Cape Breton Road Read online

  “Maybe. That your nephew back there in the dark? Good place for him, from what I heard. The States shipping us their bad apples now, eh?”

  “You better fuck off, Neilie. You won’t get a dance with blood on your puss.”

  “Isn’t he the tough character now? You’ll get yours, Starr, you’ll get what’s coming.”

  “It won’t be from you, or that piece of shit next to you either.”

  The men moved off toward the entrance, glancing back, muttering but not loud enough to be heard. Innis knew there were fights in his uncle’s past, even without proof or demonstration. It was there in his eyes sometimes, a flash of icy grey. He never bragged or told stories about it, but they were there in the small scars around his eyes, the nicked cheekbone, the swollen bridge of his nose.

  “Looks like it’s all over the place now,” Innis said, “my life story.”

  “I wouldn’t flatter yourself that it’s all around. Fuck them. They didn’t find out from me. Anyway, you’ll be leaving in a few weeks. Right?”

  It surprised Innis to hear it put that way, in weeks, to hear Starr say it. “You bet.”

  “Enjoy it while you can, b’y. You’re in the land of opportunity.”

  Starr, sobered a bit from his clash with Campbell, lurched away toward the music, firing the empty bottle into the trees. He bumped into Dan Rory and Finlay coming out the door and stopped to talk with them before they came on toward the cars parked at odd angles, some nosed up on the grass, little parties going on inside them. After Finlay had helped his father inside their old Chevrolet, he hailed Innis and met him by the rear bumper.

  “Innis, listen, I just wanted to tell you Daddy and me walked way up in the woods a couple days ago. He wanted to go up there, that’s a long haul for a man his years. Stubborn, and he’s got a heart like a horse. You happy, Innis, you taking care of yourself?”

  “I’m okay, I’m getting by.”

  “I only have a minute. Listen, Daddy saw you at the old spring.”

  “Up your way? I haven’t been there since the winter, since that day.”

  “Sure, but he saw you, you see, bending to the water. Clear as day, to him, to him. He didn’t want to tell you but I’m telling you. Good night. Go back in there and get some dancing done.”

  Not a chance. He watched Finlay back the car out slowly and carefully, the same way he drove. What did he mean? Nothing fearful in it that Innis could detect, Dan Rory saw things other people didn’t, but he was eighty-some years old. You’d see all kinds of stuff at that age, wouldn’t you, so much crammed in your brain, memories and sights? But a cold feeling trailed through him, a little chill. Just the weed, providing highlights, as it could do.

  The strait, over the woods behind the hall, lay out dark and still. The mountain above it was blank but for a solitary light at its shore, tiny in the long blackness. A range light? A house? Not many people lived over there. Were there lynx in that dense steep wood, wood that had never been cut? On the water, if he watched it carefully, were traces of current. He’d like to tell Starr, Listen, I’m a light year ahead of you, I’ve been places with that woman, right here inside my head, where you’ll never get to, not with your head or your hands or your prick. A commotion arose inside the hall, a confusion of shouting. The fiddle went louder for a few bars, then quit. People drifted outside and stood smoking and exclaiming about the heat. A few went to their cars where matches flared in the windshields. Innis thought he heard Starr’s name tossed about, and not kindly. Claire appeared in the doorway, noticed him, came over to him at the edge of the trees.

  “We should be dancing out here,” she said. “The heat inside is tough on tempers. You have a cigarette by any chance? I’m dying for one. No, you don’t smoke, just those damned roll-your-owns that flip your head around.” She swiped her hair back from her face, jammed her hands in the pockets of her jeans.

  “What’re you mad at me for?” Innis said. “I’m just an innocent bystander.”

  “Your uncle broke up the dancing. Carrying on. He cut in on me and some Neilie guy. Oh, he’s spoiling for a brawl, that one, and he’ll get it too. More than one man here who’d punch his lights out. Have you said anything to him?”

  “About what?”

  “Anything.”

  “Jesus, Claire, what’s to say?”

  He watched her bum a cigarette from the men gathered at the Olds. One lit it for her with a flourish of his lighter and she lingered, blowing smoke over her shoulder, taking in their langorous banter, their laughter. To a man, their eyes followed her back and it wouldn’t be hard to imagine what they were murmuring.

