In 1960, the twenty-eighth day of June, I was saved. At exactly six o'clock in the morning, I woke up and realized that today was my eighteenth birthday. The bells of the Catholic Church were heard. I would still go to Sunday's service, but I was reluctant in my heart. "Well," I told the bell, and also to myself, "at least from tomorrow you will not disturb me again." But I did not move, and lay quietly for a moment, looking up, the poplar leaves outside the window rattling softly; it was a morning in Nova Scotia.
On such a big day, I didn't hurry to get out of bed, at least in part because I heard another sound, very different from the low, solemn beat of the church bells. Father's irregular snoring, whirring, rough and harsh, came from the next door with moisture. Although I could only hear him, in my mind, it was no different from seeing. He must have been lying on his back, his thinning iron gray hair scattered on the pillow, his deeply sunken cheeks, even his dark eyebrows rising and falling with his chaotic breathing. His mouth must have been slightly open, and there was a tiny bubble of saliva at the corner of his mouth bulging and shattering. Not surprisingly, his left arm and even his left leg would be thrown off the edge of the bed and rested on the floor. Judging from his posture, it seemed as if his father had prevented any accidents in his sleep, and in the event of an accident, he only needed to turn slightly to the left and straighten up, and he was already standing on the edge of the bed. Half of his body was always touching the ground, waiting.
My father always got up first, and I think he should get up in a little while. He would take a breath like someone had choked his neck, and the snoring would stop abruptly. Then there would be the sound of quiet walking next door, and then the crooked door would be pushed open and closed, and my father would pass through my room. He usually carries his shoes in his left hand and pants at the same time, while his right hand is trying to button up and tie the belt. For as long as I can remember, my father had generally been fully dressed when he passed, leaving only buttons and hooks, which he was not good at, because in the small mine where he had worked before, an explosive had taken his index and middle fingers from his scarred right hand. However, he did not expect much from the remaining fingers, just to be able to "pinch and pull", tie buttons, and tie belts; and these tasks they also did their best, but there was always a sense of desperation that was difficult to worry about. The three fingers often seem to be more than diligent, but they themselves seem to feel a little overwhelmed.
As I passed my room, my father would walk lightly so as not to wake me, while I would close my eyes and pretend to be asleep to make him think he had a plan. When he went downstairs to make a fire, my mother and I would stay for a while and then tentatively communicate with a cough to determine who was the next person to get up. If I coughed and motioned for me to wake up, it was time for me to follow my father's footsteps downstairs; if I had not made a sound, my mother would have passed through my room in a few minutes. I would close my eyes a second time, but I always felt that this trick did not work for my mother; she was not like her father, and I always felt that the difference between real sleep and false sleep was very clear in her mind. And playing these tricks actually I don't think it's glorious. But today, I thought, this is the last time, I hope they all go down the stairs before me. Because today I have some things to do, and I have a short time: shortly after my parents go downstairs, my seven younger siblings are going to get up.
They were now sleeping in a very different world across the hallway. Two large rooms, generally we call "girls' rooms" and "boys' rooms". The former lived my sisters, Mary fifteen, Judy fourteen, Catherine twelve, Bernadette three; Daniel nine, Harvey seven, and David five in the other room. Their world was very different, very happy, often with unconcealed laughter, casual pantomimes, and muffled pillow fights, and when they fell asleep, there would be comic books that often changed hands and the crumbs of cookies they had stolen. The "we" side is different. There are two rooms, only one door, and as I said before, my parents have to pass through my room when they come in and out. Such a structure was indeed unsatisfactory, and my father had proposed to open a door from the porch to their room, and then completely destroy the unqualified crooked door that connected to our room. But my father probably had planned to cover the beams and arches of the rooms, and the latter thing did not move either. On the coldest mornings of winter, you can look up and notice that the silver nail hats are frosted, and you can see your breath in the cold and clear air.
Sleeping on this side of the corridor made me feel particularly mature, completely out of the world of my younger siblings, which was vaguely full of laughter and laughter. This probably had something to do with being three years older than my second-older peers, and of course there were various other reasons for separating me from them. We all slept in the crib in our parents' room for a while, because I was the eldest and the first to move out, so I stayed in the next room. They kept me so close, perhaps because I was their first child and had no experience in caring for babies and young children, so I was more nervous and worried for a longer time. So, for as long as I can remember, I've been lying alone in this bed. I was followed by three younger sisters, and my closest brother, Daniel, was nine years behind me, and it was an insurmountable chasm. At that time, my parents seemed to feel the need to let Daniel sleep with me, or let our brothers move to the opposite side together, maybe they were used to hearing my breathing on the other side of the wall, or they knew that I knew a lot of things, and they knew their habits, and had no choice but to trust me and see me as their peer, or more intimate, as their friend? Waking up in the middle of the night to hear your parents having sex next door is a weird and lonely thing to do, and you can even count the number of times you go back and forth. And then you think, they actually know you know, but they really don't know how much you know. Also, you're wondering when they knew you knew, and they're wondering when you started knowing these things. For the past four or five years, I have been lying there, allowing lust to wash over me like a tidal wave, and I have other troubles besides that swollen body, such as sympathizing with the inevitable embarrassment of my parents, and feeling sad for the skinless "personal privacy" in our family. When the two know that the first fruits of their sex life are listening to the reality a few feet away, I am afraid it will not be easy to continue. And, I guess, there's another thing they don't know I already know.
It was Grandpa who told me seven years ago. I was ten years old, my grandfather was eighty, and the spring was melting, and he spent the afternoon in the tavern in the town, drinking and spitting, tapping the table and pounding his thighs, and his friends who had crippled limbs in the mine smoked pipes, and Grandpa's head was always caged in smoke. As I walked past the tavern gate with my bag on my back, Grandpa called out to me as if I were a little taxi and said he wanted to go home. So we walked back through the streets and alleys, and although the old man's footsteps were unstable, the strange thing was that the waist plate was still straight, and I looked thin and embarrassed next to me. Grandpa wanted me to walk next to him, but he would never allow me to help him, because that would hurt his dignity.
