Causeway: A Passage From Innocence (9 page)

Theresa always seemed sickly but, compared to Jackie Nicholson, she was robust. Jackie is skinny, and his nose is always running. If there is impetigo on the go, Jackie gets it first. The teacher always had her eye on Jackie for signs of illness, and you’d have bet money that if anybody had tuberculosis it would be Jackie.

But it was Theresa, and we all had to have tests. They stuck a patch on your arm, and you had to leave it there for weeks, it seemed. Everybody was looking at everybody else, wondering who else had it. Keeping a little distance from Angus Neil because he was Theresa’s brother, and from Jackie Nick because he was always poking at his runny nose or wiping it on his sleeve.

But when they took the patches off, everyone was clean.

The Cabot Grill is on the south end of the paved main street that runs through town, Granville Street. I remember being inside it once because, in a room above it, there was a doctor—Dr. Knodell. I would go to the doctor for the terrible nosebleeds I get certain times of the year. And for the infestation of plump watery hives that torment my body, usually in the spring and fall.

Recently I’ve been going to the new doctor who is from far away, a
place called Poland. The new doctor has a name few can pronounce—Dr. Guzdziol. In the beginning they’d call him Dr. Goose-oil, mockingly. But as they get to know him and his story, and that he and his wife, Anna, fought in the war against the Nazis, they struggle to get the name right. “Doctor Goose-a-doll,” they’ll say. Or simply, “the Polish doctor.”

The Polish doctor lives in West Bay Road, which is out back. But there is a rumour that Dr. Knodell is moving away and that the Polish doctor will replace him here in town later this year.

After visiting Dr. Knodell once, my mother and I waited in the Cabot Grill for our ride home. I, though only four or five years old, was permanently impressed by the perpetual clatter and the powerful aromas of the restaurant. It all comes back on the day of the coronation.

The place is full of people, and we are told we’ll have to wait for a booth. There is loud music, and I wander towards the source, a shiny jukebox with chrome and soft lights. I recognize the song and know the singer is Hank Williams, whom everybody around here seems to love. I remember the day Hank Williams died. The older boys and girls stood around talking about it quietly, as they did when King George died the year before. It was New Year’s Day and we were coasting, and when young Angus Walker brought the news, everybody stopped.

I wander off in the direction of the jukebox. Through a glass front, I can see lists of songs. I return to my mother and announce that I’d like to play a song on the jukebox.

She laughs.

“Save your money,” she says.

“Money?”

“Yes, dear. It costs money to play music on the jukebox.”

“Oh.”

I wander back to the jukebox. And yes, I read that it costs a nickel for a selection. Five for a quarter. My fingertips caress the coins in my pocket. Forty cents, burning a hole.

I am reading carefully through the titles. “The Yellow Rose of Texas.” I saw a movie with that name once. “Wheel of Fortune.” “Your Cheatin’ Heart” by Hank.

Then, to my astonishment, I see a song that is “free.”

One song out of the dozens and dozens listed there at a nickel each, and clear as can be, it is “free.”

I return to where my mother is waiting.

“Can I play the free one?”

“The free one?”

“Yes,” I announce. “There’s one there that’s free.”

“Nothing is for free,” my mother says.

“Come,” I say, and take her by the hand. Lead her to the jukebox and point it out.

THE BEST THINGS IN LIFE ARE free INKSPOTS.

My mother has a puzzled frown on her face.

“Look again,” I say, because it’s clear she doesn’t understand.

“The best things in life are inkspots. Free.”

Now she is smiling broadly. I read her expression as pride, remembering that, most of the time, I am the man of the house. She places a gentle hand on the top of my head.

Then she laughs. “No, no,” she says. “It’s
by
the Inkspots.”

The Inkspots?

“The Best Things in Life Are Free,” she says. “The Inkspots are the singers.”

Singers called inkspots? The best things in life? Free? It makes no sense to me. It is the opposite of what I know. The best things in life cost money. The best things in life require grown-up men to
have jobs, and if they lack connections or an education they have to go away.

I am about to ask my mother for some further elaboration, but she is gone already. She is already at Dan Rory’s side, whispering and laughing.

