The Long Stretch (19 page)

After Bachelor Lake, Val-d’Or looks like a city. Billboards and neon signs and car dealers. The air is different. Hazy. People
are all in a rush. Wondering what it would be like working in a place like that, right on the edge of the city. You’d never have a nickel to your name. That’s what it would have been like in Sudbury. Toronto would have been a disaster.

Prunes was from Val-d’Or. My partner at Bachelor Lake, Proulx. Nice guy. Always practising English on me. Probably because of him I’ll never work underground again.

A Friday evening in January 1968. Men in the dry quieter than usual. Coming and going from the first aid room down back. Somebody hurt, probably. Picked up my lamp from the usual spot on the rack, strapped the battery on. Slung the light around my neck. More people heading for the first aid room. Jack with them. Something going on down there. Went along to look.

First I couldn’t see anything. Just a row of broad-backed sweat- and dirt-stained shirts, in a little semicircle, like a singing group. I moved up closer, looking between two of them. I see a yellowish corpse on a trolley, a small towel covering his privates. Everything else exposed. Showing large bruises up the chest. Jawbone askew. Arms stiff and formal at his sides. Jack poking at his side saying Jaysus. He’s practically turned into jelly inside. The corpse quivers when Jack touches it.

Prunes. Took a shift on the crusher, hoping to get on there full time. Surface work. Prunes never liked underground the way some do. Me included. Until that moment.

Clearing something from a conveyor belt, he got caught. Went into the hopper. Halfway through before they got to the shutdown.

Coins covering his eyes. New wife in Val-d’Or.

Life’s too short. Even if I had to go on pogey.

I think it was the coins in his eye sockets that did it.

I had a number for his wife. He gave it to me before, saying if I was ever in Val-d’Or. But I didn’t have the heart for it. She probably couldn’t speak English anyway.

It was mid-afternoon when I parked my car on the main drag and checked into the Hotel Louis-something, same place Jack and I had stayed on the way up. Got into my room, then crashed. Had been up with some of the boys at Ikey’s kind of late the night before. Ikey left the bar open for as long as we were there. A lot of free rounds.

Had a restless sleep. Dreamed I was in my bunkhouse room with Jack and Effie. Effie was sitting on a chair. Wearing her father’s old army jacket. A big row of medals across the front. Has her legs crossed carelessly, so you could almost see up. Jack was studying her, saying “Kind of coarse, she is.”

Keeps repeating it.

Effie just looking at him like she couldn’t care less, but like she expected me to do something.

And I couldn’t think of a thing. Then she hauls out a gun. I wake up in a sweat.

Wherever that came from. It wasn’t like Jack to make comments like that. A few weeks earlier he had a letter from Jessie. Maybe that caused it.

“Says here she’s acting like she owns the old place.”

“Who?” I asked.

“The young one,” he said. “Your missus.”

“Oh, for Christ sake,” I said.

He laughed and said: “You’ll be having the
fuamhair
in there with you before you know it.”

“Not likely,” I said.

It was late when I awoke. The hotel room was dark. Downstairs there was a babble and a stink coming from the beer parlour, so I went in there. Ordered a quart of Molsons and a bag of chips. A couple of pieces of pepperoni. Just sitting there enjoying the beer when I looked up and it was the hooker, Scotty. As soon as she opened her mouth I realized how lonely I had been. It was the accent. In this place. It made me smile.

After some small talk she said, “We never finished the business we started the last time…we don’t have to, but.”

Looking over her shoulder.

“I’m surprised you remember,” I said. Almost three years gone.

“I remember you dad,” she said. Pronouncing it like “dod.”

I was about to correct her but, realizing it felt good, stopped myself. Then told her I had a room. Alone this time.

She laughed and grabbed my hand.

Going up the stairs I was panicking. Thinking we should have had more to drink. Suddenly not liking the look of her rear end as it swung up the stairs before me. Looking large and threatening. Feeling everything but lust.

At the door she looked in cautiously, then went straight to the bathroom and looked around. Smiled and opened her arms to me. I just stood there. So she came toward me with her head cocked to one side, caught the end of my belt and gave it a tug.

I was suddenly feeling wretched. But Scotty was oblivious, opening my trousers, reaching in and beginning to rub. I closed my eyes, so it would be forever unseen, and unremembered.

When I opened my eyes, she was taking things off as anyone would for any reason. To wash, or swim, or sleep. With no more ceremony that Uncle Jack or Black Angus or Prunes in
the dry. It was only when I saw her breasts exposed. They were larger than I would have guessed and they startled me with a primal longing, to put my hands and my face on them.

“You’re a miner,” she said, after removing the rest of her clothing, and then mine. “Normally I’m afraid of the miners. They get rough. But this is your first time. Paying for it. I can tell. Which reminds me.” And neatly plucked my wallet from my trousers hanging on the back of a chair beside the bed. Extracted a twenty, put it in her purse, and was back to me almost without having interrupted what she was doing.