"I can walk home by myself, James," he said without looking down, only looking over the tip of his nose and the sea lion hurling at me, "no one is taking me home." I'm just looking for a road companion. So I walk over here, you go on your own, and we're like two friends coming out for a walk. No, it's not like, it's. ”
But when we went around an alley, he put his left arm on the stone façade of a house, rested with his forehead against his forearm, and began to grope his front flap with his right hand. He stood like this, his head against the wall, his feet two feet away from the corner, like the hypotenuses of a right triangle in a geometry textbook. The shoe was still in his own urine, and he began to mutter, saying that he loved me, that although he had hidden it in his heart at that time, he loved me before I was born.
"You know," he said, "how happy I was when your mother didn't care to have a child, so happy that I was embarrassed myself." Your grandmother was angry, and your grandparents knew to cry, and strangled their silly hands there. Every time I bump into them, I walk around with my head down. I knew I should ask God for forgiveness, but that was the result I had been asking God to worship the Buddha. Hearing this, I said, 'Okay, he can only stay and marry her now.' Because he's that kind of man. Then, he will take over my class and fulfill a wish. ’”
At this moment, his head slipped from his left arm, and he turned violently in a shaky way and almost hit me, as if he had just known that I was next to him. "Oh my God," he looked frightened, "I'm a selfish old fool!" What have I done! Just said what I didn't say! "He grabbed me by the shoulder too hard at first, then loosened up a bit, but all the way home his big hand was on my shoulder and never removed. As soon as he entered the house, he immediately collapsed into the chair closest to the door, almost crying: "Did I tell him... Did I tell him..." Grandma, who was ten years younger than him, suddenly became alert and immediately approached him and asked, "What did you tell him?" "And he raised his hands and let them fall back into his thighs, as if to say that things were irretrievable." You know. You know. He seemed genuinely frightened.
"Go home, James," Grandma said in a calm and gentle tone, though I knew she must have been angry in her heart, "and this man is old, and you don't have to pay attention to him. He hadn't figured out in his life when to shut up or when to pull up his pants. "When I turned to leave, I noticed that he had not pulled the zipper before peeing, and his underwear was not pulled straight.
No one mentioned it again, but one of my grandparents was so frightened and the other so angry, I knew it must be true, because if it wasn't for the real thing, their reaction had never been so intense. So I stopped exploring the truth and falsity; with this extra layer of information, it was even stranger to lie there and hear the voice of your younger siblings "from nothing." One is that you seem to be involved in the process, and the other is that you know that your own beginnings are different, at least not in that bed. I've imagined the back seat of an old-fashioned car in the photo, the grassy slope behind a demolished ballroom, or the sandy beach by the sea. I always liked to believe that being pregnant with me was different for them, that there had been joy, not just an indifferent release. But each of us is expected to be a derivative of love, not just a necessity to be added, and we all want to be harmonious and satisfied before that erection. Of course, my imagination may not match the facts, just as I have speculated about many things, and perhaps I know nothing about how they feel in the moment, let alone the situation at that time.
But after today, maybe I don't need to bother with these things anymore. I grew up as a prisoner in the dirty coal mining town of Cape Breton Island, and finally it was all forgotten. I decided that anywhere in the world was better than these dilapidated coal mines, these smoky black houses, and especially in recent years, these thoughts have become more and more vivid in my mind. It seems to have risen at the same time as my desire for sex, similar to lust, and as long as the first wave comes, it will only increase with the passage of time. I must not be a second father, and I must not be like my father who is downstairs at this time, and I must put on a kettle and ping-pong, as if he has something urgent, and there is something for him to rush to. It's just that he has nowhere to go. I can't become a grandfather, he is in his nineties, old dragon clock, every day just sit in front of the window to pray, occasionally sober moments, only remember his own feats in the mine. In the stories he liked to tell, there was always how straight the stakes he had erected with his father; of course, time had passed, and the laneways he had built under the mine were about to collapse, when he was sixty-two, his father was twenty-five, and I was not yet born.
Grandpa's retirement was a long, long time ago, and the big mines he had contributed to, though so poetic in his memories, had actually stopped working. My father hasn't worked since the beginning of March, and he doesn't want to stay home, so seeing him makes it even harder for each of us to relax. Especially in the summer vacation, the house is full of people, and this tension is exacerbated, and there is nowhere to go. Early this morning, listening to him walking back and forth, fiddling loudly with the lid of the stove, pretending that he had to, pretending that he was in a hurry because he was needed somewhere, I felt that there was a vast and muddy bay between me and my father; and equally distant was the new father who would let me ride on his shoulder and take me to the grocery store to buy ice cream and go to a baseball game that I could not understand. He would also take me to the mine for me to touch the horses there, and even let me sit on the broad and soft horseback. When we approached, the father would speak softly to the horses to let them know where we were, so that he could reach out and touch them so that the horses would not be frightened. These horses are invisible. They have been working in the mines for too long to know what light is, and then the dark working environment has become their whole world.
But now, even if his father is free, he will not do these things with his younger siblings anymore. He was old and his hair was white, except for the missing fingers of his right hand, and on one occasion the drill failed, leaving a scar at his hairline that extended to the right side of his face like a ferocious bolt of lightning. At night, I heard his coughing and loud panting, all because of the rock dust that had accumulated in his lungs from the coal mine. He sucked up so much bad air in the harsh coal mines that the coughs may also indicate that he would not live long. The younger siblings across the corridor, by the time they were also eighteen, would not be able to hear him fiddling with the stove like I did.
