The Long Stretch (10 page)

Effie and I are fooling around like we always did. Carrying on, Ma used to call it. I’m twelve. She must have turned thirteen. We each have pieces of wood and we’re swordfighting. She dodges my thrust but loses balance, and spins away from me. Suddenly, this perfect round ass is filling the back of her jeans in a way I’ve never seen before. All slack and boniness, gone. And, buoyed on an adrenalin surge, I swing my wooden sword and whack the fleshy curve of her buttock more firmly than I’d have wanted to.

She freezes, then wheels to face me, “Grow up, for God’s sake.”

And the words sting.

I guess that’s what happened when I was away with Uncle Jack. I started growing up. Effie grew up a long time before I did.

There was a fellow who’d bring oil to the school. Driving a big tanker truck. The girls thought he was the spit of Elvis Presley. She’d be glued to the windows with the rest of them. His name was Bobby Campbell. And there was another one named Jimmie who would park his car near the schoolgrounds and just
sit there. Driving them crazy. He had shiny black hair with a few twists on front. Duck’s arse on the back. They said he looked exactly like James Dean who died a few years before but whose movies were just getting here. He had the same half-closed semi-gawky mouth. And he knew who they thought he looked like. So when he sat there in the car, he slouched and smoked. And when he talked he tried to sound like an American. Kind of nasal. He’d been out of school a couple of years. Was waiting to go away to the uranium mines in Elliot Lake where all the young fellows were heading then. Anybody who wasn’t away already was waiting to go away. That was what growing up looked like.

Duck’s arse on the back of your head and waiting to go away.

Then the Swedes and the government announced the pulp mill. It was about 1960. And people started coming back again. Like when the causeway started. But not Jack this time. Stayed absent.

“So how’s your ma?” I ask.

“A whole lot better than anticipated,” he says, watching me warily. “I guess you haven’t seen her lately.”

“Drop down for a game of cards from time to time.”

Realizing it’s been months.

“She was pretty apprehensive about me bringing things up that might be a little upsetting.”

“Like what?” I ask.

“Something about your ma and Squint?”

I got a letter from Ma. Around the same time Uncle Jack was talking about us moving on somewhere else. Sometime in February ’65. Ma says she and Squint are going to get married at Easter. Don’t take it wrong, says she. It’s for the companionship. And he’s a good man. Grandma is all for it.

I was floored. Not a year and a half passed since the day the old man…and her getting married again. And to Squint.

“Grandma says she can manage alone if I move over to Squint’s. I don’t know. Grandma’s probably better off alone than with Squint here (ha, ha).”

First time she ever wrote to me in her life.

“Ah well,” Jack said. “Sandy’d want that. I know that much about him.”

Grandma used to call Squint the
gloichd.
In plain English, a creep.

“I suppose Squint will be moving in,” Jack said with a sly look.

“No,” I said. “I think she’s moving to his place.”

“Jaysus,” Jack said. “They’ll have to do a fumigation first.”

“Grandma wants to live alone,” I said.

Grandpa was gone by then just about a year. Since just before I went to Tilt Cove with Jack.

“Can’t have that,” Jack said, rubbing his chin. “Grandma is after getting a little
gliogach
herself.”

“Grandma
gliogach,
” I say, laughing. “Hard to imagine that.”

“Dropping things,” he said. “Forgetful. Wife was telling me in the last letter. Some day she’d fall down. Break a hip. Screwed then,” he said. “Maybe we can get her to move out, stay with the wife.”

“There isn’t room at your place.”

“Wife can move into the young fellow’s room. Give the old
lady ours.” Reaching then for his smokes. “For all I’m home,” he said. “Wife doesn’t need all that room by herself.”

I knew Jack would take a couple of weeks to communicate his plan to Jessie, so I wrote to Effie write away: “Right after Ma and Squint, I’m going to want you to move in with Grandma. It’ll be doing us a big favour. And of course, I’ll be going home for it.”

“You mind if I make some fresh tea?” he asks.

“Go ahead.”

Over the sound of the water gushing he’s saying, “Ma told me there’d been a bit of a…falling out. You and your mom. And Squint.”

“Just a little something with Squint,” I say.

He makes a face. “More than ‘a little something,’ I’d guess, to come between yourself and your mother.”

“Nothing worth talking about,” I say. “Anyway, how did that come up?”

