I looked.

"Am I right or am I wrong," he said aggressively.

"You're right."

"You hear any foolish talk about...anything. You just let it go. All right?"

"Right," I said.

"No telling what you might be hearing around. But you just let it slide right into the ditch there. Out to the big furnace."

I was comforted, somehow.

"Okay. Let's go back," he ordered, and he took another swallow. I started the half-ton and turned it around carefully.

The talk was, of course, already going strong. Just not where I could hear it.

Sextus is looking relieved. Suddenly refreshed. Says: "I'm trying to think of the old man coping with knowing that all those years."

"He always held it against Angus," I say. "Not that he'd say much one way or the other."

"Never heard him say a hard word against anybody. They can be pretty wicked around here. With the talk."

"Jack never let things eat at him," I say.

"When did you first know there was something wrong with him?"

I shrug. "Just the coughing."

He fumbles a cigarette out of the package on the table between us.

You could tell there was something bad wrong with Uncle Jack long before I left Bachelor Lake. I lived with his cough for years there and in Tilt Cove. But then forgot about it for a while when he moved to the staff house. But during the winter of '67-'68, he'd scare you sometimes. In the cookhouse. Or having a beer at Ikey's. The coughing fits.

They'd make jokes: "If it has hair on it, swallow. It'll be your arsehole." That's the way he coughed.

Then you'd think: That's just Jack. And there were a lot of people coughing in the bunkhouses those days. Especially the ones who had worked in Newfoundland during the war. Especially St. Lawrence. The radiation. They were only finding out about the radiation there in the sixties. When we were in Bachelor Lake.

"Ma said it was what saved him from the war. Said the three of them came home in the spring of '40. Going to join up. Went down to Sydney. But the old man got rejected. Something about the lungs. That's what saved him."

"From what and for what?" I ask.

"I guess from whatever it was got into the other two. And for what?"

He thinks about that for a few seconds, then smiles. "I guess for what's sitting in front of you right now."

Sextus was born in '42.

One evening a few years ago, after I dried out, I took Millie up to the top of Creignish Mountain to show her the fire ditch. Would never have felt comfortable showing Effie. Millie is different.

After everything went black and you could see the beads of light over the mainland, she said, "Did you make that up?"

I couldn't lie. I told her about the old man taking me up here.

"He had a good soul," she said.

"So where do you think it is?"

She looked out over the bay for a while, then said, "How do you remember him?"

"What's that got to do with it?"

"If people remember you well, that's heaven."

"What if they don't remember you at all?"

"Extinction," she said.

"Like Limbo," I said.

"Like Limbo," she said. "Hell but without the pain. Sorrow instead."

"Better than the real thing."

"For some people," she said.

"So where does that leave the old man?"

"Depends on you," she said.

"In one way, the war was the best thing that could have happened to them," says Sextus.

"Didn't do much for Uncle Jack."

"Makes my point, doesn't it? Jack was what they'd all have been if there'd been no war."

4.

The final months were full of surprises.

Near mid-August the old man called home from the power commission and asked me to drive in and get him. Me with no licence. Ma didn't object, but said, "Be careful," as I left.

Pulling in to the parking area in front of the power commission, I almost ran into a big fancy black car. The Chrysler. The two of them sitting in it. Himself and the Swede's wife. He didn't even try to conceal anything when I stopped alongside.

Late August, Ma asked me to go upstairs with her. Something ominous. Grandpa and Grandma looking at us, curious. Ma wasn't one for private conversations.

She took me to their bedroom and opened his closet door.

"Look at that," she said.

There was a brand-new suit hanging there.

"Where did he get that?" I asked.

"Who knows?" she said.

It was your basic charcoal wool suit, the kind men wore on special occasions. Or to church. Or their own funerals.

"The man never darkens the door of a church," she said.

"Maybe he's got a girlfriend," I said. Joking.

She looked at me hard. "Aren't you after getting the mouth on you," she said and shut the door.

Labour Day weekend, the Friday. Sitting alone in the dark under the big pine tree halfway between our lane and MacAskill's, puffing on a Kool. Home was getting too tense. I heard somebody coming. I cupped the cigarette in my hands and held my breath. It was somebody walking slowly along the shoulder of the road. Crunch. Crunch. Jesus. A woman.

She stopped about twenty feet from me and just stood there, arms folded. She was wearing a pale blue checked blouse and pink pedal-pushers. Effie.

"Where are you heading?" I said.

She squealed. "Cripes," she said, when she saw it was me. "What are you trying to do?"

"Sorry."

"What are you doing out here?"

"Just having a smoke," I said.

"A smoke!" She was grinning at that. "When did you start that?"

"Want one?"

"Sure."

And I jumped up.

When she bent her face into my hands to take a light, the flare of the match made her look like a woman.

"So," she said. "Waiting for somebody?"

"Nah," I said. "Just hanging around."

Then I heard the purr of a car out on the Trans-Canada.

"That'll be him," she said.

"How do you know?"

"A woman's instinct." I could picture the smirk.

"I thought he had Hollywood mufflers," I said calmly.

"Who?" she said. "Oh, you're thinking of him. He's gone back. To Ontario."

"So who's this?"

The headlights were intruding already and the hum of the engine was getting louder.

"You're way behind," she said, laughing at me.

Then the car crunched onto the shoulder and pulled alongside. The driver leaned over and pushed the door open. The dome light came on. Warm radio sounds. I found my thrill...on Blueberry Hill. I recognized the fellow at the wheel, somebody else home from away with his hair all creamed into a black, shiny tangle like you'd see in the movies. Wearing a black leather jacket. He gave me a limp two-finger wave as she swept onto the seat beside him. I noticed then that she was chewing gum. I hated that.

"See ya round," she said as she slammed the door.

The car wheeled in toward where I was standing by the tree, then backed out swift and smooth. Then whipped away with a rattle of gravel. Leaving her smell and the smells of the car and Brylcreem all mingled in with the night.

Labour Day weekend, the Sunday. The old man was restless all evening. Then got up and walked out without a word. I followed him, at a distance. Out of the house and down the lane. Who knows what was going on? Caught a glimpse of him at the end of the lane, just strolling casually, hands in his pockets. Then the shadows swallowed him.

The night was quieter than usual. The summer sounds of insects screaming at each other were gone. The sky was luminous with stars and constellations, a full moon hanging there.

I began to focus on a dark shape near the big pine tree. A parked car. I wanted it to be Effie and a boyfriend. But I knew it wasn't.

The way his step quickened, I got the impression he was expecting it to be there. He walked right up to the passenger side, opened the door. The inside light came on. He climbed in and shut the door. It was only for a flash, but I could see that there was a woman behind the wheel. Golden hair piled on top of her head. Then I could imagine plain old Ma, home. Frowning and wondering.

The car started quickly. Obviously a V-8, probably a 420 engine under the hood. A big Chrysler by the look of it when it pulled out from beneath the tree and turned toward the Trans-Canada. They drove some distance before they turned on the headlights. Which was a good thing because if they'd turned them on pulling out from the tree they'd have seen me standing there like an idiot.

I was still living through those days when I met Millie. Memories still feeding on me the night I drove her up the General Line, over the back of Creignish Mountain, and showed her how the sun falls into St. Georges Bay. Except I didn't have his faith in its cleansing power.

"I guess I'll never forgive him," I said to her that night.

She let the statement sit there. Me wondering if it was because it was too much for her to embrace or too silly to be worth acknowledging.

"Forgive what?" she said finally. "Him dying?"

"It's more complicated that that."

"The Swede's wife?"

"Forget it," I said.

"It's possible," she said, "you were just jealous."