  “I think they like you,” Innis said.

  “That’s a polite way to look at it. And you, do you like me?”

  “Get serious, Claire.”

  She glanced at the little white building where the fiddle once again had been taken up, and then she grabbed his hand. “Let’s get out of here.”

  Innis tried to read her face. “Where to? He’s got the keys anyway.”

  “I don’t mean the car.” She pointed behind him, the sharpness gone from her voice. “I mean the shore, down there.”

  His eyes were used to the dark now and the night had an odd clarity, the way he thought a cat might see it, darkness being just shapes defined by what little light was out there, the flicker of a car on the mountain highway, back in the woods, the pulse of fireflies, the bow light of a small boat steady in its barely troubled reflection. The shadows on the woods had a sheen, like velvet. If he could have called up such a sound as the lynx made, he would have, because he knew now what had been in it: joy fused with terror, a cry to chill the world around him, to make him, the lynx, the center of everything.

  “Sure, let’s go down,” he said.

  Claire pulled him away through a dark field. “Lord, it’s black,” she said, letting go his hand. “I can’t see where my feet are falling.” She was still in the dance, he knew that, but maybe he could take her somewhere else. Quiet water showed in the trees as they pushed through unmown hay and grass until they found a path cutting into the lower woods, the ground soft at first, a smell of pitch and dank fern, like sweet tobacco, and the black sooty mud of the boggy places, and the brooks, all smells conjuring his own familiar woods. She stumbled on a tree root and he grabbed her to stop her fall, then he kissed her without hesitation. She seemed surprised for a moment, then she laughed and kissed him hard before pulling away down the path. The rolling stroke of the fiddler softened, grew faint, the yells of the dancers intermittent, far off. She ran ahead of him as the path twisted and dropped to the beach, eager for the fine sand he’d guessed would be there, and he heard the chuff of her knees and her hands as she threw herself into it, kneeling. Out on the water something small splashed, a silvery burst in the dark. The sky was shot with stars but their light touched nothing but the eye, and Innis’s magnified everything, a swathe of oxeye daisies floating brilliantly in the dark, a driftlog shaggy as a pale horse, the spine of a big stone splitting a tidal stream whose ebb at the water’s edge was absorbed in soft quick laps. A luminescence eased through the water like curtains in a breeze.

  “Innis, let’s swim.”

  “You’re out of your mind, Claire.”

  “Sissy.”

  “It’s not midnight.”

  “Near enough, come on.”

  There was no moon to relieve the blackness, but Claire’s blouse unfurled from her, fell to the sand. She was humming some tune. What songs did she like? Why didn’t he know? Her back was the color of light wood where her swimsuit had covered her and he wanted to enclose her in his bare arms. He was removing his shoes, clumsily, one foot already cool in the sand.

  “Jesus, Claire, that water’s got to be cold.” But he was wrestling his shirt off, his jeans were slipping down. “Starr”—but then he didn’t know what to say about him. Maybe he just had to put his uncle’s name out there, toss it in the sand like their clothing. Claire, dimly naked, flung her jeans away
. Her shape moving toward the water’s edge made him wait, turn into a watcher again: what more could he want than this that seemed to be happening?

  Bold as Claire was, she shrieked when the water touched her, her arms high over her head, then she dove under, surfacing quickly, mewing, laughing. By the time Innis winced over the gravel and stones of the shallows, she yelled it was lovely now, once you were in it was great, but Innis, busy imagining crabs and eels his toes were probing toward, took one good grunt of breath and held it. He flinched at strands of eelgrass caressing his ankles. When the water lapped his crotch he yelled out. God, he’d never get hard again in his life, his cock so shrivelled it was numb, just a bit of fish bait between his legs. Claire swam with smooth strokes that seemed the only sound on the whole water. Innis was afraid his mood was turning into gooseflesh and clamped teeth, but when he finally shut his eyes and plunged, Claire was right: half a minute of agony and his body soothed out, his nakedness grew warm and sinuous. He’d never swum at night except once in a public pool roiling with chlorine and lights and hysterical kids. Now his pale limbs seemed liquid themselves and he stroked his way in a slow dog paddle toward Claire with hardly a splash, pleased with his stealthy passage. He could hear her breathing as she floated quietly on her back, her face a light mask in the darkness until he was near and then he could see her skin beneath the clear water, her hands weaving circles to keep her afloat. He reached out, brushed her leg.