I watch a slight twitch at the corner of my father’s mouth, as it grows into a smile broad as the dawn.

Later, when the sun is gone and it is dark, there are fireworks. Rockets sail into the night sky, then burst into showers. There is the noise of giant firecrackers exploding. The people in town are greatly impressed and roar out in excitement with every explosion of noise and light. It is a real celebration—for the new Queen and the conquerors of Mount Everest. But the spectacle is unimpressive compared to what we see across the Strait of Canso, almost regularly now, as they tear a mountain down to build the causeway that will bring the world to us.

Sunday morning, riding the church bus to Mass, I couldn’t take my eyes off a kerchief on the head of the woman sitting alone in front of me. It was made of silk and was bright red and green, and there was something written there in block letters, but I could see only
KOR.

We go to Mass in Port Hawkesbury because there is no Catholic Church in Port Hastings. Most of the people who live here are Protestants and have their own little church down below our house. Sundays, in the summertime, you can hear the singing because they leave the doors open. I often go down there after I get back from Mass to listen and try to hear their sermons. I can hear the singing clearly from over beside the school, where old people from out back tie their horses to the trees. I sometimes sneak in to watch their funerals. The Protestants leave the caskets open during funerals the way we do at wakes. That way you know there’s nothing dangerous about the dead.

I like the sound of the Protestant Church music and the way everybody sings along. I’ve seen them at the funerals with their books and their mouths wide open, singing loudly, their faces flushed and their eyes closed. The minister just talks, like a teacher. At Mass the priest has his back to us and mumbles privately in Latin. The singing is by a choir, or sometimes by a kid my age from town.
His father is Eddie Fougere, who owns the service station near the ferry terminal. The kid’s name is Aloysius, and you often hear him singing by himself, his high voice ringing in the far hollows of the ceiling. He’s been trained to sing by both his mother and the nuns, and he can even play the organ. I appreciate him mostly because he has the misfortune of a name as dubious as mine. Aloysius. Misery loves company, they say.

For some reason or other, Catholics never seem to want to sing along. We just stand or sit and listen.

There is a parish bus for Catholics who live in Port Hastings and Point Tupper and don’t have cars. Hardly anybody has a car, it seems, unless he has a job on the railroad or with the Highways Department.

I don’t know much about the differences between the Protestants and the Catholics, only that they are wrong and we are right. But then I wonder: if they are so wrong, how come they seem to have so much more? Plus their own church, right here in the village.

When I’d remember my father in my prayers, I was always careful to point out that the request was not for me. I understood why my father had to go away to find work. But I could also tell by the expression on his face when he’d be leaving that he would prefer to have stayed home. It’s as simple as that. “Away” is a place of loneliness for him, much as, in some strange way, home is frequently a place of loneliness for me.

I leaned forward, studying the scarf on the head of the woman in front of me, wondering where she got it. It was pulled forward on her head, so I couldn’t see her face from where I sat.

I remembered that the Syrian had been around a few days earlier. I saw him struggling up the hill, by our place, bent under the heavy load he always carries. Maybe she got the scarf from him. I’m not certain where the Syrian comes from. I’ve heard he has a store somewhere on the mainland, but he carries much of what he sells in the store in a large
leather case slung over his back. It is held shut by a wide leather strap that he grips with both hands as he trudges through the countryside. He goes from door to door, opening the case, holding up his merchandise and praising it in English that is difficult to understand—kitchen things and clothing, pills and colourful cloth, and delicate silk scarves.

The poor Syrian, I thought. This is what he has to do to eat. Walking the roads, bent double under his heavy load. And I realized there are worse things than being away, working underground by the light of the lamp on your hat.

One night he came to our house late and asked if he could stay.

“Please, Missis,” he begged. “I have no place to sleep. Please, Missis, let me come in.”

My mother was just standing there, looking anxious.

“I can’t,” she said.

“Please, Missis.”

“No,” she said. “There’s no man here.”

“Please, Missis, I have no place to sleep.”

“I’m sorry,” she said.

And then she shut the door. Through the window I saw him plodding up the hill like a tired old horse, until he vanished in the darkness. And I felt angry, the echo of those ugly words ringing in my ears.

“Please, Missis.”

