"No," I said. "I think she's moving to his place."

"Jaysus," Jack said. "They'll have to do a fumigation first."

"Grandma wants to live alone," I said.

Grandpa was gone by then just about a year. Since just before I went to Tilt Cove with Jack.

"Can't have that," Jack said, rubbing his chin. "Grandma is after getting a little gliogach herself."

"Grandma gliogach," I say, laughing. "Hard to imagine that."

"Dropping things," he said. "Forgetful. Wife was telling me in the last letter. Some day she'd fall down. Break a hip. Screwed then," he said. "Maybe we can get her to move out, stay with the wife."

"There isn't room at your place."

"Wife can move into the young fellow's room. Give the old lady ours." Reaching then for his smokes. "For all I'm home," he said. "Wife doesn't need all that room by herself."

I knew Jack would take a couple of weeks to communicate his plan to Jessie, so I wrote to Effie write away: "Right after Ma and Squint, I'm going to want you to move in with Grandma. It'll be doing us a big favour. And of course, I'll be going home for it."

"You mind if I make some fresh tea?" he asks.

"Go ahead."

Over the sound of the water gushing he's saying, "Ma told me there'd been a bit of a...falling out. You and your mom. And Squint."

"Just a little something with Squint," I say.

He makes a face. "More than 'a little something,' I'd guess, to come between yourself and your mother."

"Nothing worth talking about," I say. "Anyway, how did that come up?"

He shrugs. "I mentioned to Ma that I might drop in on Squint while I'm here. Since he was overseas with Angus."

I hear myself saying: "So what if he was overseas with Angus. I've spent a long time forgetting it and I'm fucking sick of it."

"Hey hey hey," he says, holding a hand up like a traffic cop. "Take it easy. It's me. Sextus. Family. Calm down. Skip it. I'm just making conversation."

Family. That's what Squint said. As if it excused falsehood. Effie wrote: "It's great, your ma and Squint getting married. She needs somebody. I feel terrible, even thinking about what you suggest. Moving in there, for your grandma's sake. But whatever happens, I'm going to have to get out of here. It just gets worse. The other night he went out and locked me in the house. He padlocked the storm door. I had to leave by the window."

"Ma said there was a falling out. You and Squint. I was only wondering," he said.

I say: "Sorry about that. Booze throws off my sugar. Makes me edgy."

Squint's insinuating know-all face in front of me; half smiling as he communicates gossip with the bogus authority of an eyewitness who saw nothing and knows nothing.

"What was it, then?" His voice is soothing.

"Nothing I want to go into," I say.

"Nothing to do with the Swede's wife," he says.

Then I lie: "No, no, no. Just something to do with herself. What did you say it was? Faye. Angus and Faye."

He persists. "But to alienate you from Mary. Your poor ma..."

"That's not true," I say. Another lie. "Ma and I stay in touch."

"I actually thought," he says, "driving up here this morning, the two of us would drop in on him. Bring a jug. Maybe get him talking."

"I don't think so," I say. "Squint's changed."

"Like. Who knows? It's nearly forty years now. If we got him talking we'd get to the crux of whatever it was with Uncle Sandy and Angus. Whaddaya say?"

I say: "Even if Squint had something to say-and I doubt it-what's the point? Like, what else is there to know?"

His face. Like Squint's was. Like everyone who has ever spoken to me with the attitude of superiority based on knowing what I don't know, assuming, as they must, that I know nothing.

"The kettle is boiling," I say.

He stands, walks to the stove. Then he heads for the door.

"Where are you off to?" I ask.

"I feel like taking a piss," he says, then stops, and looks back over his shoulder. "If that's all right with you."

Just before Easter '65, she wrote again to say she'd move in with Grandma as soon as we wanted her to. She knew there would be talk but didn't care. Didn't know how she'd keep the old fellow from hanging around there. But figured Grandma would control that. Grandma didn't put up with much. Would move in right after Ma and Squint, if we still wanted. They were getting married at Easter.

I broke the news to Jack, carefully. He looked at me for a long time, saying nothing. Making me want to wave a hand in front of his face, say, Hello there! Speak up! But he said nothing. Just pulled a matchstick out of his pocket, stuck it in his ear, and wiggled it around. When he extracted it there was a big brown gob on the end of it, which he examined. Then said: "Whatever you think yourself."

"I know what you're thinking," I said, feeling a trace of desperation.

"Well, that makes one of us," he said. Laughed. And walked off.

Heading for Itchy's. He was there, most every night those last few weeks in Tilt Cove.

Ma wrote once more. She thought Effie and Grandma was a great idea. You couldn't tell what Angus thought. He was on a bender at the time.

Leaving Tilt Cove felt like the last day of school used to. Cleaning my stuff out of the dry. Putting up with a lot of static from the guys. Tilt Cove was a place you stayed in because you had to. You lived to leave. And Jack and I were leaving. Our two kitbags packed and leaning side by side in a corner of my room, hardhats giving the top a rounded shape. Smelling like underground.

Then Jack's old buddy Black Angus MacDonald came by with a bottle of rum. Captain Morgan. I had a couple with them but he and Jack were speaking Gaelic. Stuff I couldn't follow.

