The Long Stretch (18 page)

Driving home in the spring of ‘68. After four years away with Uncle Jack. Three of them at Bachelor Lake. Time past but not past at all.

November 22, 1963, and my father occupy my life as real and present as all the experience I have since. The day seems like yesterday. And the going away with Uncle Jack. The living in Tilt Cove. Bachelor Lake. Just layers.

May 1968. Driving down the long hundred miles of packed dirt from Miquelon to Senneterre, with nothing but trees and low cloud and dirty clods of spring snow to look at. Then pavement to Val-d’Or. Reviewing layers of time. Old people gone. Ma now Mrs. Squint. Effie clinging to me from the distance, me to her. Feeling really good. Thinking: I’ve got the worst over with and I’m only twenty-one going on twenty-two.

Jack didn’t get up to say goodbye. Working graveyard, but I still found it disturbing. Us together most of the time since we went to Tilt Cove, April 19, 1964.

Uncle Jack was right about my age. The doctor in Tilt Cove told me I had to be eighteen. I said I was but that I didn’t have anything on me. Jack backed me up and they said send home for it.
Which I did. By the time I got it I was eighteen and they didn’t care. I was only a labourer. I got all the worst jobs underground. Pick and shovel stuff, like Jack said. Breaking rock on the grizzly with a sledgehammer. Cleaning the sump in the bottom of the shaft, using shovels and a muck pig to get out the water and sludge that accumulated there. Installing air and water pipes. Laying track. Every shit job that nobody else would do.

I didn’t mind at first. I got a buzz going underground. The cage ride down. The cool black privacy below. The pneumatic roar of the jacklegs and the sudden silence when the miners finished the drilling and were loading powder and fuse. You’d be looking forward to the end of the shift then. And there’d be talk, in the quiet. About other mines, the war, the depression. Stuff I knew vaguely about from the old man and Angus at the kitchen table drinking.

Everybody seemed to be a little bit crazy. Everybody but Uncle Jack. And they seemed to know it. He was different. Always listening. Always the first to laugh at something funny. He was a boss, but he’d stand and talk, twirling the safety glasses in his hand. Sometimes he’d even grab a shovel and help with the hand-mucking.

I even got kind of fond of the smell, the dense damp exhaust of the rusting machinery, compressed air, ore dust, blasting smoke. Just as well I didn’t mind it since it got into your clothes and your skin and nothing seemed to get it out. Only cheap shaving lotion if the occasion was important, which it rarely was.

I can still remember trudging down a drift at the end of shift, waiting for the snap and thunder of rounds going off. Rumbling guts of granite. And the guys giving each other a hard time.

Hey, young fella, bring that eight-foot steel out to the station when you’re coming.

Me doing it.

Asking, when I got it out, what to do with it.

Them saying, Work it up in yeh.

Everybody laughing like mad. Including me.

The whisper and rattle of the cage hurtling up and down the shaft, the snap of signals as it stopped at each level, the clank and thump of heavy wooden doors echoing through the emptying drifts, loading the guys for surface and the shower and a beer at Itchy’s or, after ‘65, Ikey’s, and a pile of mass-murdered supper wherever. Compliments of Crawley-McCracken.

I was just a helper. But they were promising that I’d get into production work by that fall. I was related to Jack. And a lot of them knew the old man. From the war.

“You Sandy Gillis’s boy?” they’d say, eyes narrow.

“Yes,” I’d say.

“We were overseas together,” they’d say. As if that told me everything.

Letter from Aunt Jessie. August ‘64.

“So the young fella is on the paper in Halifax,” Jack says. “Son of a gun.”

But you could tell he was pleased. Aunt Jessie sent a clipping of the first story that had his name on it. It didn’t mean much to me. But it was something to see the name: A. Sextus Gillis.

“Great that he’s using the A.,” Uncle Jack said.

Showing it around the club later, his best friend, Black Angus MacDonald, said: “What the fuck kind of a name is that?”

We were still sharing a room then. Barely big enough for two. In a big rectangular bunkhouse made mostly out of plywood.
Fifty men living in it, yet somehow it always smelled clean. You left the work clothes over in the dry, a change house located right next to the headframe, that perpendicular odd-shaped building that straddles the shaft and distinguishes every underground mining community you’ll ever see. The dry had hooks and baskets, raised close to the roof by chains and pulleys. The way campers hang food to keep it from bears. You’d lock the chain since your wallet would be in the basket. Nobody ever pretended that there was much respect for private property in the camp. People came from everywhere.

Letter from Effie. September ‘64.

“Dear Johnny,” it said. Dear? That was a first. The letter was full of news, mostly about people getting married. People a little bit older than we were, but whom we’d know from the dances. There must have been five or six couples tied the knot that summer. Even the one from Long Point, the girl I took home that night. In the family way, Effie implied.

