ashamed in the least to admit it. His uncle looked at him, perplexed, and asked him with deep gravity to tell him all he knew.
“Well, his name is Eugene Gallant. He is Micmac and French, and he’s a damn straight guy, and he wants me to go fishing with him out in the bay. And he is kind and nice as anything, so you don’t have to be ashamed, I can go live with him. I will learn how to fish and live my life just like he does.”
Alex said this very quickly, and very hopefully. He shook somewhat when he spoke. For he was hoping he would have a life that was his own. And the old man nodded and said nothing. For days he said nothing. For days he said neither nay nor yea about this revelation. And Alex carried on.
And then, on Alex’s birthday, Jim simply came into the room with documents he had collected and handed them to the boy, stiffly as if he were a postman, without a word, except there may have been some unintended mirth in him. Without saying a word, though, he turned and left the room. And Alex’s life was opened up to him.
His mother had been a child when she got pregnant. His father was named Roach. He was from a family on the road. His grandfather Leopold was buried at the small Protestant graveyard near Hackerook. Leopold had been killed by a Chapman grader on a turn along the highway one late evening in February 1954. He was protesting the plowing job Chapman had been given (up until this time the road had been closed all winter).
“The man had come out to stop us, and we weren’t able to stop. His family never forgave me for this, but his family were squatters on my land, on my property, and I could have put them off but didn’t—more fool I. I left them their little farmhouse.”
Though his family had long resented the Chapmans, and young Roach was fed on this resentment as much as any, he was taken in by Muriel, a war bride, and shown books and taught painting.
“He used her kind nature to gain audience with your mother,” the old man wrote. “It was your mother he wanted.”
Here, on those bleak winter days, Roach came as a respite from his little fallen farmyard. But he resented what they had and what his family lacked, and secretly blamed Chapman for it, and for the death of his own father.
Many times the old man would come in and see the young Roach boy there, pitiful and alone, his feet freezing from walking through a winter gale, and give him some money. Their niece Rosa, about fourteen years old, was living with them at the time.
“But I thought nothing of this then,” Chapman said, “more fool I.”
As time went on, it seemed only Muriel was alive to Roach’s ambition, and encouraged him; he wanted to have a grand life, to escape the bitter hardship. He would spend late afternoons and evenings reading what she gave him, but dissatisfied with her and resentful of Chapman he would always mention what his father could have had if he had been treated better and not been killed at thirty-eight.
One day Roach left to work a mine in Quebec for the summer.
“Better off without him,” Chapman told Muriel, who had been foolish enough to look upon him as a son. But Roach found nothing in those mines, and nothing in the subterranean jazz bars of Montreal where he and others tried to talk like the beatniks of New York. He was gone, and forgotten, and might have never returned, except the bar he worked at went out of business in 1959.
“You are here because Roach failed at bartending,” Old Chapman cruelly wrote.
So in the dazzling heat of mid-July 1959 he returned, tall, thin, with bony arms and a serious gaze, a beard modeled after those who he could never be. He walked back up the Chapman lane, asking Chapman for a job.
“So we put him lifting scrap metal with old Harold Tucker,” Chapman wrote. “He stayed with us, in the room that is now yours. Muriel looked upon him as the son she never had.”
But it was as a conjugal to Rosa, not the woebegone son of a kind, naive British
“Well, his name is Eugene Gallant. He is Micmac and French, and he’s a damn straight guy, and he wants me to go fishing with him out in the bay. And he is kind and nice as anything, so you don’t have to be ashamed, I can go live with him. I will learn how to fish and live my life just like he does.”
Alex said this very quickly, and very hopefully. He shook somewhat when he spoke. For he was hoping he would have a life that was his own. And the old man nodded and said nothing. For days he said nothing. For days he said neither nay nor yea about this revelation. And Alex carried on.
And then, on Alex’s birthday, Jim simply came into the room with documents he had collected and handed them to the boy, stiffly as if he were a postman, without a word, except there may have been some unintended mirth in him. Without saying a word, though, he turned and left the room. And Alex’s life was opened up to him.
His mother had been a child when she got pregnant. His father was named Roach. He was from a family on the road. His grandfather Leopold was buried at the small Protestant graveyard near Hackerook. Leopold had been killed by a Chapman grader on a turn along the highway one late evening in February 1954. He was protesting the plowing job Chapman had been given (up until this time the road had been closed all winter).
“The man had come out to stop us, and we weren’t able to stop. His family never forgave me for this, but his family were squatters on my land, on my property, and I could have put them off but didn’t—more fool I. I left them their little farmhouse.”
Though his family had long resented the Chapmans, and young Roach was fed on this resentment as much as any, he was taken in by Muriel, a war bride, and shown books and taught painting.
“He used her kind nature to gain audience with your mother,” the old man wrote. “It was your mother he wanted.”
Here, on those bleak winter days, Roach came as a respite from his little fallen farmyard. But he resented what they had and what his family lacked, and secretly blamed Chapman for it, and for the death of his own father.
Many times the old man would come in and see the young Roach boy there, pitiful and alone, his feet freezing from walking through a winter gale, and give him some money. Their niece Rosa, about fourteen years old, was living with them at the time.
“But I thought nothing of this then,” Chapman said, “more fool I.”
As time went on, it seemed only Muriel was alive to Roach’s ambition, and encouraged him; he wanted to have a grand life, to escape the bitter hardship. He would spend late afternoons and evenings reading what she gave him, but dissatisfied with her and resentful of Chapman he would always mention what his father could have had if he had been treated better and not been killed at thirty-eight.
One day Roach left to work a mine in Quebec for the summer.
“Better off without him,” Chapman told Muriel, who had been foolish enough to look upon him as a son. But Roach found nothing in those mines, and nothing in the subterranean jazz bars of Montreal where he and others tried to talk like the beatniks of New York. He was gone, and forgotten, and might have never returned, except the bar he worked at went out of business in 1959.
“You are here because Roach failed at bartending,” Old Chapman cruelly wrote.
So in the dazzling heat of mid-July 1959 he returned, tall, thin, with bony arms and a serious gaze, a beard modeled after those who he could never be. He walked back up the Chapman lane, asking Chapman for a job.
“So we put him lifting scrap metal with old Harold Tucker,” Chapman wrote. “He stayed with us, in the room that is now yours. Muriel looked upon him as the son she never had.”
But it was as a conjugal to Rosa, not the woebegone son of a kind, naive British
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