Cape Breton Road Read Online Free PDF Page B

more miles per gallon, Ned said, and in a loud bar they went for bourbon, flat-out, and Innis reached a point where it slid down like pop. He began to flip unshelled peanuts at people passing their table, laughing at first, but then grimly flinging them, taunting anyone his bleary gaze could fix on. To save him from a sure beating, Ned coaxed him into the street and drove him home, Sleep it off, man, go to bed. But when Innis, stumbling and cursing, saw his mother glowering at the top of the stairs, something flipped, he was on the verge of striking her before he pulled back, somehow it was her fault that his simple life had turned hopelessly complicated. After throwing up in the bathroom, he smashed the mirror, the toilet. It was the toilet that freaked her out, seeing him lift the lid off the back and break up the tank, yelling and slipping, collapsing finally on the wet tiles, water gushing everywhere, so mad drunk no one would come near him, and if he hadn’t been in deep trouble already, she would have had the cops in, such was her disgust. No alcohol since, not even a beer. He did not miss it: it lit flames in his nerves, made his mind thick and stupid. But grass was clear, thoughtful, mellow, most of the time. Every so often, though not enough to put him off, bitterness rose up in him when he smoked, his grievances vivid, he tasted them, felt their sting. But he kept them in his head, talked them out with himself, found the words that would have worked if he’d had the wits when he’d needed them. Sometimes, stoned and alone, he would realize that he wastalking out loud, fists clenched, pumping his anger as if the person were right there in the room with him. But he calmed down when he came down. Maybe it was good after all, that he could work it out this way alone. And if grass stoked his fantasies, better that than nothing. By fall, he would have plenty weed, not just for himself, but for the right people with money to spare.
    His only call had been from his mother a few weeks ago, and though there were times back home when she’d been tough with him, formidable, and he’d feared her temper, he was struck by how distant she sounded, her voice thin, almost pleading. When he’d lived with her, she knew a good bit about his life, if not as much as she wanted to know, but now she had no real idea what he was up to and that seemed to shake her up. Don’t worry, Ma, Innis told her before he hung up, conscious of the bad line and the eavesdroppers, I hitched my wagon to a Starr. She didn’t laugh.
    He squinted at the dark shape of the barn set back in the old pasture. Hard to imagine there’d ever been life in it, horses and cows coming and going, rumbling in their own hot stink, but warm nevertheless even on a night like this. Starr had hated farming, he let the place go after Grandpa died, the equipment wasn’t touched again, even the old pick-up behind the toolshed was sunk to its hubs, the tires rotting, a load of snow in the truckbed. I shovelled so much shit I ran off to the navy, he said, and I wouldn’t grow anything here now that God didn’t give me for nothing, not even a blade of grass. Okay, Starr, I’ll put in a crop for you. Grass it is.
    The trucker who’d picked Innis up that day last fall outside New Glasgow said, Listen, stuff this good you couldmove easy, no problem at all around here, and don’t give me another hit or I’ll have us in the ditch. Jesus, it’s a damn shame we don’t grow it here, look at all this land, gesturing at the hills they were passing, black with spruce, and the old neglected fields. But you can, you know, Innis told him, explaining that he’d read how you could develop a strain for your own climate, they grew it all over the States, down South it was replacing moonshine, was what he’d heard. Well I never heard tell of that in Cape Breton, the trucker said, but if a man could and he did, he’d make a real go of it, good weed like you got in your hand there.