Ma came into the room then and he changed the subject.

"The old man never really forgave me. For Christmas '64," he is saying.

"Not true," I say.

"He comes home. I'm off to Bermuda," he says, not listening to me. "He never forgave me, did he? You and him home from...where was it? Quebec? No. Newfoundland. Tilt Cove. Home from the salt mines. The two of you home. Special."

"Copper," I say.

"Wha'?"

"Copper mine. Tilt Cove."

"Whatever. The first normal Christmas after Uncle Sandy. And me in Bermuda. Imagine what was going through the old man's head." Swallows a mouthful. Sighs long. "What a prick I was."

Was?

"Nobody ever missed Christmas. Not if you didn't have to. A war or something. But I missed Christmas." He grinds out the cigarette, exhaling thin smoke. "Went to Bermuda with a broad from Halifax. You never met her?"

No!

"Boss's daughter. Slick like you never saw. Out of the blue she says, 'Let's go south for Christmas.' 'South where?' I say. 'Bermuda,' she says. 'Daddy's got a place there.' She was kind of the first, how shall I put it...mature relationship." He winks at me. "She couldn't get enough of it. So...how could I say no? Ma wasn't too pleased. But I half expected the old fellow would understand. I mean, he'd seen a few Christmases from away. Himself and Uncle Sandy. The mines and the war and all."

"Didn't seem to bother Jack one way or the other," I say, looking him in the eye.

He holds me there. Then: "When you get right down to it, by Christmas '64 there wasn't all that much between him and me. Not really." He laughs. "There was no dramatic breakdown. Just something gradual, over the years."

He's dabbing the cigarette in the pile of butts in the ashtray.

"Back when I was feeling sorry for myself, I'd tell anybody who cared to listen that it was because he got physical. Punched me out once. But thinking about it, honestly. It was just once. And, fuck, I sure asked for it. So. It was something else."

Going back to Tilt Cove after Christmas, it was clear I had to find out how much Uncle Jack knew. About Angus. About what Pa's problem had been. About their whole history. Maybe understand November 22, '63. I kept watching for an opportunity to ask him about them overseas. To intercept the proper mood, get access to their common memory. All night crossing Cabot Strait. All next day on the train. Struggling back to Tilt Cove. Looking for a chance, as the slow miles of snow and mournful spruce and silent rock crept by. But Jack was pretty sick all the way back. Wouldn't talk.

Ignorance cultivates nightmares.

Grandpa used to talk about the cailleach oidhche, the old woman of the night. She'll creep into your dreams, he'd say. Climb on top of you and try to crush the breath out of your lungs. Never let you see her face. Only way to get rid of her is call for the help of the Lord. Scream Iosa Chriosd for all you're worth. That'll get rid of her, he'd say. Faith.

"The cailleach oidhche?" Effie just laughed the first time I mentioned her. The cailleach oidhche is an owl," she said. "Grandpa was just pulling your leg."

But I know it's real.

Back in the bunkhouse, sometimes I'd wake up in the middle of the night and imagine a cigarette glowing in the dark. The sensation that I knew she felt. The steam whispering and clicking in the heat pipes.

Eventually it would be morning, the bunkhouse door slamming. Guys clumping down the front steps, heading through the frosts to the cookhouse. Or the headframe. Me still fagged out from lack of sleep.

It was then I started hanging around Itchy's on my own. Drinking with the hardcore. Sheltering in their rough company and their stories about worse.

One night I realized I was smelling real cigarette smoke. Sat up quickly. Snapped on the overhead light. He was by the door. Standing there in his underwear with his trousers in his hand.

"What are you doing?" I asked, too sharply.

He looked at me curiously for a moment, the cigarette between his lips.

"Hitting the sack," he said. "Stayed at Itchy's a little longer than I should..."

The end of the sentence lost in coughing.

I collapsed back on the bed.

"Something wrong with that?"

I didn't answer. Got up and went for a leak.

He was sitting on the side of his bed winding his watch when I got back. I sat facing him.

"Bunch heading for Grande Cache next week," he said. "Want me to go with them. I said I'd rather dig shit with a spoon than mine coal. But I'm going somewhere, that's for sure." Yawned. "So what's your problem?"

"Nothing worth talking about," I said.

"Maybe you're having a bit of feeemale trouble."

I pretended to laugh.

"I'll be noticing the mail coming in," he said.

"Nothing to worry about there," I said. The urge to seek his confidence suddenly diminished.

He looked at me, eyes a bit narrower than I was accustomed to.

"Anything you want to know, just ask me," I said. "You're the one told me never mind listening to the bullshit around home."

