Causeway: A Passage From Innocence Read Online Free

also those who maintained quite seriously that Peigeag had “special powers.” I’ve heard she removed a cancerous growth on her face once by applying a peculiar poultice that contained, among other things, cobwebs. People with problems would, in the old days before doctors, come to her for mysterious cures. She could heal obscure ailments. Someone with, say, a tiny piece of wood or metal in his eye would come to her for help. She’d check the eye, then rinse her mouth with water—and spit out whatever had been causing the pain. People swear they saw her do it. Conversely, it was widely held that she could cause afflictions if provoked.
    It was getting on towards midnight, and I was standing alonein the little room contemplating the still form of my grandfather, reflecting on the terrible serenity of death. Dougald was a gentle soul, already ancient in my first memory of him. Smiling and chuckling at the slightest pleasure, he seemed to exist in perpetual deference to his more assertive wife. He called her the Old Woman even in her presence.
    It was remarked that he’d grown up hard. Lost his mother as a child. Handed off while still a boy to a bachelor uncle on the mainland, where he worked like a slave but at least learned to read and write. Fled while still young into raw frontier places in the United States. There he worked hard and carried a pistol, which he still kept somewhere in their little house on the mountain.
    He was probably in his thirties when he came home, met Peigeag, and married her.
    I was thinking: now it’s over. There he lies, unfamiliar with eyes closed, bloodless lips pressed together firmly as if to prevent his secrets from escaping back into the world of the curious. Bony hands clasped around the prayer beads on his chest.
    Then, suddenly, one of the guests, an old neighbour from up the mountain, unsteady from drink, appeared in the room. He shuffled towards the casket. He started gesticulating and speaking to the corpse in Gaelic, wildly and with great confidence.
    It was when he reached under his coat and removed a bottle of liquor and uncapped it right there and raised it to his lips that all hell suddenly broke out in the little room. Peigeag was all over the boozer, excoriating him with a shrill fluency that, even though I didn’t know the particulars of the language, made my hair stand on end. Then she grabbed the poor old fellow, frog-marched him to an outside door, and hurled him out into the snow.
    Blue eyes blazing, she wheeled and marched out of the room, back to the kitchen to resume her vigil in a rocking chair that had beenstrategically located close to the stove but with a sightline through a window to the outside, where she knew the drinkers were huddling.
    The babble in the tavern completely drowned out the hushed conversation at our table. When the Gaelic interloper leaves, I told myself, I’ll have to ask about Grandma. How is she getting along? Maybe we’ll go out there for a visit later. But at that moment an old university pal appeared out of nowhere.
    “Mac,” Dennis cried enthusiastically. “When did you come home?”
    “Just last night,” I replied, thrilled to see a familiar face.
    “What’s on for the rest of the day?”
    “Nothing much.”
    “You’ll have to come by,” said Dennis. “We got catching up to do.”
    “I will,” I replied with enthusiasm.
    I’d known Dennis for years and all through university. Both our mothers were schoolteachers. His mother, Dolly MacDonald, had actually been my teacher for a year, in grade seven. Both our fathers had been hard-rock miners.
    Dennis had a nickname among the young fellows. The madadh-ruadh we called him, which means “red fox,” because he had flaming red hair and was considered by young women to be sly.
    The Gaelic conversation was suddenly over. My father’s friend excused himself to go to the toilet. We watched as he walked away.
    “Do you know who that is?” my father asked.
    “Yes,” I