She said she was going out with somebody but it wasn’t serious. Was thinking of going to Mabou in the fall. Taking secretarial. But there was a new motel opening in town. Maybe getting on there. Said she missed me.

I bet.

In August of my summer in Tilt Cove a young MacNeil fellow from Mabou, working in a raise, lost a finger. Sandy MacNeil. I couldn’t forget the name. He was on Uncle Jack’s shift and
I’d heard Jack warn him half a dozen times about wearing his wedding ring underground. But he’d only been married a few months and wouldn’t listen.

“Wife said she’d be checking when I go home,” he said. “Wants to see that soft, white little band of skin around the finger, next to the knuckle, where the wedding band is supposed to be. Or I’m in for it.”

He laughs the way the newly married do, when it’s still okay to be soft.

Jack just shrugged and walked away.

And one day MacNeil tried to yank his hand out of the way of a moving tugger cable but the ring hooked on a single broken strand of wire. Lucky he didn’t lose the whole hand, Jack said. Jokes in the club that night, about the finger and the wedding ring. He’s real handicapped now, Black Angus was saying. That finger was the best thing he had going for him. MacNeil went home. Jack spoke to the captain and they decided to break me in working in the raise. Gave me MacNeil’s job.

Before I left Bachelor Lake, Jack had told me they were talking about moving me up. Putting me to work with the geologists. Maybe paying me to go to the mining school at Haileybury in Ontario. After that, fast track to shift leader. Me laughing, thinking about the way they talked about guys who learned mining in school. But Jack’s face was serious.

Uncle Jack was my biggest discovery in Tilt Cove. He had a life there. He had friends. Not just fellows from home, like Black Angus and Philip MacPhail. Young guys too who talked to him the way they talked to each other. He was the only shift boss people seemed to like. Maybe that was because he lived in the bunkhouse instead of the staff building across on the other side of the pond. Guys could sit at his table in the club and
talk about anything they felt like over a beer. It was because he was able. They’d say he could operate two jacklegs at the same time. Somebody saw him once. His partner had a hangover and was sleeping behind some old timber in a crosscut. There was Jack, running both machines. And the time somebody lost a tram car down an orepass. The engineers were baffled. Jack got it out. And not just underground. You’d be crazy to arm wrestle Jack. When Itchy, who was the club manager in Tilt Cove, needed somebody to keep the place under control when he’d have a special night he’d get Jack. Nobody fucked with Jack. Nobody ever saw Jack raise a hand against anyone. Jack only had to look your way and you paid attention.

Standing around in the headframe when we’d be waiting to go down, guys giving me the hip into something solid. Or whack my hardhat with a stick or another hardhat. Stun me for a minute. Just joking, but also testing. And judging. You sure don’t take after old Jack. But I didn’t mind.

And things gradually changed. I got hit in the face with a piece of stone from a rock I was breaking with a hammer on the grizzly. I hardly felt the blow. But when I put my hand up the blood was just pumping out. Coming off the cage the guys in the headframe looked shocked.

“He almost fell down the fucking waste pass,” one said. Sounding alarmed. They quickly started making jokes. Figuring I’d soon be gone. But I stayed and I became one of them. A member of the establishment.

“A good man,” Jack said to me one night after I’d been there a few months. Looked me in the eye steadily and said it again: “You’re a good man.”

I grew inches, just sitting there.

Letter from Sextus. October ‘64.

“He must need something,” Jack was saying, carefully tearing the end off the envelope.

“Getting along good…likes the job…awful busy…thinks they’re going to put him in the Legislature—That’ll be something. Maybe swing something for us then, what do you think?—Saw Duncan in a restaurant the other day…he was with a bunch of seminarians and they aren’t allowed to talk to civilians—You think!—Says hello to you…wants to know how you’re getting along.”

“Getting along good,” I said. “Tell him.”

Guys would go out every opportunity. To Springdale. Corner Brook. Just raving about Newfoundland girls when they came back. Real broad minded, they’d say. Haw haw. Didn’t bother me a bit.

There was a young one working in the company store. She was from Tilt Cove. Actually grew up there. There were a few real families there. Fishermen before the mine came. Now the cove was blocked from the sea and gradually filling in with tailings.

The girl in the store was Norma. I’d call her Normal, joking around. She was pretty in a way. There had been girls around during the summer. The manager’s daughter and a couple of other locals. We all played ball but you wouldn’t dare try getting anything going. But Norma was different. She’d always talk to me. Chit-chat about the news. Whether or not Canada should have a real flag. She didn’t think so.

The only female at Bachelor Lake was Ikey’s daughter, Miriam. Young and pretty but the word was out: look at her crossways and Ikey will cut your balls off.

Letter from Aunt Jessie in November ‘64.

“She says Grandma is doing good. Had her in to the doctor last week but she’s fine considering. Says your ma is fine. Says the young fellow was down at Thanksgiving. Got his own car now. Got himself a Volkswagen bug—death trap! Doing good at work. Got a story in the paper almost every day.