He shrugs. “I mentioned to Ma that I might drop in on Squint while I’m here. Since he was overseas with Angus.”

I hear myself saying: “So what if he was overseas with Angus. I’ve spent a long time forgetting it and I’m fucking sick of it.”

“Hey hey hey,” he says, holding a hand up like a traffic cop. “Take it easy. It’s me. Sextus. Family. Calm down. Skip it. I’m just making conversation.”

Family. That’s what Squint said. As if it excused falsehood.
Effie wrote: “It’s great, your ma and Squint getting married. She needs somebody. I feel terrible, even thinking about what you suggest. Moving in there, for your grandma’s sake. But whatever happens, I’m going to have to get out of here. It just gets worse. The other night he went out and locked me in the house. He padlocked the storm door. I had to leave by the window.”

“Ma said there was a falling out. You and Squint. I was only wondering,” he said.

I say: “Sorry about that. Booze throws off my sugar. Makes me edgy.”

Squint’s insinuating know-all face in front of me; half smiling as he communicates gossip with the bogus authority of an eyewitness who saw nothing and knows nothing.

“What was it, then?” His voice is soothing.

“Nothing I want to go into,” I say.

“Nothing to do with the Swede’s wife,” he says.

Then I lie: “No, no, no. Just something to do with herself. What did you say it was? Faye. Angus and Faye.”

He persists. “But to alienate you from Mary. Your poor ma…”

“That’s not true,” I say. Another lie. “Ma and I stay in touch.”

“I actually thought,” he says, “driving up here this morning, the two of us would drop in on him. Bring a jug. Maybe get him talking.”

“I don’t think so,” I say. “Squint’s changed.”

“Like. Who knows? It’s nearly forty years now. If we got him talking we’d get to the crux of whatever it was with Uncle Sandy and Angus. Whaddaya say?”

I say: “Even if Squint had something to say—and I doubt it—what’s the point? Like, what else is there to know?”

His face. Like Squint’s was. Like everyone who has ever spoken to me with the attitude of superiority based on knowing what I don’t know, assuming, as they must, that I know nothing.

“The kettle is boiling,” I say.

He stands, walks to the stove. Then he heads for the door.

“Where are you off to?” I ask.

“I feel like taking a piss,” he says, then stops, and looks back over his shoulder. “If that’s all right with you.”

Just before Easter ’65, she wrote again to say she’d move in with Grandma as soon as we wanted her to. She knew there would be talk but didn’t care. Didn’t know how she’d keep the old fellow from hanging around there. But figured Grandma would control that. Grandma didn’t put up with much. Would move in right after Ma and Squint, if we still wanted. They were getting married at Easter.

I broke the news to Jack, carefully. He looked at me for a long time, saying nothing. Making me want to wave a hand in front of his face, say, Hello there! Speak up! But he said nothing. Just pulled a matchstick out of his pocket, stuck it in his ear, and wiggled it around. When he extracted it there was a big brown gob on the end of it, which he examined. Then said: “Whatever you think yourself.”

“I know what you’re thinking,” I said, feeling a trace of desperation.

“Well, that makes one of us,” he said. Laughed. And walked off.

Heading for Itchy’s. He was there, most every night those last few weeks in Tilt Cove.

Ma wrote once more. She thought Effie and Grandma was a great idea. You couldn’t tell what Angus thought. He was on a bender at the time.

Leaving Tilt Cove felt like the last day of school used to. Cleaning my stuff out of the dry. Putting up with a lot of static from the guys. Tilt Cove was a place you stayed in because you had to. You lived to leave. And Jack and I were leaving. Our two kitbags packed and leaning side by side in a corner of my room, hardhats giving the top a rounded shape. Smelling like underground.

Then Jack’s old buddy Black Angus MacDonald came by with a bottle of rum. Captain Morgan. I had a couple with them but he and Jack were speaking Gaelic. Stuff I couldn’t follow.

Spent a few minutes in the card room, watching. There was a game going on pretty well nonstop. The usual crowd. A half-breed shift boss. The doctor. Itchy. Hubert the hoistman. A few others. Pretty intense about the cards so I didn’t stay there long. Walked around outside for a while. Climbed the steep embankment behind the bunkhouse and prolonged sundown a few minutes that way. But it became instantly cold when the sun dropped.

