The Long Stretch (2 page)

“I was ninety-nine per cent positive there was a tombstone,” he says, brooding.

The cemetery gate is open and I turn in.

“I thought it was over there.” He wipes the inside of the windshield with the back of his hand the way I tell people not to. He leaves a smear.

“No,” I correct. “He’s on the other side.”

We’re driving slowly along a narrow road that loops around the perimeter.

“It was a day like this,” he says. “But a lot colder.”

Rain lashing, wind trying to tear the pages out of Father Duncan’s prayer book. Father Duncan helped Father Hughie with the funeral Mass for Uncle Jack. Sextus looking dark and doomed, holding on to his mother, Aunt Jessie. Us remembering and grieving. Him planning ahead. The last time I saw either one of them…him or Effie. The day of Jack’s funeral. Thirteen years ago. Last February.

What else. My mother’s arm is looped tightly through mine. Effie, my wife, is on the other side of me, keeping up appearances but making stealthy eye contact with him. Plotting with him. Near consummation of all their wicked plans. I’m in the dark, but not for much longer.

Effie’s brother, Duncan, the priest, is shouting into the wind. I’m hoping there’s a short version of the prayers for the dead. I’m frozen. Wet. Rumsick. And remembering Jack.

If there is a shorter prayer, Duncan doesn’t know it. I distract myself from Effie and the cold, reviewing the homily in my head. It was by the parish priest, Father Hughie. Uncle Jack
was one of the Peters of the world, Father Hughie said. Jesus had a special affection for people like him. Working people. Blue-collar Apostles. I remember making a little rhyme from it:

The twelve were all, save Matthew, working class.

The priest finds relevance in this coincidence at Mass.

Angus MacAskill was there. Looking grim. Angus the Giant they called him sometimes in his later years. The
fuamhair.
Even young ones at the tavern, Billy Joe’s, not knowing a word of Gaelic, would say: “The old foyer.” There was a real giant named Angus MacAskill in Cape Breton once. Biggest man in the world, I guess. But they called this Angus MacAskill the giant because he was so shrivelled, and weakened by the booze. Irony. I’ve heard that people called him Monty after the war because, in his better days, he looked like the famous field marshal. They say Angus actually spoke with Montgomery once. Spoke right up during an inspection. That was in Holland too, just before the end. They’d say Angus was bold as brass—useless as tits on a bull, but full of gall. People couldn’t understand the connection between himself and Sandy Gillis, my old man. My father was low key. Solid. Except, of course, when the devil was in control. Which people rarely saw. That’s Angus buried over by the fence. No stone there either but I know where he is. I helped put him there. Angus was Duncan’s father. And Effie’s.

Sextus rolls the window down, almost all the way. The rain slashes at his face. “I can’t make head or tail of it.”

“Take it easy,” I say. “I know where he is.”

We swing slowly around the loop. I have my window down, peering into the rain, feeling the lightning of the vodka in my
veins and a gust of sentiment reading the names on the stones. Reynolds. Ryan. MacIsaac. MacNeil.

“Jack’s right over there,” I say, pointing ahead and to my left.

Sextus is silent. You can feel his dread. I stop the car and cut the ignition. We sit for a moment, listening to the weather revving up outside. He pours more vodka into his cup. I decline. He swallows it all quickly, then opens the car door and slides out into the rain. I follow.

“Just over here,” I say and I walk at an angle between the stones, careful to step over the grave mounds as if my footfall might disturb what’s below.

I know his coordinates. Head to foot he is between Jack Ryan and John Alex MacNeil. On either side, his neighbours are old Jimmy Charlie Fraser and Dougald MacDonald. My father is due south, one mound beyond John Joe MacFarlane. All war veterans, except Uncle Jack. You can tell Uncle Jack’s exact gravesite by a shallow subsidence. Even without a stone.

Sextus stares hard but still doesn’t weep. At least, you can’t tell in the rain. The furious face is more haggard than I had first observed. Hair coursing with the rain into the eyes. I’d hardly recognize him now.

He blesses himself. I instinctively do the same. In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost. Then he sinks to his knees on the soaked earth.

I’m thinking: Millie lives just over there, in the Heights. She’ll probably see the car in the graveyard and she’ll be asking. Oh well.

Around cemeteries I’m always conscious that somewhere, there’s a grave waiting for each of us. I will postpone my appointment for as long as I can. It’s all about time and decay. These three, my father, Uncle Jack, and Angus, I watched their decay, not knowing what I was witnessing until much later. The old man breaking down quietly from within. Angus, slowly and deliberately destroying himself with outside help, until his last pathetic moments on the side of a road. And poor Uncle Jack: victim of forces he could never even have considered. Economics, history. Life itself.

I was heading in the same direction but I decided to be different. I’ve learned how to minimize the effects of time passing. That’s how I survive. Except when I run, I have abolished time. There is only change. What somebody called entropy. That’s what I’m fighting.

A lot has changed since we buried Uncle Jack. And I am certain that I am better now than I was then. Healthier. In control. So much for time and entropy. Looking at my cousin kneeling on the wet ground beside me, head and shoulders bent as if by time, the shaggy soaked hair showing wisps of grey, I can only think: Thank Christ I saw the light when I did. And thank Millie. But you can’t let your guard down. You can’t let people drag you back.

