Cape Breton Road Read Online Free Page B

here, and The Mines itself, with its rundown storefronts and air of commercial despair, offered nothing. Starr was bound that Innis should learn to repair televisions, be his cheap apprentice for awhile. It was a skill you could stay afloat with, Starr said, get you on your own no matter where because every goddamn person everywhere has a TV. Go to the backwardest spot on earth and they’ll have a TV before a toilet, even in Outer Mongolia or someplace, and sooner or later their favorite yak program will suddenly turn to snow and there’ll be no man between them and heaven they would rather see standing at the door of their hut than you with your tools because no kind of prayer can bring a TV picture back, nobody’s god deals with that. But Starr’s shop, with its blank dusty screens stunned every which way, its spill of haphazard parts and testing devices and wire, reminded Innis of a correctional school, and Starr its dead-end instructor hunched under a lamp, a man, it seemed to Innis, who’d settled for the least ambition he could get away with. A few episodes of sparks and smoke and cursing and Innis got what he preferred—staying back in North St. Aubin, picking up odd jobs with people Starr knew, cleaning yards, painting, cutting wood, doing handyman carpentry from junior high woodshop. Sometimes he was less than handy, a jackknife carpenter for sure, but he learned fast from his mistakes and faster yet how to cover them up. I don’t care, Starr had said, ifthat’s what you want to do, you don’t have the knack for circuits, you handle a TV like a trash barrel. Bring in something toward your board, that’s all I ask for now, and there’s no temptations out there in North St. Aubin, at least I’m not finding many. You can settle down and keep straight. Don’t give your mother any more grief. Jesus Christ, Starr, who’s got the grief? If she’d made me a citizen, I wouldn’t be here. Starr said no, you got the sleigh before the horse, was it her that stole the cars?
    He was kneeling beside the tub testing the water for a bath when he heard the Lada skid down the driveway to a halt. His uncle’s laughter, a door slamming, then Starr pounding up the stairs. What the hell was he doing home so soon? Innis turned the taps on full for the noise, sweeping his hand through the water now nicely hot. Little chance that his uncle would blunder into the attic, but Innis stumbled into his jeans and by the time he had buttoned his shirt Starr was rapping on the bathroom door.
    “Hey, save me some hot water! I might need it later.”
    When his pulse had calmed, Innis stood at the door to Starr’s bedroom. His legs felt too light under him as he looked in at his uncle groping into a lower drawer of the dresser, yanking out shirts.
    “Back early,” Innis said.
    “I’m not back, I’m just refueling. What you up to?”
    “Come on, Starr, what could I be up to? A hot bath. Wild, huh?”
    “Your age, I had a bath on Saturday night in a tin tub in the middle of the kitchen.”
    “Okay, I’m really grateful for the hot running water.”
    “If you had to heat it on a coal stove, you’d damn well be grateful.”
    Starr pushed some bills into his wallet and kicked the drawer shut, stooping toward the dresser mirror. He patted his face with both hands, a tough face, darker than Innis’s, its angles squared and solid, like the men in the old photographs downstairs. A deep cleft in his chin—like a stroke Innis might make with a soft pencil—gave to his face the possibility of humor even when he set his jaw. And that’s what had saved them when they got in each other’s face, when the strain of Innis’s living there was too much for either of them, the release of a few laughs. Starr stroked a brush carefully through the tight waves of his steel-grey hair, pursed his lips at himself. “I have to piss and get out of here. There’s a woman waiting, she’s not the sort to wait for long.”
    From the hall window Innis