  I cannot remember coming up with the idea; it simply evolved. However, the notion of a man prevented from reaching his full potential and dreams because of a genetic disposition (Lauchlin never knew for sure how far he could have gotten in the boxing ring) was interesting to me. I was fascinated by how a fated shortfall could affect a man’s life for years to come and how this could be completely beyond his capacity to alter, despite the strength of his character. The metaphorical implications of Lauchlin’s defective heart arose naturally as I dug deeper into his personality and his life; the defect became another layer of his makeup, of his predicament.

  The question of staying where your roots are or leaving home to make a new life elsewhere is central to the novel. Does your interest in this derive from Cape Breton? Do you think one option is better than the other?

  My interest in this choice might have to do, in part, with Cape Bretoners’ long history of leaving home to find work and “a better life,” economically, at least. Something is gained materially when a person decides to leave, but something is also lost—community, place, traditions, and a definite and sustaining identity. The cost is hard to measure and differs from person to person. Many are left with mixed feelings. Cape Bretoners are noted for maintaining a strong connection with home, even if they live and work far away from it.

  In my father’s generation, a lot of men went off to the Great Lakes, some returning home in winter, others settling in port towns in the United States, as my father did. Some returned to Cape Breton to retire. Some people, like Lauchlin, lack the temperament necessary to remove themselves from their native community. In Lauchlin’s case, of course, he lost any will to leave after his boxing career was curtailed.

  “Cape Bretoners are noted for maintaining a strong connection with home.”

  While Lauchlin stayed home, his brother left Cape Breton in search of career opportunities, but we see that Lauchlin’s brother isn’t any happier for his choice. How does this inform the “stay or go” decision that so many Cape Bretoners are forced to make?

  Frank was destined to leave, it seems. And he is attracted to travel and to sophisticated activities that he might more likely pursue in a large metropolis like Toronto. He always had a desire to move; he was restless, a drinker who saw big things for himself. For him, the direction was always outward, despite the affections he held for home. He never had to ponder, Do I stay or leave? Leaving was a logical, necessary step. For him, home is for visiting, a place to bask in for a while, an inimitable comfort, but not a place to pursue his future.r />
  The women in Lauchlin of the Bad Heart tend to be strong, optimistic, and forward-looking, while the men are often caught in the past, indecisive, and still searching for meaning or success. Did you intend this contrast?

  “Even though the women seem stronger and somewhat more independent, they do have their own vulnerabilities.”

  I didn’t intend a strong or obvious contrast, but it is there to a degree. Still, even though the women seem stronger and somewhat more independent, they do have their own vulnerabilities. Morag, though she took hold of her own life, has never broken fully from Lauchlin and probably never will. Johanna, like most women of her generation in that region, didn’t question what fate had given her. She assumed a role and made the best of it. Tena has accepted her infirmity and resisted it at the same time, but so has Lauchlin. She is optimistic in some regards but not in others, and she was on the verge of having an affair with Lauchlin. What that might have done to her independence and optimism we can only guess.