He picks up Grandpa's old pistol, which is still on the table between us. Studies it for a moment, then holds it under his chin. And he pulls the trigger.

Click.

"You have to wonder why Uncle Sandy wouldn't have used this thing. It's a lot simpler."

"Throw that fucking thing away," I say.

Still fondling the gun he says, "The old man came to see me in Halifax. In my third year, I think. Tracked me down in the Lord Nelson Tavern. That's where we all hung out those days. Landed in. Comes right over to the table. Everybody's looking at him, wondering, 'who the fuck's that?'"

"Why?" I ask.

"He was just so...out of place."

"In a tavern?"

He shrugs. "Sat there for a while. Couple of guys tried to make small talk with him. Then he left. I followed him out. Asked how long he was there for. He said he was just heading back. Gave me twenty bucks. Christ, I felt weird. Took a long time to admit what that feeling was."

The mouth works silently for a moment, no words coming. Then, squeezed from somewhere deep in his chest: "I was ashamed. Of him."

Staring at me, awaiting my judgment. Exhaling hot smoke.

"Ashamed of your own father, hey," he says. "Pretty sick. I never even asked him to the graduation."

"He wouldn't have gone," I say. Remembering. Jack and me celebrating the day at Itchy's, in Tilt Cove. Getting drunk for the first of our Gillises to ever get a university degree.

The wind has gone silent for a moment.

"I spent a lot of time wondering what your secret was," he says.

"What secret?"

Then he points the gun at me, holding his arm fully extended, sighting down the arm and along the short silver barrel. One eye closed in a wink.

"Pa-khew," he says. Then: "The way you keep everything locked up. Say nothing. There's gotta be some big secrets in there."

His face is very serious. Then he smiles.

Grow up, for Christ's sake.

"You wonder how anybody does that," he says. "Blow somebody away...looking right at them."

"Put it away."

"You can understand a sniper. Like in a war. Or Oswald. You're just shooting...abstractions. But up close like this," he says. "I couldn't do it. Yourself I could see. Just...quick like. No thinking. Just swing it up. Pull the trigger. Bingo."

He puts the pistol barrel to the side of his head. Pulls the trigger. Click.

"For Christ's sake," I say.

6.

Even when you're ready, it takes the wind out of you. Cancer isn't just a word but a proclamation that everything you know is about to change. And death will only be the final, and in some ways gentlest, change. It's the certain prospect of intense suffering, and the terrifying anticipation of all the unpredictable changes it will bring. And loss.

Jack squeezed a large gob of tobacco spit through his lips and into his can.

"The lungs," he said. "Told me in Halifax there's a ninety per cent chance that I've had the biscuit. Said they could fight it but. It was up to me. I figure it would be a losing battle. Just prolongin' the agony. Wastin' the time a fella has left. 'Bheil thu tuigsinn?'"

"Did they say how long?"

"Could be a year. Maybe more. Maybe less." Then he grinned. "But it'll be a good year, hey? Livin' home. Pesterin' the wife. Gettin' waited on."

Then we just sat.

I decided to make Effie pregnant. Call the kid Jack. No matter what.

But she had her own ideas.

Ma once butted in. Just once. "You should see the priest," she said.

It was getting that obvious. Her spending more and more time with the other people who were taking courses. Talking about going back to work. Showing up here and there in public when I'd be working nights. Or in at Jack's place.

"The priest," I said, almost laughing in Ma's face.

"Yes," she said. "Don't act like such a know-it-all."

"Well," I said, scuffing a foot impatiently, not wanting to hurt her.

"You could do worse than talking to Father."

"I'm sure."

"I can tell you from first-hand experience, talking to the priest can help straighten things out even when you think nothing will. It's me knows."

Me looking at her in disbelief. Saying: "A lot of fucking good it did you."

Things pretty strained between myself and Ma by then. Having nothing to do with Squint at all.

Sextus says, "You spend your life becoming something, only to learn that you've lost what you were."

"I don't follow."

"That's because you are what you are. That's your secret. Who you are. And have always been."

"You're talking in circles," I say.

"You're absolutely right. I've just given you a class-A demonstration of wanking."

