Causeway: A Passage From Innocence (21 page)

“Died sitting at her table,” he said, “with the breakfast in front of her.” Isn’t that the way life is? they were saying. We never know from one minute to the next.

Poor Mary, sitting at the table, all dressed for the day, with the breakfast in front of her, little knowing as she was preparing it that she’d never live to eat it.

Of course, it wasn’t long before the gossip started. And they’d stop talking about Mary when there were kids around. But I could hear it, even if I didn’t quite understand or ever get to the bottom of it. About a party and something happening to Mary, and people dressing her up in her good clothes and propping her up at the table and putting the breakfast in front of her to make everything look natural.

Anybody I asked about it would just look at me angrily and wonder where on earth I was hearing foolishness like that. So I stopped asking, but they continued to whisper about poor Mary. And I kept watching to see the Mountie’s car going up the hill and turning into O’Handleys’ lane. But they never came. And soon Mary was forgotten,
like Douce Elizabeth Balhache and all the others who pass through here briefly.

From up by the camps now, when we’re collecting the bottles Old John saves for us, the causeway looks as though it has always been there. There is something quite natural about it, probably because the rock matches the craggy face of the cape from which it came. Early in January we saw a train creeping out over the causeway, and it was an amazing sight—like someone walking on water. It was moving carefully, puffing and shunting, the wheels squealing on the new rails. Old John said they were using the train to haul out more rails and ties and gravel, so they could finish the job and get the trains moving regularly from the mainland to Cape Breton. Big pressure, he said, because of the steel and coal that had to keep moving.

There’s a chain across the entrance to the new causeway to keep the cars off, but somebody cut it so they could drive out and be first to take a car across, even though Mr. Harry MacKenzie had already done that, claiming the fame for being first in the middle of December, just after they dumped the last load of rock. He even got his name in the paper for it.

But by the end of January, you’d see the occasional car creeping over. January 22 there was a little convoy—all twenty-five members of the Inverness County Council. They stopped at one point and got out to take pictures—a strange group of important men on an important mission. They were going over to inspect the asylum in Mulgrave, where, it seems, most of the people are originally from Inverness County. According to the paper, this was “the first official group to cross the now famous structure.”

The officials made serious comments. There was nothing in the paper about the reaction of the poor people in the place they were going to inspect.

The paper is saying that the causeway will be officially open for everybody by April, but Old John doesn’t think so. Maybe by the end of the summer, he says.

Old John, whose real name is John Suto, is tall and thin and bald and he never seems to sit down. Even when we’re there talking, he stands as if he’s ready to disappear at any moment. Sometimes I ask him about where he came from, but he doesn’t seem to want to talk about it.

Mr. Malone, who also works for the Gorman construction company, says there’s a big story hidden in Old John’s past, and that just makes him interesting along with being nice. I figure the story has to do with where he comes from, and maybe the war and what happened afterwards.

Hungary, he says, is a sad place because there is no freedom—which, I understand, is because of the Communists, who even put a Catholic cardinal in prison. He seems angry when he talks about Communists. Then some days he seems happier. And one Saturday morning, when we arrived, he was sitting in his tidy little room in the bunkhouse reading a letter. He was so absorbed in the letter that we had to knock on the door, even though it was already open. He looked up, confused. Then you could see how happy he was. He said we should watch the papers because things were happening back home, and soon there would be big surprises.

Hungarians have been fighting outsiders for a long, long time, he said, nodding his head.

So I started watching the papers closely for news from Hungary, but there was nothing but more sad news about people being persecuted.

I suppose if we’d lived in a bigger place with a bigger school, there would have been books and people who could have told us everything
we want to know about places like Hungary. I understand there are libraries and running water in the bigger schools, and sports teams and organized competitions between schools in different communities.

We have none of that here. There is a bookshelf with some large books called
The Book of Knowledge.
The other shelves are empty. The only evidence that it is a school is the blackboard and the rows of desks and the smell of chalk dust and Dustbane. For the first four months of this school year we didn’t even have a teacher.