  “Oh God, I thought you were a fish!” She was breathing hard now but Innis felt barely winded. Claire turned toward shore. “We’d better get back to the shallows, Innis. There’s no one here to save us.”

  “Good.”

  But Innis let her go, he drifted where he was, treading, wheeling slowly on his back. Stars and water. No one could touch him, a man immersed in this that most of the world was made of, his eyes leaping to the sky. The stars flowed in streams, yet he was solid as a diamond, glints of light on his wet skin. He arched his back and lay out his whole length, poising for sips of breath. The merest motion of his hands buoyed him. The water seemed to clutch his face lightly, acquainting itself, nervous touches on his temples, salt in his mouth. At the corner of his eyes a long ripple from the darkness of the strait surged quickly over his face and he coughed it out, righting himself, scrabbling for air. He swam defensively, fighting for his breath, his limbs suddenly heavy, to where he could stand. But as he extended his legs toward the bottom, his feet touched not stones and sand but a zone of water so cold it scared him, and he pushed further on where Claire was standing in water to her waist. It streamed from her hair and shone on her skin. Innis pulled up, his feet dancing on bottom, crabs or not.

  “Did you catch that layer of cold water out there?” His voice shook in the warm air. “Ice to the bone.”

  “It’s a spring, I think,” she said, her voice low, as if they’d be overheard. “They come up offshore sometimes.” She rubbed his chest briskly, then hugged him. “It’s a kick, isn’t it? Don’t you feel good?”

  “Jesus,” he said. He nuzzled her salty wet hair, the salty drops on her skin. He had taken care of her, a long night, put his lips to her belly, her body burning, too hot with life.

  “I think there’s creatures around our feet,” she said.

  “They must be friendly, they’re not biting anything.”

  “You’re not afraid of them?”

  “Right now I don’t care. I wouldn’t even feel it.” He drew her tight against him, kissed her neck, her ear, her mouth, and she returned it, working her mouth in his, a murmurous language formed only by their lips. They pulled tightly against each other, barely rocking. A wind was coming up the strait. The water lost its polished blackness, rising and falling along their bodies. Claire shivered.

  “Let’s go in,” she whispered.

  On the beach they dried each other slowly, using each other’s shirts. She teased him about his tender feet.

  “Starr will be suspicious of everything now,” he said.

  “It’s too late then,” she said, rubbing his back, hugging him from behind. She moved her hands over his chest, down the tightened muscles of his belly. “Oh my,” she said.

  They lay out on the sand, cool, then warm as they pressed into it with the slow rolling of their bodies. A small shell cut into Innis’s knee but the pain was distant, lost in all the sensations of her, and further still a sound like Starr’s voice, calling their names from somewhere up the hill, hers, then Innis’s, again and again in different voices, querulous, angry, softer and louder by turns, smothered in the wind, but Innis didn’t hear him at all for the roar of his own breath. Above them the shorebank trees were stirring in the wind like horses walking, and the world was nothing but her and him.

  16

  INNIS PRESSED THE RECEIVER against his chest. “It’s Dan Rory. The Gaelic church service in Big Bras D’Eau, it’s this morning.”

  “So?” Starr was sipping black coffee, black as his look. Innis had stumbled downstairs, surprised to find him at the table, ignoring the phone.

  “I was supposed to go with him. I have to do it, I said I would.”

  Starr took another thoughtful sip, watched him. There was a small black cut on his cheekbone and a swelling over his eye. Innis shifted the receiver in case Dan Rory could hear his heart.

  “You asking my permission or something? That’s a first,” Starr said. In the window behind him white mist had lowered the mountain ridge to a flat line.

  “Look, I don’t know what I’m in for here, Starr. I don’t want to embarrass anybody. I been to church maybe six times in my life.”

  “You ought to go more often. They talk about right and wrong there. But this is the service for you, b’y. You won’t understand a goddamn word of it.”

  “You’re the one who should be going, not me.”

  “My Gaelic’s not good enough. It’s for the old folks.”

  “Like me?”

  “Like you. Can you handle it? I thought you’d be shagged out till noon.”

  “I didn’t drink a bottle of rum.”