“I couldn’t,” she told me afterwards. “I just couldn’t. Where would we put him?”

“I don’t know,” I said.

“We’re all alone here,” she said.

I could tell she thought I was feeling sorry for the Syrian, but it was only the sound of the begging that bothered me. My father says a man should never beg. Once when they were saying go see Clough about a job, he said he’d rather starve than beg. And somehow it seemed right. Praying is not the same as begging.

I remember the church bus was banging along on the rutted road, past the end of the pavement. Near Embree’s Island, which isn’t an island anymore, curiosity moved my hand to where the tip of the red and green silk scarf draped over the back of the seat in front of me. With one finger I touched it to see what else was written there. Her hair was shiny black and very thick. She must have felt the touch because she turned her head quickly, and I finally saw her face. Her name is Jean Larter and she lives up the hill from us, near the O’Handleys, Johnny and Mary.

She’s originally from Prince Edward Island. She smiled.

I said “Excuse me,” which I’m supposed to say whenever I bother an older person. I’m also supposed to tip my cap to an older lady, but I wasn’t wearing one.

“That’s okay,” she said, believing my touch was accidental.

Jean Larter turned back, and when she did the folds concealing other letters on her kerchief flattened out and I could see the whole word now—
KOREA.
And that the design on the kerchief was actually a map of the country—one of the places we’re always reading about in the papers because of the war. And I remembered that her husband, Joe, had been there.

He didn’t have a job. He joined the army. He wound up in Korea.

I was thinking: maybe there are worse places than Stirling, where my father was working at the time.

Besides Korea, the only other name that I could see on Jean Larter’s kerchief map was Seoul, which I know from the papers is a city near the middle of the country. That the Reds took it over early in the war, but the Allies quickly took it back, then drove them all the way to Manchuria—which was when the Chinese got involved.

For the rest of the bus ride to Mass, I studied the kerchief map that Joe had brought back for Jean, trying to imagine what Korea and its
people looked like up close, head swirling with images of the war from the newspapers and a whole jumble of other times and places and their wars. I tried to imagine the rivers named Ponchon and Imjin, and a valley called Kapyong where Canadians fought heroically on Hill 677, according to the papers. Comic books and magazines are mostly pictures of Americans, but because of Joe and the Canadian stories about Hill 677, I know it wasn’t just the Americans.

I suppose I could walk up the hill behind our house and ask Joe all about Korea—except that I know from Danny MacIntosh and John MacDougall and all the others that you’re never supposed to ask them questions about their wars.

I know from talk at the post office that Joe Larter is working at the causeway now. Veterans, like Liberals and Masons, never seem to have a problem getting work.

Mr. Clough is a short, round man who wears glasses that slide down on his nose. He has a large round stomach that projects in front of him and is accentuated by wide suspenders. He complains about his stomach, and I have heard that he has ulcers. He moves slowly and makes puffing sounds.

Many people seem to be afraid of Mr. Clough. And when they go to buy their things at the larger store, which is farther along the road and which they call R.J.’s, they hurry by looking straight ahead. Going back, they walk on the other side of the road. Sometimes Mr. Clough will stand in the doorway of his store with his hands in his pockets and glare.

Everybody owes him money because he sells groceries on credit. He has two counters in the store, and behind one there is the post office. Behind the other he seems to have a little office of his own, and he keeps the bill-books there. Everybody has a bill-book, and you pay
it off at the end of every month. Knowing they have a bill-book at Mr. Clough’s store seems to make the older people nervous.

But there are certain things you never buy at Mr. Clough’s, even if you owe him money. Meat, for instance. My mother says she doesn’t trust his fridge. And she constantly complains about his bread box. It is a large wooden crate with a lid on top, and the lid is worn and chipped because men sit there when they’re waiting for the mail or when they’re talking business with Mr. Clough.

My mother hates the fact that men have their big rear ends so close to the bread, and she knows that some of them will fart on the bread box just for devilment. I’ve seen them do it—leaning gently to one side, smirking privately, and letting go.

Not that it matters to us because we never buy bread anyway. My mother makes our bread on Thursdays.

But I know all about Mr. Clough because he has sometimes caught me going by the store.

