Cape Breton Road (7 page)

Innis heard the Lada horn, that irritating hoot, what a lame automobile, any woman worth your time wouldn’t be seen in it. Starr must have noticed his tracks leading away from the woodpile. He hurried the rest of the way through the lower woods, stumbling once nearly to his knees, whoops, that roach had a wallop. He leaped from the shorebank to the beach and tramped through its mix of snow and ice, feeling the bite of the wind. The mountain seemed higher across the strait, the wooded hills of St. Aubin at his back. In January it had been all still ice, clear across to the other side. But now the dark cold water was moving, waves eating tangled floes from shore rocks and ragged driftwood. The storms had driven in a huge tree trunk, its amputated roots already sea-worn, tipped with claws of ice. He hauled on yellow rope snaked under the snow and drew out a lobster buoy, a gay red and white, and he twirled it around and around his head and away into the water. The waves would wash it in again, or would the eddy get it and
bob it out with the tide, down there beyond the big bridge, out to sea? A thick hemp towline was woven among the beach debris like a weathered python. Starr had played here as a kid, swum here. Hard to imagine it ever warm enough. A tree stump, so often soaked and dried out it had opened out like a book, long laminations of wooden pages.

For an island, Starr had told him when Innis first came, St. Aubin’s as much land as sea, land being close on three sides of us, we’re a long loaf of an island tucked into Cape Breton Island, and the water to the west and south is the heart of us, the big lake, saltwater, the tides run in the strait you see toward the mountain there, but we got the ocean on the northeast end, can’t see it from here unless you’re way high, the sea isn’t far, she’s out there bright and wide. So you could be worse places, it’s not like you’re on St. Kilda. Innis had thought he’d prefer an island clean and isolated, where you couldn’t see anything but ocean, but that was the early days after his arrival when he didn’t care much what happened to him. It didn’t help when Starr told him, I’ve lived by myself a long time and if I had a choice it’d be a woman bedding down in here, not a nephew who’s made a hash of his life. Sure, Uncle. Who could blame you for that? Though the tide was twisting through its dark surface, the strait had been frozen across to the mountain shore for over a month, and he had walked out on it once with Starr who warned him that you had to know how to read the ice or it can take you into a quick black hole, the current trapping you under and sweeping you away In the days before paved roads people travelled the ice all over, when solid it was a good highway, you could hit another shore just about anywhere that mattered. Only patches of ice were travelling today, gliding seaward.

He poked along the beach, kicking ice, his eyes tearing in the wind. Objects had more than common interest when he was high, even a rum bottle, its colorful Jamaican label half peeled away. Jamaica sun, wow. And
ganja
. His hands were cold already but he brushed snow off the big log and sat. He took out his pad, sketching not the shore—it was too new to him and he wasn’t sure how he felt about it, the water unnerved him a little this close, level with it—but the spring up in the woods where the animal had drunk and he had drunk just after it, it had to be a cat, that shy stealth, so quiet, crouched at the lip of the spring, nothing else moving but the lap and flicker of its tongue and the last, light snow, and the fringe of its fur in the wind. Innis used a black ballpoint to get the feeling of the woods, the feathery, spiraling snow, the stark silence in simple lines, black against white, and the dark mouth of the spring, that little pattering cave, the faint pawprints. The cat, whatever it was, would have to wait until it revealed itself, or he might invent it, he wanted to imagine a snow leopard. Who would stop him? He could draw what he liked. The penpoint began to skip, he put the sketchpad in his pocket and wandered further, into the cove where he investigated a long hump set back beyond the highwater line, covered with a blue tarpaulin, its edges held down with stones. He knocked on it. Wood. Anyone home? Kneeling, he lifted the tarp like a skirt: a boat, dull white paint. The blade of an oar was visible. There were the remnants of a nest in the rocky sand. He stood up and looked out at the water leaping with waves and sun, tips whitened with wind. Jesus, who would dare row in that? It stirred and excited him, as much because he was safe on the shore as the prospect itself. Maybe you wouldn’t even have to
row, maybe the currents would take you all the way to the bridge and beyond, cold spray in your face. One warm spring morning in Boston he was on the bank of the Charles River, lying on the grass, mellowed out, glad to be alone, traffic a distant noise, when he heard the synchronized grunts of a rowing crew, college boys, Harvard in their crimson shirts, and he sat up to watch their shell cut sleekly past, the oars as efficient as wings, the rowers blind to anything but their task, and he longed to have his heart pounding like theirs, to share their exhaustion, their camaraderie, their kind of learning he would never know. Starr said, your grandmother lived over there on the other side and my father rowed across to see her, in some mean weather too, he wanted to see her that bad.

