Cape Breton Road Page 13

  “I kissed your belly. Once, quick and soft. That’s all I did. It looked so tasty I just had to. Sorry.” He glanced along the inside of Claire’s leg where the skin looked so soft he closed his eyes. When he opened them she was staring at him, or maybe into him, he wasn’t sure.

  “You don’t seem like the sneaky type,” she said.

  “It was just a kiss. Creepy, was it?”

  “It didn’t come back to me that way, no.” She smiled. “I just wanted to ask you, now. Must be the grass. It brings … details.” She stretched her legs and leaned back into the sofa. Innis saw her again in that bed, just a flash. He had given her water. He had cooled her hot skin.

  He touched the instep of her bare foot, drew his hand back. “I had to do that,” he said. “Sorry.”

  “God, your fingers are cold,” she whispered.

  “It’s the weed. Cannabis hands.”

  “It’s strange out here in the country sometimes,” she said. “May, and the light is like ice today. Marooned in mist.” She shivered, clutched the robe to her throat. She squeezed his arm, then his thigh. “That woods has hardened you up.”

  “A real spring day would be a gas, huh? I mean a real warm day, flat out.” His voice had gone husky, barely carrying the burden of words.

  “Yes, yes. Flowers, Innis. Perfume in the air.” She pulled off her headband and twirled it across the room. “I want to smell lilacs on that bush out there.” She tilted her head toward him and smiled, her black curls falling around her face. He tried to say something. The next step seemed to be his but his breathing took away his voice. He moved up beside her slowly, and then he put his lips against her lips, lightly, hesitating so as to save himself, his pride or whatever he had to save. But when she did not recoil or speak and he felt her hand down his back, he leaned into her arms. She felt luxurious, wholly longed for, and his hug was strong, meant. Her neck where he kissed was cool, then warm, and he wondered what this thrill he was so glad for was going to cost him. She held his face in her hands.

  “You’re a hungry one, you are.”

  “You could feed me.”

  “That’s risky. It could be bad for us both.”

  “You sound like my mother.”

  “You wouldn’t kiss your mother like that. And don’t be too hard on her.”

  She slid out of his arms and stood with her back to the fire, warming her hands behind her. Innis looked at her slender feet, the curve of her leg. Even in Starr’s old brown robe, roped at the waist, she looked beautiful.

  “I saw your sketchpad,” she said, not looking at him but out the window as if she was speaking to someone else. She sounded so serious he smiled.

  “What sketchpad? I have lots of them, Claire, but I don’t show them to anybody.”

  “It was lying on your bed, your door was open. I just picked it up, leafed through it. You never saw me naked like that.”

  “Okay, I took liberties. You can do that if you’re an artist. My high school teacher told me that’s what art is all about, changing what you see. There was nothing dirty there.”

  “I didn’t mean that. There’s other things though.”

  “What?”

  She shook her head, smiled. He rested against the sofa, smiling too, his eyes sleepy. “Come upstairs with me, Claire.”

  “Oh, Innis,” she said with a soft, helpless laugh. “Upstairs,” she whispered. “Such a simple word.”

  He reached his hand toward her, hoping what he’d asked was ambiguous enough not to leave him looking foolish.

  “I have to get a drink,” he said. “Pot makes me thirsty. I can hardly talk.”

  “We’ve talked already. I should get dressed. We wouldn’t want your uncle to show up about now. Would we?”

  “I don’t really give a damn, Claire. I don’t.”

  “You should.”

  As she stepped past him she touched his hair and he was glad she didn’t say anything more, his mouth was so dry.

  In the kitchen he filled a tumbler from the tap and drank the cold water greedily, gasping. The spring in its dark little house, way up the hill. Yet this country was so huge, thousands of miles, thousands of lakes, and maybe he would find one whose edge he could live on. Here, he was just at the beginning of it, as far east as you could get, and out there was the rest of it, spreading westward. His pot plants were ready, but he couldn’t plant them on a day like this, a chilling east wind pulling in fog from the ocean. Late frost or not, he’d have to get them up there soon, their roots were probing out the drain holes in the cans, they wanted space, a real sun. At the sink, he took in air, calming himself. If he had gone upstairs to bed with her, would she have compared him with Starr? God. He didn’t want to think about it. But she liked weed, she liked that sort of magic, and Starr had none of that to give, the whole feeling was different. After one more mouthful of water, he stood in the lower hall listening to Claire’s footsteps, heard her sit on the bed: he knew that sound so well, the way her weight spoke in the springs, her tossings, murmurs, rhythms of sleep. Then there was last night, and there was this afternoon.

