Cape Breton Road (31 page)

“Lift that kilt, you wouldn’t see much,” someone behind him said. “All smooth there, like a doll.”

Innis laughed. It was an old guy, a local by his accent, still in his church necktie, his dark coat slung over his arm, his silver hair carefully parted and slicked down.

“The kilt doesn’t quite hang right on him, does it?” Innis said, stepping back, tilting his head.

“He’s got no arse, that’s why. And too much knee there, for a laddie. You ever wear one of those?”

“Me? No. You?

“I don’t play in a pipe band and I wasn’t in the army. My dad got Gaelic from his mother’s milk, but you wouldn’t get him in a rig like that.”

“I saw older people in kilts out on the grounds there. Not students, are they?” Innis said.

“Och, no. They’re for this Gathering of the Clans thing, they’re mostly from away, you know. They travel around and get dressed up from one do to another, you can see the stickers on their cars. It’s them that got those booths set up out there with the names of clans on them. You find your clan and they have brochures and bits of paraphernalia. I’m a MacLachlan myself. ‘These Are Your People,’ the sign says on the MacLachlan booth. No, they’re not, I says to myself. Never set eyes on them. My people were in church with me this morning. They don’t care about castles.”

They drifted along together toward a portrait of Bonnie Prince Charlie and Innis read that this was the Stuart Pretender who had rallied his supporters toward the disasterous battle on Culloden Moor, the deathknell of the clan system.

“Some think him a hero but he’s no hero of mine,” the man said. “A lot of romantic foolishness fixed to that name. At Culloden he was worthless. He was half-Polish besides.”

“Says here he inspired a lot of songs and stuff.”

“Songs are fine, but they’re not history. People don’t want the facts. He came from France and he went back to France. That’s where he grew up.” He nodded at the effigy of the Highland Woman. “I think I’ve seen enough. I’m getting cranky in my old age anyway, so my wife tells me. Good day to you, sir.”

“See you around.”

The Highland Woman was arrayed in a long tartan skirt and white blouse with a sash of matching tartan—the correct garb, the text pointed out, not the short kilt, the
philibeag
, the kind the men wore. Claire should be down at the beach, this kind of afternoon, lying in the warm sand, and he with her. Then it came slowly into his mind, his face flared, his heart swelled as he stared at the painted flesh behind the glass: that ball of paper, he knew what it was, he had not a moment’s doubt but it was the drawing he had done of Claire, in the grove of fine old hemlocks, their trunks like columns, under their warm open shade he’d said, Could I draw you, would you let me draw you nude here? Now? He’d liked the sound of “nude,” it had a ring to it. You already did, Innis. Weeks ago. But from memory, Innis said, I made you up, it’s not the same. Nevertheless, Claire said, it looked convincing. Innis already had his sketchpad on his knee. One sketch. For my eyes only, he said. She was darker by that part of summer, her skin was like creamy coffee where her swimsuit had covered her on the beach. Posing her, Innis touched her shoulder lightly as if he had never touched her before. His head had felt light and threatened to start him trembling, but the soft scratch of his pencil calmed him: he would, though he’d never been to art school where women modelled naked every day, draw this woman coolly, capture that something about her more desirable than any woman he wanted to imagine. That slight smile, her graceful limbs against the hemlock bark, it was more than sexual, he knew that and felt that, he couldn’t say what it was, but it had kept him drawing until the breeze died and he watched Claire pull her clothes on quickly, shooing
mosquitoes from her face. And now that study of her, of her in that afternoon—and him, every line and shading of it was himself too—was crushed into a ball in Starr’s pocket.

He located Claire circling a tall wooden figure of Angus MacAskill, the Cape Breton Giant. “Look at the pictures of him,” she said. “He’s handsome, but this is a cartoon.”

Innis smiled and shrugged. He couldn’t think, he felt hollowed out. He stared at The Giant’s belongings, the enormous boots, the waistcoat that could envelope two men, the walking stick as tall as a staff. Starr must have gone through his things, he’d hidden his bigger sketchpad underneath the mattress. Starr had no right to do that, none.

“Innis?”

“You almost done with this place? It’s stuffy.”

“You go ahead, I’ll meet you.”

“Where?”

“Oh … in that tea shop at the entrance. Will that do?”

“For what?”

She touched his face. “For now.”

