was.
“It was in the war. There were people called snipers. They sat up in trees. Or high up in church steeples. Or in the upperwindows of houses. And they shot people who were just going about their business.”
“But they couldn’t kill Pa,” I said.
“That they couldn’t,” she said.
“And did Pa get the guy?”
“I’m afraid not,” she said.
1
A stranger driving the Long Stretch wouldn’t see much. Dense dumb trees jostling in spaces that were once fields. A sodden marsh. Cords of pulpwood stacked, awaiting a trucker’s whim. A few unwelcoming houses.
The sun in winter struggles just above the woods, weakly tinting the grey with a rosy glow and, sometimes, in the evenings, igniting small fires of light in frozen puddles. Summer shines, but only briefly. The Long Stretch is mostly a winter memory.
Belonging to the place you see more.
My father, Jack, and Angus grew up here, closer than brothers. Jack would never say something like “closer than brothers.” He’d say t’ihck as t’ieves. “We were ahll t’ihck as t’ieves around there.” He’d say it with a little smile. Exaggerating his accent. Because of speaking Gaelic when he was young. Talking Gaelic left them handicapped, Jack used to say. Every time you opened your mouth. Mouht.
They lasted in Newfoundland about a year after their first flight from home, on the coal boat. Hellish work, Jack said. A bunch of Newfoundlanders digging a hardrock mine with their bare hands practically. Working for nothing, or next to nothing. Soaked and cold all the time. Wet rag over your face to keep the dust out. Working for hope—that this would turninto something. And it did, later, “after the three stooges left,” Jack said. Turned into a real mine.
They left for Quebec in ‘38. First to Senneterre, then to Bourlamaque, which was great. Close to Val-d’Or. Good times then. Bought an old rattletrap of a car in Amos. Then the war started and they went home to celebrate for a while. Then drove to Sydney to join up. The Cape Breton Highlanders took two of them. Turned Jack down. “Bad wind,” he said, tapping his chest with his big middle finger. “Something they didn’t like in there.”
Romantic fever.
So my father and Angus went to war, and Jack went back to Newfoundland. It was the same as service, they told him. Mining fluorospar in St. Lawrence. Strategic material, for making aluminum. And he joined the militia. Got some kind of uniform at least. But he wasn’t a soldier, he was a miner.
The old man called Jack a zombie once. Drinking at the kitchen table long ago. During the causeway construction, when everybody was around. I barely remember it but I have this image of Jack going over the table after him. Pa, scrambling back, laughing. Grandpa caught Jack halfway and held him. I remember the sound of the table cracking.
The old man could get away with a lot since he was a vet. Wounded in action. People wondering, of course: What kind of action?
Jack worked in St. Lawrence right through the war, his destiny taking root.
Coming back from the war, my father didn’t even have the accent. Talked like from away, at least in my memory. Except when he said “hard.” The r would stick in your ear. Lost everything else, it seems.
A car drives by the end of the lane. I instinctively look to the place on the wall where light would reflect when my father would be coming home. There is nothing.
Then the phone rings, like an alarm. We both jump.
“Hello.”
“Hello. Which one of you is this?”
I put my hand over the receiver. “It’s your mother,” I whisper.
No reaction.
To the phone I say: “It’s John. Is this you, Jessie?”
“Let me speak to the other fellow,” she says.
I hear him say “Hello, Mom” like he does it every day. Not like somebody who’s had hardly any contact in thirteen years.
Then a long silence, letting her talk.
There was a huge celebration the day they opened the World’s Deepest Causeway,
“It was in the war. There were people called snipers. They sat up in trees. Or high up in church steeples. Or in the upperwindows of houses. And they shot people who were just going about their business.”
“But they couldn’t kill Pa,” I said.
“That they couldn’t,” she said.
“And did Pa get the guy?”
“I’m afraid not,” she said.
1
A stranger driving the Long Stretch wouldn’t see much. Dense dumb trees jostling in spaces that were once fields. A sodden marsh. Cords of pulpwood stacked, awaiting a trucker’s whim. A few unwelcoming houses.
The sun in winter struggles just above the woods, weakly tinting the grey with a rosy glow and, sometimes, in the evenings, igniting small fires of light in frozen puddles. Summer shines, but only briefly. The Long Stretch is mostly a winter memory.
Belonging to the place you see more.
My father, Jack, and Angus grew up here, closer than brothers. Jack would never say something like “closer than brothers.” He’d say t’ihck as t’ieves. “We were ahll t’ihck as t’ieves around there.” He’d say it with a little smile. Exaggerating his accent. Because of speaking Gaelic when he was young. Talking Gaelic left them handicapped, Jack used to say. Every time you opened your mouth. Mouht.
They lasted in Newfoundland about a year after their first flight from home, on the coal boat. Hellish work, Jack said. A bunch of Newfoundlanders digging a hardrock mine with their bare hands practically. Working for nothing, or next to nothing. Soaked and cold all the time. Wet rag over your face to keep the dust out. Working for hope—that this would turninto something. And it did, later, “after the three stooges left,” Jack said. Turned into a real mine.
They left for Quebec in ‘38. First to Senneterre, then to Bourlamaque, which was great. Close to Val-d’Or. Good times then. Bought an old rattletrap of a car in Amos. Then the war started and they went home to celebrate for a while. Then drove to Sydney to join up. The Cape Breton Highlanders took two of them. Turned Jack down. “Bad wind,” he said, tapping his chest with his big middle finger. “Something they didn’t like in there.”
Romantic fever.
So my father and Angus went to war, and Jack went back to Newfoundland. It was the same as service, they told him. Mining fluorospar in St. Lawrence. Strategic material, for making aluminum. And he joined the militia. Got some kind of uniform at least. But he wasn’t a soldier, he was a miner.
The old man called Jack a zombie once. Drinking at the kitchen table long ago. During the causeway construction, when everybody was around. I barely remember it but I have this image of Jack going over the table after him. Pa, scrambling back, laughing. Grandpa caught Jack halfway and held him. I remember the sound of the table cracking.
The old man could get away with a lot since he was a vet. Wounded in action. People wondering, of course: What kind of action?
Jack worked in St. Lawrence right through the war, his destiny taking root.
Coming back from the war, my father didn’t even have the accent. Talked like from away, at least in my memory. Except when he said “hard.” The r would stick in your ear. Lost everything else, it seems.
A car drives by the end of the lane. I instinctively look to the place on the wall where light would reflect when my father would be coming home. There is nothing.
Then the phone rings, like an alarm. We both jump.
“Hello.”
“Hello. Which one of you is this?”
I put my hand over the receiver. “It’s your mother,” I whisper.
No reaction.
To the phone I say: “It’s John. Is this you, Jessie?”
“Let me speak to the other fellow,” she says.
I hear him say “Hello, Mom” like he does it every day. Not like somebody who’s had hardly any contact in thirteen years.
Then a long silence, letting her talk.
There was a huge celebration the day they opened the World’s Deepest Causeway,
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