The Long Stretch (12 page)

Summer 1963. The old man started acting out of character. Gentler in his own rough way.

I was helping out. Haymaking. I was suddenly almost as tall as he was. Surprised to discover I was starting to look like him too. People would comment: especially around the eyes. Getting those Gillis eyes.

Also getting the odd day working for pay. Usually on a pulp truck. People stockpiling pulpwood then. The new mill was starting up. Hard work, hauling pulp and haymaking, before the mechanical revolution around here when everybody went crazy for gadgets. Now a lot of them just shrinkwrap the hay and leave it in the field. And haul pulpwood without ever touching a stick of it. Back then it was forking the hay and slinging wood with a pulphook. Building muscle. I’d catch the old man sizing me up.

July was always hot. Evenings you’d want to go into the village. It was cooler there, alongside the strait. Sit out in front of Mrs. Lew’s canteen, have a soft drink, watch the world come and go. Lots of cars roaring around then. Money to burn, for a change.

A Friday night, Effie and I are sitting side by side on pop cases. You can tell she’s giving the eye to a car parked in front. A ’58 Mercury with Ontario plates. A continental kit on the
back end. Big whip aerial. Two guys in the front gabbing and laughing in loud bursts. Their radio blaring
Out in the west Texas town of El Paso I fell in love with a Mexican giiiiiirl
…Good old Marty Robbins, helping us all pass the balmy boring summer evening.

Paddy Fox is inside. He’s leaning out through the open hatch where people buy things. His eye has a permanent red blob in it, like some eggs you open up. Burst blood vessel, I guess. A reminder of my old man.

Then there’s the crunch of gravel as a big black Chrysler pulls in and slides to a stop. A ghost gets out: white skin, white-blonde hair, white blouse open down to there, and tiny tight white shorts. Three strides and she’s up the steps, standing near enough to smell, and ordering a pack of Kools and a bottle of Lime Rickey. Our eyes meet. She’s like nobody from around here. And as she turns she stops and looks at me again, almost staring. Smiles and says hello. Then asks what my name is. Has an accent.

I struggle to stand up and say, John Gillis. And she says, Is that a common name around here? Gillis? And I say, Pretty common. She smiles and says, Nice to meet you, John Gillis, and she trots down to the car. And is quickly gone. “There you go,” says Effie. “An older woman for you.”

She looked to be about mid-thirties. Little thrills ping in my midsection.

“What do you think, Paddy?” says Effie.

“That’s eatin’ stuff,” says Paddy.

Mrs. Lew is at the window, wiping her hands on a ragged dishtowel.

“That’s one of the new Swedes,” she says.

The old man took his vacation for our haymaking so Grandpa and I didn’t have to do it all ourselves. That was weird. He usually only took a vacation in hunting season. Hated haymaking, he said. From the time he was a kid. We still used a horse back then. Mostly to humour Grandpa. We could have had a tractor. But Grandpa like harnessing old Tony, cutting and raking the way he’d always done it. Used Pa’s half-ton to haul it to the barn. My father and I did the heavy stuff. Grandpa and Tony both knew they didn’t have much more haymaking left in them.

The work Pa did, the way he lived, kept him lean. When he was stripped to the waist under the baking July haymaking sun, you could see the long stringy muscles tense under the milky skin. Uncle Jack tended more to bulk. You’d never notice his physical power unless you got to see his bare back when he was moving his arms around. Like taking off a pullover. You’d see the thick muscles knotting behind the shoulder, neck bulging. Jack was stronger than the old man, but the old man was quicker.

“The old man was kind of like a big friendly dog,” Sextus said once. “Uncle Sandy was like a cat.”

Near the end Pa seemed to be trying to open up. By then, of course, people were conditioned by his isolation.

Haymaking that summer, my father would have a case of Schooner behind the seat of the truck. Would sip one between loads.

“Want one?” he asked me once, grinning.

Me wondering if he meant it, or was setting a trap.

“No thanks,” I said.

Grandpa watching cautiously.

“Here. Take a sip,” Pa said, holding the bottle toward me.

I took it, raised it carefully to my lips, watching his eyes as I did.

The beer stung the tongue, hot and sour.

I grimaced and handed the bottle back.

He roared laughing.

The evening closed in quickly behind the Chrysler. Seemed to leave everything moving gently and rustly, like a flag stirred by a sudden breeze. You felt an absence. The music coming from the car with Ontario plates had gone gentler, a mournful Acker Bilk tune, “Stranger on the Shore.” Effie kind of swaying, sitting on the pop case, looking dreamy. Then the door of the Merc swings open and one of them calls out, kind of rough, “Hey, Eff-ay. Come ‘ere.”