Once fertility becomes an issue it isn't long before it becomes an obsession. I asked Effie to stop taking those pills and I think she did. You could never be sure. But nothing seemed to be happening. I even inquired about getting special drugs. The doctor laughed at me. Told me the best drug was a bottle of good French wine. So I tried that. And in January and February, when it was her time, I'd be snooping in the bathroom trash basket. Even the kitchen garbage. To see if maybe she missed. But she was regular as clockwork.

And he thinks she made him pathetic. I could tell him about pathetic.

Every day on the way home from work I'd stop in to visit Jack.

"It's a friendly cancer," he said. "I feel better than ever."

"When do you think you got it?"

Laughing. "It's one of those things you always have. Near died when I was little," he said. "So I've done okay. Getting this far. Considering everything." Then: "It was the bron'ical trouble that kept me out of the army. In '40. Who knows what kind a mess I'd have got into if it wasn't for that?"

Mostly we'd just sit and reminisce about Tilt Cove and Bachelor Lake.

Or just sit.

Sextus can't keep his hands off that gun. Keeps turning the cylinder. Clicking the hammer on the empty chambers.

"You wonder about the Americans. With so many of these things around, I'm surprised there aren't more people blowing themselves away down there. Or each other. It seems like such an easy solution sometimes."

"What stopped you?" I say.

He looks up, surprised. "The kid," he says. "I swear, if it wasn't for her..."

I actually went to the doctor myself once. Arranged a checkup. But the real motive was to ask him about Effie. Find out if she was secretly on the pill. Or whatever.

He looked at me sharply and basically told me it was none of my business. But when I was leaving he said, "If you're worried about getting pregnant you'd better have Effie come and see me again."

"What do you mean?"

"You never know with that old Vatican roulette you two have been playing."

"So if we don't want babies we should be doing something," I said.

"Damn right," he said.

Then winked.

So I figured she was on the level.

But nothing happened.

One night I suggested she was taking some prevention secretly.

"Oh fuck off," she said.

All I could think to say was: "Nice talk!"

7.

Near the beginning of February 1970, there was a terrible storm. Blew hurricane gales for a couple of days. Lots of rain. Hardly a flake of snow left by the time it was over. But one night in the middle of it a rusty old Greek oil tanker called the Arrow wandered off course coming up the bay and ran onto a reef near Arichat. Smack into a well-known hazard called Cerberus Rock. The papers said afterwards the reef was named after some Greek dog that guards the entrance to Hell. The tanker was carrying nearly four million gallons of bunker C, crude oil bound for the pulp mill.

Two nights after that I had a phone call from Sextus. He was in Hastings. The paper had sent him down from Toronto to cover the story. He was staying at the Skye. Had to stay there because of the story, he explained. I thought it queer, anyway, him not staying home. Effie was working at the Skye again and she actually spoke to him before I did. Told him to call me. The motel was full of reporters and government people, down to watch the tanker break up and spill its cargo into Chedabucto Bay.

He wanted to know how the old man was doing.

"Not great," I said. "Good time for a visit."

"Gonna be pretty busy," he said. "But I'll try."

I didn't see much of him during the first few days of his stay. The Arrow story seemed to get bigger and bigger every hour. It was on the national news. Oil spills were becoming big news other places. This was a first for Canada.

Effie was night manager at the motel and she was seeing a lot of Sextus.

I was still up waiting when she came in from work at about three on the Thursday morning of the following week. I'd had some rum. A few big ones.

"Where you been?" I asked.

"Working," she said. "You know that."

"I expected you a lot earlier."

"I finished at midnight. But I had a drink with your cousin and some of the other reporters. I wasn't in a hurry because I figured you were at Jack's."

"At Jack's?"

"Well, you're practically living there now anyway."

"Jack's sick," I said.

"I know Jack's sick," she said. And as she started walking away said: "Jack's probably going to die. Another ghost from your tragic past to come and live with us, as if there weren't enough of them here already."

God and the ghosts only know what happened in the next two seconds but somehow I was suddenly staring into her face from up close and my head was bursting. She made no sound. Then I realized she was actually trying to say something. And I felt her hands, on my wrists, tugging, and then I looked at my own hands, which were locked on her throat.

When I released her the only thing she said was: "Oh my God."