The Stars Shine Down (3 page)

No one had thought to pack a lunch for Lara.

“Where is your lunch, Lara?” Miss Terkel asked.

“I’m not hungry,” Lara said stubbornly. “I had a big breakfast.”

Most of the girls at school were nicely dressed in clean skirts and blouses. Lara had outgrown her few faded plaid dresses and threadbare blouses. She had gone to her father.

“I need some clothes for school,” Lara said.

“Dae ye now? Weel, I’m nae made of money. Get yourself something frae the Salvation Army Citadel.”

“That’s charity, Papa.”

And her father had slapped her hard across the face.

The children at school were familiar with games Lara had never even heard of. The girls had dolls and toys, and some of them were willing to share them with Lara, but she was painfully aware that nothing belonged to her. And there was something more. Over the next few years Lara got a glimpse of a different world, a world where children had mothers and fathers who gave them presents and birthday parties and loved them and held them and kissed them. And for the first time
Lara began to realize how much was missing in her life. It only made her feel lonelier.

The boardinghouse was a different kind of school. It was an international microcosm. Lara learned to tell where the boarders came from by their names. Mac was from Scotland…Hodder and Pyke were from Newfoundland…Chiasson and Aucoin were from France…Dudash and Kosick from Poland. The boarders were lumbermen, fishermen, miners, and tradesmen. They would gather in the large dining room in the morning for breakfast and in the evening for supper, and their talk was fascinating to Lara. Each group seemed to have its own mysterious language.

There were thousands of lumbermen in Nova Scotia, scattered around the peninsula. The lumbermen at the boardinghouse smelled of sawdust and burnt bark, and they spoke of arcane things like chippers and edging and trim.

“We should get out almost two hundred million board feet this year,” one of them announced at supper.

“How can feet be bored?” Lara asked.

There was a roar of laughter. “Child, board foot is a piece of lumber a foot square by an inch thick. When you grow up and get married, if you want to build a five-room, all-wood house, it will take twelve thousand board feet.”

“I’m not going to get married,” Lara swore.

The fishermen were another breed. They returned to the boardinghouse stinking of the sea, and they talked about the new experiment of growing oysters on the Bras d’Or Lake and bragged to one another of their catches of cod and herring and mackerel and haddock.

But the boarders who fascinated Lara the most were the miners. There were thirty-five hundred miners in Cape Breton, working the collieries at Lingan and Prince and Phalen.
Lara loved the names of the mines. There was the Jubilee and the Last Chance and the Black Diamond and the Lucky Lady.

She was fascinated by their discussion of the day’s work.

“What’s this I hear about Mike?”

“It’s true. The poor bastard was traveling inbye in a man-rake, and a box jumped the track and crushed his leg. The son of a bitch of a foreman said it was Mike’s fault for not gettin’ out of the way fast enough, and he’s having his lamp stopped.”

Lara was baffled. “What does that mean?”

One of the miners explained. “It means Mike was on his way to work—going inbye—in a man-rake—that’s a car that takes you down to your working level. A box—that’s a coal train—jumped the track and hit him.”

“And stopped his lamp?” Lara asked.

The miner laughed. “When you’ve had your lamp stopped, it means you’ve been suspended.”

When Lara was fifteen, she entered St. Michael’s High School. She was gangly and awkward, with long legs, stringy black hair, and intelligent gray eyes still too large for her pale, thin face. No one quite knew how she was going to turn out. She was on the verge of womanhood, and her looks were in a stage of metamorphosis. She could have become ugly or beautiful.

To James Cameron, his daughter was ugly. “Ye hae best marry the first mon fool enough to ask ye,” he told her. “Ye’ll nae hae the looks to make a guid bargain.”

Lara stood there, saying nothing.

“And tell the poor mon nae to expect a dowry frae me.”

Mungo McSween had walked into the room. He stood there listening, furious.

“That’s all, girl,” James Cameron said. “Gae back to the kitchen.”

Lara fled.

“Why dae ye dae that to your daughter?” McSween demanded.

James Cameron looked up, his eyes bleary. “Nane of your business.”

“You’re drunk.”

“Aye. And what else is there? If it isn’t women, it’s the whiskey, isn’t it?”

McSween went into the kitchen, where Lara was washing dishes at the sink. Her eyes were hot with tears. McSween put his arms around her. “Niver ye mind, lassie,” he said. “He dinna mean it.”

“He hates me.”

“Nae, he doesna.”

“He’s never given me one kind word. Never once. Never!”

