Cape Breton Road (29 page)

A FEW DAYS
later Innis hitched out to the TransCanada where thumbing a ride would be easy in the tourist traffic, and the August weather had turned fair. A couple on their honeymoon, from upstate New York, gave him a lift in their station wagon, thinking him a local, and he did nothing to disabuse them, muting his accent as much as he could, and what would a college professor and his much younger wife know about how locals talked anyway? They’d never been here before and had just pulled out of the motel at the intersection, so for a mile or so there was a high view of the strait, calm as stone this time of the morning, and of the mountain west almost to Red Head and east clear to the Cape. The new wife, whose dark-rimmed glasses could not hide her pretty green eyes, had been to Norway and said it reminded her a bit of a fjord along here, but her husband disagreed amiably.

“Not high enough,” he said, “or deep enough, I suspect.”

“It’s deep on the other side of this island,” Innis said, “Nine hundred feet.”

“Really?” the man said. “Well.”

Then they hit a dull stretch of island highway, ragged woods as far as you could see on either side, they didn’t
make you want to wander through them. Innis handed them information freely whether it was accurate or not, enjoying their confidence in him and his status as a local.

“Yes, I was born down that road near your motel. My great grandfather was a pioneer.” A term he had never used before. He knew it was true, but the word had always conjured up Western movies, it didn’t seem to fit here somehow. The woman asked him if he had any favorite spots up north in The Highlands and he nearly blurted out that he’d never been up in The Highlands but he caught himself. “Ingonish is terrific, great beach.” Then he told her he was going into town to get a birthday gift for an older cousin. “What do you think would be good, what would she like?”

“What do you mean by older,” the woman said, smiling, “fifty?”

“Maybe thirty-eight, I never asked her.”

“Perfume?”

“She’s not much for perfume.”

“A piece of jewellery could be nice,” the woman said, glancing back at him from her seat. “What is she like?”

“Yeah,” Innis said. “I thought maybe earrings. She looks great in earrings.”

HE WALKED THE
main street in The Mines, realizing quickly he should have gone on to North Sydney, to the mall, the store fronts here were depressing. The jeweller’s window featured watches and rings and the dim interior didn’t seem to offer much. Innis had never shopped for something like this. He wanted to spend money on it, it had been a long time since he had a packet of bills in his pocket, but it had to be unusual,
this gift. Not just any earrings would do. Maybe there’d be something at the North Sydney mall, but he hated it, the people milling around there like it was the only thing in their lives, the bingo games going on in the big hallway, all those old folks hunched over cards, cigarettes burning down in their ashtrays. He passed an old guy he’d seen before, when he’d been here with Starr, “How’re ya t’day, buddy?” the man said, they always spoke on the street, the older fellas, more than a few of them had a limp or a stoop, they walked like some part of them had broken way back, a hiss of pain through their teeth, but they were friendly. Only one coal mine was operating anymore, it ran miles out underneath the sea. When he came abreast of Starr’s shop across the street, he saw that his uncle was not there today, the sign on the door hung lopsided. That foolish plant in the window. Jesus, was it dead, nearly a fossil. Come on, Starr, just a tumbler of water once in awhile. Why did he even bother with a Closed sign? Everything about it said closed, said I might be back tomorrow or never. A car went by honking at two girls outside the drugstore, drivers honked a lot here, hailed people on the street with their horns. The girls were looking him over from across the street. Younger than him, but maybe on an earlier day he would have crossed over to them and said, What’s happening? Know where there’s some fun in this town? He might have, if they seemed hip at all, asked where he could score some weed. But not today, not anymore.

The stores ended and he walked on toward the shore road that led to North Sydney, passing old miners’ cottages, the only ones left on this street, a section of small rowhouses. At the curve where he planned to hitchhike there was a sign at the
roadside pointing in the other direction down a north road:
JUNE BUG ANTIQUES: ONE QUARTER MILE BUT WORTH THE WHILE
. The day was hot, hotter here than in St. Aubin, but the sea behind the houses was blue and fresh. Innis turned down toward the shop, curious, he’d never been in one, just heard Claire refer to things she’d bought in them when she had her own house. His mother had always scorned antiques, Oh Lord, stuff my dad would’ve burned they want five hundred dollars for.

