Cape Breton Road (22 page)

“We need to get away for a few days, Claire. Let’s try some other part of the Island, a place you haven’t been. I need to get away.”

“Starr, I’m working, I have a job.”

“Quit. Dump it.”

“I can’t. I don’t want to. Can I just soak up a little sun?”

He was quiet, folding and refolding his towel. Innis knew Starr did not want to leave them like this, even though Innis was lying next to Claire head to feet, even though he only had his shirt off and was sleepy and probably a bit singed. But fuck him, let him say so.

“I’m going back up,” Starr said. “You coming?”

“I’ll be up in a little, I just got here,” Claire said, frowning.

“Even you can get a sunburn, miss,” Starr said. Innis heard his uncle’s shoes chopping through the sand and he was gone.

Innis did not want to say a word. Proximity, just lying there with her, he’d settle for it, it couldn’t last long. He waited for Claire to speak but she didn’t. Something hit the water, too quick and sharp to be a fish.

“He tossed a stone from the woods,” Claire said. “Ignore it.”

“I’m not moving. He’s probably spying on us. Not that he’d get an eyeful of anything.”

“We won’t give him an eyeful of anything either. Right?” Claire, her face toward the sun, did not move, just her eyes, barely slitted. She smiled.

Innis took his time buttoning his shirt. Starr was right, his shoulders were tender.

“I guess I don’t understand you, Claire,” he said. He squeezed a small warm stone in his fist.

She wiggled her toes, raised her head slightly to observe him. “Why would you want to, Innis? There’s no fun in that.”

T
HE RAIN HAD PASSED
, but every minute or so the ceiling above the priest’s bed produced a single drop that fell emphatically on the plastic tarp below. That sharp splat made the room seem derelict somehow, and though he didn’t like asphalt roofs, Innis intended to silence it. He pulled a crude wooden ladder out from under the house and crawled over the roof where a patch of black shingles broke into coal-like bits when he pried them and the wind whipped them about. Last autumn the colors had flamed along the miles of that mountain, making him ache for October afternoons back home, the sidewalk leaves he’d kicked through, the smell of their dust, their smoke. He was rubbing grit from his eyes when he heard a car below, a honk. Father Lesperance, in a summer outfit, his portly belly expanding a big blue T-shirt. Bermuda shorts, a bit too long, but neat black stockings in black shoes. He was clutching a bag of groceries. Innis climbed down to talk to him and as they shook hands there was a whiff of liquor in his words, then it was gone.

“St. Swithun’s Day, Innis. A healer and a bringer of rain. Forty more days of it if it rains on St. Swithun’s, but I think we’re safe by the looks of that sky.”

“You been enjoying the cottage, Father?”

“I’m happy you’re after that leak. I had to sleep on the
blasted couch last time.” He whipped off his battered khaki hat and stepped back a few paces, squinting at the roof. The purplish tinge in his cheeks seemed deeper today. “Yes, yes. Good, Innis, good. Not much rain, but a damp bed is misery. Did you find those bundles of shingles? Two will do it you think?”

“Plenty, Father. It’s just the one spot.”

“Come in for a rest then, come in.”

The priest hustled about in the kitchen, pulling open curtains and drawers. Innis noticed the painting had been hung and he moved closer.
THE JESUIT MARTYR-SAINTS OF NORTH AMERICA
the caption said and listed their names. A watercolor? A group of priests, eight, in cassocks, standing or kneeling, one holding up a crucifix, all suspended in the sky and gazing toward a heavenly radiance of pale blue where angels and cherubs hovered. But below them, in the nasty world of frontier Canada, a smaller scene of their martyred deaths, a mayhem of Indian treachery. A peaceful campfire in the center of a loghouse settlement, three seated Indians, one in full headdress, poking sticks in the embers under a big kettle, getting ready to torture a priest who was bound to a stake. Around them there was plenty of tomahawk action, priests knocked to the ground or crouching in fear or unwittingly shaking an Indian hand while another Indian reared up behind, two-handing a tomahawk toward the father’s skull. No blood yet, it was all stilled in the act, hatchets raised but yet to fall, the consequences clear. In the background a lake, spiky spruce trees, Canada wilderness but little different from what Innis wandered in every day. He didn’t know the story behind these murders or who was to blame for what, but that’s where the action was for sure, hatchets and blood. The upper part of the
picture didn’t have much going for it—serene, the angels cute and sweet. Weren’t angels ever mean, little streaks of meanness in them? Innis would have drawn them that way, and he wouldn’t have the priests floating in clouds of pale yellow and blue. Too hokey. These had to be tough men.