  On the hall tree, coats were hung. He punched his uncle’s old pea jacket hard, one fist and then the other, then went out to the toolshed. In the big vise he clamped a straight piece of scrap iron and banged it with a ballpeen until it lay flat.

  10

  MAY SLIPPED PAST, and with it the afternoon with Claire, try as he might to believe it or some version of it would happen again. She didn’t touch him that way again, nothing in her voice invited him that close. She still smiled at him nevertheless, she’d hug him in the kitchen with Starr looking on, josh him, kid him. And he talked to her as if nothing had happened, too proud to let her know how well he remembered a kiss. It was just the way things had come together that afternoon, the fog closing them away from the rest of the world, her mood, the weed. He wanted her to sense that he understood. But he didn’t, and trying to puzzle her out only put her in his mind more and more.

  He found her swinging the mattock in a cool and windy sun. She had hacked up a small patch of pasture, torn out thick sods, exposing red-brown soil underneath. She looked happy, her hair wind-tossed, her skin darker already against the sleeves of a yellow blouse, and the sight of her got to him quick. The field greening in with new grass, and her in it alone. But Starr was always in the wings, somewhere.

  “You’re working up a sweat, Miss Claire.”

  “I am.” She leaned on the pick handle laughing, getting her breath. “I’m tilling a little garden. Toiling at least. Look at the blister, will you!” She let the pick fall and held out her palm. Innis glanced toward the house where two white shirts of Starr’s flapped on the clothesline. Curtains breathed in and out of an upstairs window. He took her hand and blew softly on her skin.

  “Gloves, girl, is what you need. Hard labor.”

  She withdrew her hand and looked at him. She smiled, brushed her hair back. “I have to dig this up or I’ll lose my momentum, no? Want to help?”

  “I’d help you with anything, Claire.” He crushed a clod of dirt in his hand. “I’ve got to tell you, I think about you too much.”

  She’d taken up the spade and was turning the soil, red-brown bladefuls, and chopping it finer.

  “You remember that foggy afternoon? I bet you don’t.”

  “Yes I do,” she said. “But you know …” She nodded toward the house. “Starr will go only so far with you, and with you and me. That was full of risks, that afternoon. Sweet ones maybe, but I like it here, Innis. I want to stay awhile.”

  “How long?”

  “Awhile. Why should I tell you how long, and you so keen to be away from here?”

  “Hard for me to believe you would stay, that’s all. You’ve been places. You’ve been out in the world.”

  “Yes. But I’m resting, you could look at it that way. A break from a bad situation.”

  “Then what?”

  “You want to be sure about everything, Innis. I can’t help
you there. But we could break up this dirt and get some seeds in, couldn’t we do that?”

  “Might still get a frost, you know.”

  “But we’re not afraid of frosts, are we, you and me?”

  They worked without speaking. Innis chopped the soil, two-handing the spade handle, drawing it up eye level and plunging its blade deep into the dirt. Claire combed a rake through behind him. The sun was constantly attended by clouds, the air shadowed and then bright over and over, wind beating away even the persistent blackflies. Innis kept at it, his wind was good anyway, he could dig out a whole field for her if she asked him, and he could hear her breath too, behind him, a little quicker than his, and that would have to do for now.

  “Claire, what’re you planting?”

  “Just flowers. I never had time for a garden with Russ. Horses are a lot of work, they need attention. But the horses are all gone now.”

  “Bulbs of some kind are coming up by the front step. Granny’s, Starr says, from years back.”

  “Sure. Irises, I bet. Day lilies later. Then hollyhocks higher than your head. You find them around the old houses.”

  “That looks like an iris in the field there, where it’s damp.”

  “It’s a wild iris, a blue flag, really.”

  “I didn’t know irises could be wild.”

  “Blue ones. Maybe others I don’t know about.”

  “The lilac’s out. You smell it yet?”

  “Oh, gorgeous. Isn’t it powerful?”