She stands, stretches, and says, “What.”

“We’re going to the dance in Creignish. Wanna come?”

“Sure,” she says without a moment’s hesitation and is gone, door slamming and engine starting simultaneously, tires popping gravel then hitting pavement with a little screech. The continental extension on the rearend almost touching when they accelerated. Then gone, taillights disappearing up over the graveyard hill. Me left with Paddy and his bad eye.

Got up and stretched, like nothing mattered.

Before beginning the long walk home I said to Mrs. Lew, “Give me a pack of cigarettes.”

“What do you want?” she asked.

“Gimme a pack of those Kools,” I said.

Two days later I saw the Chrysler in town. I was standing with Pa and Squint on the sidewalk near the old town hall. Noticed them staring at somebody walking along the other side of the street. Squint saying, “
Tha i muineil…
,” laughing strangely, gawking. Pa looking nervous, knowing I was near. Watching the Swede’s wife crossing the street wearing tight pants called pedal-pushers. Me knowing what
Tha i muineil
meant. Figured it out.

Me. Too young to understand that grown men remain randy adolescents.

Except Pa was looking like he was seeing a real ghost.

“They say the worst thing the father can do is make himself hard to forget,” Sextus says, puffing smoke.

“Who said that?”

“Who knows? Sometimes the less they say the more they leave behind.”

“I never had much of a problem forgetting the old man,” I say, feeling the ghostly presence of him again.

A Saturday evening, the day we finished putting the hay in, Pa said to me, “What are you now, anyway? Sixteen, is it?”

I nodded. Seventeen in October.

“I suppose you’ll be wanting your driver’s licence soon.”

“I’d like that,” I said cautiously.

“What’s stopping you?”

“Well,” I said, allowing a nervous laugh, “I’d have to learn first.”

“Bullshit,” he said. “You can drive. You’ve been practising.”

I’d been at the wheel, putting the hay in. Could see him watching closely.

“Well,” I said, “just in the yard. And around the field. Nowhere with traffic.”

“Not on the road?” He looked skeptical.

“No,” I said.

“Well. It’s about time, then. Let’s go.”

“But I don’t have a beginner’s,” I said.

“Fuck the beginner’s,” he said.

A word he rarely used around me before that. His way of opening up, I guess.

We drove out through Sugar Camp. At the turn off to West Bay Road he said keep going. When we got to Glenora Road, he said take a left. I figured I’d turn back at Dan Alex MacIntyre’s lane but he said keep going again. Alex Lamey’s then. But he said no, hang a left on the Trans-Canada.

“The Mounties will be around,” I said. “It’s the weekend. We can turn up MacIntyre’s Mountain.”

“Fuck the Mounties,” he said.

Me driving along about forty miles per hour, hands leaving imprints on the steering wheel, eyes bugging out of my head, blood pressure through the roof, and a feeling like sexual excitement right in the pit of my groin. Wanting to pass somebody I knew. Toot the horn, wave casually at people. Especially Effie. Imagining the half-ton as a Monarch. One better than a Mercury. With Hollywood mufflers gurgling.

Near the General Line, Pa said, “I want you to turn up there. I want to show you something.”

By then he had a pint bottle in his hand. Must have been in his pocket. Or stashed under the seat.

A couple of miles up the dirt road he said, “Keep left at the intersection, by the old John H. place. Towards Creignish Rear.” Going by Shimon Angus’s place he nods toward the old farm: “Did you know that Shimon Angus had twenty-seven kids?”

I said I didn’t know that.

“From three wives,” he said. “The pope gave him a medal.”

I think he expects me to laugh.

“Jack’s Jessie was saying they should have gave the medal to the women.”

A mile or so past Shimon Angus’s the road breaks out of the trees and suddenly you can see you’re on the top of Creignish Mountain and St. Georges Bay is spread out in a great blue sheet in front of you. At the foot of the mountain, the houses of Creignish are strewn along Route 19, with the church among them. Stella Maris, Star of the Sea. Stuck on the top of a fold in the mountainside, the graveyard rolling off to the right, and the dancehall in front, just across the road, back to the windy gulf. This is where everybody goes on Friday nights to dance and drink and fight and pick up women.

He swigs straight from his bottle and screws the cap back on.

“This is the prettiest place in the world,” he says, staring out into the bay.

I’d pulled over to the side, on his instruction.