The words return from the shadows of memory, like leaves in the wind:

The twelve were all, save Matthew, working class.

The priest finds relevance in this coincidence at Mass.

But what did Matthew do?

There were eleven working men like us;

And Matthew pushed a pencil, just like you.

That was a long time ago, long before I became a pencil-pusher myself.

From here in the graveyard, you could once see where I work, over at the pulp mill. Now the poplars and silver maples are too high. But you can still see the whirling clouds of vapour from the mill’s smokestacks whipping high over the trees and the new houses and the Protestant graveyard across the road.

The mill was a godsend. Jobs for hundreds, thousands if you count the woods. One thing this place has is woods. Fly over it sometime, Halifax to Sydney, and you’ll see. Woods clambering up and down the rocky hills, striding across ravines, wrapping the broad lakes as if to suffocate even them, contained only by the nudging sea. Mile after rugged, ragged, rolling mile. Trees. Black and green and blue-jade. You’d hardly think anybody lived here.

Generations fought the woods, an endless war for the nourishing ground. The ground fed us and our animals. The woods were the enemy, and, for some of us, worse. Imprisonment. A dense sound barrier, cutting us off from the world outside, tolerant only of its own sounds. Sounds of loneliness. Especially if you lived deep in the woods like we did, out the road they called the Long Stretch. Then the mill came. Thanks to the Swedes.

We call wood “fibre” now. And fibre means money. Money meant progress, a sudden leap into the twentieth century. At least that’s how it felt. The woods between the Long Stretch and the village, Port Hastings, are all thinned out now. Almost
gone. There’s hardly a break between the village and Port Hawkesbury, three miles further along the Canso Strait.

Thousands of us live here now, as well as anybody lives anywhere, bombarded by the sounds and images of everywhere, and we owe it all to the woods and the Swedes who had the sense to see potential in the trees. Jack saw the potential too, but it takes more than vision to make something happen. It takes money and it takes drag. Jack didn’t have much of either.

The mill came too late for Uncle Jack. Ten years sooner it might have made a big difference for him. Maybe he’d be alive now. Without it I don’t know where I’d be. Maybe like him now, under the sod. All worked out and used up trying to get something going in life. Maybe a little independence and dignity. Like I have now, in spades.

I’ve put in more than fifteen years over there. But it’s like yesterday I started working in the woodyard. Then moved inside. And when they built the high-yield, I got in there as an operator. Watching dials and pushing buttons. On my way then. Now I’m management.

Sometimes I wonder why I ever left shift work. We worked twelve-hour shifts, three of them a week, which left a lot of spare time. A lot of the shift workers have little businesses on the side. Taxis or trucking or woodlots. Imagine people with two paying jobs. It isn’t such a long time ago when there were damned few around here with even one. That’s why men like Uncle Jack were away so much. For me, one job was plenty. I’d put in my three twelve-hour shifts and then spend a lot of time on self-destruction.

Then I hooked up with Millie and got my act together. Got into fitness. Moved into the office, assistant personnel manager. Lots of talk when that happened, but I took the position. Fuck
it. And anybody who didn’t like it. I help people when they need it, but I cultivate a careful balance between being neighbourly and private. I learned to treasure privacy when everybody knew my business. There is no comfort in familiarity. But isolation is dangerous, so I have crafted a careful formula. A little bit of both. Millie helps. Two or three times a month.

He blesses himself again and stands up. We are both wet through by now. The chill is in my marrow.

“So where’s Angus?” he asks.

“Over there.”

“No stone either,” he says.

“Not yet, anyway.”

“You were there. When Angus,” he says.

I just nod.

“Near the end of the Long Stretch, they said. His own worst enemy, Angus.”

“I half thought, at least she would…come down, that time,” I say.

“No way,” he says. “She wouldn’t even send flowers.”

Her own father.

He looks at me, wondering what I know. About the real Angus. She wouldn’t call him Angus the Giant. Or Monty. The Devil, she called him. But I reveal nothing. He has already taken enough of my privacy.

“Think of the three of them,” he says. “These two and…” He looks at me again, inquiring.

I shake my head.

Angus and my father were together only when they were on the booze, but they were linked closer than brothers. It was always a mystery, Pa and Angus. Once friends who became like enemies, they remained bound by something closer than friendship. An unlikely experience that changed everything for them and their children. Effie. Me. Then Sextus.

They were in the war, but in different outfits. Different campaigns, for the most of it. But people say the war was a common experience for their generation and became a bond among those who were in it, stronger than brotherhood. For people who didn’t know them as well as I do, that’s usually enough to explain the mystery of their association. For me, there is no mystery. I know the bond. I know the unlikely story of how they came together somewhere over there. Of what happened. I know the truth.

Once Duncan wrote up a long account of his father’s war experiences. It was after Angus died. There’s a lot about Italy and Holland. No mention of what happened to my old man, though. Duncan tried to whitewash the truth by ignoring it. Sextus wrote a novel based on it, but he didn’t even try to get near the truth.

