Each Man's Son (17 page)

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 ground 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.

After Red Willie had disappeared Alan came out of hiding and walked boldly over to the carriage, hoping Mrs. Ainslie might see him and come out again. But the surgery door remained closed. He studied the ground where the scuffle had taken place, and then turned to follow Red Willie down the drive, trying to figure out the meaning of what he had seen. Apparently Red Willie thought it was all right to kick a little man but wrong to fight one. It must be very bad to be
small. He looked down at his own legs and wondered how long it would be before they grew heavy with bone and muscle. Someday they must be like his father's. At the edge of the road he saw a stone like the one Willie had kicked and he swung back his leg and let go the way Red Willie had done, but when his toe hit the stone he had to suppress a yelp of pain. Why was it that nobody thought much of Red Willie, though a lot of people were afraid of him?

When he reached the main road the first of the men were coming back from the mine. All the way up the road he met them walking with black faces and staring white eyes, their lunch pails under their arms with the gray metal showing through in the spots where the paint had been rubbed off. His house was still empty when he got home, so he sat on the front step, feeling very tired and a little queer, and drew pictures in the dirt with a twig, watching occasionally as a woman brought out a washtub to scrub the coal dust off her husband.

Angus the Barraman waved when he reached his own house, and then he came over and sat on the steps beside him, his face and hands still black and his eyelids red.

“There iss hell in my legs today, Alan. Where iss your mother?”

“I don't know.”

“She whill be home soon, howeffer?”

Again Alan said he didn't know, and Angus the Barraman took out a plug and bit off a chew. He looked down the road and saw two of his own boys chasing each other around the house.

“My kids iss making so much noise I ought to get up and beat the hell owt of them, but I whould sooner sit here a bit.” He chewed ponderously for a minute. “We ha? heard your father comes back to town soon,” he said finally.

Alan looked at the dirt and continued to draw pictures.

“We ha? heard also that he does not come home at all.”

Still Alan said nothing and Angus continued to chew, breathing through his nostrils like a dog and stopping occasionally to calculate whether or not he had worked up enough juice for a worthwhile spit.

“Mr. MacNeil?” Alan said. “Could Red Willie MacIsaac beat my father?”

Angus the Barraman's eyes made two white circles in his black face as he stared at Alan with apparent lack of comprehension.

“Could he kick the guts out of my father, Mr. MacNeil?”

Angus's shoulders began to shake with amusement. “Ho, ho, ho,” he said. “But that iss so funny you do not even know the beginnings of how funny it iss.”

Alan began to laugh too. “Then you mean Red Willie isn't telling the truth when he says he can beat my father?”

“Och!” said Angus. “Och now, but that whould be fine! By Chesus, I whould like to see Red Willie drunk enough to try, and then we whould see how far he whould bounce when your father let him ha? the right cross.”

Alan squirmed with pleasure. “What is a right cross?”

“It iss your father's favorite punch. After he makes hiss man drop hiss guard with the cleverness, he giffs him the right to the side of the jaw or to the face maybe, and when he lands it good that iss usually all there iss to it.”

Alan was feeling more lighthearted every moment. “Then my father is still the strongest man in Cape Breton, isn't he, Mr. MacNeil?”

Angus turned slowly to feel Alan's biceps. After his fingers had probed the frail muscle, his face became solemn and he shook his head.

“You whill ha? to grow like a son of a bitch to be as strong as your father.” He took his fingers from the biceps and felt Alan's head. “Maybe you whill ha? the big brain, like the doctor.”

“But is my father the strongest man in Cape Breton, Mr. MacNeil?”

Angus thought this over for such a long time that Alan was beginning to believe he had forgotten the question. Finally he squeezed his chew into the side of his left cheek and let go a squirt.

“There wass Captain Livingstone from Boulardarie,” he said, “who wass so strong that once when he wass buying a suit of clothes in the Boston States the man in the store asked wass they too loose, so Captain Livingstone swelled out the muscles of hiss back and shoulders and burst every seam in them just to show a little of what he could do.”

“Is my father stronger than that?”

“Whell now, in the muscles he iss not. He might beat the captain with the clefferness, but the captain iss dead now, so who knows?”

“If the captain was so strong, why did he die? Did somebody kill him?”

“Whell now, nobody effer told me abowt that, Alan.” Angus scratched his head. “I would not be surprised howeffer if he was drown-ded. Maybe he wass drown-ded and the Jamaica sharks ett him. They tell me them sharks off Jamaica hass bites so big they can bite the head off you.”

Alan looked down in the dirt and began to scratch a skeleton while Angus the Barraman chewed steadily beside him.

Then Alan said, “Mr. MacNeil–what happened to my father last night?”

“Och!” said Angus, and began to squirm in his pants. “What whould you be asking a question like that for?”

“You were talking about my father this morning. I heard you.”

“Och, and what iss talk? Och, now! It iss what I said beforehand moreoffer–there wass dirty tricks in Trenton on Friday night. Withowt the dirty tricks–och, there whould ha? been
no question at all whateffer abowt it. But don't you be asking me any more abowt that, for I ha? promised your mother I whill not say.”

Alan kept after him. “Mr. MacNeil–what are dirty tricks?”

“Whell now, I did not promise her I whould not talk abowt that. So listen and I whill tell you. There iss all kinds to them. But suppose you wass fighting a fella and you hit him in the balls–that whould be the dirtiest trick you could do.”

“Did a man hit my father like that, Mr. MacNeil?”

“That I do not know for sure, but I ha? my ideas on it. But I am not going to talk any more abowt your father, Alan, so be a good little bugger and don't ask me.”

At last Alan's face broke into a smile. “Without the dirty tricks, is my father stronger than anybody that ever lived in Cape Breton?”

“No,” said Angus the Barraman decisively, “he iss not, and you can't blame him for it, eether. For nobody that effer lived anywhere wass so strong as Angus MacAskill of St. Ann's, who wass four hundred and twenty-five pounds of bone and muscle, and wass so strong he did not ha? to fight at all to prove it. MacAskill was so strong that Queen Victoria her ownself invited him all the way to her palace in London just to ha? a look at him, and when he wass finished with walking up and down before her, she had to buy herself a new carpet to make up for the holes hiss heels had cut into the old one.” Angus the Barraman shook his head solemnly. “But what he did there wass nothing to what he did right here in Cape Breton, for the Queen wass a lady, and it whould not be polite for MacAskill to show off to a lady what he could really do.”

Angus stopped to let go a long spit.

“He showed it once and for all the day the Yankee sea captain put into St. Ann's for water and boasted there wass stronger men in the Boston States than they wass in Cape Breton.”