Cape Breton Road Read online

  “And what’s he need to talk to you for? Eh? Wants you to meet him in Sydney.”

  “Starr, for Christ’s sake, we had a long relationship. You wouldn’t know anything about that, would you, but I can tell you it has a few loose ends. None of them have to do with love. We shared property and money.”

  “And what’s this he’s saying about me?” Starr turned the letter toward the light. “If you want to hitch up with that two-bit TV repairman, suit yourself” Is that all I am? Maybe so, maybe so. It’s not a sexy business, it’s just a living, and barely that.”

  “The letter has his name on it, Starr, not mine. I didn’t ask him to write it, those are his words. And I didn’t ask you to read it either.”

  “I don’t want to see anything of that son of a bitch in here, I don’t even want to see his handwriting in the mailbox.”

  “You’re being ridiculous, Starr. I won’t even talk to you about this, it’s none of your affair.”

  Innis clomped noisily up the back steps and they both went quiet as he opened the door, slapping the salt cod, now little more than a tailfin. “Good evening to you too,” he said, passing between them on his way upstairs. From his room he could hear only the heated murmur of their voices, then Starr going outside, his feet on the gravel. Innis saw him out the hall window smoking at the toolshed door, staring into the field. The house was quiet for a while, then Claire went out to him and they talked there at the door. She came back to the house and called up the stairs to Innis.

  “There’s a dance over at the community hall. Let’s dance.” She looked up at him, her foot on the bottom step. She had the letter in her hand. Innis, who’d grown up in apartments, had come to believe two storeys were clearly superior: upstairs gave you another perspective on those you lived with.

  “What’s that got to do with me?” That was not how he wanted to reply, he wanted to say, Hey, Miss Claire, let’s go, let’s do it, but Starr was around. There seemed to be nothing in this house he could seize for himself. Whatever he had was on hold.

  “Oh come on, Innis,” Claire said. The hall light caught the skin of her throat, the silver hoops in her ears, the lustre of her dark hair he’d heard her washing in the tub before supper, pitcherfuls of water cascading through it. “Come with us.”

  “That’s the trouble, Claire.”

  “What is?”

  “With us.” He leaned on the railing and spoke lower. “I’d go with you in a second. Anyway, I can’t dance.” He had danced in high school, but mostly stoned flailing to the blare of rock music, or slowstepping in that sweaty hug you hoped would lead to sex. “Not the way they do it here.”

  “Time to learn something new. Innis, I know you’re a dancer, dear. You can’t fool me.”

  “What about Starr?”

  “What about him? We need to get out of the house and I want you to come too.”

  “He doesn’t want me tagging along. You know that, so why are you asking me?”

  Claire swung around the balustrade and came up a few steps, beckoning him in a loud whisper, “So I can get you off in the bushes! Now come on, step on it.”

  “Jesus, Claire, give me a minute or two.” He splashed cold water over his face, sniffed the armpits of a denim shirt that was not too wrinkled. From his stash box he plucked out half a joint, just in case. Starr hit the horn. A quick look in the mirror: he ran his hands along his temples, his ponytailed hair felt sleek and tight, aerodynamic, wind would flow over him tonight, a slipstream.

  Innis squeezed in the back and stretched his long legs across the seat. Claire smiled at him, then gave Starr a buss on the cheek as if everything was just fine, though Starr did not seem festive, not his usual Friday night self. He drove slowly toward The Head, letting a car pass him, ripping by at high speed. “Jackass, he’s half-cut already. Be dead before he gets there.” In the rearview mirror he noticed Innis scratching his neck. “You got bites there, b’y?”

  “Down at the shore. The mosquitoes are brutal.”

  “Jewelweed for bites. Used to be some growing by the brook. My mother made a salve out of it.”

  “Did it work?”

  “She didn’t use anything that didn’t work. I wish I’d listened better, or written them down. She had remedies for everything, body or head.”

  “Bad dreams?” Claire said.

  “You having bad dreams?”

  Claire just smiled and looked away toward the mountain, a dark cloud lay along the ridge, a long fish trailing raggedy fins. High above it a contrail picked up the lost rays of the sun, moving like a cut in flesh across the blue-grey sky.