“Come here,” he’ll say. “What have you got there?”

I’ll show him.

“You could have got that here,” he’ll say, frowning into the bag.

After that I’ll feel guilty all the way home for somehow having betrayed the only storekeeper who lets people buy food on credit even if they’re Tories and Catholics.

Sometimes if it’s something like salt cod, I’ll buy it at Clough’s even though I’m supposed to go to R.J.’s (which we are beginning to call McGowan’s because Mr. Howard McGowan owns it now). Mr. Clough keeps the salt cod in a wooden box in the back room, and I know how to pick out what we want, always selecting the white thin pieces that are less likely to have the worms.

But if I had my way I’d always go to R.J.’s because it is a much more interesting place, with clothes and equipment and ammunition and the smell of new rubber boots and leather, and coffins on the third floor.
Both Ronnie the Minister and Isabel Grant, who work for him, are friendlier than Mr. Clough, who always seems to be in pain.

Once when he looked in the bag and frowned, he said to me, “I have to make a living too.”

And it stayed with me all day. Mr. Clough, who has a store and a post office and important connections, has to make a living too.

Mr. Clough is by the bread box talking to Danny MacIntosh, who is sitting on it. Danny MacIntosh was shot in World War One but went back again for World War Two anyway. Because he spent so much time in the wars, he never got a wife and he lives alone in a little old house at the foot of Church Street, the street on top of which my Aunt Veronica lives. Often Danny goes on benders, and other war veterans will be at his place telling stories. Sometimes they don’t even notice if you sneak in to listen.

His house is full of interesting stuff he brought back from overseas. My favourite thing is a cane with a three-foot sword inside it.

What Danny MacIntosh and Mr. Clough have in common is their pain. Mr. Clough’s is in his stomach. Danny MacIntosh’s pain seems to be all over, and he wears copper bracelets that he thinks will help. He is also always eating garlic, which Mr. Clough keeps in the store just for him because it’s impossible to imagine that anybody else here would ever want it. Danny MacIntosh thinks the garlic helps control his suffering. You can almost tell before you get there that he is in the store because you can smell his breath even before you’re through the door.

Danny MacIntosh doesn’t have to earn a living because he has a pension, from fighting in two world wars. But if he ever needed a job I don’t think he’d have any problem, being a veteran and being in with Mr. Clough because of religion and politics.

Mr. Clough has power and money and a bad stomach. Some people respect him and some are afraid of him. I haven’t yet been able to figure out the difference between respect and fear. The two seem to go together, at least where we live. I’m not sure what it is that makes people nervous—the power, the money, or the ulcer. My Aunt Veronica figures all three go together, and we’re better off than he is with our health and our poverty. That’s the way she talks, using a word like poverty that describes people living far away, in places like China and Korea. Everybody says she has a gift with words and can even make a word like poverty sound hilarious.

“Are all the people in Korea poor?” I ask.

“I’m sure the kids in Korea would be happy to trade places with you,” I’m told. “So eat your supper.”

Johnny Eddy MacDonald is one person I know who is not afraid of Mr. Clough. Every day he picks up the mail for out back and delivers it with his horse and wagon. He is big and fat and red-faced and always laughing. In the wintertime he uses a horse and sleigh to drive the mail, and he lets us clamber onto the back when he’s passing by the school on his way out the Victoria Line. Johnny Eddy will even torment Mr. Clough about politics. He isn’t a Mason because he’s a Catholic, but he gets away with it because they’re both Big Liberals. You know he’s a Liberal because you have to be to get a job driving the mail out back.

Johnny Eddy suddenly looms in the doorway and shouts a greeting. Danny MacIntosh looks up, and Mr. Clough turns. Because the wicket is near the door, he finally seems to notice me. Johnny Eddy walks in and the store suddenly feels crowded.

Mr. Clough says something like “Poof Poof,” and walks behind the post office counter, past the weigh scales and the ball of string and the big roll of wrapping paper and the large, open box of cookies that have spots of jam in the centres. We never buy the cookies either.

He fusses around the little pigeonholes where he keeps the letters, then turns and examines a pile of parcels on the floor.

Then he announces: “There’s a COD from Simpsons.”