Outside, the sun struck him, dazed him, but he sat on the warm dry grass of the green. His plants would thrive on this heat, there had to be buds by now. He had to go up in the higher woods and see, he’d hung around down below lately whenever he could, nearer Claire when she was around, the water. Jesus, he had to get up there. Soon.

He felt a shadow over him and squinted up at his uncle. They regarded each other as if there were no one else around. Innis got up slowly so he, half a head taller, could look Starr in the face.

“That’s my room upstairs,” he said.

“Is it?”

“I don’t want you digging through my stuff.”

“You got nothing to dig through. You should be more careful when you strip your sheets. Things pop out.” There was rum on his breath and the man he’d been talking to earlier, a florid man with thin sandy hair, came up behind him laughing.

“Jesus, Starr, the clans are massing, b’y. You going to march or fight?”

“What? Ah, Joe! With that crew? I couldn’t keep a straight face. Let’s you and me march to those trees and have a snapper, eh?”

“Let’s have a gander at these characters first, all that kilted folk from hither and yon. This your nephew is it? Pleased to meet you, b’y!”

“Hi, Joe. Innis.”

“How’s business, Starr?”

“All but boards over the windows, Joe. I don’t give a damn if every TV in the world goes up in smoke tomorrow.”

“That’s a terrible thing to say, Starr. What would we do with ourselves?”

Pipes had struck up, an annoucement came over loudspeakers that a march of the clans was assembling. Clansmen kilted and otherwise were lining up on the hill leading toward the ampitheatre.

“This is the International Gathering of the Clans?” Starr said, amused.

“I guess the word didn’t get around,” Joe said. He pulled a flask hidden behind his belt and gave it a buss. “Internationally, like.”

“You should be up there, Starr,” Innis said, “a Gaelic speaker like you.”

“Find me one kiltie up there that speaks Gaelic and I’ll kiss him.”

“Bit thin in the ranks, the whole bunch,” Joe said. “Must’ve been a bad year for cattle raiding. Keep an eye peeled for MacIvors. Seen any milling about?”

“They don’t have a booth, Joe.”

“Ah, well, Jesus, what a shame. I’d’ve dragged in a few of my own, if I’d known they were scarce. My cousin Murdena, she can’t get enough of the old country folderol. Loves the aristocrats, oh Jesus, truck in some chief or duke or somebody in his knobby knees to cut ribbons and, God, she’s off. Clippings on the wall.”

“The same crowd that sent us over here in the first place, for Christ’s sake, and here we are kissing their arse.”

Two pipers led the procession, a motley parade of men and women, some in various interpretations and portions of Highland dress, some in streetclothes, but all solemnly out of step. Clan banners rose here and there in the ranks. One young man wore running shoes with his kilt, another a T-shirt that said
UNIVERSITY OF NORTH
C
AROLINA
. The tourists lining the route looked unsure. Where was the big band of pipers and drummers all dressed in uniforms? An old man in full regalia came sweeping along, huge in a bloused shirt and shoulder plaid, kilt swinging, he could have stepped out of a painting in the Great Hall, one of the chiefs on a mountain pass, flowing white hair under his bonnet, long beard, planting a big staff in the ground with each exaggerated stride and a serious squint ahead of him.

“A Scotchman, by God,” Starr said.

“A right old actor, he is,” Joe said. “Straight from the movies.”

“Jesus, he could be your chief, Joe. Where’s your chief?”

“We left him way back in the fog, b’y, the mists of the ages. He got nothing to do with me anyhow. Say, is it too early for a drink, Starr?”

“No, and it isn’t too late either. Car or trees?”

“Too hot in the car, and the trees are so handy like. You coming, Innis?”

“He’s a pure young man,” Starr said. “Forget him.”

Innis watched them go off to the woods behind the buildings, Joe’s arm around his uncle. Thanks, Joe, keep him there awhile, will you?