  “I’ve had a few bad dreams,” Innis said, just to keep things going, “but I wouldn’t talk about them.”

  “Sex dreams, no doubt.” Starr fixed him in the mirror until the car wandered, then he looked back to the road. “She had a treatment for that too, your Granny. I heard her telling old Cousin Willena about it once, she didn’t know I could understand the Gaelic good enough, but you pick it up all right when they don’t want you to know. Some fella came up in their conversation, he’d been bedevilled by randy dreaming, and my mother said, There’s something for that, you know. Garden lettuce, the leaves, pound them up soft and mix them with camphor, then rub it on the man’s testicles. She didn’t say testicles but I knew what she meant. That’ll kill those kind of dreams all right, and maybe a few other things.”

  “Did she say you had to get the man’s permission?” Claire said.

  Starr glanced her way. “You wouldn’t, would you, girl? You’d slap it right on. You got any lettuce in your garden there?”

  “I have nasturtiums coming along nicely. But I can’t say much for the rest.”

  “Och,” Starr said with mock pity, “no flowers for Claire.”

  “Not true. Innis brought me lavender orchids from the fields. They’re on my dresser, if you want to see them.”

  Innis hid his smile against the window.

  HE HAD EXPECTED a big hall like he’d seen on TV in Boston, couples swirling over a dance floor, print dresses umbrellaed above chaste legs, the men hearty and grinning and good at the steps, square as their plaid shirts and string ties, some guy calling out indecipherable instructions over a loudspeaker. Instead he was crowded just inside the entrance of a small community hall, a former schoolhouse. A few men out front were gathered at the open trunk of a car, drinking. Innis had already resisted Claire’s attempt to tug him onto the floor, into an energetic circle of couples, but more spectators so far than dancers. Claire looked great out there, her skin a shade darker against her mustard green blouse, he loved her black hair, she just brushed it or the wind blew it and the thick curls still fell beautifully around her face, her blue eyes glowing black, a shine of excitement in them, maybe a little wine too, that easy laughter when she’d had a couple glasses, he could see all that in her dancing and it didn’t seem to matter who her partner was, maybe it was all for herself. Were those steps she could teach Innis? Not publicly. Let her whirl around with that local fellow, short and earnest, a grin that said I can’t believe my luck, and those who were watching could stoke up their gossip about the woman who lived with Starr Corbett and his nephew, Innis knew that, had overheard it when they first arrived, as he had on the phone, and he didn’t want to put himself in the middle of it right here, all the wondering and the details they didn’t know but filled in for themselves.

  Pressed to the wall, he stiffened against flashes of panic: it was just the weed, he’d had a few tokes in the trees hoping it would loosen him up, he’d seen a single firefly flash like an eye, just once. He didn’t know any of the people packed around the cleared space where half a dozen couples, their ages and abilities mixed, stepped off to the music, it wasn’t square dancing after all, there was no caller just whoops and exclamations, onlookers turning to each other to gab or nodding along to the strong beat of a fiddle, appraising the dancers, some eager, waiting their turn. The fiddler, lean and brown and old like the instrument on his sh
oulder, was tucked into a dim corner, Starr standing behind him, bending suddenly to say a few words in the fiddler’s ear, then moving off into the crowd. The fiddler smiled as he played, maybe at Starr’s remark or from the tune or just his mood this evening in a hot and excited room. Innis lost sight of Claire, she was somewhere in the back now, resting, after dancing, pretty clear she came here to dance, with Starr or without. And to take Innis into the bushes. Innis laughed, his voice mingling with the random yells to dancers and fiddler, close to the floor, b’y! Me, I’m just a wallflower, poor b’y that I am, Innis whispered to himself in the local accent, in that broad rhythm he could mimic now, making Claire laugh if Starr wasn’t in earshot. He was good with voices, you needed to be when you spent a lot of time alone, and these Cape Breton voices he had heard often in his mother’s kitchen, and the “down home” visitors even made fun of each other, the people from town mocking the slow country cadences, and someone from New Skye taking off on someone else from Tarbot, a place not fifteen miles away. Starr had imitated Innis too, his Boston talk, the r’s that disappeared in the back of his throat. Right now Innis wanted to be that kind of stranger, just dropped in from Boston to have a look around, not from here in any way, just passing through, on the road. Had anyone in this room been a name in his mother’s kitchen, in gossip there about St. Aubin? In his memory, their voices were an atmosphere, a feeling he got in that noisy room, cigarettes going constantly, bottles and glasses and ice and laughter, and once in awhile a fiddler there too if they were lucky, if not, his dad or later his mother would play records and the guests would argue that so-and-so had a better bow or was better for listening than dancing, they seemed to know them all, the fiddlers from St. Aubin, from Inverness, Mabou, Cape North, each with a distinctive style, they could pick one out without any clue but the playing, what the fiddler put into the notes.

