Me wondering if he meant it, or was setting a trap.

"No thanks," I said.

Grandpa watching cautiously.

"Here. Take a sip," Pa said, holding the bottle toward me.

I took it, raised it carefully to my lips, watching his eyes as I did.

The beer stung the tongue, hot and sour.

I grimaced and handed the bottle back.

He roared laughing.

The evening closed in quickly behind the Chrysler. Seemed to leave everything moving gently and rustly, like a flag stirred by a sudden breeze. You felt an absence. The music coming from the car with Ontario plates had gone gentler, a mournful Acker Bilk tune, "Stranger on the Shore." Effie kind of swaying, sitting on the pop case, looking dreamy. Then the door of the Merc swings open and one of them calls out, kind of rough, "Hey, Eff-ay. Come 'ere."

She stands, stretches, and says, "What."

"We're going to the dance in Creignish. Wanna come?"

"Sure," she says without a moment's hesitation and is gone, door slamming and engine starting simultaneously, tires popping gravel then hitting pavement with a little screech. The continental extension on the rearend almost touching when they accelerated. Then gone, taillights disappearing up over the graveyard hill. Me left with Paddy and his bad eye.

Got up and stretched, like nothing mattered.

Before beginning the long walk home I said to Mrs. Lew, "Give me a pack of cigarettes."

"What do you want?" she asked.

"Gimme a pack of those Kools," I said.

Two days later I saw the Chrysler in town. I was standing with Pa and Squint on the sidewalk near the old town hall. Noticed them staring at somebody walking along the other side of the street. Squint saying, "Tha i muineil...," laughing strangely, gawking. Pa looking nervous, knowing I was near. Watching the Swede's wife crossing the street wearing tight pants called pedal-pushers. Me knowing what Tha i muineil meant. Figured it out.

Me. Too young to understand that grown men remain randy adolescents.

Except Pa was looking like he was seeing a real ghost.

"They say the worst thing the father can do is make himself hard to forget," Sextus says, puffing smoke.

"Who said that?"

"Who knows? Sometimes the less they say the more they leave behind."

"I never had much of a problem forgetting the old man," I say, feeling the ghostly presence of him again.

A Saturday evening, the day we finished putting the hay in, Pa said to me, "What are you now, anyway? Sixteen, is it?"

I nodded. Seventeen in October.

"I suppose you'll be wanting your driver's licence soon."

"I'd like that," I said cautiously.

"What's stopping you?"

"Well," I said, allowing a nervous laugh, "I'd have to learn first."

"Bullshit," he said. "You can drive. You've been practising."

I'd been at the wheel, putting the hay in. Could see him watching closely.

"Well," I said, "just in the yard. And around the field. Nowhere with traffic."

"Not on the road?" He looked skeptical.

"No," I said.

"Well. It's about time, then. Let's go."

"But I don't have a beginner's," I said.

"Fuck the beginner's," he said.

A word he rarely used around me before that. His way of opening up, I guess.

We drove out through Sugar Camp. At the turn off to West Bay Road he said keep going. When we got to Glenora Road, he said take a left. I figured I'd turn back at Dan Alex MacIntyre's lane but he said keep going again. Alex Lamey's then. But he said no, hang a left on the Trans-Canada.

"The Mounties will be around," I said. "It's the weekend. We can turn up MacIntyre's Mountain."

"Fuck the Mounties," he said.

Me driving along about forty miles per hour, hands leaving imprints on the steering wheel, eyes bugging out of my head, blood pressure through the roof, and a feeling like sexual excitement right in the pit of my groin. Wanting to pass somebody I knew. Toot the horn, wave casually at people. Especially Effie. Imagining the half-ton as a Monarch. One better than a Mercury. With Hollywood mufflers gurgling.

Near the General Line, Pa said, "I want you to turn up there. I want to show you something."

By then he had a pint bottle in his hand. Must have been in his pocket. Or stashed under the seat.