“I’ve seen a lot of the world, you know,” he said, looking in my direction.

I nod.

“You know that,” he said.

“Yes.”

“So you know I know what I’m talking about.”

“Yes.”

“There were places I’ve seen…would have been nice. Holland was too flat. But France. Belgium. Even Holland, though. You should see the nice farms there. Big meadows. Dikes holding the water back.”

“And windmills?”

“Big jeezly windmills. Like the books. Canals too.”

“Nice people?”

“Oh, yeah.” Then, looking back out toward the bay: “But this here’s the place, hey?”

White clouds are turning pink, like smoke over a fire.

“Over to the right,” Pa said. “You can’t see it from here. Used to be a fellow they called Wild Archie. Fished out of Gloucester, Mass.” He takes a swallow. “One night he’s in a barroom, Wild Archie. In Gloucester, Mass. Gets into a tangle with another fellow. The guy shoots him.”

“Shoots him?”

“Shoots him. Bullet passes an inch from his heart. Last thing Wild Archie did was kill the guy who shot him. Bare hands. Before he died. They brought him home, Wild Archie. Buried him down there somewhere.”

He’s looking out, toward the rest of the world. Face tight from booze.

Not thinking it through, I said: “You got shot once, Pa.”

His hand went to the side of his forehead.

“Made quite a mess, eh?” he said.

“How did it happen?”

It’d been years since I asked.

“A long story.” Then he said: “You really want to know?”

Shocked. “Sure,” I said.

“Well,” he said, real slow. “You’re going to have to ask somebody else.”

Oh.

“I don’t know a thing about it,” he said.

Then looked straight at me.

“That’s okay, Pa.”

“Right,” he said, looking back toward the bay. “Some man, that Wild Archie.”

You can tell Sextus is drunk, finally, by the way he almost knocks over his chair standing up. Pushes it back with the backs of his legs, hands pressing on the tabletop.

“There was a reason for…Angus and Uncle Sandy. You know?”

He sits down again and seizes the rum bottle resolutely. Pours a shaky dollop into his glass, then looks at me, his face set with purpose.

“You’re going to listen to this,” he says. “Away back, a few years after Uncle Sandy…Duncan came to Toronto. Must have been between ’68 and ’69. He was ordained. My old man was still alive. Duncan stayed with me. We got into it, pretty serious, a couple of times. And one night, pretty far into his cups, he told me the whole story. Oh, he beat around the bush quite a bit. Asking things like, ‘How is a person supposed to react when he discovers somebody close is guilty of something really, really bad?’ Him the priest, asking me? I mean, spare me.”

I say: “Hey, guess what. I already know the whole story. Okay?”

He takes a long drag on his cigarette, not sure whether to believe me.

“You know? What happened in the barn? In Holland?”

“Yes.”

“No sniper?”

“No sniper.”

“How Angus…?”

“Yes.”

“Who? Where did you find out?”

“Uncle Jack told me.”

“Fuck off.”

“It’s true.”

“The old man knew?”

“Uncle Jack knew.”

“Holy Jesus.”

Pa just kept staring out over St. Georges Bay, shaking his head. Occasionally sipping from his flask.

“I hear the Swedes put the mill here because it reminds them of home,” he said finally.

“I never heard,” I said. The mayor of Hawkesbury said it was because of the harbour.

“Interesting people, the Swedes,” he said. “Different ways of looking at things.”

“How long do you think they’ll be here?” I asked cautiously.

He looked at me full on for a moment. “However long the trees last.”

After a while he said, “I suppose you have a girlfriend.” Seemed to be killing time. Waiting for something. The sun was hanging just above the horizon. Lights were sparkling on the distant blot of shore. The mainland.

“Not me,” I said, laughing nervously.

“Sure you have,” he said quietly.

Me thinking: this is weird, for your father.

“It’s different now than when I was a young fellow.”

“How?”

Then he was watching the sun for a while.

“Nowadays,” he said, slouching farther down, “you can afford to be young.”

Then, after a long silence in which I thought he’d dozed off: “You need the rig any time, after you get your licence, you just ask.”

I stared at him, wondering if he realized it was me he was talking to. He drifted off sometimes. The plate in his head. Often forgot what he just finished saying.

“You hear what I’m saying,” he said, looking at me directly.

“Wow, thanks.”

Probably the liquor talking, I thought.

“You won’t be young for long.”

“I can’t believe the old man knew,” Sextus said. “When did he tell you?”

“I don’t remember exactly,” I said. “We were in Quebec.”