A big word that, truth. It took me years and a lot of pain to get it. My personal possession now, not transferable, as they say. Of no relevance to anybody else.

Truth and time: you spend your whole life either searching for them or hiding from them.

“The three of them gone without a trace,” he says.

“This one should be remembered,” I say, bowing my head to Uncle Jack’s grave.

“Not a stone among them,” he says.

“Angus got a write-up,” I say. “You’ve seen Duncan’s manuscript.”

No reaction.

“And of course, the old man. The stories just get bigger and better. There’ll be a movie some day. Maybe with Sylvester Stallone. You’ll be a rich man.”

Not even a smile.

“They all deserve a stone,” he says.

“Jack anyway,” I say.

“We’ll have to do something,” he says.

“I’m game.”

He’s looking at me again, for some opening. I stare straight ahead.

“I’d like to see where Uncle Sandy…”

I turn away. “Some other time.”

We return to the car, wordless. He swills vodka straight from the bottle. Passes it to me but I wave it off.

“Queer when you think of it,” he says. “The five of us. Here we all are again. Too bad we can’t all talk about. Things. Hey?”

The moment blows by with another rain rattle.

“So that’s that,” he says, lighting a cigarette. He sounds angry, or disappointed.

“I can look after the stone,” I say.

“Makes sense,” he says, looking down.

“Of course, I’d consult.”

He just looks at me, then away.

“He is your father, after all,” I say.

“A mere technicality.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t say that.”

“You and he were closer than…anybody,” he says.

I am listening for the undertones, but there aren’t any.

“I think I was resentful,” he says. “You and the old man. When you were working away together.”

“I hardly think,” I begin.

“I’d like to have known him better.”

“What was he when he went?” I ask. A gesture of pity.

“Fifty-one,” he says.

“Angus made what?”

“Fifty-seven. And how old was Uncle Sandy…?”

“Forty-five,” I say quickly.

He is studying the cigarette between his fingers. Then he spots something to pick at on his thumb. Nervous hands. Not like Uncle Jack’s, thick and worn at the finger-ends, but steady.

“Fifty-one, the old man,” he says. “Hard years. Not a lot of pleasure for poor old Jack. Or Angus. Or any of them, I guess.”

“They had their time,” I say.

“Fifty-one.”

“Not very old when you think about it.”

“You know Kennedy was only forty-six,” he says.

I trace a line in the condensation on the side window.

“Wicked young,” he says. “You realize that when you hit forty yourself.” He is smiling.

“We could put both of them on the one stone,” I say, finally.

“Assuming they’re close enough. Their graves.”

Closer in their graves than they ever were out of them.

“They’re close enough,” I say.

“You must think of him a lot. Uncle Sandy. These days. Being nearly twenty years, exactly.”

“I find myself thinking more about Uncle Jack,” I say. “I don’t know why. I guess maybe there’s more to think about there.” I roll down my window a crack to let some smoke out.

“And how about yourself?” he asks.

“Doing okay,” I say. “And yourself?”

He shrugs and spreads his hands, making a face. Then I take a deep breath and say: “So what about herself?” I watch closely. Then say the name. “Effie.”

He looks at me carefully. Then he says, casually: “We’re split. You know that.”

There is no shock, no relief. No payoff.

“Say something,” he says. “Or hit me. Just don’t look stupid.”

“No skin off my arse,” I say. I look him in the eye to confirm.

“Can we shake on it, then?” he says, lifting his hand.

I can’t. Shake. Or let the moment pass. I keep my hands on the wheel. “How long are you here for?”

“It depends.”

“I suppose.”

“Wouldn’t be right if I didn’t put in an appearance in Judique,” he says. “Face the old woman. It’s been quite a while.”

“She’ll be glad to see you,” I say, carelessly.

“You think?”

“Well, I would think so. It’s been what since you left here?”

“Thirteen years,” he says. “Give or take. Queer how you let the days slide and they become years like that.” He snaps his fingers. “Then you figure it doesn’t matter any more. But of course that’s wrong. It never goes away. The nagging, missing. But the longer it goes on, the harder it gets to face. So you push it further away. You know what I mean?”

I look out the side window.

“Not that I haven’t seen Ma now and than during that time. But seeing her on a few short visits to Toronto, you don’t really get much of an impression.”

“I can imagine.” Then I say: “You should come out to the old place, have something to eat.”

He looks at me hard, showing surprise. “I’d better check into the motel. Take a shower. Get to bed early. I’m pretty bushed from the drive down. Anyway, I wouldn’t expect you’d want to talk a whole lot to me.”

But maybe listen.

“Suit yourself,” I say. “I’ve got no plans. Was just going to watch the hockey game. You’re welcome to come out. The place has a shower. You could stay the night.”

“Can’t stand hockey,” he says, laughing.

“Not that interested myself,” I say. “Just something to occupy a Saturday night.”

He is thinking about it, staring at me, searching my face, I suppose, for motives. I look straight at his eyes. The sockets have grown deeper and darker. The liquor taking hold.

“I have a bag in the car,” he says quietly.