The last time I lay here on my back, I remembered the first time I was lying on the ground next to my father. It was an illegal small coal mine under the sea, where my father had been working since November of the previous year. At the end of the semester, I went to him and worked with him for a few weeks, and when we were done, the mine was finally closed. I didn't think of it myself, I was quite proud to work there, and Grandpa was rarely sober, saying, "Once you start, you can't stop." Once you take a sip of the underground water, you will always want to go back and drink it. That water will seep into your bloodstream. We have it all in our veins. Our family has been working in coal mines since 1873 to the present. ”
The small mine paid very little, was poorly equipped and ventilated, and because it was illegal in itself, there were no safety regulations to follow. On the first day, we crawled on coal and shale debris, water oozing from all sides of us, as if it were going to seep into our bodies, and as long as we crawled forward like moles, the cold immediately invaded the bone marrow, never mercy. At that time, I really thought it was difficult for me to get out alive. We first use drill gangs and drill bits, then explosives, and finally pickaxes and shovels to mine a very narrow seam of coal. The mine tunnel we crawled was less than a meter high, and my father had already trained into a machine, just shoveling coal backwards, and I couldn't do anything, just follow my father's instructions, don't worry about the roadway collapsing, don't worry about the rats rubbing my face, don't care about my legs, stomach and eggs because I was immersed in water, I was unconscious, and I tried to forget that I could hardly breathe because of the dust, and even if I breathed air, it was second-hand.
Once I felt something whizzing past me, and in the light of my lamp I saw my father's wrench draw an arc above my head, smashing an arm's length away in front of me, squeaking with an unusually sharp sound. So I saw this rat lying a few inches in front of my eyes. Its head had been smashed and splashed on the wrench of the coal block, but it was still moaning to itself. And between its twitching legs, a stream of yellow urine flowed out, although it was exhausted in the blink of an eye. Father pulled down the wrench, picked up the tail of the rat that was not yet dead, and violently threw it backwards, and we heard it bounce off the wall and snap into the water. The father gritted his teeth and scolded the phrase "dirty things raised by the dog mother", and then wiped the wrench on the wall. My father and I stopped moving, lay down and rested for a while, and the two of us withstood the cold in the darkness and dampness.
Strangely enough, I sometimes can't tell why I had to leave, because I really hate everything here, or just because the coal mine is no longer there, and despite its badness, maybe it's better to go to a place you hate than to have nowhere to go. It was this that made my father more and more nervous, because for many years he had been using his body as a full-powered car, and now, with many injuries and dying of obsolescence, the use of this shell was very little: except for sex, he would only go for a walk by the sea or in the mountains, which was not so much a walk as a tight rush. When the walk didn't work, he would make himself unconscious with rum, and then his friends would take him back and throw him to the ground as soon as he entered the kitchen door, leaving his legs intertwined and pressed under him. My mother and I dragged him half-back and half-dragged him to the staircase at the other end of the dining room, and then mentally counted and carried him up fourteen steps one step at a time. These steps are not always done. Once, he smashed the window panes of the dining room with one punch, brandishing his still clenched fists, and scarlet blood was thrown everywhere: on the floor, on the wallpaper, on the curtains, on the dinner plate, on the silly and pathetic dolls, on the coloring book and on the table on a copy of Great Hopes; the whole dining room became a wrestling field for me and him. When he was finally subdued and his fist was loosened, we had to respectfully ask him to clench his fist again, so that he could pour the bright red iodine into his wound, and at the same time use tweezers to find the silver light of the broken glass. At that time we all prayed, including himself, that the tendons were not broken and that there would be no infection, for that was the only hand he could use, and that all of us were passengers on that hand in danger in the midst of the treacherous ocean.
Sometimes he was so drunk that my mother and I couldn't get him in, so we had to leave him in my bed. In the midst of his fists and feet and the foul language he shouted, we did everything we could, hoping to at least take off his shoes and undo his collar, belt, and trouser waistband. On days like this, I could only lie by his side all night, enduring the disgusting sticky, sweet smell of rum, and my ears were filled with his unrecognizable, unspoken dream words, and the terrible choking caused by his high and low purrs and phlegm in his throat. Sometimes he would unexpectedly wave his arms on either side, and once his forearm hit the bridge of my nose, and suddenly tears and nosebleeds poured out at the same time, and I only put the sheets in my mouth to block the howl that had rushed to my throat.
But all the storms will recede into a few strong gusts of wind, and finally calm down. Perhaps without storms and strong winds, we would not have any calm, or perhaps calm must be paved by the former to show its original appearance. So, sometimes when he wakes up at one or two o'clock in the middle of the night, I feel the incomparable tranquility like a quiet sea, and only at that moment can I faintly recognize the man who let me ride on my shoulder. I would get up, in this sleeping room, go downstairs and pour him a glass of milk: after drunkenness, my tongue would be thick, it would be better to drink milk, and the heat of my throat would be relieved. He would say thank you, say he was sorry, I would say it was okay and tell him there was really nothing to be sorry for. He said he was sorry that he always looked like this, sorry he could give me so little. But he added that since he couldn't give me anything, he would try not to ask me for anything. He said I was free and I didn't owe my parents anything. Maybe this is already a very generous gift, because many young people like me here, at least when they have worked, will go to work very early, and not everyone will go to high school, let alone graduate from high school. Perhaps, not counting the life he gave me, letting me finish high school is already his gift.
But that's in the past, I think, life here and the high school it used to be. The thought suddenly made me wake up and realize if I had just fallen asleep again. Because although I felt like I was paying attention all the time, it was clear that my mother had crossed the room and was downstairs preparing breakfast. Today, this last day, at least I don't have to pretend to sleep, for which I am still grateful.