He flipped over on his back, finishing his smoke. Then said: "You should be careful before that one gets her hooks in you."

Her letters after that were cautious.

Things are pretty well the same, she'd say. But it's under control.

Then something like: Had my visitor again the other night. But now that you know I don't feel so spooked. Actually, I'm getting sick of it. I don't think it's sick or perverted. But you never know. Duncan doesn't know everything but I'll tell him if I have to.

She was handling it.

The next night over beer, Jack told me he was quitting at Easter. Take a week off. Go see MacIsaac in Sudbury. Am I interested? Better money in Sudbury. Big bonus money in the shaft if you're any good.

Guys got rich in Elliot Lake. Kirkland Lake. Timmins before that. Now it's Sudbury. I could maybe work there a few months, save everything. Go home, start something there. Maybe get serious with Effie. Start a life. You could work forever in a place like Tilt Cove and still have nothing. A scab mine, no union, no bonus, minimal pay, no benefits.

And, of course, at twenty-one, I'd have insurance coming. From the old man. Legion life insurance.

"They've got a union in Sudbury," I said.

"They have that," Jack said. "But that don't bother me."

Jack was against unions.

"Anyway, it's just time to move on."

I agreed.

Halfway down the third beer, my label peeled and piled in little balls, I said without looking: "About last night."

He looked uneasy.

"I've been going out with Effie some," I said.

"I noticed," he said.

"She's...not like Angus."

"The war did a lot of damage to people," he said. "Brought out the best in some. The worst in some others."

I just nodded.

"Maybe it will come up between you."

"Why would it?" I asked.

"There's tihngs you don't know," he said.

Tihngs.

Finally he asked: "Do you think you'll be coming with me? Or going home?"

Then his face contorted in a grimace.

My answer was lost as he folded up in a seizure of deep coughing.

Part 5.

1.

Effie and I are fooling around like we always did. Carrying on, Ma used to call it. I'm twelve. She must have turned thirteen. We each have pieces of wood and we're swordfighting. She dodges my thrust but loses balance, and spins away from me. Suddenly, this perfect round ass is filling the back of her jeans in a way I've never seen before. All slack and boniness, gone. And, buoyed on an adrenalin surge, I swing my wooden sword and whack the fleshy curve of her buttock more firmly than I'd have wanted to.

She freezes, then wheels to face me, "Grow up, for God's sake."

And the words sting.

I guess that's what happened when I was away with Uncle Jack. I started growing up. Effie grew up a long time before I did.

There was a fellow who'd bring oil to the school. Driving a big tanker truck. The girls thought he was the spit of Elvis Presley. She'd be glued to the windows with the rest of them. His name was Bobby Campbell. And there was another one named Jimmie who would park his car near the schoolgrounds and just sit there. Driving them crazy. He had shiny black hair with a few twists on front. Duck's arse on the back. They said he looked exactly like James Dean who died a few years before but whose movies were just getting here. He had the same half-closed semi-gawky mouth. And he knew who they thought he looked like. So when he sat there in the car, he slouched and smoked. And when he talked he tried to sound like an American. Kind of nasal. He'd been out of school a couple of years. Was waiting to go away to the uranium mines in Elliot Lake where all the young fellows were heading then. Anybody who wasn't away already was waiting to go away. That was what growing up looked like.

Duck's arse on the back of your head and waiting to go away.

Then the Swedes and the government announced the pulp mill. It was about 1960. And people started coming back again. Like when the causeway started. But not Jack this time. Stayed absent.

2.

"So how's your ma?" I ask.

"A whole lot better than anticipated," he says, watching me warily. "I guess you haven't seen her lately."

"Drop down for a game of cards from time to time."

Realizing it's been months.

"She was pretty apprehensive about me bringing things up that might be a little upsetting."

"Like what?" I ask.

"Something about your ma and Squint?"

I got a letter from Ma. Around the same time Uncle Jack was talking about us moving on somewhere else. Sometime in February '65. Ma says she and Squint are going to get married at Easter. Don't take it wrong, says she. It's for the companionship. And he's a good man. Grandma is all for it.

I was floored. Not a year and a half passed since the day the old man...and her getting married again. And to Squint.

"Grandma says she can manage alone if I move over to Squint's. I don't know. Grandma's probably better off alone than with Squint here (ha, ha)."

First time she ever wrote to me in her life.

"Ah well," Jack said. "Sandy'd want that. I know that much about him."

Grandma used to call Squint the gloichd. In plain English, a creep.

"I suppose Squint will be moving in," Jack said with a sly look.