The shop, whose wooden sign featured a royal-blue beetle, was in a made-over front porch, enclosed with windows, and when his entry tinkled a bell above the door, a blonde woman stood up from behind her counter. “Hi how are you?” she said, “I dropped my lighter. I’m trying to quit.” She waggled a long thin cigarette. “Four a day, that’s all I’m allowing myself. But this is my third, and what is it, noon?”

“About that.”

“You go ahead and look around. Shout if you need me.”

There was no theme to the objects arranged on every surface in the room and Innis liked that, lamps impossibly ornate, glassware that caught the window light, blues and greens, china on an oak table with big claw feet, a ship’s lantern hanging from the ceiling. Smaller items Innis picked up carefully, turning them over in his hands, wondering what they were. A butter mold. Sheep shears. A moustache cup. A pair of opera glasses. A salt cellar, crystal, Ireland, the sticker said, and a crystal pitcher. A coal scuttle from England, brass and embossed with a ploughing scene, a pair of fireplace bellows, horse brasses, a spinning wheel made of fine wood, like his grandmother’s in the attic, a crockery churn, a Victrola with a horn, framed photographs of Cape Breton, black-and-whites
the photographers had handcolored, Margaree Valley, Cape North, Loch Lomond, places he had not been.

“What’s this?” He held up a pronged instrument.

“They used to spear eels with that, maybe still do. You ever eat eels? I like them myself, if they’re fresh.”

There was a commode set, pitcher and basin and toothbrush vase, in yellow roses, but not quite as good as what he had in his room, even with its hairline cracks. Whisky jugs in wicker. A big wooden bread bowl that looked homemade too, like the weaving shuttle of hard, worn wood. A huge copper boiling pot had seen hard use over a fire. A Scottish dirk with a jewelled pommel. “That came out of an old house,” she said, “not far from here. Full of things from the old country.”

“My uncle has a few antiques,” Innis said, “but we sit on them and eat off them, so I guess he wouldn’t sell. His kitchen table might be worth a buck or two. My grandfather made it. Rock maple.”

“I wouldn’t doubt it. Nova Scotia furniture. Carloads trucked off to the States after the War. They’d come up from Boston or someplace and just go door to door in the country. What do you want for that old bureau there? Lamps, commodes, spinning wheels, buy it up for a song. Five or ten dollars cash was a lot of money then, out in the country.” She pointed to his belt. “You’re interested in militaria?”

“This was given to me. I like that gun though.”

He held up a long rifle whose tag said circa 1850, it had a ramrod and touches of brass and an oiled stock. But what he fell in love with was a navy telescope covered in worn brown leather. He extended its four brass parts and aimed it out into the afternoon: the Atlantic was perking up in the wind, the
foreshortened waves carrying sun on their backs. A seagull out of focus blurred past. Whitecaps huddled and leapt. The woman watched him as he put it to his eye several times in different directions. “That’s English,” she said, “I got that from a retired captain, saltwater, he picked up a lot of things in England.” The tag said a hundred and fifty dollars, so he set it down. “Do you have earrings?”

“Over here.” Her jewellery was arrayed in a glass case beneath her counter. She began to lay pairs of them on the top, telling him what they were and what she liked, some of them had been hers, “I bought them for myself,” she said, “I’ve got dozens of them, I can never get enough jewellery, if it’s something I like. These are malachite and silver. Elegant, eh? Victorian.” She dangled them at her earlobes and smiled, she had light blue eyes shaded with mischief, and she was older than Claire.

“I don’t think they’d suit her, she’s sort of dark, like, well, a Greek or Italian. Except her eyes, you wouldn’t see them on anybody else, blue as ink.”

“She tall?”

“She is. A long neck. It’s beautiful. Can I say that about a neck?”

“Absolutely. How about these, with her black hair?” She tinkled them like bells. “Navajo.” Discs bigger than silver dollars, with moons of turquoise, silver beads. “I bought them in New Mexico maybe twelve years ago. My boyfriend thought I was nuts. That’s one reason he isn’t my boyfriend anymore.”

“How much?”

“Oh, gee. I’d have to ask a hundred. Less than I paid. But I can see you like them.”

“Not just any woman would look good in them.”

“Me, for instance. Listen, I can tell you like that telescope, you handle it like its your own. You can have that and the earrings for two hundred, if that’s in your line of sight.”