A couple of miles up the dirt road he said, "Keep left at the intersection, by the old John H. place. Towards Creignish Rear." Going by Shimon Angus's place he nods toward the old farm: "Did you know that Shimon Angus had twenty-seven kids?"

I said I didn't know that.

"From three wives," he said. "The pope gave him a medal."

I think he expects me to laugh.

"Jack's Jessie was saying they should have gave the medal to the women."

A mile or so past Shimon Angus's the road breaks out of the trees and suddenly you can see you're on the top of Creignish Mountain and St. Georges Bay is spread out in a great blue sheet in front of you. At the foot of the mountain, the houses of Creignish are strewn along Route 19, with the church among them. Stella Maris, Star of the Sea. Stuck on the top of a fold in the mountainside, the graveyard rolling off to the right, and the dancehall in front, just across the road, back to the windy gulf. This is where everybody goes on Friday nights to dance and drink and fight and pick up women.

He swigs straight from his bottle and screws the cap back on.

"This is the prettiest place in the world," he says, staring out into the bay.

I'd pulled over to the side, on his instruction.

"I've seen a lot of the world, you know," he said, looking in my direction.

I nod.

"You know that," he said.

"Yes."

"So you know I know what I'm talking about."

"Yes."

"There were places I've seen...would have been nice. Holland was too flat. But France. Belgium. Even Holland, though. You should see the nice farms there. Big meadows. Dikes holding the water back."

"And windmills?"

"Big jeezly windmills. Like the books. Canals too."

"Nice people?"

"Oh, yeah." Then, looking back out toward the bay: "But this here's the place, hey?"

White clouds are turning pink, like smoke over a fire.

"Over to the right," Pa said. "You can't see it from here. Used to be a fellow they called Wild Archie. Fished out of Gloucester, Mass." He takes a swallow. "One night he's in a barroom, Wild Archie. In Gloucester, Mass. Gets into a tangle with another fellow. The guy shoots him."

"Shoots him?"

"Shoots him. Bullet passes an inch from his heart. Last thing Wild Archie did was kill the guy who shot him. Bare hands. Before he died. They brought him home, Wild Archie. Buried him down there somewhere."

He's looking out, toward the rest of the world. Face tight from booze.

Not thinking it through, I said: "You got shot once, Pa."

His hand went to the side of his forehead.

"Made quite a mess, eh?" he said.

"How did it happen?"

It'd been years since I asked.

"A long story." Then he said: "You really want to know?"

Shocked. "Sure," I said.

"Well," he said, real slow. "You're going to have to ask somebody else."

Oh.

"I don't know a thing about it," he said.

Then looked straight at me.

"That's okay, Pa."

"Right," he said, looking back toward the bay. "Some man, that Wild Archie."

2.

You can tell Sextus is drunk, finally, by the way he almost knocks over his chair standing up. Pushes it back with the backs of his legs, hands pressing on the tabletop.

"There was a reason for...Angus and Uncle Sandy. You know?"

He sits down again and seizes the rum bottle resolutely. Pours a shaky dollop into his glass, then looks at me, his face set with purpose.

"You're going to listen to this," he says. "Away back, a few years after Uncle Sandy...Duncan came to Toronto. Must have been between '68 and '69. He was ordained. My old man was still alive. Duncan stayed with me. We got into it, pretty serious, a couple of times. And one night, pretty far into his cups, he told me the whole story. Oh, he beat around the bush quite a bit. Asking things like, 'How is a person supposed to react when he discovers somebody close is guilty of something really, really bad?' Him the priest, asking me? I mean, spare me."

I say: "Hey, guess what. I already know the whole story. Okay?"

He takes a long drag on his cigarette, not sure whether to believe me.

"You know? What happened in the barn? In Holland?"

"Yes."

"No sniper?"

"No sniper."

"How Angus...?"

"Yes."

"Who? Where did you find out?"