Forgiveness (3 page)

I opened the passenger door and Grandpa slowly lowered himself in, holding the windshield as a brace. He let out a grunt when he was in the seat, followed, as always, by a cheerful “Okay—I’m
good—thanks.” I closed the door as he did up his seat belt, then walked around the back and got in the driver’s seat.

We were in a bit of a hurry. We were headed to Grosse Île, which was tucked away in the northeast corner of the island. Grandpa always stayed with his cousin Margaret when he came home, which was about every ten years. Margaret was sure to have dinner ready by now.

Margaret’s house was straight out of a children’s tale. Like her, the house was tiny, old, and full of warmth. Everything was small and made out of wood. Every tabletop was fitted with a knitted doily. You never knew when a teapot might show up. There was a painted cuckoo clock above the archway that led from the living room into the dining area and kitchen. Neither Margaret nor her house quite fit in the twenty-first century.

Margaret embraced us and poured us tea. Halfway through the first cup, a truck came barrelling up her gravel driveway. Through the window we saw the rusted-out Chevy swerve as the driver tried to light a cigarette. It looked like his eyes were closed. He was drunk. “Right pissed” were Margaret’s words. We smelled whisky before we heard the door open.

Margaret met her brother Frederick in the foyer.

“You can’t come in here now. You go home, make a pot of coffee, and come back when you’re presentable,” she told him.

Grandpa explained to me that Frederick had been thrown out of Margaret’s house more times than he’d been thrown out of the local tavern. He put up no fight.

“I’ll see ya soon, Ralph!” he yelled as the door closed. A few minutes later the engine rattled away.

Margaret apologized profusely. It was unnecessary, of course, but she was mightily embarrassed. We sat down to a wonderful dinner of herring, lobster, and mashed potatoes. We drank milk. Margaret spent the dinner updating Grandpa on who had left and who had died.

Frederick dutifully returned four-and-a-half hours later smelling of coffee and cigarettes. It seemed as though he had willed
himself sober so he could see my grandpa. His mission was simple: he wanted us to come to his house so he could give us his stash of canned haddock.

Grandpa could not say no to this gift; it would be a devastating insult. Fortunately, there was a lobster trap in the cab of Frederick’s truck, giving us an excuse to follow him to his place in our rental car. We passed the post office, the graveyard, and two rabbits. The dark and the fog conspired against me as I struggled to follow Frederick’s rear lights. There was not a street light to be seen.

We wound our way through a wooded area as the road deteriorated into a well-worn trail. Houses appeared out of the woods like ghosts. We pulled into a muddy ditch that served as a driveway, climbed out, and carefully made our way up to a rickety veranda.

The house was a dump. It reeked of whisky, canning brine, and sweat. It had not seen a cleaning product in a decade. The coffeepot had been left on. There was a canister of coffee whitener and an overflowing ashtray on the small kitchen table.

Frederick invited us to sit. The three kitchen chairs look liable to buckle. We took our chances and sat as he rifled through the cabinet under the sink for his stash—our gift. Half of Frederick’s body was under his sink; it was as if he were rooting under the deck of a boat. He emerged with a sly grin, exposing broken, nicotine-stained teeth.

“Here you be,” he said, holding out four Mason jars jammed full of haddock. Grandpa was clearly eager to leave and after some small talk about recent fish hauls and mutual friends, he used his time-tested escape hatch: “Well, we won’t keep you.”

“Don’t want to stay for a nightcap?”

“Oh no, we’ve had a long day of travel.”

And with that, we were off.

We were both glad to return to Margaret’s. Her house hugged us as we came in. Grandpa took the spare room upstairs, I took the living-room couch. There was a small TV on top of a three-drawer cabinet. I turned it on and surfed the few channels Margaret was
able to receive. The TV was placed in such a manner that you could really only see it if you were lying on the couch as I was. There was dust on the “on” knob. Watching CNN in Margaret’s living room, I felt strangely out of place.

I woke to the sound of frying eggs and the smell of coffee. I could hear the shower going. I stretched and untangled myself from the three blankets I had slept under. The top one was an old Hudson’s Bay blanket; I could almost see the paper catalogue it would have been ordered from, the one that came in the mail from the mainland.

In the kitchen, a CorningWare coffee percolator was brewing on the stovetop. The cast-iron frying pan had clearly cooked thousands upon thousands of eggs. I sat at the small kitchen table just behind the cupboard that separated the kitchen and the dining room. Margaret spun around with an enormous smile.

“Good morning, dear. I hope that you were comfortable enough on that old couch. Oh, how I wish I had another bed for you to have a proper sleep in.”

I could tell she had been up half the night worrying about the sleeping arrangements.

“I had a great sleep. I hope the TV didn’t bother you,” I reassured her.

“Not at all, dear. I’m glad someone got some use out of it.”

While I poured my coffee, Margaret dished me a heaping plate: four eggs, salted fish, two pieces of homemade bread, all smothered with fresh butter. Grandpa came in and sat down beside me with a smile.

After breakfast, he and I struck out for a drive around his old stomping grounds. We were hardly out of Margaret’s front door before we stumbled into his memories. Almost everything was exactly as it had been when he was a child. We stopped the car at a valley and walked over the first hill to find his school. Behind the school was a clearing, more of a mossy bog that would ice over come winter. It was the local hockey rink.

“Seems like I spent my whole childhood in that clearing,” he said.

He told me there were two teams. The Uproaders lived up the road from the school and the Downroaders lived below it. Grandpa was an Uproader along with his brother Ford, his cousin Walter MacLean, Harold Patton, Deighton Aitken, brothers David and Robert Grey, and Michael Sumarah. The Downroaders donned Toronto Maple Leafs jerseys, while the Uproaders sported the jerseys of the Chicago Blackhawks. Michael Sumarah’s father, a Syrian immigrant who owned the dry goods store, had purchased the jerseys from the Hudson’s Bay catalogue—the same one from which Margaret would have selected her blanket.