“Interesting, isn’t it?” Father Lesperance said behind him, holding a can of orange juice in each hand. “Not great art of course, but it’s direct and innocent. And the little narrative below.”

“They had a hard life, I guess.”

“They did that.”

He listened to the priest in the bedroom. A drawer opened, the clink of glass, a pause, the drawer closed.

“Nobody’s broken into the cottage, Father, not that I could see.”

“No, no,” he said, returning. “We’re still intact. I brought a few kids out last week, we tramped the shore and up the woods. They liked it until it rained and then they were disappointed I had no television.” He leaned in from the kitchen. “You know one of them has cousins up on MacLean’s Cross? Their cousins’ dog was killed a while back, at night, struck by a car. The bastard just drove away. A terrible thing to do, and them heartbroken. A car chaser, that dog, true, but they loved him.”

Innis looked closely at the painting, tracing its surface with his finger. “They see the car that did it?”

“A dark car, that’s all the kids could recall. Shiny, new, they said.”

“What was its name?”

“Name?”

“The dog, that they hit.”

“I don’t know it myself, Innis. It wasn’t much more than a pup.”

The priest spread the front window curtains wider and stood looking out. “Innis, the old Captain, he keeps a very nice automobile over there, stores it until summer.”

“Yeah, that’s what I hear.”

“Funny but somebody saw it on the road. Captain MacQueen’s not there yet, so of course that’s a curious thing. But I went over and there it is, the Cadillac sitting in his garage. I looked in the crack.”

“Somebody was mistaken then.”

“It would appear somebody was. People see things in the country, of course, that aren’t always there for the rest of us. Take Dan Rory. He’s got the second sight, they say. Forerunners and that sort of thing.”

“He can tell when a person’s going to die,” Innis said. “I don’t believe that myself.”

“I’m skeptical too, Innis, yes, I am, about those kinds of powers in a man. But if you’re here at night, you know, it’s not like the city at all. I saw a single firefly in a warm night breeze, against the trees it moved more like a bird, in dips and sweeps, a bleep bleep of light, uncommonly glowing. Almost supernatural. Wouldn’t take much to see it that way, I suppose. But then again, I didn’t want to believe it was anything but a firefly. Other eyes could see it easily as something else, a premonitory light perhaps, a spirit. In the Celtic world, there are sites they call ‘thin places.’ I love that term. Places where we’re likely to experience the spiritual. These were ancient sites, already spiritual, and so churches were often built on them. There might even be a thin place or two around here. My mother was
Irish, a Roche. Norman name, like yours, Corbett. Oh, they got all around, Ireland, Scotland. But we’re not superstitious, not you and me. Eh?”

“I don’t think so, Father. Well, sometimes.”

“Of course, I knock on wood, I fling a little salt over my shoulder. I grew up with that.” The priest turned away from the window. “You have a boarder where you live, I guess?”

“Since a while, Father.”

“Claire Wiston, yes? I knew the man she used to live with, over there in Black Rock. Sometimes he showed up at the church where I assisted. Stress and strain brings a man back to the church sometimes, they want the comfort. They fall away from it when life is smooth, but give them a rocky spell and there they are at the door.”

“I don’t know him at all, Father.”

“No, I guess you wouldn’t. You getting on with Claire? She’s a nice woman, from what I could tell.”

“Sure. We’re just boarders, the two of us.”

“Of course, of course. What do you think of this?” From behind the sofa the priest pulled out a large kite of wood and red paper emblazoned with the golden head of a roaring lion. He held it up high. “The lion is my idea. I like lions.”

“It’s a good day for them. Isn’t it?”

“Lions or kites? Oh, both. A man I don’t like very much, Innis, I had to give him some hard advice. He told me, Father, why don’t you go fly a kite? Yes, I said. I’m perfectly capable of that, and it’s a pity you are not. Shall we?”

They strolled down toward the old wharf, the strait lively and blue under a brisk sun. Two young children were in swimming, shrieking at the small waves that washed over them, their
parents, dressed, sitting on a blanket watching, smoking cigarettes, dad’s trousers rolled up his white calves, mom with a cup in her hand. Innis looked for girls in bathing suits but it was not that kind of beach, not enough action, there weren’t any boys making fools of themselves with a Frisbee. Innis sidearmed a flat stone at the water but the first skip was swallowed by a wave. Downbound toward the sea, a sloop, driving hard under the westerly wind, galloped along in midchannel, cutting the chop, spray cracking white off its bow.