  Behind Innis, outdoors, men were lounging on and in a big Oldsmobile as in a bar, illuminated by the dome light, the driver seated, his legs swung out the open door. Why couldn’t Starr get himself a real vehicle like that instead of that balky Russian crate he was fixing half the time. Innis turned back to the crowd. There was almost no one here his age, save for a lanky girl in a long brown braid dancing with her dad, it looked like, or maybe an uncle, which might account for the bleary-bright desire in his eyes, for her or somebody, a patch of white belly behind a broken shirt button, a dark tooth in his smile. All right, sure, he would love to get laid, take a woman to bed, if he could find one willing to skip the weary preliminaries, go with him into those woods out back, he knew what the moss would feel like, the scents that would be in the air. But not while Claire was here: he wouldn’t want her to know he was even thinking about anyone else, as if that, absurd as it was, would reduce whatever wild chance he had with her. Through the moving faces he caught his uncle squinting at him until whatever he wanted to see came into focus, then he looked away. Was he wondering what his nephew was doing here, alone against the wall, two steps from the doorway? Innis was never sure anymore just what the man was thinking. Sometimes he could hardly remember what it had been like when there was only the two of them in that house. B.C. Before Claire. But he did know that high-flying feel-good smile of Starr’s, knew it well, the look that said Fuck it, I’m in a long slow dive into a night of drinking and you can watch me or not, I don’t care. A joy Innis could not move with, fed as it was by a pint of rum and a case of Moosehead Ale in the trunk of the car. Tomorrow Starr would be glum with hangover, tonight would be ashes in his mouth. Innis hated the blearing, dulling euphoria of alcohol, your mind muddled, foolish. Give him weed any day, his head was clear, and travelling. A little paranoia sometimes, but it gave him no excuse at all for not understanding what he did.

  Jesus, there was old Dan Rory planted in a chair, his cane making do for dancing, thumping to the fiddler’s foot, a brown, paint-flecked shoe with a bit of shine on it. Where was Finlay? Innis flushed, remembering suddenly the felled pine tree like it happened this afternoon, the anger and embarrassment of being surprised in the woods. Too late, Dan Rory had seen him and motioned him near, what could he do but push his way over there. Innis bent down to hear him and the old man shouted into his ear, “We’ll take in the Gaelic pretty soon, you and me, Innis, it’s coming up. Having a good time, are you?” Innis smiled and nodded and eased away as the fiddler ended with a sharp cut of his bow and waved it to clapping and shouts. Innis was afraid this was a break and he would once again be pulled into introductions and versions of his autobiography, whose family he was attached to, they always insisted on that, Co leis thu? as an old woman he’d shovelled snow for asked him once, not who are you but whose are you?

  But the fiddler hardly drew a breath before he swung into another tune. Most of the dancers moved to the sidelines, fanning their faces, plucking at their clothing, but others stepped out. Claire had been drawn out by the hand and Innis paused to study her partner, a guy maybe her age, late thirties, jeans faded to a warm blue, black hair thick about his neck, his white teeth taking Claire into his smile. Innis didn’t know who he was but he could see how tightly he swung her into him, Claire stepping deftly around his clumsiness, the muscles glistening in her neck under the ceiling bulb as harshly bright as a kitchens. Kitchen rackets, his mother had called them, house dances and ceilidhs, Cape Bretoners loved them even in Boston, and it was this very closeness that they seemed to enjoy so much, a small, intense space to spin in. Claire had that look his mother had on Saturday nights when dancing was in the air and her restless all day, jumpy, irritable. Who needs a kid to look after when you want to be out, happy in the clamor of a bar, iced bourbon, a man near your face? His mother would go out no matter what the weather. She craved that kind of attention available nowhere else, even as a boy he had figured that out. On those nights Innis kept out of her way. But she called him to her affection in the morning. Innis, honey? You awake? Come in here and see me, hugging him, covering his face with kisses.