There was nothing McSween could say.

In the summer the tourists would arrive at Glace Bay. They came in their expensive cars, wearing beautiful clothes and shopped along Castle Street and dined at the Cedar House and at Jasper’s, and they visited Ingonish Beach and Cape Smoky and the Bird Islands. They were superior beings from another world, and Lara envied them and longed to escape with them when they left at the end of summer. But how?

Lara had heard stories about Grandfather Maxwell.

“The auld bastard tried to keep me frae marryin’ his precious daughter,” James Cameron would complain to any of the boarders who would listen. “He was filthy rich, but do ye think he wad gie me aught? Nae. But I took guid care of his Peggy anyway…”

And Lara would fantasize that one day her grandfather would come to take her away to glamorous cities she had read about: London and Rome and Paris.
And I’ll have beautiful clothes to wear. Hundreds of dresses and new shoes.

But as the months and the years went by, and there was no word, Lara finally came to realize that she would never see her grandfather. She was doomed to spend the rest of her life in Glace Bay.

T
here were myriad activities for a teenager growing up in Glace Bay: There were football games and hockey games, skating rinks and bowling, and in the summer, swimming and fishing. Carl’s Drug Store was the popular after-school hangout. There were two movie theaters, and for dancing, the Venetian Gardens.

Lara had no chance to enjoy any of those things. She rose at five every morning to help Bertha prepare breakfast for the boarders and make up the beds before she left for school. In the afternoon she would hurry home to begin preparing supper. She helped Bertha serve, and after supper Lara cleared the table and washed and dried the dishes.

The boardinghouse served some favorite Scottish dishes:
howtowdie
and
hairst bree, cabbieclaw
and
skirlie.
Black Bun was a favorite, a spicy mixture encased in a short paste jacket made from half a pound of flour.

The conversation of the Scotsmen at supper made the Highlands of Scotland come alive for Lara. Her ancestors had come from the Highlands, and the stories about them gave Lara the only sense of belonging that she had. The boarders talked of the Great Glen containing Loch Ness, Lochy, and Linnhe and of the rugged islands off the coast.

There was a battered piano in the sitting room, and some-times at night, after supper, half a dozen boarders would gather around and sing the songs of home: “Annie Laurie,” and “Comin’ Through the Rye,” and “The Hills of Home,” and “The Bonnie Banks O’Loch Lomond.”

Once a year there was a parade in town, and all the Scotsmen in Glace Bay would proudly put on their kilts or tartans and march through the streets to the raucous accompaniment of bagpipes.

“Why do the men wear skirts?” Lara asked Mungo McSween.

He frowned. “It’s
nae
a skirt, lass. It’s a kilt. Our ancestors invented it long ago. In the Highlands a plaid covered a mon’s body agin the bitter cold but kept his legs free sae he could race across the heather and peat and escape his enemies. And at night, if he was in the open, the great length of the cloth was both bed and tent for him.”

The names of the Scottish places were poetry to Lara. There was Breadalbane Glenfinnan, and Kilbride, Kilninver, and Kilmichael. Lara learned that “kil” referred to a monk’s cell of medieval times. If a name began with “inver” or “aber,” it meant the village was at the mouth of a stream. If it began with “strath,” it was in a valley. “Bad” meant the village was in a grove.

There were fierce arguments every night at the supper table. The Scotsmen argued about everything. Their ancestors had
belonged to proud clans, and they were still fiercely protective of their history.

“The House of Bruce produced cowards. They lay down for the English like groveling dogs.”

“You dinna ken wha’ you’re talking aboot, as usual, Ian. ‘Twas the great Bruce himself who stood up to the English. ‘Twas the House of Stuart that groveled.”

“Och, you’re a fool, and your clan comes from a long line of fools.”

The argument would grow more heated.

“You ken wha’ Scotland needed? Mair leaders like Robert the Second. Now, there was a great mon. He sired twenty-one bairns?”

“Aye, and half of them were bastards!”

And another argument would start.

Lara could not believe that they were fighting over events that had happened more than six hundred years earlier.

Mungo McSween said to Lara, “Dinna let it bother ye, lassie. A Scotsman wi’ start a fight in an empty house.”

It was a poem by Sir Walter Scott that set Lara’s imagination on fire:

Oh, young Lochinvar is come out of the west:

Through all the wide Border his steed was the best;

And save his good broadsword he weapon had none;

He rode all unarmed and he rode all alone.