  “I don’t see how that matters.” Starr drew slowly on a cigarette, squinting through the smoke. “The princess still sleeping?”

  “How would I know? It’s not my bed she sleeps in.”

  “Well now, I’m glad to hear that. I was worried. Tell Dan Rory you’ll be up at the mailbox, wearing my necktie with the hangman’s knot, and the worst sport coat I can find you.”

  IF INNIS HAD any prayer in him, it was please God, no rain, he didn’t want the church with rain, he should have insisted Starr come instead of him, Look, you phony, dropping Gaelic when you don’t want me to know what you’re saying, this is your kind of church, not mine, but there it was, rain steady and oppressive, streaming from the steep roof of the white-shingled church, people ducking for the front door, huddling in the vestibule, nodding and exchanging a few quick words as they shook out an umbrella or a hat. They’d been deprived of the social gathering out front where, Dan Rory said, the older folks liked to meet before the service, some had come miles away for this, and Innis felt maybe the rain was better after all—he’d been spared the introductions, And who’s this young man with you, Dan Rory, no, is it Munro Corbett’s boy, well, well, and you’re liking it here, are you, sure, not like Boston, but less rush and fuss, eh?

  With Starr, there might be plenty fuss and rush this day. Innis was worried, leaving Claire, not sure yet just how she felt or what his uncle knew or what he’d throw at her when she came down to the kitchen. Would they have it out, him not even there? But what could his uncle know? Innis and Claire had separated on the path to the dance hall, returned from different directions, she back into the music, Innis out at the cars, feeling tired in a lovely and powerful way Starr might even have smelled on him when he came out of the trees, Jesus, where the hell were you two? Two? Innis had said, I went off for a piss. Starr, fresh from a fistfight that had been broken up, put his face close to Innis’s and said, there’s a lot
more than pissing going on here tonight.

  Innis inched along behind Dan Rory, the old man halting nearly every step to greet someone in a husky whisper or clasp a hand while he talked. They fell in and out of Gaelic, hitting points of reference that English didn’t seem to touch, and Innis was sure some of it bore on him, this lanky youth in bad clothes. Did they think him a grandson or what? Finlay, up ahead, or Dan Rory would explain. He shouldn’t have come, his head was back with Claire, he was unsure where and how he would take up with her after last night, what daylight would do to them, but he had to get alone with her to find out, away from Starr. Innis looked at his wrists thrust out the sleeves of a coat Starr must have hidden away to humiliate him in, some kind of polyester fleck like seat covers in a cocktail lounge, and a tie with tiny red horseshoes on it. Dan Rory leaned into yet another pew, huddling in a little circle of Gaelic while Innis waited, his cheeks flushed, there for all to see and whisper about, oh Jesus, he’d have to go through it all when this was over, Who, who, Co his thu?, whose are you? Why couldn’t they just sit down? But he couldn’t tug the old man’s coattail, these exchanges meant too much, the old folks craning their necks, checking out who was still in the aisles, the knock of a cane, the squeak of shoes, the labored sigh as someone found his seat, coughs and murmurs and the slick sound of raincoats coming off. Further down sat a girl, a young woman, her blonde hair fanning almost white down her back, bent into a hymnal, she was a wonderful distraction, the grey glass window light on her hair, he wanted to slip in next to her, hey, what’s with you here, all these old folks, are we in the same boat, you and me? Maybe she knew Gaelic, there were young people who did, determined to carry it forward, Finlay said, more up west than here. That would seem sexy to Innis, hearing her talk that tongue, asking her words, interesting words, since he’d heard it only from older people, Dan Rory and Finlay exchanging a private line or two, sometimes Starr on the telephone. Maybe she would sing when the time came, if they sang hymns in Gaelic. Listening to the radio in a car with her she might be ordinary, but here in church, as Dan Rory directed Innis into the pew behind her, she seemed beautiful, mysterious. An old man in a brown suit scooched over to let him sit, taking in a good glance through his fogged lenses. Then Dan Rory settled his long body against the pew back. Only laughter will save us, Starr had said once. He wasn’t laughing this morning. Was Claire up now? She’d had a lot of wine. Innis had wanted to see her first, blowzy with sleep, that incredible hair that nothing could muss enough to make her look plain. But Starr would see her first. Starr, you bastard. What do I do now?