Cape Breton Road (10 page)

Claire dressed to kill this morning, heading out with Starr, she looked a knockout. Her clothing, her smile, the whole house seemed lighter. She and Starr were still just having fun
for a few days, getting away alone, getting off the island, anywhere to leave St. Aubin behind. Innis dug out a sketchpad from his backpack and drew her quickly in the light through the window curtain, rapid strokes, not so much her as an impression of her, whirling, caught in a dance. This morning, lying awake as he often did, he’d heard her, first up, bare feet on the floor, into the bathroom. First the tub running, hard, her hands swishing hot and cold water, back and forth. Then the taps turned off, the cold tap, the little screech of the hot one. Water dripped,
plink, plink
, loud in the steamy air. He heard the fall of her robe. He closed his eyes. She said
ouch
and the cold tap came on for a blast. Then she eased into the tub, her skin rumping against the porcelain as she settled, water cascading through her hands. Innis’s bare feet swung out from the bed and touched the floor like feathers. He knew each board between his door and the bathroom, which noisy, which quiet, and he glided over them and knelt in one motion, his eye barely touching the keyhole. He’d spied on his mother’s friends, long after he was old enough to let it go. Watching a woman unaware she was watched, hey. Such excitement, those fractions of flesh: all he’d needed was a blur of panties sliding down, skin suddenly pale beneath a line of tan, a few seconds of moist cleavage, hair. He could not stop imagining his own body against Claire’s on a cold night like last night, with its icy moon, the taste of her skin on his tongue, and there was a sweet center he could only agonize about. But he stood up and just listened to her swirl the water, scoop it over her body. Her skin would be hot when she rose up. He had thought she heard him standing there, she could have heard his heartbeats sure enough: she went quiet in the water for what seemed like
minutes and Innis, hearing Starr get out of bed, had backed away carefully into his room.

He fell into a nap, woke, heart pounding, the room darkened, depressing even after he realized where he was. He lay there sore, inert, a weight he hadn’t the will to lift. What was he doing here? He felt a bit crazy, like a part of his youth had been amputated, snatched away. He could never get on a plane to Boston or hitchhike there or even walk across the border. He might have left Watertown anyway, but that wasn’t the same thing as not being allowed back, ever, not the same at all. The walls suddenly oppressive, he pushed off the bed and looked at himself in the mirror of the tiny bathroom. His face was thinner, the bones showed more, his long chin stubbled red. That dark skin under his eyes hadn’t been there before but it made his green eyes look older. He cut a piece of lacing off his boot, gathered his long hair in both hands and drew it into a ponytail, tying it off. He grinned wearily at himself: a man to be reckoned with.

In the fog-dimmed afternoon he swerved across the road to the Captain’s house and put his eye to a crack in the garage door. Was that a streak of chrome? A car in there? Probably an old heap. He gave the door a kick and trudged off to the road where he’d have to stick his thumb out or face a long walk home.

I
NNIS EXPECTED A SPRING
with warm rains, Boston in April, but instead it had come in with snow, and a strong northeast storm
pushed drift ice back up the strait and into the lake beyond, and in the morning’s calm water, green as old metal from the shadow of the mountain, pan ice ebbed in white patches slowly toward the sea, steaming faintly in the sun. Spring, Starr said, it’s just an appendage of winter here, so don’t get your hopes up. For a spell the snow did give way to rain but cold rain, though the temperature rose enough to notice as Innis worked in Dan Rory’s woods in the mornings where he was beginning to see a path take shape through the broken trees and the tough brush underneath, windfalls crisscrossed like tossed sticks, snared in each other by branch stubs hard as steel. Finlay appeared one day, told him things were looking better and laid two sawbucks on him, Here, he said, a man your age needs something in his pocket. That’s not all I need, Innis said, and Finlay said, That’s as true for me as it is for you, if you can believe it, and then he was gone again into the trees. It embarrassed Innis now to recall his crazy fury in the winter pines: must’ve been the resin, a bad high. He stood back from the slash fires, his face hot in their raging crackle and snap, glad for the rest, the bright noise, wind swelling their red cores, turning them to ash that scattered and danced in the heated air. He was getting stronger, he could feel it in this wild heat, he was using his whole body now, could drive that crosscut saw through a hefty trunk without a break, lost, almost dazed in the rhythm, nothing in his head but motion. When he finished, his long arms were no longer limp and trembling, he wasn’t spitting on busted blisters, and he could swing the axe again and again deep into wood, widening the notch, the blade spitting chips hard and fast. He liked to watch the heap of slash slowly sink, the logs collapse, slip down until, icy grey and blackened, they smoldered in feathery ash.