“Ran into Squint out at your place the other evening. Getting into the pulpwood contracting. Looks like he’s going to lease your woods for the pulp. Got a couple of trucks. Himself and Grandma beat the other two at cards.”

Squint? Playing cards?

“That’ll be a help to Mary. Those woods were ready for cutting for years now. As long as Squint doesn’t ruin them. Was always kind of a gwoik, Squint. In the woods, anyway.”

Everybody getting on with life, or acting like it.

Letter from Aunt Jessie. End of November ‘64.

“Your ma and Squint were at the card game in Glendale last week.”

We just looked at each other.

Finally I asked: “And did they win anything?”

Jack looked back at the letter. Studied it.

“She doesn’t say.”

“Ma loves her cards.”

“Ah well,” Jack said. “It’s been over a year. Since poor Sandy.”

I dream about him a lot. I can never remember where we are or what we’re talking about. Always very casual and friendly. The way I never knew him. Except, almost, once. Up on top of Creignish Mountain, watching the sun go down.

It was starting to rain halfway to Senneterre. Big spatters on the windshield. I passed a young fellow on the other side of the road, heading in the opposite direction. Standing there in his underwear, staring at me. A hitchhiker, changing out of his good clothes so they wouldn’t get wet. Had a big bag of mining gear on the ground beside the suitcase. Like somebody from home. Heading in. Looking for work. Me heading out.

Letter from Effie. November ‘64.

Kept it in my pocket until Jack went off to the club. “Dear Johnny.” The words were like a touch.

It was a long letter. Stuff I already knew. Her working in the motel. Not liking it much. Then a lot of woe. She never realized she could miss somebody as much as she misses me! More than Duncan. She could never really talk to Duncan. And while she never really talked to me either, she knew she could. Not out for number one like all the guys she knew. Somebody she knew she could tell anything
to without worrying that it would be all over the place in twenty-four hours. Was I planning on coming home for Christmas? Please say yes. Et cetera.

It was the kind of letter you’d expect to sign off with a love So-and-so. But she didn’t. She signed it like this: “Your (best) friend. Effie.”

And that was how Christmas ‘64 happened.

I was asking Jack what his plans were for Christmas.

“I wasn’t thinking about Christmas. When is it? Jesus. We’re that close. Well. Well.”

After some thought he said: “I suppose I should talk to the brass. Figure out what the schedule is like for Christmas.” Then: “What about yourself?”

I don’t know. “What do people usually do at Christmas?”

“Some go out. A lot stay. No place to go. You make extra, working over Christmas.”

“I suppose,” I said.

At night I’d just lay there, listening to Jack snoring. Or if he had a few in him, coughing. Sometimes expecting him to expire in a great gagging spasm. It was scary. Especially thinking that this could be my whole life. Me, eventually, the guy keeping somebody awake with the hawking and coughing and farting. There had to be something better.

Then I’d think of Effie.

Getting gas outside Val-d’Or. There was a car on the other side of the pump. Nova Scotia plates. Two big guys in the front seat. Asked the guy at the wheel where they were coming from.

“Walton,” the driver said. A mine down near Windsor, on the Bay of Fundy. Heading for the new development near Matagami Lake.

“Heard of it,” I said. “I’m just coming out of Coniagas Mine in Bachelor Lake.”

The guy on the passenger side said, “Poor you,” and the driver snickered.

“Quite the shithole, that is,” he said.

Jack still there. The best damned miner in Canada. Not likely to be working in a shithole.

“We need a little break,” I told Jack, just before Christmas.

“Whatever you think yourself,” Jack said, nursing a beer in Itchy’s club.

I was drinking a Coke.

“I wouldn’t mind going home for a visit,” I said. “It’s about time.”

“Yeah,” he said. “A fellow should make the effort. Check in on Grandma. How she’s getting along. And have a visit with the young fellow. Before he’s the premier and too busy.”

Letter from Sextus. Mid-December ‘64.

Dear Pa.

“He’s getting some time off at the holidays,” Jack said.

“Great,” I said. “When’s he coming?”

“Hmmm. I guess he’s not…Himself and some friend are going down south for the holidays. Bermuda.”

The way he said it.
Bermouda.

“That’s queer,” I said.

“I always wanted to go to
Bermouda.
They say it’s hot down there.” “Probably,” I said. “Who’s the friend?”

“It doesn’t say,” Jack said.

A week before Christmas Uncle Jack was into it pretty good. Getting his Christmas cheer out of the way before going home, he said. Aunt Jessie was strict about liquor. I was having rum and Coke and feeling the buzz.

Jack brought it up. “Do you ever think of the old man?”

“Now and then,” I said.

“You might hear some bullshit around home,” he said. “People with nothing better to do.” A pause. “You just…you just let it go by,” he said with a wave of his hand. “Right?”

“Right.”

“You’re a good man,” he said.

Not a stickman.