  “It must get in Starr’s window up there. Must drive him nuts.”

  “He’s nervous as a cat today.”

  “Summer getting to him, is it?”

  “So to us all. Ever see air so clear?”

  “It could be warmer, if it’s summer we’re talking about. Be hotter in Boston long about now.”

  Innis shaped seed furrows with the tip of the mattock. In his face she fanned out seed packets like a hand of cards. “Take your pick. Nasturtiums, lots of those. Poppies. Petunias, marigolds. Color is what I want.”

  “Should’ve started those indoors, Claire. It’s June already.”

  “Like you started yours?”

  Innis didn’t answer. He looked toward the house, took a breather. “I shouldn’t tell you any more about it. I shouldn’t tell you anything about myself.”

  “Why?” She was crouching along a furrow tapping seeds out of a packet, the knees of her jeans damp from the soil.

  “A word here, a word there, and my uncle …”

  “My uncle what?” Starr had come into the field, frowning, the breeze covering his footsteps. “Am I missing something?”

  He looks tired, that was Innis’s first thought, or something like tired. “This little garden here,” Innis said, grinning, jamming his spade in the ground like a spear. “Claire wanted to surprise you.”

  “I’m sure she’s got surprises in her.”

  With her shoe Claire pressed a row of soil down carefully, not looking at him. “I wanted flowers we can see from the windows.”

  “You’ll be lucky if you do,” Starr said, blowing smoke from a fresh Export. “I saw you out here slaving away. I thinks, they have to be planting, or digging a grave. I hope it isn’t mine.”

  “Starr, don’t be morbid,” Claire said.

  “I could think of better spots for a grave,” Innis said.

  “Woods are full of them,” Starr said.

  “What are those gulls circling for?” Innis pointed to a dozen seagulls dipping and crying above the woods to the east.

  “That’s the old MacLeod place. No MacLeods there anymore, but the smelt are running in their brook. Spawning time.” Starr went on across the field.

  “What’s he going over there for?” Innis said. “Never seen him in the barn.”

  “He’s thinking he might cut hay this year.”

  “What’ll he harness that old mower to, the Lada?”

  “He’s doing it by hand he said. Scything it, I guess.” Claire stood up and looked toward the barn as if to verify this. “Good thing no cows are waiting for it.”

  “He seems a little glum lately,” Innis said. “That could be good or bad, I suppose, depending on how you look at it.”

  Claire balled up an empty seed packet and tossed it aside. “Russ showed up at the shop yesterday. I was helping your uncle straighten out his books.”

  “His books?” Innis laughed. “Some books. A mess when I saw them.”

  “Do you know how complicated it is?” she said, her voice low.

  “What is?”

  “The three of us, here. This is his house, you know.”

  “I didn’t know that?”

  “Listen for a minute. I left Russ because somehow I’d come to stand for his disappointments, and there he was right there in Starr’s shop, all ruffed up and giving us both the bad mouth. He’s bigger than Starr, you know, he’s a big man. But Starr took him by the throat and choked him until he couldn’t spit out another rotten word and then he threw him out the door, he said he’d kill him if he came back.”

  “Starr couldn’t kill anybody,” Innis said.

  “Russ doesn’t know that.”

  “Sergeant Corbett of The Royal Mounted. So now you love him, is that it?”

  “Oh, I don’t know if it’s love, Innis, no. Do you know what that is? I don’t think you do.”

  “I might surprise you, girl.”

  “You might surprise yourself, boy.”

  She exchanged a smile with him, tearing open another seed packet with her teeth. She chewed the bit of paper slowly, rolled it on her tongue and spat it at him. Innis smiled sadly, shook his head.

  “Claire, do you think I’m a stick of wood or what?” He stomped the last furrow flat. “Am I supposed to forget that afternoon?”

  “Forget it for now,” she said. “Please.” She touched her finger to his mouth, left the grit of clay on his lips. But, feeling his uncle behind him, he turned to see Starr making his way into the grass of the lower field, a scythe raised high by the throat like a weapon. He brought it down and then stood finishing a cigarette. Then slowly, almost thoughtfully, he swung into motion, sweeping the blade side to side, its fresh edge flashing.

  “Look at Father Time over there,” Innis said.

