The Second Son (16 page)

One Saturday in late September of ’55, Emmanuel ran with my Uncle Andy for the last time. My uncle stopped by our house that afternoon and had a conversation in the kitchen with my mother. I remember I was all ears because Uncle Andy had started talking about Grandma Bessie. I was sitting at the table pretending to do homework and he was on his usual chair by the door.

“Her nibs wants me to buy the farm,” he announced. “She wants to move into town, next year maybe.”

My mother seemed surprised. “How much is she asking?”

“Her friend the lawyer came up with a price. Says it’s worth thirty-four thousand dollars.”

“Wow! That much?”

“Yep.”

“Including the stock and machinery?”

“Yep.”

“That’s still a lot of money. Does she want it all at once?”

“Wants a third down.”

“Do you trust her friend?”

“R.D.?” Uncle Andy smiled. “About as far as I can throw him. And you know the size of him.”

“Are they courting?”

“Hah. Those two?”

“I’m serious.”

He considered it for just a second. “Don’t think so. She likes her independence too much.”

“She learned her lesson, I guess, taking on the MacRaes. Can you afford the down payment? Do you have any savings?”

“Not a whole hell of a lot. Can’t save much on the salary she pays me. Takes half of it back for room and board.”

“What about Angus? He’s been back at Goose Bay for a year now. He must have a bundle saved up.”

“I wrote him last month, offered him a share. He hasn’t answered yet. Maybe he’s thinking about it.”

Mother laughed. “You’d have to keep it to yourself. She’ll never stand for Angus MacRae owning any part of the Weir homestead.”

“Don’t I know it? The last time he came by she told him the spare room was being painted, before he got past the porch.”

“They’ll never forgive each other, I guess.”

Uncle Andy grinned. “Must have been the donuts.”

She laughed. “That’s it, blame it on the donuts. Which reminds me, I made some oat bread.”

“Sounds good. Got any milk?”

She pulled a chair out and motioned him to the table. “Homogenized.”

“Oh, Jesus, you too?” He slid into the chair and winked at me. “You’re a town girl now, for sure.”

I waited for her to scold him for swearing but she didn’t seem to notice. Her cheeks were red and she was smiling at him, like she always did when he visited, giggling and laughing and smiling a lot. “Never mind,” she said, “it won’t be long before you can’t even buy pasteurized.” A few short steps and she had the cookie tin, a glass, and a bottle of milk in front of him. “Help yourself.”

He looked up at her and laughed. “Still trying to spoil me, eh?” Then he looked over at me. “How about Mike?”

“He’s having lunch soon.” I didn’t protest, she always meant what she said. When Uncle Andy slipped me one I smiled and slid it under my notebook.

Eventually he got back to the business with Grandma Bessie. “Anyways, the problem with the deal is she doesn’t want to move out right away. Says she wants to see how good I am at making the payments, before she gives up the farm . . . completely.”

My mother frowned. “You mean she wants you to start paying for it before she’ll sign it over. That sounds like R.D. himself talking. What about Angus? You’re asking him for help and he won’t even be able to come near the place. That doesn’t sound fair to me.”

“Not at first.” Uncle Andy didn’t seem perturbed. I guess he was used to the family putting him first. “I explained that in the letter. He’d be kind of a silent partner. Like you said, I couldn’t tell her I got the money from him. That’s why I was thinking . . . maybe if a fella said he borrowed the money from you and Ed, she might not have a problem. She likes you better than Angus.”

“I’m not so sure about that. But I’ll talk to Ed, see if I can catch him in a good mood.”

“A good mood?”

“He’s been kind of grouchy, lately. Says business was way down this summer. Can’t afford that new car he’s been dreaming about.”

“That reminds me, can you ask him if I can borrow the car next Saturday?”

“Land o’ Goshen,” she exclaimed, “you’re talking about buying a farm from her and you can’t even borrow her car?”

“Aw, you know what she’s like. She’ll go over it with a fine-tooth comb, soon as I bring it home. God help me if there’s so much as a stray hair on her precious seat covers.”

My mother laughed out loud. “So that’s what you’re up to. What’s wrong? Your date’s too good for the horse and buggy? Why don’t you take the sulky?”

“Don’t be a smartass, now. Just ask Ed if I can borrow the car.”