Father Lesperance inhaled deeply, beaming comically at the sun, the kite close to his chest like a shield. “This island was all French once, did you know?”

“I wondered about the name.”

“Eighteenth century, a Frenchman owned the whole works, every square meter of it. His own farm was up on the eastern end. Good farm, sophisticated in its day. But the fortunes of war overtook him. After the Battle of Louisbourg, it all fell to the British, and he was a French officer, decorated one in fact. And later on of course, you Highlanders came in, Innis, my man. But we had a foot here first, oh, yes. I know a very old woman down the road who remembers French gravestones in her woods when she was a little girl. All swallowed up in trees now. Sooner or later, the woods have the last word here. Give me a hand, Innis, if you would.”

Innis held the kite while the priest backed away, spooling out line.

“Do you like boats, Innis?”

“I wouldn’t mind riding along on that one out there. Where they heading, do you think?”

“Oh they’re out of Baddeck, I’d say. Maybe they’ve been
cruising the lake. Might be making for somewhere up or down the coast, anywhere. They’ll be in the Atlantic soon, at any rate.”

“Could they go all the way to Boston in a boat like that?”

“Why not? That’s got to be about a forty-footer. Why, you want to go to Boston?”

“I wouldn’t mind a trip back.”

“No money?”

“Not yet. I’ll be okay.”

“What are your plans, Innis? Long-range, I mean?”

Innis laughed. He almost felt he could tell the priest the truth, he seemed like a guy who might understand it: Father, I’ve got a little crop of dope up in the woods and it’s going to get me out of here and into a new life. “Nothing specific, Father. Not since Boston.”

“What happened?”

“Oh, some bad habits. And my mother and me didn’t get along too well. So … I came up here.”

“What kind of schooling?”

“High school.” Schoolbooks, he never had the patience for them. He could not concentrate on them at home, though he could draw for hours, shaping things to his own eye. The television had always been there, a murky voice in the living room. He filled small tablets, then larger ones until he started buying sketch pads and decent paper, good pencils. A teacher or two had captured him for a while—Innis, look, you’re far smarter than the work you’re doing, you can do better than this. An art teacher in high school said he had talent, he should think about art school or college, but Innis said I just do sketches, that’s all I want. “I almost graduated. I didn’t like it enough.”

“Schooling comes from all directions, Innis, it never stops. Okay,” the priest yelled, “let her go!”

Innis lifted the kite and the wind took it up and slashed it back and forth, paper crackling, tail whipping. Father Lesperance laughed, his battered hat blew off, his bald head glistening as he unreeled the kite higher and higher over the water until it was a bit of red dancing against the long green mountain. Innis raised his fist high, feeling only sun and wind and water.

T
HE BLACK ROOF SHINGLES
had soaked up the day’s heat and Innis tossed in his bed, tormented by a mosquito’s needling, looping drone. A moth flittered across his cheek, startling him. In the lamplight, blots like brown ink on its creamy wings. He dozed again in the dark but a bat woke him, veering near and away, a flutter of warm air, and he made no move to drive it off. Was she scared of bats? He lay with his arms flung back, waiting for window light, thinking of Claire, angry he couldn’t keep her out of his mind. Amazing. One kiss, weeks and weeks ago, but the taste of that ran all through him when he had nothing to do but lie here and remember. The house was too quiet. No snoring down the hall, no stirrings on the other side of the plaster. If he held his breath he could just make out that distant rustling of the tide, the sound of broad water moving on a still night. Starr had finally persuaded Claire to quit her job in Sydney, she wasn’t that keen
on it anyway, I’m too old to smile when I don’t feel like it, she said, and Starr said Amen, and forget about money, we’re fine. Innis didn’t see how that could be true, but off they’d gone for Isle Madame, Starr hadn’t much business anyway, people were outdoors, it was an uncommonly warm summer so far, more sun than Starr had seen in years, fine as long as the spring didn’t go dry. He told Claire if she liked beaches so much she’d love the sand of Ingonish up north, softer than sugar, and on the west coast the water was warm from the Northumberland Strait. She was dark as a Greek now. A summer person, she bloomed. What would she want with a winter man like Innis? He’d been a small diversion once, on a foggy afternoon.