We drove out. New road to Springdale pretty solid considering it was springtime. No talk in the car for hours. Jack seemed permanently down those days. Shaking hands with Black Angus as we left, you could see faint ripples along his jawline.

Jack bought a flask in Corner Brook. Saved it for the boat. Sipping it as we crossed the Cabot Strait, heading toward
North Sydney. Halfway through the flask, he made a few jokes about Angus. Me being almost related to him, going out with Effie. And Squint going to be my stepfather. Me retaliating: “He’ll be almost like your brother-in-law.” “No fucking way,” Jack saying, half laughing.

He’d only recently started using “fuck” in front of me.

Aunt Jessie met the ferry. Hugged me, kissed Jack lightly on his cheek.

Ma and Squint got married quietly. A few people sitting around at our place the night before. Effie came over. Didn’t stay long. Angus was there, pretty well elected.

He sobered up for the church part. It was only for family, but he was invited. He and Squint had spent a hard year together in Italy, and later in Holland. There was a little reception. And that set him off again. Got maudlin trying to propose a toast. Last seen leaning in a corner, singing “Molly Bond.”
For sheee was taaall and sleeender, and gentle as a faaawn.
Then was gone for days. That’s when we moved Effie into the old place. Her first night there we sat up late talking mostly about childhood. How things change.

“There’s something I have to tell you.”

“What?” she said.

“The dog.”

“What dog?”

“Sandy. I think my father shot him.”

“Everybody knew that,” she said quietly.

Everybody.

She kissed me softly on the forehead. Then shoved her hands through my hair.

“Enough about the past,” she said. “If that’s the worst you’ll ever have to confess…”

And we went to our separate and chilly little rooms.

You could hear Grandma snoring.

The next day Uncle Jack and I drove to Ontario in Jack’s car. Straight through to Sudbury, taking turns at the wheel. Blew through Ottawa in the middle of the night. Parliament Hill lit up like a carnival. Made Sudbury in thirty hours. Stayed with somebody Jack knew from Flin Flon, contracting then at Inco.

There was nothing in Sudbury. Inco wasn’t hiring. MacIsaac made some kind of excuse. Suggested Paddy Harrison and a new shaft somewhere. Pretty vague, Jack said afterwards. Giving us the brushoff. Dropped by Falconbridge. Nothing.

“Where to now?” I asked.

“Flatten her for Toronto,” Jack said.

On the way down to Toronto we got drunk in the car on cheap Ontario beer, and Uncle Jack was figuring it was really because he was too old.

“Forty-four isn’t old,” I said.

Coughing on the drag of his cigarette. “Lately I feel a hundred and forty-four.”

“You should quit that,” I said.

“I s’pose,” he said, eyeing the cigarette. But the face was saying why bother.

We were heading for Toronto because we heard there was work driving a tunnel there for a subway.
Coming back into the kitchen, Sextus shuts the door carefully behind him.

“Jesus, it’s cold out there,” he says.

“I thought you got lost,” I say. I pour tea.

The mood lighter now. Everything cooled off. Like the weather.

“I walked down to the end of the lane—you can’t see MacAskill’s old place anymore,” he says. “Was thinking about the old man. How he ended up. In the kitchen of that place. With Angus for company. The old cocksucker not even aware that there was a dead man in front of him.

“Then there was poor Uncle Sandy,” he adds.

Oblivious to my silent withdrawal.

“Everything linked together,” he says. “The three of them. This queer symmetry in the way they lived. And died. Here’s to them,” he says.

I raise my cup.

In Toronto, the contractor on the tunnel job had a shift boss from Glencoe. Jack called him on the phone. We arranged to meet him at a tavern called the Rondun, in Parkdale. We hit the place about five in the afternoon. Everybody there looked like from home. “We’re going to like Toronto,” Jack said, winking. A lot of local fellows drinking there. Ironworkers from Mabou. Miners from Inverness. Tunnel men from Judique, with stories from places with names like Amos and Wawa and Flin Flon. Places I heard about in Tilt Cove. Wasn’t long before we were both pretty full.

In the can, a MacIsaac from Port Hood said out of the side of his mouth I could probably get something with the ironworkers at the new TD Centre. Whatever that was. “You look like you could climb,” he said.

I gave it a second and a half of thought, then said, “Nah…the old fellow and I are partners. We’re looking for work underground.”

Toronto was something else. We stayed in a run-down hotel not far from the tavern.