This morning he moved closer to the embers, drying the sweat from his clothes. That first week his muscles had been so tender, even his legs, he groaned when he sat down to eat, and one afternoon Claire put her fork down and came around behind him and began kneading his shoulders, the back of his neck, working her fingers deep into the muscle, deeper, it seemed, it felt so good Innis flushed and shut his eyes and when he opened them Starr was squinting at him over a cup of coffee. That’s enough of that, Starr said, this isn’t a massage parlor, but Claire continued long enough to let him know she didn’t care for his remark, then she sat down and finished her supper. Claire had gone back to work, in Sydney, taking reservations for the airline. Starr had told her, Don’t worry about money, you’ve got a place to stay and I’ll take care of the rest, but she’d said no, she always paid her way, she preferred it, even with Russ her old boyfriend she’d put up her half and watched her savings evaporate in horse feed and stables and vet bills. Starr went with her to retrieve her car from Black Rock, Russ having calmed down enough to talk at the front door. But when he saw Starr behind her, things got tense until Claire talked Starr into backing off, both men flinging harsh words at each other, things, she said later, that men don’t forget.

That incident seemed to make Starr more possessive of her, and glad she was rarely alone in the house with Innis. His uncle could barely hide his annoyance when he came upon them talking in the parlor or the kitchen, as if she and Innis should not have anything to say to each other when he was not a part of it. But Innis thought it was a trip that he could spark jealousy in his uncle, that the man might view him as a threat just because he was alone in the same room with Claire. They
only chatted and joked anyway. Okay, she was a fox, what could Innis do about that? When Starr was upstairs, Innis purposely kept his voice low, just as Starr did when he didn’t want Innis to overhear. But he had overheard one night when he was squatting down in the attic checking his plants, afraid to breathe after they both came into the kitchen below him. You shouldn’t be alone here with him, Starr said, it’s not a good idea, and she said, Starr, explain what you mean by that, would you please? But Starr didn’t even try, he just mumbled into another subject and they were soon out the door. They were not home often in the evenings, she and his uncle. Once in a while they didn’t show up at all, crashing overnight somewhere in Sydney, Innis supposed, she had a girlfriend or two down there, more private than this house could be, free of his eyes and his ears which, he had to admit, were tuned, with Claire moving through the house, to an immeasurable tolerance. Starr had a cot in the back of his shop but Claire would never go for that, Innis was certain. Of course you never knew what women would go for, they were full of surprises, he’d spent enough time around them to know that.

When the fire was no more than lazy wisps of smoke, Innis walked to the priest’s. He warmed up the cottage, going room to room with a mug of coffee in his hands until the dampness was gone. Today he would draw some light in. After he ate, he cut in the trim in Father Lesperance’s bedroom, pleased with the ragged yellow glow along the borders. He lifted the crucifix off the wall, set it on the storm-washed lobster crate the priest had dragged up from the beach (proud of it—Innis, he’d said, look at this, a made-to-order table!), the grit of sand still in its slats. Innis rolled a stripe of paint from
ceiling to floor over the faded shape of the cross, then he covered the whole rectangle of the wall, moved on to the next until he was done. He soaked the roller in a pail and sat on the edge of the narrow bed, crinkling the plastic dropcloth he’d laid over it. It was early for a joint, he had to portion it out, but he lit the smaller of two roaches from his breast pocket. He watched smoke leak between his pressed lips, followed it up the window, then saw Father Lesperance pulling up out front. Innis grabbed his coat and whirled the air toward the kitchen, toward an open window, then ran to the curb to intercept the priest as he was pulling a flat package from the back seat.

“Ah, Innis, my man!”

“Father.”

“I’m just swinging by, Innis, on my way to Baddeck. I found this at a yard sale. We’ll make use of it, in the front room, shall we?” He ripped the brown paper away and held up a painting, several men in black cassocks gazing up at a heavenly sky, smaller figures below them in a woodsy scene, Indians, a campfire, a lake.

“Good colors in it,” Innis said. “Those angels in the clouds?”

“They are, Innis, if a little cute.” He looked toward the mountain ridge where sooty black clouds were riding, tattered by a northeast wind. “Nothing angelic up there. I’d say we’ve got a storm on the way, maybe rain this time.”