I moved quickly and pulled out a worn-out backpack hidden under the mattress. This bag was used by my father when he was young. "When will I use that old backpack?" A few months ago, I tried my best to ask him in a casual tone, as if my preparations were for a boring camp. "Whatever." He answered very calmly, with a look of indifference.
I quietly packed my bags and used my ballpoint pen to tick the list of items, and I had an envelope under my pillow, and the entries were written on the back. Four pairs of underwear, four pairs of trousers, four shirts, a towel, a few handkerchiefs, a gabardine coat, a plastic raincoat and a shaving suit. Only the last one was new and never used, the cheapest one produced by Gillette. I used my father's razor before, because it had not been changed for many years, not only some damage, but also glowing patina. Now I've used it for many years, sometimes too diligently, because on closer inspection it doesn't look like my beard is growing so fast.
When I went downstairs, the two rooms on the opposite side had not moved, and I was even more grateful for this. Because it was the first time, I didn't know how to say goodbye, and because I had no bottom in my heart, I hoped that the fewer people present, the better. But who knows, maybe I'm very good at saying goodbye. I put my backpack on the second step so it wasn't too conspicuous, and went into the kitchen. Mother was busy at the stove, and Father was looking out the window with his back to the kitchen. All that can be seen there are blue-gray cinder piles, abandoned coal unloading trucks with only skeletons left, and the rolling sea. They weren't surprised to see me, because it was usually the case, the three of us, quiet mornings. But I have to concentrate today and finish what I have to say in a short break between the three of us. "I want to go today." I tried my best to say it casually. Only the rhythm of the mother's firewood was slightly changed, indicating that she heard it, and the father was still standing there, looking out the window at the sea. "I felt, I'll go now," I added, my voice getting softer, "don't wait for them to get up, it's easier that way." ”
The water boiled, and as if she was stalling for time, the mother moved the kettle to the back of the stove, turned around and asked, "Where are you going?" Blind River Town? ”
My mother's reaction was so different from what I expected that I was inexplicably numb. I don't know why I thought she would be surprised, surprised, even stunned, but she didn't have it at all. The town of Blind River, which she mentions, is the center of many uranium mines in northern Ontario, and I never had it in my mind. My mother not only seemed to know that I was leaving, but even arranged a route for me and specified a destination. It reminds me of what I read at school about how Dickens's mother supported him to work in a shoe polish factory, and his own opinion on it. The life his mother embraced seemed so terrible to him, and so terrible compared to the life he himself aspired to.
Father turned from the window and said, "You just turned eighteen today, maybe, wait and see." Maybe there will be a job soon. But from his eyes I didn't see what he had to say, because he also understood that it was better to be bored in waiting, and there was despair and helplessness to survive. My father's reaction also made me inexplicably disappointed and angry, because I always felt that they would keep me hysterically, and I would have to show determination.
"What's there to wait for?" I asked a meaningless question, and I knew the answer was obvious. "Why do you want me to stay here?"
"You will be mistaken," said father, "and if you want to go, of course you will be free." We don't ask you, much less force you to do anything. I'm just saying that you don't necessarily have to 'necessarily' go now. ”
Suddenly, the "go" thing becomes urgent, because depending on the situation, it will only get worse and worse. So I said, "Goodbye." I'll write, but not in Blind River Town. The last half of the sentence was almost subconsciously trying to make fun of my mother.
I went to get my backpack, re-entered the house, went out the door, and even reached the main road. My father kept taking me to the gate outside, and my mother said, "I was going to make a birthday cake today..." She hesitated to say it, and the unfinished sentences drifted in the morning air. She was trying to make up for her previous words, desperately trying to turn the conversation back to my birthday. Father said, "You should go to the house over there, and if you come back next time, maybe they won't be there." ”
Walking to "over there", it was only half a block away, and for as long as I can remember, it had been where my grandparents lived. No matter who among us has been hit by some wind and rain, we can always use it as a safe haven. Dad, who said they wouldn't be there forever, suddenly pointed out something I had never really thought about. The old house had turned black from year after year of soot, and I walked down the old street toward it, worried only about the ash-filled pavement and the cinder-filled pits under my feet, and I felt a little trepidation. It was not yet seven o'clock, and I was like an early milkman, except that I had no milk to deliver, just went door to door to say goodbye at their quiet door.
Entering the house, Grandpa smoked a pipe by the window, stroking the rosary beads with his twisted fingers, and his hands were so badly injured that he himself could not remember them. He had been getting deafer and deafer for a while, and I closed it when I entered the door, and he didn't even turn his head. I decided not to start with him. If I had looked for him first, it would have meant shouting and repeating, and I reckon I don't have the mental strength at the moment. Grandma, like her mother, was busy at the stove. She was tall, her hair gray, and although she was almost eighty, her posture was still majestic. Her hands were so powerful that they hardly resembled those of a woman, and although they were not fat, they always appeared very large, and their legs and feet were very flexible. This is the age, she still comes and goes lightly, and her ears are clear.
"I'm leaving today." I'll try to be as succinct as possible.
She plucked the firewood again and replied, "It's okay." There's no work here. That's always been the case here. ”
Grandma never changed her gaelic accent when she was young, and she liked to use the irrelevant third person, and I kept telling her to innovate.
"James, come here." She said, taking me to the pantry. With amazing agility, she climbed onto a chair and removed from the top floor of the cupboard a large, old sugar jar with cracks on it. Inside were postcards wrapped in dust, a few faded yellow pay slips that looked like they were about to be crushed when touched, and two letters, tied with a shoelace. Postcards and pay stubs of place names leapt across the dust and years of the divide and came toward me: Spring Hill, Scranton, Wilkes-Barrie, Yellowknife, British Beach, Butte, Virginia City, Escanaba, Sudbury, Whitehorse, Drumheller, Harlan, Kentucky, Elgins, West Virginia, Forney, British Columbia, Trinidad, Colorado — coal and gold mines, copper and lead, gold and iron, nickel, gold and coal. East, West, North, South, Souvenirs and Sent Greetings. Those places were as young as me, as old as my grandmother, and had never heard of them.