“I could never live with a miner,” she said again, busying herself at my neck. “My husband works on the railroad.”

“That’s queer,” I said. “First time I met you, he worked in Cadillac, you said. Underground.” She sat up then, laughed, and gave me a playful slap.

“Never contradict a lady,” she said with that accent.

“So what does he really do?”

“Ask me what my dod does,” she said, lifting her sentences at the end.

“Your father?”

“Aye,” she said. “M’dod is a prison guard. Back home. A screw, they call them. I used to tease my dod, askin’, Dod, what’s a screw gettin’ an hour these days?”

Threw her head back and laughed. She had a lovely long neck.

“M’dod’s a hoot,” she said.

“So what is it your husband does?” I asked again.

“You really want to know?” she asked, with a wicked look on her face.

I nodded.

“He works behind the bar. Downstairs.”

She giggled.

But before the panic got me, she went to work, pushing me back on the bed, then straddling me energetically, one hand holding me by the hair, the other busy where I couldn’t see but could feel an avalanche. And I suddenly went spastic, then an explosion, replaced by shame and embarrassment.

“Ooh, what a naughty boy,” she said, wiping her hand on the blanket and climbing out of the bed.

She was putting her clothes on as quickly as she had taken them off. Then she said: “Let’s go down and you can buy me a drink. Maybe try again later.”

And I said I don’t think so, thinking about the big fellow in the wrinkly white shirt down behind the bar.

I hadn’t told anybody exactly when I’d be arriving, so Effie wasn’t home. I drove out to Squint’s. Aunt Jessie was there. The three of them sitting at the kitchen table drinking tea. Jessie and Squint had coats on. Big hugs from Ma and Jessie. Squint shook my hand, looking glad to see me. Squint seemed okay after all. Then he went out again. Had a big tree-farmer in the yard, a bunch of cogs and gears spread out under it on a piece of cardboard.

“Ask Jessie about Sextus,” Ma said when I had a cup of tea in front of me.

“My God, you never know where he’s going to be next,” Jessie said. “One day he’s calling from Ottawa. He was there when Trudeau won the leadership and became the prime minister.
Then it was straight down to the States to cover the uproar over Martin Luther King. Wasn’t that awful? The poor man.”

The month before, April, they’d been talking about Trudeau at the camp. All the Frenchmen excited getting one of their own in the big job in Ottawa. Jack telling them they were all being sucked in. Some old draft dodger pretending he was a hippy. Only half-French anyway.

In ‘65 Jack said he voted for the Ralliement des Créditistes. Some fringe party I could never figure out. When their guy came to the camp he couldn’t talk enough English to explain himself. Jack voted for him anyway. Then ragged the guys who voted Liberal or Tory. Calling them patsies. Them shouting back at him in English and French: “You’re just fucking around, Jack. Makin’ a mockery of democracy.”

Jack saying: “Bulllllshit. That old Caouette is the real McCoy. An honest man. I bought a car from him in Amos in ‘39.” Then laughing his head off. Jack was always looking for ways to rile people up, then laugh at them.

Ma asked, “Have you seen Effie?”

Exchanging a quick glance with Jessie when I said, “No, she wasn’t home.”

Then Ma says, “Och, she won’t be far. So where will you be staying?”

Jessie finally asks, “So. How did you leave the old man?”

“Prospering,” I said. “Doing great. Could land home any day.

You won’t know him.”

“Oh,” she said, laughing. “What’s he been doing? Watching the diet, I hope.”

“Getting younger and better looking every day, Jack is.”

“Well, he’d better give me a little notice,” she said, brushing crumbs off her lap.

“You better be careful,” I said. “Jack’ll be taking up with some old French one if you’re not careful.”

“Will you listen to him,” said Ma. “The lip.”

“No big loss,” Jessie said, laughing.

A few days before my last shift underground, I could hear Jack roaring in the washroom of the dry, the spasms deep in his lungs. Imagine windowpanes rattling.

One of the shift bosses tossed his head to one side and said, “You better check.”

“Jesus, Jack, is this you?” I said. Standing at the urinal looking at a fibrous red blob the size of a jellyfish.

“Wha’?” he says innocently. Over at the sink drying his hands. The seizure past.

“Mother of God,” I said, “somebody left half their guts hawked up in here. Yech Christ.”

“Sorry,” he said. “Musta had a nosebleed in my sleep last night…ran down my throat.”

Before I left for home he said: “I don’t want you going telling the young fella. Or anybody. Okay?”

“Sure, Jack.”

After Aunt Jessie was gone, Ma said: “We were half thinking you’d want to be staying here for a little while. Till you get things ready.”

By the look on her face, it had already been decided.

“God. Look at you! You’re so tall and so thin!”

Me glowing and wanting to eat her.

She asked where my bags were, I said I’d left them over at Squint’s.

“Oh,” she said, a little surprised.

“I thought it might be best for the first little while,” I said.