“I’m tired of snow, Father. I better get off home myself.”

“Been painting?” He pointed to the spatters on Innis’s denim shirt.

“I did the bedroom. It needs another coat.”

“Wonderful, let’s look.”

Before Innis could slow him down the priest charged into the cottage, pausing in the front room to sniff the air. “Odd smell, that paint.” But he didn’t even glance at Innis. “So much better, that room, isn’t it? Oh, that’s a nice yellow, that’s summer, Innis.”

“Seems a long way off, Father.”

“Don’t you worry. When it comes, it’s glorious. I’ll give you a lift home? Yes.”

They shut all the windows and went back to the car. The priest flipped his felt hat into the back seat. A light rain had begun and he hunched toward the windshield. “Not a Catholic family on this part of the island, that I know of.”

“You know Dan Rory and Finlay, I guess. MacRitchies?”

“I do. Good men.”

“You can drop me off anywhere, Father,” Innis said, wanting to clear his head before he got home.

“No, no. Just tell me where.”

Father Lesperance was no slouch at the wheel, he drove faster than he talked, the car rocking around curves on its bad shocks. They idled at Starr’s mailbox while the priest worked his wallet loose under the big coat. The rain was light but beginning to gust, smearing the windshield.

“No hurry to pay me,” Innis said. “When I’m done is fine.”

“Here’s an installment anyway. Is that your uncle down there?”

They both looked down the long sloping driveway where Starr had the hood of the Lada up. He had just crawled from underneath the engine and directed a wild kick at the front fender. Claire’s car was parked ahead of it at the back door.

“That commie car bums him out sometimes,” Innis said.

“Yes, I see. A man of passions. A lady’s man, I hear.”

“Who would you hear that from?”

“He doesn’t keep it a secret, does he?” The priest smiled and stuffed bills in Innis’s shirt pocket. “Here’s fifty.”

“Too much, Father.” Innis plucked it out but the priest just shook his big bald head.

“I don’t see how. A lot of work remains, my friend.”

As Innis walked down the driveway, scuffing crusted snow, he could hear Starr cursing steadily.

“I wouldn’t give you a nickel for that car,” Innis said, hating the sight of it anyway, its chalky blue paint, the dreary dents.

Starr extracted himself from under the hood, a smear of grease across his brow. “You got a nickel for any car? That job at the padre’s is short on money and long on time, b’y. What’s he got down there, a cottage or a cathedral?”

Innis yanked the bills from his pocket. “Here. Take it.”

“Not a lot, is it?”

“I’m not finished. Claire home?”

“She doesn’t feel good, came home early and called me. Got a fever. But I have to go to North Sydney, pick up a goddamn shipment of parts. If I can get this piece of shit to start.” He booted the bumper. “I could’ve been there and back by now. Communists put this thing together, did you know that? Cold country car, eh? Canada eats this car for breakfast. Help me rock the son of a bitch, I think the starter’s locked up.”

Innis rocked the car while Starr tried the ignition, but nothing came to life. He banged his head against the steering wheel.

“Sure it’s the starter?” Innis said, wishing he knew enough about engines to tell his uncle precisely what was wrong.

“Look, Innis, you steal cars, you don’t fix them. Remember? Just let me rest here a minute, let me think. Is that the damn phone again? They’re like kids—no TV, they don’t know what the fuck to do with themselves.”

“I don’t think it’s our ring. Sounded like four-ring-five.”

“Four-ring-arsehole, it’ll wake Claire up.” Starr stared at the back door. “I hope she’s all right. She was damned glad to come here and stay. Walked into my shop that day lugging her busted stereo. Can you fix this? Damn right, I said, I’d fix anything for you, if it takes glue or nails I’ll do it. God, she looked awful good. Women like her don’t come through the door of my broken-down shop very often, I can tell you. Then I saw her at the North Sydney Mall, she just stood out, and I think, what the hell, I said hello. We talked, good talk, fun. So I said, I’d like to take you out to dinner. If you like to dance, we’ll do that too. She laughed, she looked at me real hard. I’m in a relationship, she said. I said, I don’t think you’re in so deep you can’t have dinner with me. And I was right, I knew it, I knew there was something wrong there with her and that boyfriend. That’s the kind of thing you wouldn’t notice, Innis, you wouldn’t have scoped that out. Now she knows what I’m like, I know what she’s like.”