there in the kitchen. Christie, shaking all over.
Morag cries.
Memorybank Movie: Christie with Spirits
Morag is nine, and it is winter. The snow is a good four feet thick outside and you have to walk to school on the road, where the snowplough has been. The windows are covered with frost-feathers and frost-ferns, and it doesn’t matter thatyou can’t see out because the patterns are so good to look at. In the kitchen, the stove keeps them warm, although Christie has a job scrounging enough wood. Lots of people on Relief are going to the Nuisance Grounds looking for old wooden boxes, not being able to afford cordwood, but Christie has first pick. Christie is not on Relief. Relief means you have no job on account of the Depression, and the government feeds you slop. Ugh. The Depression means there aren’t any jobs, or hardly any, or like that.
Christie is drinking red biddy he got from somebody across the tracks, and he is explaining about the wood and other things to Morag. Prin is cross about the red biddy, so she has turned her chair away from him.
“I leave some, do you see, then, Morag,” Christie says. “It’s only right. Garbage belongs to all. Communal property, as you might say. One man’s muck is everyman’s muck. The socialism of the junk heap. All the same, though, with every profession do you see, there must be some advantages, some little thing or other that you get which others don’t. And this here is mine. The Nuisance Grounds keeps us warm. Out of the garbage dump and into the fire. Och aye, that was the grand load of boxes I brought back today. Old butter crates from the Creamery.”
He swallows some more red biddy, coughs, then gets into the subject he always talks about when the spirits are in him.
“Let the Connors and the McVities and the Camerons and Simon Pearl and all them in their houses up there–let them look down on the likes of Christie Logan. Let them. I say unto you, Morag, girl, I open my shirt to the cold winds of their voices, yea, and to the ice of their everlasting eyes. They don’t touch me, Morag. For my kin and clan are as good as theirs any day of the week, any week of the month, anymonth of the year, any year of the century, and any century of all time.”
Gulp. Swallow. The spirits are really in him. His eyes are shining. His right hand comes up, clenched. He is pretending he is holding a claymore. Morag knows, because once afterwards he said so, laughing. But you aren’t supposed to laugh now.
“Was I not born a Highlander, in Easter Ross, one of the North Logans? An ancient clan, an ancient people. Is our motto not a fine, proud set of words, then? This Is the Valour of My Ancestors. The motto of the Logans, Morag, and our war cry is The Ridge of Tears . The ridge of tears! Druim-nan deur , although I’m not so sure how to pronounce it, not having the Gaelic. A sad cry, it is, for the sadness of my people. A cry heard at Culloden, in the black days of the battle, when the clans stood together for the last time, and the clans were broken by the Sassenach cannons and the damned bloody rifles of the redcoat swine. They mowed the clans down in cold blood, my dear, and it must have been enough to tear the heart and unhinge the mind of the strongest coldest man alive, for our folk were poor bloody crofters, and were not wanting to fight the wars of the chieftains, at all. But they thought their chieftains had the power from heaven, Morag. They believed their chiefs were kings from God. And them who didn’t believe was raised anyway, with fire and with sword, until they went off to fight Charlie’s battle for him, and him a green boy from France who neither knew nor cared for his people but only for the crown gleaming there in the eye of his own mind.”
Christie stumbles to the sideboard and opens a drawer. He brings out the book, The Clans and Tartans of Scotland , and looks up Logan.
“See there,” he bellows. “The crest badge of the Logans. And what
Morag cries.
Memorybank Movie: Christie with Spirits
Morag is nine, and it is winter. The snow is a good four feet thick outside and you have to walk to school on the road, where the snowplough has been. The windows are covered with frost-feathers and frost-ferns, and it doesn’t matter thatyou can’t see out because the patterns are so good to look at. In the kitchen, the stove keeps them warm, although Christie has a job scrounging enough wood. Lots of people on Relief are going to the Nuisance Grounds looking for old wooden boxes, not being able to afford cordwood, but Christie has first pick. Christie is not on Relief. Relief means you have no job on account of the Depression, and the government feeds you slop. Ugh. The Depression means there aren’t any jobs, or hardly any, or like that.
Christie is drinking red biddy he got from somebody across the tracks, and he is explaining about the wood and other things to Morag. Prin is cross about the red biddy, so she has turned her chair away from him.
“I leave some, do you see, then, Morag,” Christie says. “It’s only right. Garbage belongs to all. Communal property, as you might say. One man’s muck is everyman’s muck. The socialism of the junk heap. All the same, though, with every profession do you see, there must be some advantages, some little thing or other that you get which others don’t. And this here is mine. The Nuisance Grounds keeps us warm. Out of the garbage dump and into the fire. Och aye, that was the grand load of boxes I brought back today. Old butter crates from the Creamery.”
He swallows some more red biddy, coughs, then gets into the subject he always talks about when the spirits are in him.
“Let the Connors and the McVities and the Camerons and Simon Pearl and all them in their houses up there–let them look down on the likes of Christie Logan. Let them. I say unto you, Morag, girl, I open my shirt to the cold winds of their voices, yea, and to the ice of their everlasting eyes. They don’t touch me, Morag. For my kin and clan are as good as theirs any day of the week, any week of the month, anymonth of the year, any year of the century, and any century of all time.”
Gulp. Swallow. The spirits are really in him. His eyes are shining. His right hand comes up, clenched. He is pretending he is holding a claymore. Morag knows, because once afterwards he said so, laughing. But you aren’t supposed to laugh now.
“Was I not born a Highlander, in Easter Ross, one of the North Logans? An ancient clan, an ancient people. Is our motto not a fine, proud set of words, then? This Is the Valour of My Ancestors. The motto of the Logans, Morag, and our war cry is The Ridge of Tears . The ridge of tears! Druim-nan deur , although I’m not so sure how to pronounce it, not having the Gaelic. A sad cry, it is, for the sadness of my people. A cry heard at Culloden, in the black days of the battle, when the clans stood together for the last time, and the clans were broken by the Sassenach cannons and the damned bloody rifles of the redcoat swine. They mowed the clans down in cold blood, my dear, and it must have been enough to tear the heart and unhinge the mind of the strongest coldest man alive, for our folk were poor bloody crofters, and were not wanting to fight the wars of the chieftains, at all. But they thought their chieftains had the power from heaven, Morag. They believed their chiefs were kings from God. And them who didn’t believe was raised anyway, with fire and with sword, until they went off to fight Charlie’s battle for him, and him a green boy from France who neither knew nor cared for his people but only for the crown gleaming there in the eye of his own mind.”
Christie stumbles to the sideboard and opens a drawer. He brings out the book, The Clans and Tartans of Scotland , and looks up Logan.
“See there,” he bellows. “The crest badge of the Logans. And what
Similar Books