“Hey, I’m fat.” He smiled and patted his breastpocket. “Great. Thanks. I need something for an old guy too. I’ll look around just a bit more.”

He wanted to blow every bill in his pocket right here, go out the door broke with a sack full of these old things, he loved them. He turned over a set of black rosary beads, fine for Father Lesperance, but it was Dan Rory he was buying for, something. A pipe. He fingered its carved bowl, deep ruby wood, the head of a stag whose antlers flowed back like hair, joined to the stem. Innis took it to the counter.

“Strange, isn’t it?” she said. “Somebody brought that over from the Highlands, so they tell me.”

“I know a man who might like it.”

“Ten dollars?”

“Thanks, fine. And this, for my uncle. He’d get a kick out of it. I think.” He handed her a Lucite cigarette holder, a nude woman in a classical pose.

“1930s. You can have it, it’s yours. I hope your uncle’s not religious.”

“Not that I can tell.”

ON SUNDAY MORNING
, Innis squatted in the sand and studied the plant, amazed by its seeming harmlessness, swaying softly, a good five feet now, its flower heads resembling the Queen Anne’s lace in the upper fields. He supposed any part of it was death, so he pulled on work gloves before he gripped the stalk and yanked it out by the roots. As he plucked the leaves and
dropped them into a paper bag, he could feel his heart rising. He found he was holding his breath, as if he might inhale the vapor of its juices, and by the time he’d sliced the stalks into short pieces, leaving only the flowers scattered in the sand, his hands were trembling so hard he had to laugh. Jesus, this wasn’t nitroglycerin, it wasn’t going to scorch his face. He shucked the gloves and closed them inside the bag, then washed his knife in the shallows. The waves were small, falling lazily ashore, the wind east and a little chilly, smelling of salt. Salt water would clean the blade. The skiff lay hull up in the sand. He’d had a scare thrown into him, he had to admit, but he would row again, when he was ready. Now he had other things on his mind. Near the shorebank he stopped to inspect a dead bird, but it was only curved, burnt wood, its charcoal glistening like the feathers of a crow, sometimes they woke him early, their morning noises, crawking, jittering, mewing on the roof.

In the toolshed, with the heel of a hammer handle he carefully crushed roots and pieces of stalk in a crockery bowl, working them, along with leaves, into a pulp. Twisting that in cheesecloth, he squeezed out small amounts of juice into a jelly jar. Claire was in Sydney to see a friend about a job—this time Starr did not object—and Starr was at the shop, but Innis kept an ear out for their cars. He wouldn’t want to explain this little project to either of them, pleased though he was with the success of his extractions, a touch of the scientist about it. How many people up and down this road knew what water hemlock could do? He held the bottle up to the window over the tool bench, tilting the liquid in the glass: not a lot, but if the taste on a peashooter could kill you, this portion could do it in spades. Greyish-green, it looked harmless as spit. He screwed
the cap down tight. Indians in South America tipped their arrows with poison, something from a plant. Not the sort of work for a Sunday morning maybe, but a man had to move when the spirit was upon him. He’d wanted to see if he could do it—capture that lethal sap. It was sort of like hunting, wasn’t it, but better since he’d never want to bring an animal down. He took the leavings in the paper bag he’d soaked with kerosene, to the edge of the woods and watched them burn to ash. Then he returned to the toolshed and hid the jar in the loft where no one would come upon it.

Last night Starr had been in a good mood after supper because Claire fried him marrachain and potatoes. And while he was drinking his tea Innis reached across the table and set the cigarette holder by his plate.

“What’s this?”

“Stick your Exports in it. Smoke through a holder, Starr, it’s better for your health.”

But he’d known immediately he should have given it to him without Claire at the table. Without her, they might’ve joked it away.

Starr held it up to the light, turned it round. “I couldn’t smoke a cig in this. They’d think I was a fairy.”

“Not a chance, Starr,” Claire said.

“It’s just a naked woman,” Innis said.

“No such thing as just a naked woman.” Starr handed it back to him. “You know that as well as me.”

NOT LONG AFTER
noon he heard Claire’s car but he waited where he was. She leaned in the door of the toolshed, a bright sun behind her.

“You’re not in the house much lately,” she said. “Have you eaten?”