Fellow Uproader Deighton Aitken was Grandpa’s closest chum and his right-winger. Deighton loved to say the word
Judas.
He’d scream against the frigid air: “Judas—pass me the puck, Ralphie!” Deighton always wanted the puck. He was always on the make for the next goal.

After the first period Mrs. Grey, Robert’s mother, would usually come out with hot chocolate for all the boys. Hot chocolate under the stars with the game underway made for some of the finest nights
in Grandpa MacLean’s memory. Although it was a warm breezy summer day, I could hear the blades carve into the ice and see the vapour rising from his mouth.

We lingered around the marshy rink for a while. Grandpa wanted to imagine being on the ice for one last skate as an Uproader, but we ran the risk of our shoes sinking in the mud. As we climbed back up the hill, Grandpa took a last look. He didn’t say anything, but I know he saw twelve kids wearing Leafs and Blackhawks jerseys, some leaning on their sticks, some skating. He heard an echo of
Judas
off the pine trees.

We pressed on down the winding road and came to the local coffee shop. It was a tired-looking, smoke-stained place with six tables and some old bar-room chairs. I felt like we had stepped into an ATCO trailer. But the people huddled inside were some of the warmest I had ever met. It was the kind of place where, as the door opened, everyone paused to see who was joining them. They smiled with anticipation.

Today, they looked us over and I could tell everyone had the same question in their minds: Who are his people? I was a write-off on that front—I was clearly a “come from away.” But they got forensic with Grandpa. Eyes were squinting, searching for a telltale family feature: Big ears? A particular nose?

I was looking through the room for a table to sit at and quickly get out of everyone’s line of sight when I noticed that Grandpa was scanning their faces too, on the hunt for familiarity. From a table near the back of the room just beside the men’s washroom came a holler. “MacLean!” It rang out with the excitement of a call of “Bingo!” Grandpa had been identified. Three old ladies at the table closest to us nodded in agreement. We had apparently been tagged and fit for release. We meandered our way to the back table and shook hands with one of Grandpa’s old acquaintances. He was a member of the Sumarah clan—a cousin, I think. The family still owned the general store, and the man told us they had dramatically increased their operations by moving into the business of smoking fish.

These folks were tough. They stubbornly clung to this island, daring time to try to change their way of life. They lived by the ageless rhythm of the sea. We shared a cup of coffee with them and took our leave.

Just as we rounded out the walk, we came upon the Notre-Dame de la Garde hospital, a four-storey solid brick building. It was a big rectangle with a cross on top and eight windows per side. It was well kept—newly painted and without a brick out of place. The hospital was the last stop for most people on the island.

“If the sea doesn’t get ’em, most folks around here will meet their Maker right here,” said Grandpa.

In a way, he had almost met his Maker here too.

The Magdalen Islands were founded by shipwrecked people. Close to its shores, there have been over one hundred wrecks. It is an island of castaways. Folks from the mainland washed up onto the beaches of the island, leaving their old lives beyond the Gulf of St. Lawrence behind. They had little choice but to make a go of it on that lifeboat of land. No one was coming to look for them. Time moved on, just as the families of those who washed up there.

Ralph’s father’s name was Stanley MacLean. He was a carpenter, which on the Magdalen Islands meant a shipbuilder. He was a mean, violent man who belittled those around him, especially his children.

Ralph remembers one day when he was eight, his father entered the living room and strutted up to the phonograph. He put on a two-step jig. He was in a foul mood. You could feel it.

“Dance, boy,” he commanded.

Ralph looked down; all he saw were two left feet. His mother had been too busy trying to put food on the table to take time to teach her second youngest son to dance. He just stood beside the couch with a bowed head.

“I can’t. I got two left feet, Pa,” he whispered.

Ralph was upset that he could not please his father. More than
anything, he was afraid of what would happen next. He was right to be afraid.

His father used his big boot to kick Ralph into the couch. His small frame hit the couch hard, bouncing him straight back onto the hardwood floor. Violence of this sort was unpredictable. Was it a brief flash of rage that would quickly retreat into its ugly old cave? That was rarely the case, but there was always hope.

“Quit crying, boy,” Stanley threatened.

Ralph knew more was to come if he didn’t stop. But he just couldn’t. He was eight and he was gasping. He lay on the wood floor, seeing two big boots right in front of his face, then one. The next kick propelled him to the doorway. When he landed, instinct took over. He tried to grasp the archway as he scrambled to gain his footing. That didn’t work. His father’s boot plowed into his lower back. He was licked. All he could do was close his eyes and curl up into a ball. It was his only hope. It took three more kicks for the storm to pass. The last kick sent him flailing right through the open patio door. Ralph lay in the mud of the backyard, bloodied and battered.

I have never seen my grandfather dance.

If Ralph’s father was the darkness in his life, his mother was the light. Susan MacLean was his saving grace. Grace comes in many forms, and God works in mysterious ways. Ralph knew this through his mother. He never called her Mother. It was always “Dearest Mother,” because that’s what she was. When he speaks of her at length, which he often does, his Maritime accent washes ashore and mother becomes “mutter.”

Susan had eight children to feed, clothe, and make right with her Lord: Irene, Ada, Arthur, Lillian, Mabel, Greta, Ralph, and Ford. Little Irene met her Lord after only two years of life. The remaining seven would read about Him every night as soon as the dinner dishes were done.

Ralph MacLean’s very first memory was of red Mandarin writing on a storefront window. He was in Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island. The red letters were followed by his second memory: being chased by an angry Chinese launderer armed with a hot iron.