"In these places, your father is actually only underground," Grandma said angrily, "before he left here, and after he came back here, the same is true." After we die, I am afraid that there is time to stay there, and people are still alive, so why bother to drill down. ”
"But then again," Grandma said after a moment's silence and a serious tone, "this is after all what he is good at and wants to do, but I don't want him to do it, at least not here." ”
She untied her shoelaces and showed me the two letters. The first letter, postmarked March 12, 1938, was sent to "Kellogg, Idaho," "Waiting for the Depository": "I'm old, and I'll be happy if you can come back and replace me." Coal seams can still be mined for many years. I haven't died in a long time. Conditions are getting better. The weather is mild and we are all fine. Don't bother replying. Just come back. We are waiting for you. Love your father. ”
The second letter, also "Deposit-pending," "Sent to Kellogg, Idaho," said: "Don't listen to him." Once you come back, you'll never be able to go again. What a life here. They say the coal seam will be finished in a few years. Love your mother. ”
I had never seen Grandpa's handwriting before, and while I knew he could read it, for some reason I always felt he didn't know how to write. Now that I think about it, it is probably because his hand has been seriously injured, twisted and deformed, coupled with the increase of age, it is more and more difficult to control, presumably it is impossible to complete such an exquisite task of "writing".
The two letters used the same thick-headed pen, and the ink was so black that I had never seen it. In a way, the two letters are like an old couple at odds, canceling each other's expectations, but tied together by a dusty torn shoelace.
I came out of the pantry and walked to the window where Grandpa was sitting. "I'm leaving today." I leaned over and shouted.
"Oh yes." He said that he did not say no, his eyes were still looking out the window, and his fingers were still playing with the rosary beads. He didn't move, only smoke rising from the pipe, the two rows of teeth biting the pipe were dilapidated, and the color was frighteningly filthy. Lately he's fallen in love with saying "Oh yes, yes, and he's going to use it back; it's actually a way he's invented to hide his hearing. At this moment, I could not tell whether he had heard my words, or if he had heard them dimly, or if he had not heard them at all, but had given a perfect response. I felt that if I had to say it again, I would not be able to maintain a steady tone, so I turned and walked out. When I got to the door, I found Grandpa dragging his feet behind.
"Don't forget to go home, James," he said, "or you'll always feel like something is missing." Once you drink the water underground, it becomes a part of your body, just like the blood that a man leaves in a woman's body can change a woman for a lifetime and never get rid of it. That's a part of a man that flows in the deepest recesses of a woman's body. This kind of thing can keep you awake at night and haunt you until you die. ”
He knew how much Grandma hated him, so he tried to speak quietly. But he was so his ear that he couldn't hear his own voice, so like many deaf people, he was basically shouting. You could almost hear his shouts bouncing off the walls of his house, fading into the bright morning sun. I held out my hand to Grandpa, and I felt a twisted and mutilated force coming from him, and I was about to crush my palm. His fingers were strangely shaped, his open thumb was flat and too broad, the bulging scars had long been sharpened hard and black, and the huge and abnormal balls were his twisted and misaligned joints, but this was a hand with terrifying strength. For a moment I had a terrifying thought: Maybe I can't go, I'll never be released. But finally Grandpa let go of his hand and I felt free.
Even a potholed street can seem lonely when you realize that you don't know when you will be able to reread it, or even see you again in this life. My backpack was so conspicuous that I took remote trails, and I was afraid to talk to people or try to explain, because saying anything would be a failure in vain. As I was about to get out of town, I got into a coal truck and drove twenty-five miles along the coastline. The truck was so noisy and so bumpy that it was impossible for the driver to talk to me. I am thankful for the silence that engulfed both of us.
Throughout the morning, I switched to a variety of unexpected modes of transport, and after a series of short rides, by noon, when I finally crossed the Canso Strait on the island of Cape Breton, my journey away from home had really begun. Only by leaving that island behind did I feel that my new identity could be used. This identity is like a piece of clothing that has not been worn, and has been carefully stored in a brand new wrapping paper. It turned me into a Vancouverite, the most distant place I could imagine.
I was somehow always worried that I wouldn't be able to get out of Cape Breton Island, that at the last moment there would be huge tentacles, or terrible hands like Grandpa's, that would grab me and drag me back. Now that he had finally set foot on the mainland, he looked back at Cape Breton, where greenery rose in the mist, and white waves trampled on the surface of the sea.
The first ride on the mainland was a blue Dodge pickup driven by three black men, which was very worn and had the words "Reyfield Cricke, Lincolnville Area, Nova Scotia, Small Cargo" printed on the body. They were going to New Glasgow and said they were going to walk about eighty miles, and they could pick me up if I wanted to. They told me again that because their truck was old and couldn't drive fast, I might get in a better car if I waited. However, they also said, I don't have to wait stupidly, anyway, faster and slower will always arrive. If I couldn't stand it and wanted to get out of the car, I would smack the top cover of their cab. They would have wanted me to sit in the cab, but it was illegal to have four people in the cab of a commercial vehicle, and they didn't want to provoke the police, which would be troublesome. I climbed into the car and sat on the spare tires used in the back body and the truck started. The sun was already high, and when I took off my backpack, although I couldn't see it, I obviously felt two large streams of sweat running through my back and meeting. I finally realized that I hadn't eaten since dinner last night and was hungry.