“Will you promise to behave yourself? We have to go to church in that car.”

“Jesus, you’re worse than her nibs.”

I was back and forth, studying their faces, trying to figure out what they were laughing at.

“Speaking of her nibs,” my mother asked, “what interest is she planning to charge you?”

“The going rate, you can be sure of that.”

“You should talk to Ed. Maybe he can get you a better deal from the Royal Bank, maybe co-sign for you. He just sponsored the new manager for the Kinsmen Club.”

Uncle Andy’s face brightened. “Would you talk to him? She might move sooner, if I can come up with the cash right away.”

“Sure. We can talk some more when you come by to get the car. You’re not planning on leaving that horse here?”

“Yes, please,” I chimed in, “I could look after him.”

They both laughed at me before Uncle Andy answered, “I’ll hitch a ride with the neighbours, bring the car back Sunday morning. Maybe Ed can take me back?”

I think she said it was okay, but I don’t remember. I was distracted by the sound of Emmanuel making his whinnying noises. He was out there with Uncle Andy’s horse, waiting for a run into town. “You better go,” my mother said, “before that boy steals your horse. Then you’d look cute.”

The last we saw of them, they were disappearing around the corner of Elm Street, at the turn onto Dominion.

It happened on Main Street, just at the bottom of the big hill where the high school is today, where the buildings used to thin out and the cars coming out of town liked to speed up. Mr. Lacombe saw it all from his front porch and it was mostly his version that was in the
Glengarry News
the next week. Uncle Andy and Emmanuel were moving at their normal pace when they reached the work crew that was emptying out the storm drain at the side of the road. Usually the horse didn’t mind Emmanuel running beside him like that, only it seems the boy went too far left trying to avoid the workmen and bumped hard into the horse’s hindquarters. The horse shied away, pulling left into the wrong lane. He might have straightened out, they said, if Emmanuel hadn’t stumbled — it must have been those damn big boots of his — and fallen right into the horse’s feet.

Now the horse really wanted to go left and so did Uncle Andy. Except he was so busy watching the workmen and Emmanuel on his right, that he must not have seen young Arcade Pommier gunning his new Ford Fairlane up Main Street. At the inquest Arcade claimed he couldn’t have been going more than forty but Chief Kennedy told my dad he’d clocked him at sixty on that same stretch just two days earlier. It didn’t matter, anyway. Forty miles an hour would have killed Uncle Andy just as dead as sixty.

The car hit the horse, not the buggy, but when the horse went flying the buggy went with it and Uncle Andy was thrown clear to the other side of the road, where his head hit the cement sidewalk. They said it was instant, his skull fractured and his neck broken. I still think he must have had enough time to know what was happening, that he had saved Emmanuel but couldn’t save himself. I also think he had time to tell himself he wasn’t going to be taking that girl out, after all. And I bet he had enough time to tell himself that maybe he’d kept on driving that horse and buggy one day longer than he should have. I know my mother thought about all those things. I heard her say them over and over during the next few days.

It was my dad who came home and told us what had happened. When Mom and I heard the sirens we thought it was a fire, somewhere in town. Sirens mean more in a small town. They mean someone you know is in trouble. That was why Dad and Andrew had walked down from the store to see what the commotion was. Andrew ran ahead and saw right away it was Uncle Andy. Later, when he’d stopped crying, he talked about how strange Uncle Andy looked, lying there with his neck twisted and his head all bloody. He said Emmanuel was over by the side of the road where the horse was screaming and thrashing. The boy was blubbering and crying, he said, probably more upset about the horse than anything. I don’t know if Emmanuel was ever smart enough to figure out he had caused it. We heard later that his parents had to put him in a school or something, where he could be looked after better.

Andrew said he didn’t cry right away, not even when Mr. Lacombe brought his hunting rifle over and Chief Kennedy shot poor Prince. Then they covered Uncle Andy with a blanket, only it wasn’t long enough. His boots had been knocked off and all you could see was his feet sticking out, in those red woollen socks he used to wear. Andrew said that was when he started to cry, when it really hit him that Uncle Andy was lying under that blanket with no shoes on. And he didn’t need them anymore, because he wasn’t ever going to get up.