I’m not sure how it happened, but by late summer last year people were talking about the fact that no teacher was available for the Big Room. The Little Room had Mrs. Martha Hennessey, but from grade six up we were going to have to start the new year with correspondence courses. Our lessons would come in large packages from Halifax, and we would have a supervisor in the classroom to make sure we did them and behaved.

The supervisor, Mrs. Mary Ellen MacNamara, had an awful time. I thought it was great fun, watching the older kids carrying on, coming and going and tormenting the poor woman at the teacher’s desk. I was getting my work done at home, under the eye of my mother, who is a schoolteacher herself.

Going to school was crazy, with nobody doing a stroke of work and just wandering around the room as if there was no adult there at all.

By the end of January, just in time to salvage the year, we had a real teacher, Mrs. Dolly MacDonald from Judique, and the foolishness stopped—really quickly.

We call her Dolly when we talk about her, the way we used to call Miss MacKinnon Phemie when she couldn’t hear us. Mrs. Katie Gillis was always Mrs. Gillis because she gave you the impression she could read your mind and hear everything you were saying or thinking, even when she was nowhere near you. Once someone had an apple he
wanted to share but didn’t have anything to cut it. Mrs. Gillis, who is an old lady, took the apple in her hands and, with a quick twist, split it in two pieces as neatly as if she’d used a knife. Even the bigger boys were impressed.

Even out back of the cove, where no adult ever went, you’d refer to her as Mrs. Gillis because, somehow, she always knew what you were up to.

But Dolly was different. She was friendly and always had a kind expression on her face. You couldn’t picture Dolly splitting an apple with her bare hands. It took a lot to make her angry, but, when it happened, the whole room would go cold because of her disappointment. So everybody seemed to work hard to avoid upsetting her.

Obviously she noticed that the school had nothing but the bare necessities—not even books on the bookshelves. Shortly after she arrived there was talk about putting on a variety concert to raise money for school supplies. School kids and adults would prepare a program of entertainment. This was something new. In the past we’d have Christmas concerts for the entertainment of our parents, but never before, as far as I know, did we have adults and kids on the same stage entertaining the public.

There were meetings in the evenings, and soon there was a program. I didn’t have much to do with it, except for helping get the stage ready, and that suited me just fine.

My part in the Christmas concert the last year I was in the Little Room was a poem called “A Small Boy’s Pockets”—about all the junk mothers find in a kid’s pants. As I recited each verse, I was supposed to reach into my pocket and pull something out. There was a jackknife, a marble, a rabbit’s foot, and a few other things. But to make my pockets look really full, the teacher stuffed them full of balled-up paper. The problem was that she put so much paper in my pocket that I couldn’t find the things I was supposed to find to match the verses. It was a
terrible struggle, with balls of paper falling out of my pockets and causing me to lose my place, and everybody laughing because they thought my confusion was all part of the performance.

The next day at the mail, Mr. Clough told me it was the best part of the concert and gave me two of the cookies with the spot of jam in the middle. But I knew the truth—my performance had been a disaster, and I was determined not to let it happen again.

Studying the program for the variety concert, I was relieved not to be on it but surprised to see my father’s name, Dan R. MacIntyre. He and Angus Walker Sr. were in a “skit.” A skit, I understood, is a little performance that’s supposed to be funny. My father and Angus Walker Sr.? Funny?

Mr. Walker is a photographer who has a studio near the causeway. He also built a small canteen, attached to the studio, where you can buy hot dogs and ice cream, cigarettes and other treats from his mother-in-law, Mrs. Lew Reynolds. It was one of the first signs of new business when they were building the causeway. Next door, where Johnny Morrison had his blacksmith shop, another Mr. Morrison started turning the old forge into an Esso service station.

My father is funny at home or when he’s speaking Gaelic, but not like the performers in the movies or on the radio. And I never heard Angus Walker Sr. being funny at all, which is not to say that he couldn’t be comical in private. But being funny in front of everybody is another matter altogether.