So faith in love, and so dauntless in war,

There never was knight like the young Lochinvar.

And the glorious poem went on to tell how Lochinvar risked his life to rescue his beloved, who was being forced to marry another man.

So daring in love, and so dauntless in war, Have ye e’er heard of gallant like young Lochinvar?

Someday,
Lara thought,
a handsome Lochinvar will come and rescue me.

One day Lara was working in the kitchen when she came across an advertisement in a magazine, and her breath caught in her throat. It showed a tall, handsome man, blond, elegantly dressed in tails and white tie. He had blue eyes and a warm smile, and he looked every inch a prince.
That’s what my Lochinvar will look like,
Lara thought.
He’s out there somewhere, looking for me. He’ll come and rescue me from here. I’ll be at the sink washing dishes, and he’ll come up behind me, put his arms around me, and whisper, “Can I help you?” And I’ll turn and look into his eyes. And I’ll say, “Do you dry dishes?”

Bertha’s voice said, “Do I
what
?”

Lara whirled around. Bertha was standing behind her. Lara had not realized she had spoken aloud.

“Nothing.” Lara blushed.

To Lara, the most fascinating dinner conversations revolved around the stories of the notorious Highland clearances. She had heard them told over and over but could never get enough of it.

“Tell me again,” she would ask. And Mungo McSween was eager to oblige…

“Weel, it began in the year 1792, and it went on for more than sixty years. At first they called it
Bliadhna nan Co-arach
—The Year of the Sheep. The landowners in the Highlands had decided that their land would be more profitable with sheep than with tenant farmers, so they brought flocks of sheep into the Highlands and found that
they could survive the cold winters. That was when the clearances began.

“The cry became
Mo thruaighe ort a thir, tha’n caoraich mhor a’ teachd
! ‘Woe to thee, oh, land, the great sheep is coming.’ First there were a hundred sheep, then a thousand, then ten thousand. It was a bloody invasion.

“The lairds saw riches beyond their dreams, but they maun first get rid of the tenants, who worked their wee patches of land. They had little enough to begin with, God knows. They lived in sma stone houses with nae chimneys and nae windows. But the lairds forced them out.”

The young girl was wide-eyed. “How?”

“The government regiments were ordered to attack the villages and evict the tenants. The soldiers wad come to a little village and gie the tenants six hours to remove their cattle and furniture and get out. They maun leave their crops behind. Then the soldiers burned their huts to the ground. More than a quarter of a million men, women, and children were forced frae their holdings and driven to the shores of the sea.”

“But how could they drive them from their own land?”

“Ah, they niver owned the land, you see. They had the use of an acre or two frae a laird, but it was niver theirs. They paid a fee in goods or labor in order to till the land and grow some tatties and raise a few cattle.”

“What happened if the people wouldn’t move?” Lara asked breathlessly.

“The old folk that didn’t get out in time were burned in their huts. The government was ruthless. Och, it was a terrible time. The people had naething to eat. Cholera struck, and diseases spread like wildfire.”

“How awful,” Lara said.

“Aye, lassie. Our people lived on tatties and bread and porridge, when they could git it. But there’s one thing the
government could nae take away frae the Highlanders—their pride. They fought back as best they could. For days after the burning was o’er, the homeless people remained in the glen, trying to salvage what they could frae the ruins. They put canvas over their heids for protection agin the night rain. My great-great-grandfather and my great-great-grandmother were there and suffered through it all. It’s part of our history, and it’s been burned into our very souls.”

Lara could visualize the thousands of desperate, forlorn people robbed of everything they possessed, stunned by what had happened to them. She could hear the crying of the mourners and the screams of the terrified children.

“What finally happened to the people?” Lara asked.

“They left for other lands on ships that were deathtraps. The crowded passengers died of fever or frae dysentery. Sometimes the ship would hit storms that delayed them for weeks, sae they ran out of food. Only the strong were still alive when the ships landed in Canada. But once they landed here, they were able to hae somethin’ they niver had before.”

“Their own land,” Lara said.

“That’s right, lass.”

Someday,
Lara thought fiercely,
I will have my own land, and no one—no one—will ever take it away from me.

On an evening in early July, James Cameron was in bed with one of the whores at Kirstie’s bawdy house when he suffered a heart attack. He was quite drunk, and when he suddenly toppled over, his playmate assumed he had simply fallen asleep.

“Oh, no, you don’t! I have other customers waitin’ for me. Wake up, James! Wake up!”

He was gasping for breath and clutching his chest.