  Claire could dance, yes, she knew the steps, and she made up some of her own. Slow dancing was Innis’s style, turning slow and easy with a woman all up and down you, feeling her waist in your hands, her smile, the muscles of her back, her legs. Innis tapped the toe of his shoe on the floor, just barely, as he watched: she was breathing hard but she didn’t miss a step, not that he could notice. That lingering ache arose in him: there was not any lovely part of her his mind hadn’t made warm in his hands, his mouth. Why in hell had he come here? To watch that guy fling himself around in front of her, chest hair peeping out of his shirt?

  Suddenly Starr was beside him, clamping his arm in those wiry fingers, hard, like a bite. “Be honest,” he said into his ear, “where’d you find a racket like this in Boston, eh?” Innis could have said, More places than you’d think, the town is lousy with Cape Bretoners, but he just smiled. His uncle’s white shirt was stained with sweat, his eyes that darker grey they sometimes turned, their color deepened by how he felt, high or low.

  “You don’t drink and you don’t dance, Cock Roddy,” Starr said. “What’re you good for?”

  “Where’s all the young folks?”

  “Like you? There’s a dance across the water, in that big trailer park. Rock’ n’ roll is what they like.”

  “I can live without it. Who’s the guy with Claire?”

  Starr narrowed his eyes. “Buddy Marr? I’ll be in bad shape before I worry about him. Beating your time, is he?”

  “Not mine. Yours maybe.”

  “No maybe about it. But I’ll dance when I’m ready. I feel good enough to die.”

  For a few moments Innis felt the camaraderie they’d sometimes had months ago, as if Claire were a strange and desirable woman they were both appraising on equal ground, uncle and nephew, two men with needs, two bachelors: didn’t they both love to be high, in their own ways? Everything seemed to be revolving pleasantly—the brogues, the pounding feet, the fiddle, even the big ceiling lightbulb seemed to have a spin, a glow. Starr pulled h
im outside where he’d stashed a bottle behind a tree, but Innis said no, he didn’t want any, and Starr said yes you do, you’ll find that out someday. The air was a relief, a soft breeze cooling their sweat. Innis looked over where cars were parked, caught sight of a man in a red sport shirt as an arriving car swept its headlights over him. Father Lesperance? Jesus, it was, gabbing with some guys beside a car, a paper cup in his hand. Innis wanted to say hello, talk to him, but only if the priest were alone. Starr raised the bottle and drank while Innis took in the rich river of the Milky Way. Stars seemed to trickle like bright dust. A shooting one crossed his vision like a scratch on a dark window.

  “You can gawk at the moon anytime,” Starr said. Another splash of liquor, the bottle catching light from the doorway. He seemed drunk in some way Innis had not seen before, plunging downward, blind. “Listen.” He pulled Innis close, spoke low, a fume of rum in his words: “Oh, I don’t think, dear, you’ll get it near hard enough,” this in a mocking voice whose source Innis did not recognize. And then, as if Innis were suddenly a confidant, “She likes it very very hard, you know, none of this halfhearted stuff. No one-eyed worms for that girl or she’ll send you away. Tight as a buttercup.”

  “You’re drunk, Starr, come on.”

  His uncle stepped back and laughed, as if Innis were somebody he’d bumped into in the dark. Two men who’d just left their car stopped as they passed by.

  “Jesus, it’s Starr Corbett, he got no legs under him,” one said, the other laughing behind him.

  Starr whirled around at them. “I got legs enough for you, you shit-arse.”

  Innis could feel all three of them stiffen. The man let a few seconds pass before he replied, his voice tighter. “Try that on me a little later, Starr, b’y, I’m not in the mood yet.”

  “I’ll break your jaw if you’re in the mood or not, Neilie Campbell. Wouldn’t be the first time either.”