The Tea Room featured Scottish fare—tea and scones and shortbread—but hadn’t forgotten the motor homes and cars parked in the lot. Innis bought a Coke and two bags of chips and sat at an empty table. Tartan clan plaques shaped identically like coats of arms were displayed along the wall, too neat and uniform somehow, but Innis studied them as he downed his Coke. Two children, brother and sister, hot and bored, fidgeted at the table next to him, their parents preoccupied in a whispered, tight-lipped disagreement. But the corner table caught his eye, a middle-aged man and woman lounged imperiously in their Highland gear. Innis had seen them climb out of a big van with New York plates, decals in the rear window from Highland occasions they’d hit all over North America—Stone Mountain, Grandfather Mountain, Santa Rosa—and they were chalking up another one here, though they seemed aloof, above the mere civilians around them, people
who possibly were not even of Highland descent. The man, his balmoral cocked on his ear, had a lean, wizened face, and the bearing of his sharp chin seemed to express some notion of breeding which his dress was meant to declare, but a pair of mirrored aviator sunglasses, slightly askew on his nose, marred the effect. His wife, skirted in tartan, sipped her iced tea and nibbled a scone and jam. They didn’t talk. The man’s attention seemed to be elsewhere, maybe in some glen, misty with the romance of his race. “What clan are you folks from?” Innis said as they got up to leave, gesturing with his Coke bottle at the shields on the wall. The man gazed down through his mirrored lenses. “Clan Snodgrass,” he said curtly, his voice surprisingly deep for his wiry build, his wife adding as they turned away in a swirl of pleats, “Snodgrass of the Isles.”

“Ahl” Starr, wearing his sunglasses, had suddenly appeared behind Innis’s chair. “God bless you! Fine people, those Snodgrasses!” The couple didn’t look back but kept on through the door while Starr addressed them, a little louder. “Distinguished themselves in the battle of Killie-Something-Or-Other, if I remember rightly. Not often you run into a Snodgrass, I mean of the Highland sort. We better get you into the Great Hall over there, seems you’ve been overlooked.”

“Where’s Joe?” Innis said. He was already missing his genial diversion.

Starr, after squaring up a chair with some difficulty, sat down. “They need a booth, those people. What’s a clan without a booth? Where’s Claire?”

“Said she’d meet us here.”

“From where?”

“Last I saw of her she was checking out Giant MacAskill.”

“Wouldn’t she, though? Just like her. A major distraction, The Giant. Gets women thinking.”

“Gets you thinking.”

“Ah. Miss Claire. Miss Claire doesn’t think along those lines, eh?”

“Not the way you do.”

“You’re a lily-white pair, the two of you. My, my.” Starr lit a cigarette and blew out the first drag in a long sigh. “You an expert now on what Claire’s thinking?”

“She’s lived with us for how many months. I ought to know something about her.”

“Something?” Starr leaned back in his chair, smoking, staring at Innis. The other tables were empty now. “The question in my mind is, should you know this!” His hand disappeared under the table and he brought it up and fired the ball of paper at Innis’s face, hitting his closed eye but it stung, flared red when Innis opened it, and he was on his feet fast, he shoved his uncle in the face, staggered him, they both yelled something Innis would not remember, but he would remember the speed, how fast they came together, Innis’s heart shaking, he hardly knew what he was doing, he was taller than Starr, he’d never felt so strong in his life, he’d sawed those goddamn dead trees up with a bucksaw but Starr had an instinct Innis couldn’t find in himself, a punch stunned him, not its force as much as its surprise, it was quick and on the mark, and Innis, hurt but jacked-up, swung wide and caught Starr off the side of his chin, then danced back, shocked, hot, ready for damage, words, for the pushing and shoving of the fights he was used to. Starr hit him three times—yes, it was three, later he could count each one—fast, in the face. Innis shouted,
blood in his nose, flailing, overwhelming Starr but not hurting him, and they bounced off tables, the wall, crazy with anger, they clawed their shirts, ripped them, scratching, digging, but Innis knew he’d already lost whatever it was, the fight, the chance to push Starr back and get some room with Claire, to save something he needed to save. They hit the floor in a desperate and raging hug, and then Starr released him suddenly and rolled away, Innis flopped on his back, tasting blood, gagging it up. Somebody tossed him a wet kitchen towel and he sat up and pressed it to his face, his lips stung, his nose was throbbing. He’d got it in the ribs too, a chair, something wooden, maybe Starr’s fist, Christ, his fist was all bone. He could hear the manager or someone above him shouting about the Mounties as he set the table back on its legs. Innis grabbed the wad of paper, got to his feet and pushed through a family jammed in the doorway like onlookers at an auto wreck. Starr was over at the Lada, staring at the road and smoking. The parking lot was filling with cars, sun broke from a windshield with an aching flash. Innis arched his head back, pinched his nostrils. He felt people staring, he hated that more than the hurt. He was patting his mouth for blood when he saw Claire coming toward him, but she stopped far enough away so that her connection to him would not be apparent, and when he tried to smile, wiping his nose on his sleeve, she turned back into the crowd.