I guess Dad took Andrew out of there and they drove home to tell Mom. I was still sitting at the table and Mom was at the sink when they came in. Not only was Andrew crying, but Dad had a look on his face that told her right away it was something really bad. He said, “You better sit down, Lorna. I’ve got some bad news.”

She put a hand out in front of her, as if to keep him and his bad news away from her. “I can hear just as well standing up.” Maybe she thought if she just stayed standing up the news wouldn’t be so bad. “What is it?” she kept asking. “What is it? Why is Andrew crying?”

Dad held out his arms. “Please, Lorna, let’s sit down.”

She would have none of it. “Just tell me what happened. What was that siren we heard?”

“It’s Andy. There’s been an accident.” He hesitated then, and tried again to put his arms around her but she pushed him away. He finally gave in. “He’s gone, Lorna. Andy’s gone.”

She screamed at him, “What do you mean?”

“The horse pulled in front of a car . . . he got thrown from the buggy. It was instant. He hit his head.”

Her chin started to quiver and her lips kind of twisted, like she couldn’t control them. Then she started shaking her head, not making a sound, like she was trying to stop herself from crying. She looked at the empty glass, still sitting on the kitchen table. “He just left here,” she whispered, “he was fine.”

We all stared at that empty glass, as though it had some answer for us, as though there was some way to fill it up with milk again and turn the clock back, just those few minutes. Then the sound of Andrew’s crying broke through our reverie and my mother turned to him. “Oh, Andrew,” she moaned as she pulled him to her, holding him tight for the longest time, while they both cried.

Eventually the crying stopped. I’m sure I cried at some point, I don’t really remember. I do remember that all through the wake and the funeral my mother wouldn’t let Andrew out of her sight. Maybe she was afraid that if she lost him, too, something inside her would break. Maybe she had always seen him as the replacement for the baby Andrew she had lost. It must have been something like that, because during those days she would draw him to her every time he came near, not saying anything, just putting an arm around him and laying her head against his curly hair and closing her eyes. And sometimes, like when we were in the line beside the coffin with everybody coming by and offering their condolences, she would notice Andrew was missing and send me to find him. And when I brought him back she would pull him to her and wouldn’t let him go.

My father must have noticed this. He took me aside after we got home from the wake that first night and asked me if I was okay.

“Waddaya mean?” I asked.

“You haven’t cried much. And you’re not talking much, at all.” He hesitated then and I remember being kind of glad he was worried about me, even though I had no name for what he was worried about. Neither did he. He just chewed his lip for a minute or so, then said, “I know you liked Uncle Andy a lot. I mean, you must be missing him.”

My lower lip started to tremble then and I resented him for making me talk about it. I felt like he was trying to make me cry, to prove I loved Uncle Andy just as much as Andrew did. “I dunno what you mean,” I managed to blurt out. “Of course I miss him. But it’s not my fault. I didn’t do anything.”

I don’t know why I said that. It sure upset my father. He started sputtering something about nobody saying anything like that, and why would I ever say such a thing? I could see he was sorry he had ever started talking to me. All he could think to do was put an arm around me and tell me I should talk to him about how I felt, that it was best to cry and let it all out. But I twisted away from him, refusing to cry. And I didn’t tell him how I felt. I remember thinking that if he had eyes in his head he should know how I felt, and shouldn’t have to ask. She couldn’t have known how I felt, either, or she wouldn’t have let it go on.

My mother took a long time to get over Uncle Andy’s death. I’m not sure she ever did. I felt like me and my dad were in the same boat for most of that fall and winter, after the accident. She worried about Andrew all the time, where he was, what he was doing, always wanting to be assured he was safe. When spring finally came, I expected the warmer weather would bring talk of opening up the cottage and getting back to some happy things, like fishing. Dad’s pride and joy was his cedar strip Peterborough and his five-horsepower Evinrude that he kept in top shape. He stored them every winter with the Model A in the old horse shed behind the house. I used to sit in the boat and work the tiller, dreaming about being old enough to take the sixteen-foot boat out by myself.

The back shed was the closest I got to fishing that spring, and for a long time after. I was pestering Dad one Saturday about taking the boat out and getting ready for fishing season, when he gave us the bad news. We were at the supper table. He looked at my mother and she shrugged her shoulders. “You’ll have to tell them sometime.”