When I got to New Glasgow, they got me off at a small gas station. The black friend wanted to continue to help, and showed me the way and told me how to go to the west end of the town. The alleyway I had to walk through was littered with garbage, the smell of greasy hamburgers wafting out of several fast-food restaurants on the side of the road, and the jukeboxes inside were so loud that from the half-open and half-hidden doors, the song of Elvis and the sour smell of rough food were squeezed out into the alley. I wanted to take a break, but there was always an incomprehensible sense of urgency, and I always felt that the cars on this one-way street were all driving to a wonderful end, and I was afraid that if I stopped for a moment and went to buy a hamburger or something, I would miss the car that was worth my ride. Sweat was running down my forehead, stinging my eyes, and I knew that thanks to the straps of my backpack, the two dark pieces of sweat on my back must have been getting wider and wider.
When the sun was almost at its highest, a red car pulled over on the gravel parking lane of the highway, and the driver leaned over to open the co-pilot's door. He was a rather bloated fifty-year-old man, his flushed face sweating all the time, his wet forehead shiny and shiny, sticking to his small handful of brown hair. His coat was straddling the back seat, and he had a pen pocket in his shirt pocket, and pencils and fountain pens were lined up. The neckline of his shirt was open, the tie was ripped open and crooked to one side, and neither the belt nor the buttons on the waistband of his pants were fastened. His fat thighs had filled the gray tubes of his pants, but they still looked wrinkled because of sweating. His shirt was white, sweat was secretly seeping out of his armpits, and when he leaned forward, there were two large wet spots on his back. His hands were very fair, too small to be out of proportion to his figure.
The car moved forward, the road flashed, and the white line on the ground saw me amazingly. He often grabbed a dirty hand towel from his seat, wiped the sweat from his palms, and then wiped the black water from the steering wheel.
"It's hot enough," he said, "hotter than a bitch in hell." ”
"Yes," I said, "it's very hot. It's hot indeed. ”
"That little broken town ahead," he said, "you can't walk around it for a week without doing anything." ”
"Yeah, such a small town."
"Are you just passing by?"
"Yes, I'm going back to Vancouver."
"Oh, then you're still far away, little brother, still far away." I haven't been to Vancouver yet, and I've never been further west than Toronto. I've told my company how many times I'm going to go west, but they have to send me here. Three or four times a year. The weather has always been so uncomfortable, like now, it is as hot as hell, and in the winter, it can freeze the eggs of the copper monkey. Then he suddenly honked his horn like a salute, because he saw a teenage girl who didn't know where to go just happened to be standing on the side of the road.
Although the windows were open, it was still hot, and because the car was red, the feeling was even stronger. Throughout the afternoon, the road snaked ahead, like a snake's scales gleaming on the road ahead, leaving a disgusting white stripe on its back. Because of the slopes and turns, we are like being locked in a roller coaster with sharp turns, with the arc of the car going east and west, and our feet must always be ready to endure the force coming from the chassis of the car. Sometimes, we rushed into the small pit and valley, and I was often frightened as if my chest and stomach were hollowed out, and only when the car climbed up again and continued to make a detour, I found my internal organs again. From time to time, insects "bang" on the windshield in front of the car, instantly transformed into a yellow smudge. The tires hissed on the hot tarmac, as if they would leave two tire marks on the back of the car. I felt that the clothes on my legs or on my back were all on my skin because of sweat. New sweat appeared on my companion's shirt, and the area grew larger. He threw his shoulders and neck up to the back of the chair, his huge body lifted from the soaking cushion, his pants were not tied, and he put his hand deep into his crotch. "Let it breathe there too," he said as he adjusted the position of his genitals, "these panties must have been made by an Indian, and they were always put up." ”
We were chatting all afternoon during the drive, mostly him talking, and I listened, but I didn't mind at all. I had never seen such a person before. He talks about his business (more paychecks, more kickbacks, plus a lot of gray deals), his boss (stupid and asshole, with someone so capable running errands for him to count his luck), his family (a wife, a son, a daughter, everything is just right), sex (no more, he won't get tired of dying), Toronto (expanding every day, not the same as before), and taxes (getting higher and higher, the property is out of his own pocket, because the government has been busy cutting taxes for the rich). He had endless words, and no matter what he said, I never heard them. He sounded so confident, as if he knew everything. You will feel that he is very sure of his omniscience, that everything is under his control, as if he never hesitates, does not need to pause, does not tire, and even thinks unnecessarily. He is like a jukebox, with a mysterious source supplying it with an endless variety of coins.
The villages and towns all retreated rapidly. Truro, Glenn Helm, Wentworth, Oxford; steaming, flashing by. In less than thirty miles we would be out of Nova Scotia, my companion told me. We are approaching the border of New Brunswick. I have reached a certain divide that I will cross, and once I cross, I can forget a lot of the past, and my state of mind has become a state of exhaustion but also a state of relief. This mood is very similar to when I left the Cape britannica, but with today's travel, it is not as clear and light as before. This scorching sun, after this long journey, is indeed a little tired.
Suddenly the road turned to the left, and all the twists and turns were gone, and only extended from us up the long hill, about half a mile away to the tip of the mountain. After we started climbing, we began to see houses on both sides, and the higher we climbed, the more houses there were, scattered along the mountain road.
My companion honked his horn rhythmically as he saw a young girl and her mother tiptoeing their backs to the rope to dry their clothes. The two of them were busy on the rope with their hands raised, and on the ground between them lay a basket with washed clothes. They all still have a few clips in their mouths so they don't have to let go of the rope every time and get it down.
"I want to say that they have the wrong thing in their mouths, and they should change it," he said, "and the second round can consider letting the girl hold my egg with her chin." ”
To see them, he drove the car very close, the tires rattling on the stones on the side of the road, and finally we were back on the right path, much quieter.