“So you knew all along too?”

“Yes,” I said.

“And did you ever discuss it with her?”

“There was nothing to discuss.”

“Well…fuck,” he said. “What about the Dutch woman? Or girl, I guess she’d have been.”

I raise my hand, cautioning, shaking my head. This is where everything went off the rails with Squint. Bringing the Dutch woman into it. Giving gossip some kind of authenticity.

“That’s where I draw the line,” I say.

He studies me, face full of sympathy.

“Can’t say that I blame you.”

Summer of ’63 was when the talk started about my father and the Swede’s wife. The Swede was one of the managers at the new mill. She was German. Or so everybody wrongly thought. She was really Dutch. But overheard speaking German at the Auto Parts. And looked like one. The blonde hair and blue eyes. Some kind of an academic. Unusually interested in things around here. Always trying to talk to people. A lot avoiding her, thinking she was a German.

You discover gossip, when it’s about yourself, in the sudden silences that seem to go before you, pushing aside whatever was going on before you got there. A strange feeling, that your presence is suddenly alarming to people you think you know well. Conversations quickly started, out of nothing. You don’t discover the substance until later.

I shouldn’t have been surprised at the gossip. Once I saw them, near the post office, standing talking. The old man was smiling like a boy, hands in his pockets. She was standing with her weight on one leg, the other angled out, casually. Toe poking at bits of gravel. She was wearing a skirt this time.
But there was no mistaking her. The hair, tied back, showing her ears. The skirt draped over the extended leg, showed it off nicely. Arms folded under her chest showed that off pretty good too. Talking a blue streak. Like old friends. Then they shook hands and she headed for the big Chrysler. I felt relief. Something about the handshake. But it still seemed queer, him that friendly with a German.

The sun was almost touching the horizon.

“There’s the one over the road,” he said. “The little red one at Angus’s place.”

“Effie,” I said.

“Yeah, Effie,” he said. “You wouldn’t be interested in that, would you?”

“Nah. She’s like my sister.”

“Yes,” he said, nodding. “So. You want the rig for going to dances down north. You just say the word. Nice people down there.”

“Duncan’s going to be a priest,” I said.

“Hah.” Then: “You used to be around with that little Effie a lot. All the time.”

The sun was putting a warm glow on his face, leaving a dark absence where his skull was missing.

“Just playing,” I said.

“That’s all right. But you get older, there’s no more playing.” Took another swallow from his flask. “There’s a streak in those people.”

“Yes.”

“A streak o’ misery.”

“But there’s good in them too,” I said.

By then, of course, there was no reason for him to caution me about Effie. I had other fantasies. The blonde lady, the Swede’s wife. The image of her standing close, at Mrs. Lew’s, asking who I was, wouldn’t leave me. All the impressions created by movies and magazines and songs on the radio, real. Right in front of you, jangling all the senses. Sight, sound, smell, even touch and taste, if you dared. I seemed to be seeing her everywhere.

I was swimming off the old coal pier one hot afternoon when I noticed her standing watching me. Wearing the same outfit I first saw her in. Real short shorts. There was a kid with her. A boy, maybe nine or so. I was alone in the water so it had to be me they were looking at. I didn’t know how to acknowledge them so I didn’t try.

She put her hand to the side of her mouth and called out: “You make me want to jump in. Just like I am.”

And I suddenly had the completely crazy notion that she was there for me. You laugh now but when you’re sixteen and curious such things are possible. Why should it only be between men and girls? Why not women and boys? And I wasn’t such a boy. Going on seventeen and almost as tall as the old man. The spit of him, people were saying.

Of course, it’s pathetic now, but at the time it gave me power. Effie was the only other, but she had nowhere near the force I felt coming out of the Swede’s wife. And Effie had outgrown me. You’d think she lived in that ’58 Merc with the continental kit. You’d see it gliding over the Long Stretch from up in the field where I’d be turning the hay with Grandpa, or from a ladder on the side of the barn where I’d be fixing shingles or painting. Cruising through like a jungle animal on the hunt,
except you could see the prey already inside, sitting up close to the driver. Going somewhere or returning.

Who cared. I had my own imagery. Day and night. And I’d come to, breathless and wet and relieved and lonely. Not knowing that this was as close as I’d get to normal for a long, long time.

On Creignish Mountain I asked Pa, “Did you ever go to Sweden?”

He laughed. “Was no war in Sweden.”

“You know some of the new Swedes,” I said.

He looked at me a moment. Then said, “Don’t know a soul among them.”