  Claire punched his shoulder. “Innis, I wouldn’t let him hear you. He’s not in the mood.”

  “Oh, to hell with him, Claire. I’ve got a garden to get in myself.”

  “Not today?”

  “It’s a secret. I hope.”

  “So do I, dear.”

  Innis glanced up at a contrail, a slow chalky stroke in the blue afternoon sky. The plane was tiny, higher than the prop plane that had brought him here from Halifax.

  “At least I’m growing something on this land. Starr’s waltzing with a scythe.”

  11

  THREE DAYS LATER INNIS was gathering his gear from the attic, setting plants, their soil dry and light, in an old fruit basket he’d found in the toolshed loft, a few more arranged already in a backpack, when he heard the Lada in the sideyard. Starr, and Claire. Damn it. He shut the attic door behind him and edged up to the hall window. They were still in the driveway, playing around, laughing, goofy in a hot sun and a west wind. Starr chased her like a schoolboy, grabbing for her, and she ripped a handful of grass from the ground and tossed it at him, strands blowing back in her hair. Starr stripped off his shirt, his lean torso so white he seemed to Innis shockingly naked, on his shoulders blurry blue tattoos Innis had never seen: frolicking like this, he looked, for a moment, wild, a little crazy. Claire yanked the tails of her red blouse loose and tied them up under her breasts. Innis winced, that bare tummy, that sweet spot he had tasted. Starr, twirling his shirt like a flag, bounded after her, caught her at the waist and she didn’t resist when he kissed her. Disgusted, Innis stepped back. Unhinged by the weather, both of them, nuts. By the end of summer he’d be gone and they could kiss and screw till they were dizzy, any room in the house, he didn’t
care, the woods, the fields, the barn. As he released the curtain, Claire glanced up. She froze for a long moment, Starr with his back to her now buttoning up his shirt: like she was in a play, lost in it, and Innis, in the balcony, had brought her up short. Performance over. She frowned, brushing grass from her hair, but gave Innis a furtive wave that might have scolded him for spying, he couldn’t tell.

  He stayed in his room, the door shut, until Claire tapped on it and told him they were going out for supper, she and Starr, up to Baddeck and might not be back until tomorrow.

  “Why tell me?” Innis said. “I’m not afraid of the dark.” He lay on his bed staring at water stains in the ceiling, tea-colored phantoms, day by day he’d given them dozens of shapes. He had a hard-on that hurt and he wanted to say come on in, please, Miss Claire, that warm breeze, it’s something, isn’t it? Sorry about my big stick here. But he didn’t.

  And Claire didn’t answer. He heard her on the stairs, and then they were gone, Starr giving him a cheery goose on the horn, the bastard, that miserable little beep a rabbit wouldn’t run from. Imagination, and caution, and doubt. There were three things to keep a man occupied. Who needed sex?

  He had to catch what was left of the afternoon and he headed quickly up the old logging road, anxious to reach the upper woods, looking back when he rested to see who might be on the highway. Someone might drive by and spot him and tell Starr, I saw your nephew ducking into the woods with a big basket on his arm, and a mattock on his shoulder. Now what would he be doing in the trees with that? And Innis would have to come up with a nice lie. I was up there at my pine trees, thinning them a bit, Starr, you want a nice Christmas tree, don’t you? Small stuff, penny lies.

  The woods had leafed out, were growing rich again with light and shadow, and the further in he got, the safer he felt, people just didn’t go up here. He nosed the fading blossoms on a tree he didn’t know, white and spicy against the thick dark spruce. Was this the Indian pear Starr had mentioned? Blossoms now, fruit later, so he’d have to watch. He moved on, Claire in his mind for a few strides until he could push her away again. How often in a day did she kiss Starr like that, drawing his face into her hands? Innis had once thought he’d lead her up here by the hand when summer came: he knew places that fairly begged you to lie down in them, thick beds of soft, dry moss. Another fantasy shot to hell. He heard nothing through the wall at night but Claire, her stirrings. Whatever she did with Starr now it was in his room, not hers. But stay cool, take the long view. That’s what the window told you, all you had to do in this place was look outdoors and your sight took wing, the long mountain went as wide as your vision and the water of the strait could ebb you out anywhere east. But west it was for Innis, not seaward but into the vast green ocean of Canada, into mapspace.