“For Gude’s sake,” he moaned, “git me a doctor.”

An ambulance took him to the little hospital on Quarry
Street. Dr. Duncan sent for Lara. She walked into the hospital, her heart pounding. Duncan was waiting for her.

“What happened?” Lara asked urgently. “Is my father dead?”

“No, Lara, but I’m afraid he’s had a heart attack.”

She stood there, frozen. “Is he…is he going to live?”

“I don’t know. We’re doing everything we can for him.”

“Can I see him?”

“It would be better if you came back in the morning, lass.”

She walked home, numb with fear.
Please don’t let him die, God. He’s all I have.

When Lara reached the boardinghouse, Bertha was waiting for her. “What happened?”

Lara told her.

“Oh, God!” Bertha said. “And today is Friday.”

“What?”

“Friday. The day the rents have to be collected. If I know Sean MacAllister, he’ll use this as an excuse to throw us all out into the streets.”

At least a dozen times in the past when James Cameron had been too drunk to handle it himself, he had sent Lara around to collect the rents from the other boardinghouses that Sean MacAllister owned. Lara had given the money to her father, and the next day he had taken it to the banker.

“What are we going to do?” Bertha moaned.

And suddenly Lara knew what had to be done.

“Don’t worry,” she said. “I’ll take care of it.”

In the middle of supper that evening Lara said, “Gentlemen, would you listen to me, please?” The conversations stopped. They were all watching her. “My father has had a…a little dizzy spell. He’s in the hospital. They want to keep him under observation for a bit. So, until he comes back, I’ll be collecting the rents. After supper I’ll wait for you in the parlor.”

“Is he going to be all right?” one of the boarders asked.

“Oh, yes,” Lara said with a forced smile. “It’s nothing serious.”

After supper the men came into the parlor and handed Lara their week’s rent.

“I hope your father recovers soon, child…”

“If there’s anything I can do, let me know…”

“You’re a braw lassie to do this for your father…”

“What about the other boardinghouses?” Bertha asked Lara. “He has to collect from four more.”

“I know,” Lara said. “If you’ll take care of the dishes, I’ll go collect the rents.”

Bertha looked at her dubiously. “I wish you luck.”

It was easier than Lara had expected. Most of the boarders were sympathetic and happy to help out the young girl.

Early the following morning Lara took the rent envelopes and went to see Sean MacAllister. The banker was seated in his office when Lara walked in.

“My secretary said you wanted to see me.”

“Yes, sir.”

MacAllister studied the scrawny, unkempt girl standing before him. “You’re James Cameron’s daughter, aren’t you?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Sarah.”

“Lara.”

“Sorry to hear about your father,” MacAllister said. There was no sympathy in his voice. “I’ll have to make other arrangements, of course, now that your father’s too ill to carry out his job. I…”

“Oh, no, sir!” Lara said quickly. “He asked me to handle it for him.”

“You?”

“Yes, sir.”

“I’m afraid that won’t…”

Lara put the envelopes on his desk. “Here are this week’s rents.”

MacAllister looked at her, surprised. “All of them?”

She nodded.

“And you collected them?”

“Yes, sir. And I’ll do it every week until Papa gets better.”

“I see.” He opened the envelopes and carefully counted the money. Lara watched him enter the amount in a large green ledger.

For some time now MacAllister had intended to replace James Cameron because of his drunkenness and erratic performance, and now he saw his opportunity to get rid of the family.

He was sure that the young girl in front of him would not be able to carry out her father’s duties, but at the same time he realized what the town’s reaction would be if he threw James Cameron and his daughter out of the boardinghouse into the street. He made his decision.

“I’ll try you for one month,” he said. “At the end of that time we’ll see where we stand.”

“Thank you, Mr. MacAllister. Thank you very much.”

“Wait.” He handed Lara twenty-five dollars. “This is yours.”

Lara held the money in her hand, and it was like a taste of freedom. It was the first time she had ever been paid for what she had done.

From the bank, Lara went to the hospital. Dr. Duncan was just coming out of her father’s room. Lara felt a sudden sense of panic. “He isn’t…?”

“No…no…he’s going to be all right, Lara.” He hesitated. “When I say ‘all right,’ I mean he is not going to
die…not yet, at least…but he is going to have to stay in bed for a few weeks. He’ll need someone to take care of him.”

“I’ll take care of him,” Lara said.

He looked at her and said, softly, “Your father doesn’t know it, my dear, but he’s a very lucky man.”