Spent a few minutes in the card room, watching. There was a game going on pretty well nonstop. The usual crowd. A half-breed shift boss. The doctor. Itchy. Hubert the hoistman. A few others. Pretty intense about the cards so I didn't stay there long. Walked around outside for a while. Climbed the steep embankment behind the bunkhouse and prolonged sundown a few minutes that way. But it became instantly cold when the sun dropped.

We drove out. New road to Springdale pretty solid considering it was springtime. No talk in the car for hours. Jack seemed permanently down those days. Shaking hands with Black Angus as we left, you could see faint ripples along his jawline.

Jack bought a flask in Corner Brook. Saved it for the boat. Sipping it as we crossed the Cabot Strait, heading toward North Sydney. Halfway through the flask, he made a few jokes about Angus. Me being almost related to him, going out with Effie. And Squint going to be my stepfather. Me retaliating: "He'll be almost like your brother-in-law." "No fucking way," Jack saying, half laughing.

He'd only recently started using "fuck" in front of me.

Aunt Jessie met the ferry. Hugged me, kissed Jack lightly on his cheek.

Ma and Squint got married quietly. A few people sitting around at our place the night before. Effie came over. Didn't stay long. Angus was there, pretty well elected.

He sobered up for the church part. It was only for family, but he was invited. He and Squint had spent a hard year together in Italy, and later in Holland. There was a little reception. And that set him off again. Got maudlin trying to propose a toast. Last seen leaning in a corner, singing "Molly Bond." For sheee was taaall and sleeender, and gentle as a faaawn. Then was gone for days. That's when we moved Effie into the old place. Her first night there we sat up late talking mostly about childhood. How things change.

"There's something I have to tell you."

"What?" she said.

"The dog."

"What dog?"

"Sandy. I think my father shot him."

"Everybody knew that," she said quietly.

Everybody.

She kissed me softly on the forehead. Then shoved her hands through my hair.

"Enough about the past," she said. "If that's the worst you'll ever have to confess..."

And we went to our separate and chilly little rooms.

You could hear Grandma snoring.

3.

The next day Uncle Jack and I drove to Ontario in Jack's car. Straight through to Sudbury, taking turns at the wheel. Blew through Ottawa in the middle of the night. Parliament Hill lit up like a carnival. Made Sudbury in thirty hours. Stayed with somebody Jack knew from Flin Flon, contracting then at Inco.

There was nothing in Sudbury. Inco wasn't hiring. MacIsaac made some kind of excuse. Suggested Paddy Harrison and a new shaft somewhere. Pretty vague, Jack said afterwards. Giving us the brushoff. Dropped by Falconbridge. Nothing.

"Where to now?" I asked.

"Flatten her for Toronto," Jack said.

On the way down to Toronto we got drunk in the car on cheap Ontario beer, and Uncle Jack was figuring it was really because he was too old.

"Forty-four isn't old," I said.

Coughing on the drag of his cigarette. "Lately I feel a hundred and forty-four."

"You should quit that," I said.

"I s'pose," he said, eyeing the cigarette. But the face was saying why bother.

We were heading for Toronto because we heard there was work driving a tunnel there for a subway. Coming back into the kitchen, Sextus shuts the door carefully behind him.

"Jesus, it's cold out there," he says.

"I thought you got lost," I say. I pour tea.

The mood lighter now. Everything cooled off. Like the weather.

"I walked down to the end of the lane-you can't see MacAskill's old place anymore," he says. "Was thinking about the old man. How he ended up. In the kitchen of that place. With Angus for company. The old cocksucker not even aware that there was a dead man in front of him.

"Then there was poor Uncle Sandy," he adds.

Oblivious to my silent withdrawal.

"Everything linked together," he says. "The three of them. This queer symmetry in the way they lived. And died. Here's to them," he says.

I raise my cup.

In Toronto, the contractor on the tunnel job had a shift boss from Glencoe. Jack called him on the phone. We arranged to meet him at a tavern called the Rondun, in Parkdale. We hit the place about five in the afternoon. Everybody there looked like from home. "We're going to like Toronto," Jack said, winking. A lot of local fellows drinking there. Ironworkers from Mabou. Miners from Inverness. Tunnel men from Judique, with stories from places with names like Amos and Wawa and Flin Flon. Places I heard about in Tilt Cove. Wasn't long before we were both pretty full.

In the can, a MacIsaac from Port Hood said out of the side of his mouth I could probably get something with the ironworkers at the new TD Centre. Whatever that was. "You look like you could climb," he said.

I gave it a second and a half of thought, then said, "Nah...the old fellow and I are partners. We're looking for work underground."

Toronto was something else. We stayed in a run-down hotel not far from the tavern.

Going to bed, I was looking at a newspaper. On page three there was a story and on the top, the name A. Sextus Gillis.

"Cripes, Jack," I said. "Look at this."

"Well, well," he said. "He's moving up in the world."

"We'll call the paper in the morning," I said. "Go see him."

Jack had his big paw on my shoulder, standing on one foot shaking off his shoe.

"Nohoho," he said. "Wouldn't want to bother the young fellow at his new job."

Then put the light out. Jack always took his pants off in the dark.

"He'd shit if we showed up," I said.

Jack laughed and laughed. "I imagine he would," he said.