There were lots of other performances on the program though, and I soon put my father’s out of my mind. There was Angus Walker Jr., who is a talented guitar player and wants to become the next Hank Williams. There was a short play put on by adults, plus the usual fiddle playing and Gaelic singing. And Dolly was going to bring her son Lewis, who, she said, had a nice voice and would render some Scottish
selections. That was how she described it—render Scottish selections. Probably “The Road to the Isles” or “Scots Wha Hae.”

My father is reading the paper at the kitchen table. The story is about Coffin. The paper is using his formal name. Wilbert, not Bill. My father looks serious.

“What’s happening?”

“The Quebec courts upheld the death sentence.”

“Oh.”

“Yep.”

“Does that mean they’re going to hang him?”

“Nah. There’ll be the Supreme Court of Canada. All that Quebec stuff, about English and French and them being Americans from Pennsylvania, won’t matter there.”

“What about the Boyd Gang guys?” I ask.

I am dubious. Everybody in the country seemed to be cheering for the Boyd Gang and especially Edwin Alonzo Boyd, their boss. Even Grandma Donohue and my mother, who usually think crooks should get what they deserve. But in spite of all their popularity, they still hanged two of Edwin Alonzo Boyd’s gangsters.

The Boyd Gang killed a cop, my father says. Coffin didn’t kill anybody. He’s being railroaded.

Even when you know that things are bothering my father, he doesn’t show it. When I say something that older people think is ridiculous, they say, “You’re full of shit” or “Your hole is out.” Once, when we were talking about the causeway and I said the Communists would certainly destroy it with an atomic bomb in the next world war, Pipe Major Cameron, who was in the last world war, told me: “Your hole is out so far you can cut
washers
off of it.”

The worst thing my father ever said was: “You’re full of old rope.”

After he finishes reading about Coffin, he just shakes his head and folds the paper carefully.

My father seems to keep most things inside his head, even when he’s with people he knows well. They sit in the kitchen, men pouring tea into saucers, their caps on their knees. When they smoke cigarettes, they carefully put the ashes in the cuff on the bottom of the trouser leg. When they’re leaving, you see them outside, carefully brushing the ashes away.

Sometimes they sit in silence for what seems like an hour. Then there will be a short sentence. Just a few words, and they’ll remember a common experience or some common knowledge. And then there will be head shaking and sad glances or maybe a sudden brief explosion of laughter.

This is how it is with friends and relatives, and I realize that the more we have in common, the less we have to say for understanding. And how difficult it must be for my father when he is away, mostly among strangers, having to talk and explain everything he wants them to know. Or maybe being silent all the time.

The closer we got to the big concert, the more you could feel the excitement. Dolly had to work hard to keep the classroom under control. At home I would sit by The Hole at night, listening to rehearsals for the short play that the adults were preparing to put on. My mother had a part in it. I couldn’t make head or tail out of it.

Once I asked what my father and Angus Walker were going to do, and they just told me to wait and see.

It was going to be a big surprise for everybody.

I’d have guessed a Gaelic song, even though I’ve never heard my father sing, and I don’t think that Angus Walker knows any Gaelic.

Then again, maybe he’s been listening to Major Calum Iain Norman MacLeod’s Gaelic lessons on the radio.

I haven’t heard them advance much beyond “Caite bheil bean an tighe” because my father turns the radio off right after the fiddle music program, which is before the Gaelic lessons by Major MacLeod and a girl named Seonaid.

It doesn’t really matter because now that my father is home all the time and has a truck, I hear plenty of Gaelic all around me. People from out back drop in and, when my mother is out of the kitchen, they speak Gaelic. We often visit the mountain, and that seems to be the only language the grown-ups use out there. And it doesn’t sound a bit like the careful, slow words that Major MacLeod and Seonaid use on the radio. At the mountain, the words flow like the water in Rough Brook which runs from the big marshlands up behind my grandfather’s all the way down, emptying eventually into Inhabitants Bay.