Innis shaded his eyes but the mountain trees ran ridge to shore, holding within them the life that was left there. He could glimpse but a house or two embedded in the trees like white chips of wood but he could not tell if they were old enough to have held a grandmother. Colder now, grass always made him cold, a clear memory flew into his mind, he was four years old and his mother took him with her into the ladies section of a department store, and he let go her hand to push through the racks of dresses, eager for the smell, the feel of women’s cloth against his face, and, taken with a slender mannequin, he’d gotten on his knees to peer underneath her skirt, and above him the women laughed, his mother too, he could hear her laughter now. There was no telling what weed would call up, what taste of memory.

“C
LAIRE, THAT’S
I
NNIS
. The Backwoodsman from Boston.”

“That’s me,” Innis said, flashing the peace sign. “Hello.” The kitchen killed the last of his high but enough of it lingered to ride with his uncle’s mood. He was sweating and a bit lightheaded from the long walk up and there was surely a better time to meet this woman sitting at the table, her high cheekbones rouged with winter air, her eyes dark, bright with cold. She looked at him with a calm frankness, taking him in, then she smiled.

“Hello, Innis.”

“Sorry the kitchen was cool. I got sidetracked.”

“Innis spends a lot of time on sidetracks,” Starr said, spearing a stove lid with a lifter. Innis had to smile, slightly: that was true, he did, but he didn’t like his uncle saying it. Starr clanged the poker around in the stove hole and fire flared up. He slammed the lid back in place. “Listen, Claire’s staying here for a while.”

“A short while,” Claire put in. She seemed to suspect that Innis would not be thrilled. She was right: another person crashing here, someone else who might open that attic door on a whim.

“Sure,” Innis said. “Fine. I’m just a boarder myself.”

“She’s had some trouble,” Starr said, “with an ex-boyfriend, ex-partner. Whatever he is, the bastard hit her. Look at this.” He gently lifted her chin, so the ceiling light caught a dark welt along the edge of her eye.

“Nothing serious,” she said, taking his hand away with equal gentleness. “He’s sorry already. He’d never laid a hand on me before.”

“He won’t get another chance, and that’s a fact,” Starr said, grabbing a green wool scarf off the wall hook. He wound it round his neck, tucking the ends behind the lapels of a black wool sportcoat that had seen some wear, but never in the daytime that Innis could remember, and the scarf was a new touch, a little rakish for Starr, who favored blinding-white shirts, soaked in bleach you could smell in the kitchen sink on Saturdays, he ironed them himself with great seriousness, cursing and kissing his fingers as he slowly steamed out the wrinkles. He’d been to the barber too, his wavy grey hair smoothly groomed, shiny with barber’s oil. Maybe she enhanced him somehow, this Claire, but he looked handsome in a rough-edged way and Innis, still warmed by the weed, almost told him so, but he’d learned to rein back his tongue at those very moments when effusiveness or embarrassing affection seized him: he usually regretted it when he came down. Even so, there was an air of elopement about Starr and this Claire, as if he’d brought a bride home for Innis’s approval, his blessing, here on the other side of the threshold, because he came with the house now. But no: that was stoned-think, so don’t say anything unnecessary.

Starr leaned close to her, talking low. “Okay, now, I’m going back there to get your things. Better give me your keys. You say your suitcases were already packed?”

“Two, in the hallway. He kicked one open, kicked the stuff around. Don’t bother about it. But Starr, if Russ is there? Just forget it, all right?”

“Does he own a gun?”

“I don’t think so. He never said so. But please …”

“Please? Yes, that’s what I’ll tell him if he’s there, You like to hit women? Try me instead. Please, I’d like that, I would.”

“Starr Corbett to the rescue,” Innis said.

“You should know, Tiny Tim.”

Innis felt heat rise to his face. “Come on, Starr,” he said, touching his hair. “It’s shorter than when I came.”

What had Starr told her about him? Any of the truth? If he had, there was no chance for harmony here. “He thinks I’m a hippie, Claire. He’s never met one, of course.”