Then she dragged me half running to the living room and down onto the couch where she covered my face with kisses and messed my hair and told me to stay there while she made supper. And chattered all the while from the kitchen about new projects starting up and thousands working in construction, and everything changing. It was like the causeway all over again. People coming home. Her working at the motel. Assistant manager now but still planning to go back to school. One of the girls from work going to be the bridesmaid.

The wedding had been set for June, right after the federal election, so Sextus could be the best man. I wanted Uncle Jack but she said no, Sextus would be better. He was travelling around the country, writing about the campaign. Coming home as soon as it was over.

After we ate we lay together on the couch, arms wrapped tightly around each other. There was no longer any doubt in my mind why I’d come home, or where I’d spend the rest of my life. Right here. Like this.

But later, when I awoke and found her to be sleeping, her head close to mine, curls tickling my nose, I was suddenly overcome by dread. The faces of our fathers filled the room, beaming their unhappiness all around. And when my stirring woke her she sat up slowly and asked, “Do you really want to? Go through with it? We don’t have to, you know.”

I said, “I really want to.”

Then she told me that she could understand what I was feeling. She felt the same thing. But it would pass.

“We’ve got the jitters,” she said. “I hear everybody gets them.”

You want to get married but you don’t want to get married. And you finally do because you said you would.

I was glad she admitted jitters and misgivings, because the images of her father and mine were jostling in my head all the time, it seemed. The old odours of his work clothes, still hanging on pegs in the porch. His hardhat and utility belt on a shelf. But more than that, I had the awful feeling that I was to be measured against his judgment for as long as I stayed here.

That was fifteen years ago. I have learned to ignore it. But only after recovery from years of absolute failure.

The old people around here used to fear the
cailleach oidhche,
the spirit that threatened their sleep, uninvited and unwelcome, creeping up on them with her smothering weight. I know her well. Not as an old woman, but as a man.

The slightest movement and she’s fully conscious. Legacy of her father’s prowling.

“Where are you going?” she asked, hint of panic in her voice.

“I’m beat,” I said. “Gotta go home.”

“Home?”

“Ma offered me a place out there. Just so—”

“It wouldn’t do any harm to stay here,” she said. “I could fix up a room.”

“No,” I said. “It isn’t that.”

It was late in May. The election was on for June 25. Our day was June 29. It was surprisingly easy to settle in with Ma and Squint. They lived in a big old place that had been mostly closed off until Ma moved in. Within a few days I found a rhythm in the place. Going out in the mornings, checking what Squint was up to. Usually fixing some piece of machinery. He had half a dozen men working in the woods and he spent most of his time repairing vehicles and equipment. The tree-farmer had a major problem. I’d picked up enough general knowledge of machinery working in the mines that I could be useful to him. Knew a lot about diesels.

Squint was easy on the head. He had some of the old man’s edginess but a lot of Jack’s slow deliberation. And he loved to talk.

So I asked him, “How has old Angus been making out lately?”

He laughed without stopping what he was doing.

“Angus is Angus,” he said.

“What exactly is it that’s wrong with his hearing? He always acts kind of deaf.”

“Who knows,” Squint said. “Selective deafness. Hears what he wants to, misses the rest. Pretty useful handicap.”

“He’s faking.”

“No,” he said.

September 1944, in Italy. Angus got caught out in his own artillery barrage. Out in no man’s land. Coriano Ridge.

“Typical of Angus,” I said. “Caught out.”

“Well,” Squint said, “maybe. But Angus was a specialist. They sent him out on sensitive snooping assignments, lightly armed.
Gathering information about what the enemy was up to.”

“Lightly armed?”

“You had to travel light, and the Sikhs taught him to depend mostly on his knife,” Squint said. “Lots of stories about what Angus would be getting up to out there. They say he could travel at night like a raccoon. Whenever they wanted to take a prisoner for questioning, they’d send Angus.”

When I finally encountered him, in front of the liquor store in Port Hawkesbury, Angus looked like a wreck. His hand shook when he held it out to me. Still wearing a necktie, but the shirt collar was grimy and the skinny neck scruffy.

Very serious. Asking about Ma and Squint and Jack. I was surprised by the amount of dignity he could muster. What did I think about the election? Was I ready for the big day? Great thing, Effie and me. Hoped we’d have a whole barnful of kids.

Some hope.

Before I left him he dropped his voice and asked if I could spare a five until the cheque came. I dug one out and gave it to him.

I remember asking Jack, “How did you face Angus, after you first found out?”

Jack shrugged. “Figured if the fella that caught the bullet could put it behind them, who was I?”

Then I blurted: “But what if Pa didn’t know? What if he thought it was a sniper like everybody else?”

“That’s a good one,” Jack said.

And each evening I would drive in to the motel and get Effie. We’d go to a movie. Eat at the drive-in. Or a restaurant. Or just drive and talk. Then we’d go home and have a drink of something. Or tea. And she’d ask if I wanted to stay and I’d say I’d better not.

“You’re so old-fashioned,” she’d tease.

Me mumbling something apologetic.

Her saying, “It’s a good thing one of us has his head screwed on right.”