The distance between the houses is gradually shortening, the walls are darker, and the yard is full of children, bicycles and puppies. We seemed to have reached a major intersection in town, and I noticed that there were many women hurrying past wrapped in headscarves, little boys carrying their school bags and baseball gloves, and everywhere there were men sitting or squatting tightly gathered in a pile. Other men did not sit or squat, but leaned against the wall, leaned on crutches, or struggled to stand on prosthetics. These are the so-called old and weak and disabled. Their faces were all thin and gray, as if exposure to sunlight had only been a matter of the past two days, and it was too late to make up for it no matter how much sunburn they could not make up for it.
"There's no more broken place than Spring Hill," said the man next to me, "unless you're trying to have some fun, you've come to the right place." There were many accidents in the mine, and the man died. It is common for women to be fucked. This is always the case in mining areas. You look at those kids. When it comes to the illegitimate rate, the small town of Nova Scotia leads the nation. Nobody cares. ”
I had never imagined that hearing the name "Spring Hill" and realizing that this was where I was would be so shaken. Maybe I've seen signposts, studied geography, and known that there was such a place "there," but in my mind it would never be "here."
I think of a day in November 1956: old cars waiting in front of the house with no engines, the mud on them all turned up on the road, and the rust was the relationship between the moisture brought by the sea breeze. They were waiting to be ready to drive all night to Spring Hill. At the time, I was fourteen years old, and Spring Hill was so far away that it was almost just a name, not a place. They were also waiting for food wrapped in wax paper and newspaper by their mother, and the warm bottle containing coffee and tea; they were also waiting for my father and this backpack, which was soaked in my sweat today, but it was full of miners' clothes. My father went to the rescue, and they hoped that after the rescue was successful, the clothes would be used. The underwear, thick tweed socks, steel-reinforced boots on the tip of their toes, and blackened, sweat-stained belts—two ends hunched over by hanging miner's lamps, as well as hookers, dusty empty water bags, pants, gloves, and hard hats scarred by years of falling rocks.
Grandpa had stuck his more useful ear to the radio all night, waiting for news from the underground miners and rescue teams. In the school, there are teachers in every classroom collecting donations, and a row of large words on the blackboard: "Spring Hill Miners Rescue Fund in Nova Scotia" tells us where the donations are going. I remember my sisters being reluctant when they donated their five cents, one dime, and two cents and five cents of coins. The concepts of nobility and death, when you are eleven, ten, eight, have little meaning, you cannot appreciate the feeling of a child you do not know forever losing his father, you cannot imagine that his father will no longer walk into the house, or even a corpse can be carried back in a heavy coffin for him to see. The father buried in the ground by others is unrecognizable and out of reach, far less real and concrete than licorice and matinee movies.
"Tell you," said a voice next to me, "I was here six months ago, and I made a little fat woman." As she was jerking herself up, she suddenly began to cry, calling out a name she had never heard of, and it must have been her dead husband or something. that scares me enough. Is this going to be haunted or whatever. I almost lost my stick. It may have been already there, but it just so happened that I was about to shoot in anyway. ”
We are now in the center of town, and the afternoon is coming to an end, and we see that twilight is coming. The sunlight was no longer so poisonous, slanting over the black house. Many are thin-shelled buildings, desolate, gloomy, bitter, and even have traces of fire destruction. A black woman, with two little boys, crossed the road in front of us, and the skin of the little one was not so dark. She held a bag of purchased groceries, and the two little boys each had an open sixteen-ounce bottle of Pepsi. They all covered the mouth of the bottle with their hands and shook the bottle intently so that the drink bubbled up.
A lot of people here have married, the voice added, probably everyone underground is so dark that they can't tell the light when they see it. Didn't they say that turning off the lights was the same. There was an explosion a few years ago and some guys couldn't get out of it, and I don't know how long it took. Eat the lunch left by the dead, then peel the skin of the wood and nibble on it, and drink other people's urine. A man in Georgia said that as long as they were rescued, he would pay them to travel to Georgia. But there was a who came to the rescue, and the Georgian one said that could not be brought. As a result, the others refused to go. If I had a in my company and I was going on a trip to Georgia, I would have cursed my mother. Didn't I say that I was old enough to be your dad and your grandpa, but I had never even been to Vancouver. ”
He was talking about 1958 now, and compared to the accident of 1956, the one in 1958 was much clearer in my mind. If something big happens in life, the difference between fourteen and sixteen is not small. Many precise or vague messages flashed one by one, and I did not even expect them to remain in my memory: the explosion of 1958 was on a Thursday, as in 1956; the Cumberland II was the deepest coal mine in all of North America before the explosion; in 1891, at this mine, one hundred and twenty-five people were martyred; and on the night of 1958, one hundred and seventy-four people went down the mine, and they judged that the vast majority could not survive. Eighteen people were saved after being crushed by a thousand tons of earth and stones for a week. Once upon a time, "Cumberland II" had nine hundred hired workers; now, zero.
I remembered the engine-racing cars in front of my house, the packed food, the gear, and the week's wait; the school fundraisers, Grandpa and his radio, and the other dimension of reality that had been added this time by the neighbor's television; and our silenced lives, and suddenly there were no footsteps to walk. Later, my father returned with his ghostly white face. When the younger siblings went to sleep, we whispered about leaking gas, thin oxygen, and spitting flames—fires fueled by the thousand-year-old diamond mines in the darkness of the ground. There are also the remains of the miners found: if they die from collapsed stone roofs, the bodies are often squashed and smashed; if they are scattered by the explosion, they become fragments that can never be recovered, hanging on twisted tubes, spikes, hands, feet, faces, reproductive organs, ripped intestines, hairy flesh, like strange ornaments hanging from the Christmas tree. Man is broken down into terrible puzzles, but this puzzle can never be completed.