Going to bed, I was looking at a newspaper. On page three there was a story and on the top, the name A. Sextus Gillis.

“Cripes, Jack,” I said. “Look at this.”

“Well, well,” he said. “He’s moving up in the world.”

“We’ll call the paper in the morning,” I said. “Go see him.”

Jack had his big paw on my shoulder, standing on one foot shaking off his shoe.

“Nohoho,” he said. “Wouldn’t want to bother the young fellow at his new job.”

Then put the light out. Jack always took his pants off in the dark.

“He’d shit if we showed up,” I said.

Jack laughed and laughed. “I imagine he would,” he said.

Next morning, when Beaton took us down to the subway job, I knew somehow there would be nothing. Something about Toronto. The clamour of noise seemed to be saying: You two don’t belong here.

Beaton took us to see the super. A New Brunswicker. Remembered Jack from Niagara Falls. But had no openings. Maybe in a week or two. Fellas were always moving around.

Jack looked at me, and I at him, and he said, “Thanks, anyway.”

When we left Toronto, we drove all the way along Bloor
Street and out Kingston Road, everything thinning out as we progressed eastward. Jack looking tense.

“Look,” Jack said. “Christ. There’s the Scarboro Foreign Missions.”

Bunch of fancy brick buildings in a field near the lake.

“Sure we could go down there and get some frigging feed,” he said. “All the money the wife’s poured into that place. Well. Well. That’s what it looks like.”

Of course we kept on going. Took forever. Watching the map, turning northward at Napanee.

“A few miles further on is where the Pen is,” Jack said. Kingston Pen. “Fair share of people I could visit there.” And laughed.

“We’ll give ‘er a miss for today.”

Heading for Quebec then. Beaton had given us a name there. Cousin of his, underground captain in a place called Bachelor Lake. Coniagas Mine. Base metals and silver. Assured us that if there was nothing there the cousin’ll know somebody in Chibougamau, a hundred miles or so farther up the line.

“Getting near Santa’s country,” Jack laughed.

And, Beaton had said, there’s something starting in Matagami Lake. You’ll get something. Somewhere.

Whacked the roof of the car with his big thick hand and we were off.

We spent a weekend in Val-d’Or on the way to Bachelor Lake. In a hotel. Six bucks a night. Imagine. There was a tavern in the basement. We spent Saturday afternoon and evening there. Jack went off to bed early. A pretty girl named Scotty talked to me. Told me she was a prostitute. Just like that. Came right out with it. Had a husband, working underground in Cadillac. Am I interested?

She had a heavy Scottish accent. Maybe, I said. How much?
Ten bucks. She asked if I had a room in the place. I did but Jack was in it. Could always get another one. Yes, wouldn’t kill me to blow another six bucks plus the ten for her. Figured, I guess it’s about time. After hearing so much about it in Tilt Cove. And I still hadn’t even considered anything with Effie. So why not? Rehearsal time.

Just as we were about to leave, Jack staggered in and sat down again. Sizing her up, tuned in to her accent. Started asking her where she was from in Scotland!

Peterhead, she said.

Never heard of it, said Jack.
Bheil Gaidhlig agad?
Asking her if she could speak Gaelic! Soon she excused herself and left, laughing at us.

Some things Uncle Jack didn’t have a clue about.

Bachelor Lake. The middle of nowhere. Tilt Cove without the ocean. In a nearby lumber camp, the inmates were worse than us. And an Indian settlement, but they avoided us. You could expect trouble any time the communities made contact. Lumbermen and Indians. Miners and lumbermen. Indians and miners. At each other’s throats if there was booze around, which there always was.

There was a little French place called Miquelon about twenty miles away. I remember it only because there’s an island with the same name near Newfoundland. There was a ramshackle roadhouse there. Sold booze and had a jukebox. You’d go out there now and then, looking for excitement. Hookers from Val-d’Or or Chibougamau would set up shop out there now and then.

I think mostly of blackflies and unreal sunsets. Just getting from the headframe to Ikey Ferris’s beer hall, you’d be half eaten.

Jack would say: “Blackflies so bad they sit on the limbs of the trees, then fly down and bite a hunk out of you. Then fly back up and eat it.”

Everybody laughing. Even the French guys. Even after they’d heard it a hundred times.

Sun set late in the north, but you’d always go out to watch. The drizzle of blood from a bruised sky.