Cape Breton Road Read Online Free

wanted to discuss, those who’d had interesting surgery, real excavations, or awful deaths or a trajectory of decline even Starr could appreciate. And Alec who ran the store in North St. Aubin was a cousin too, friendly but distant, taciturn, not a prober or a gossip, and Innis liked him for that since he seemed to expect nothing more private from you than he was willing to give himself and that was very little. And Starr had mentioned cousins over on Southside St. Aubin and up the east coast of Cape Breton Island but didn’t seem keen to expose them to his nephew, fine with Innis since the less he saw of kin, the better chance to be taken on his own terms, the less enmeshed his fabrications, the less strain between him and his uncle who didn’t like the lies to begin with. We should be telling the truth about yourself, Starr said, that’s the way to start over, not like this. But I’m notstarting over
here
, Innis said, am I? Can’t you understand that? I’m going west when I’m ready, but I’m not ready yet. No, Starr said, ready you’re not.
    Dan Rory lit his pipe and Finlay a cigarette, blowing smoke thoughtfully. “Saw your uncle Starr with a new ladyfriend yesterday,” Finlay said. “In Sydney.” But for the creases around his eyes he had the face of an old child, innocent but canny.
    “She’s not real new,” Innis said. “I haven’t seen her myself.”
    “Very pretty she was, yes. Arm in arm on Charlotte Street. He looked mighty pleased.”
    “He was always a good dancer, Starr Corbett,” Dan Rory said.
    “Liked a good fight sometimes too, at the dances.” Finlay took a deep drag. “Well, didn’t we all. Not so much of it now, even the youngsters.”
    Starr had never mentioned dancing, or fighting either, but sometimes if he felt good or nicely toasted he might break into a brief stepdance on the kitchen floor while Innis watched, amused.
    “I’ll drive you up home,” Finlay said. “A long walk from here.”
    Innis fetched his jacket from the parlor. He noticed on the wall a framed photograph of Dan Rory in the army kilt, young, all bony knees, a feather in the badge of his cap. The snake belt was clasped around his tunic.
    “What color was that feather?” Innis said, pointing at the photograph.
    “Green,” Dan Rory said. “It was a green feather. The feather is the first to go.”

2
    I NNIS STEPPED INTO THE attic room at the end of the hallway, into the shock of its March air and the dusty scent of dry wood. He shut the door carefully: there might be times when he would be inside here with his uncle somewhere in the house and he had to know every board that creaked, where he could crouch without announcing it, how gently he need latch the door. In the sooty darkness the door boards emitted cracks of light. He played his flashlight over the hewn rafters, the pegged beams, the trunks and boxes and pieces of furniture. The big wooden loom sat as his grandmother had left it years ago, a piece of rough grey cloth in the heddles. Her husband had built it for her, put it together right here in the attic, “over the kitchen,” and there she wove in the wintertime until arthritis crippled her. Innis had tried to imagine how she looked as she worked the loom, her feet and her hands moving, but he couldn’t, he didn’t know enough about that, not yet. He squatted beside the equipment he had collected within the loom’s frame, the old fluorescent shop fixtures he’d bought two new plant bulbs for, a simple timer, a warming tray. Start them off at maybe eighteen hours or so and see how they went. He had the pots, the soil, a small watering can, an old crock to store water in, tinfoil to drape over the length of the lamp to direct it down toward the seedlings. The loom was perfect to hang the fixture from: he could make a tent out of it with two blankets that would conceal the light and hold warmth. Even if Starr stuck his headin the door, he wouldn’t necessarily see much. If he poked