“Like hell.” Starr pulled on leather gloves and smacked a fist into one palm and then the other. “We had a house full of them down the road, MacLeans’ old place. They squatted there, they set up shop. Vietnam War scared them up here like a flock of chickens, but we didn’t give much of a damn for a while. Then one afternoon Alec Grant’s coming along in his car and one walks right in front of him crossing the road, all dreamy looking, naked as a peeled egg. Now, a woman, Alec wouldn’t have cared so much. But a longhaired hippie with a big beard, his ass hanging out, no thank you. A few of us went up there and helped them leave.”

“Hippies don’t fight,” Innis said. “That wouldn’t be hard.”

“You’re right, it wasn’t. But they weren’t all peaceful, I can tell you that. You have any work to do or you just goofing off? I haven’t seen the color of your money lately.”

“I’m owed some, and there’s a priest with a cottage needs fixing up, down by the old wharf.”

“A priest? That should bring a bundle. Claire, there’s rum in the cupboard, dear. Innis, show her. You need a drink, girl.
I’m off.” He opened the back door but stopped as if something had just occurred to him. He looked back at Innis. “None for you, though. You don’t drink.”

“Right on, Uncle. I wouldn’t touch it. Those your Lada racing gloves?”

“You’re too damn saucy. And don’t call me Uncle.” He gave Claire a wave and closed the door. Innis sighed but didn’t move while the Lada revved and revved and clattered off up the driveway. Then he sat at the table, pulling his parka open. “Hot,” he said. He smiled at Claire who was lighting a cigarette. She blew smoke at the ceiling, revealing a pretty throat, elegant and muscular.

“The hair thing’s a big deal with him, is it?” she said. “Lord, when I was your age I’d have given a lot for long straight hair.”

“Why?” Innis said. “Your hair is beautiful.” It reminded him of crows’ black, the way light caught their wings.

She smiled. “Listen, I’m not moving in. Just lying low for a week or two.”

“I’ll be out of here by maybe September myself. At the latest.”

“You don’t like it here?”

She had seen most of her thirties, and places beyond Starr, beyond Cape Breton, Innis guessed. She didn’t look like any woman he had seen here, not up close, not on the street, in The Mines or Sydney either. She knew she was attractive, he could tell, but it wasn’t an issue with her.

“What I like about here I can’t explain,” Innis said. “Anyway, it isn’t enough.”

“A young man like you, he wants to get away, sure. I came
out from Ontario with my boyfriend, the one Starr is not going to meet up with, I hope. He bought a hundred acres to raise trotters on.”

“Where?”

“Here on St. Aubin, down at Black Rock.”

“Never been there.”

“Cliffs at the back of his place, the ocean’s right there. I almost said our place. It was his project, but it took a lot of my money.”

“Money in horses.”

“Not for him, not for Russ. It was a dream of his.”

“Is that bad?”

“Not if your feet are on the ground. His money is gone too, along with some other things.”

“Bummer.”

“He didn’t take it too well. I wouldn’t mind a little of that rum?”

“Hey. Sorry.” He had the rum out fast and a glass, sighting it at the light to see if he’d washed it. “Anything with it?”

“Water and ice. Is it decent rum?”

“Captain Morgan.”

“Jesus.”

“Starr’s not fussy. If it gets him toasted …”

“I’m raising his tastes. He’ll take a good bottle of wine now, if you can find one.”

“I suppose it must be the boonies here, compared to Ontario. Toronto?”

“Close. I was an air hostess. But no, Cape Breton is beautiful. You’d be surprised what you can find here, if good wine isn’t one of them. Sydney’s not Boston, of course, is it.”

“Not what I’ve seen of it, and that isn’t much. I don’t tool around a lot.”

“Why?”

“No wheels.”

“That must be a real handicap, living out here. Starr won’t lend you his?”

“That rattletrap? I’d rather hitch. Hot in here, isn’t it?” Innis flung off his parka and checked the stove damper. “Starr tell you anything about me?” he said, his back to her.

“A little. You’re his nephew, after all. But I don’t know why you came up here from Boston. You can tell me about yourself. I’ll listen.”

“I’ve led a boring life. The good stuff’s all ahead of me, is the way I look at it. Come on, I’ll show you around.”