"I don't know what people here usually do?" The voice next to me said, "They all deserve to go out and go to work like the rest of us." The government wants to relocate them elsewhere, but even in places like Toronto they don't want to stay. One by one, they all rolled back to their graveyard, like male dogs always circling around female dogs in heat. They are actually instigators. ”
The red car stopped, next to a grocery store, and it seemed to me that there would be no second one in town. "I'll just rest here." I was a bit overwhelmed and wanted to change my taste. After doing so much work, it is certainly not okay not to relax. I went in to try my luck, just for a moment. Didn't they say that it was better to make amends than to plan ahead? ”
When he closed the door, he added, "Come with you later." Usually there will be leftovers. ”
Where we are now and what he will do is so solidly pressed down on top of my head, like the collapsed mine roofs that were still in my mind a moment ago. Even though it was still sweltering, I rolled up the windows. People on the street looked aimlessly at this side, looking at this overly bright red car, looking at the Ontario license plate, looking at me. I saw Grandpa's expression on their faces, I saw the expressions of hundreds of people who had appeared in my past lives, and even I myself had seen such cars, and I saw the same look in the reflections of glass and mirrors. The situation at the moment is that I don't belong to their life at all, I'm just packed in this semi-red translucent mobile display box, lingering in their pathetic streets for a moment, and then they will disappear, and their lives will remain the same, nothing will change, I just walk through their lives with them. Another insignificant river hurried away with the floating wreckage, and only the banks of the river were eternal. The water would turn to unknown places, where they had never set foot or reach the end of the wreckage. In that glimpse, it was enough for them to summarize me and then lightly shut me out of their world: "Our nine deaths, the undead in our graves, what can he understand?" ”
Thinking of this, I suddenly understood this kind of abomination of avoiding complexity and simplicity, and my heart was extremely depressed. Because I know that not only on this scorching day, but also in my not very long life, I have been making such mistakes. It is only now that I have intensified to become a victim of two stereotypes that I have finally come to an understanding. I somehow always thought that "leaving" was external, that it was just displacement, just labels, such as "Vancouver" that I hung on to my mouth effortlessly. Or, "leaving" is just crossing the waters, crossing the border, and, just because my father once said I was "free," I believed it. How lightweight. I finally understood that the elders in my past life were much more complicated than my judgments about them. Grandpa is sensual, romantic, and loves coal mines, and Grandma is harsh, practical, and hates coal mines. Not without distinction. The mother is silent and strong, indifferent and obedient, and the father is impatient, often rude to the margins, but he has his deep affection without words. They are so different, but they all bear it in some way and have given the past eighteen years to me; and other than that, I don't know anything else about life and the world. Their lives flow into my life, and my life is a tributary of them. There are naturally differences, but in many ways they are much more similar than I thought. I now feel that a person may be able to live in two lives, but see the same truth. For example, the owner of the translucent car I am sitting in now, all he sees is the similarities, for him, in this ruined town, the inhabitants are equivalent to a few phrases, or just the opportunity for sex, they are just uniform goldfish, imprisoned in their transparent goldfish tank, living a uniform, incomprehensible life. And the people on the street look at me the same way through the car glass. Once upon a time, I also looked at passers-by in "foreign license" cars, and I made similar judgments. But these people on the street and the owner of the car, they do not seem to have malicious intentions, and they cannot understand each other, and it is not because of their evil nature. I'm afraid the most important thing is to be honest. It may be that I tried too hard to become another person and didn't figure out who I really am at the moment. I do not know. I'm not sure. But I'm pretty sure I can't follow this man into this house, because it's almost the same as what I left this morning, and I can't accept the offer of others like he did, because the woman is like my mother. I don't know what will happen to my father, my mother, when her wind-like figure fades and his heart is still with the sound of his heart pounding with alcohol. Because I don't know when my father will die. I don't know to whom she will call out her father's name in the darkness. I don't seem to really know a thing, but I do understand my fault: I'm not honest enough with others and myself. Maybe the man who drove the car left a mark on my soul, so that I could see that I had such a soul.
At the edge of Spring Hill, two beams of forward-thrusting headlights fell on me. It pulled over and I climbed into the back seat. When I got into the car, I didn't see the handle, I couldn't close the door, so I had to tug on the crank that was used to roll the window, and I was even a little worried that even it would be pulled off by me. There were two people in the front seat, and I could only see the outline of the back of their heads, so I couldn't see what they were doing. Even the one sitting next to me, most of the people are hidden. He was tall and thin, but because he couldn't see his face clearly, it was possible to say he was thirty to fifty years old. He had two bags of mining tools at his feet, and I kept them there because there was nowhere else to put them.
"Where are you from?" He asked after the car started. "Cape Breton." I said, and then told him which one I was.
"We're coming from there too," he said, "but on the other side of the island." I guess the mine is finished on your side. It's all very old mines. We're pretty much over there. Where are you going now? ”
"I don't know," I said, "I don't know. ”
"We're going to Blind River Now," he said, "and if Blind River doesn't work, we'll hear that Colorado has found uranium and are ready to pile up." We'll probably go there again to try our luck. The car is too old to estimate to reach Colorado. But if you want to go together, you're welcome. We can at least take you for a while. ”
"I don't know," I said, "I don't know. I have to think about it. I'll have to come up with an idea for myself. ”
The car moved forward towards the night. The headlights searched for the seductive white line, which was faintly raised, as if dragging us forward, upwards, towards a certain depth, and we just followed, chasing into the boundless darkness.
"I guess your family has been in the mine over there for years?" The voice next to me asked.
"Yes," I said, "since 1873. ”
"Fuck you," he said after a pause, "you seem to be so depressed, you must be heartbroken." ”
