Ragged Company Read Online Free PDF Page B

huddled up against itself like you gotta hold yourself in or you’ll explode. That’s how it feels and for the first time in a long time, thinking of that, I don’t feel no big rush of sorrow, no big unstoppable wetness in the middle of my chest. Just okay. Just calm. And when those lights start to fade, slow and almost unnoticeable like falling into a dream, I let go, I allow myself to fall, sliding, sliding away from the monster cold beyond this place and into the soft, warm arms of the darkness.

Granite
    T HERE’S A SONG in every board and nail. That is what he told me, my father. On those nights of my youth when the north wind would rise off the lake behind our house to rattle bony knuckled fingers along the eaves and shutters, I would cry. And he’d come to me. He would emerge from the darkness, silently, this monolith of a man that was my father. Listen, he’d say. Listen. The wind is coaxing them free again. They live in every timber, every stone, and every nail. Your people. Your ancestors. They’re with you, around you, watching over you all the time. That’s what you hear, son. Lullabies. Not ghosts or goblins or witches. Just songs. The wind sets them free to sing them to you. There’s a song in every board and nail in this old house and if you listen you can hear them. And he would stretch out his great length beside me trailing the faint aura of granite dust that always clung to him, and we would open ourselves up to the chorus.
    In my child’s mind I imagined a fabulous music that would become the lullabies and hymns that eased me into sleep. When I woke he would be gone, off well before dawn to the granite quarry where he, like my grandfather and great-grandfather, had built the life that gave me mine. And my name: Granite Harvey.
    The house itself was built of the selfsame rock they quarried. Large slabs laboriously placed three storeys high. The ashen face of granite was augmented by lively rows of chert, feldspar, and gneiss, their minerals adding an unencumbered glee to the austerity of pale stone. Each piece had been carried by wagon from neighbouring fields and shoreline. Even the roof timbers, eaves, and shutters were fitted and sawn from the felled trees of the ten acres it sat upon. In this way it seemed not so much to dominate the land as become a natural part of it. For years, I truly believed it had spoken. I believed that the rocks and timbers and nails whispered to me constantly. So that nights alone, reading in front of that huge fireplace, ancestors I had never met kept me company. Now, I shake my head and stare around the empty room.
    Above me I hear Mac prowling. He was always a good prowler. It was what made him a good reporter and eventually a great editor. Always able to spot the hidden detail that turned a good story into an outstanding one. Now he was likely inspecting the house in the same way.
    I was busy with the fireplace flues when I heard him heading down the stairs. “Fine wood,” he said, entering the room. “This whole place is built of really fine wood. Maple, oak, and just the right touches of pine and cedar in the baths. Someone really knew what they were doing, Gran. They don’t build them like this anymore.”
    “No,” I said. “Great-grandfather built things to last.”
    “Still, you know, there’s a great place for a sauna up there and a skylight or two would brighten it. Right now, it’s almost Gothic—all that
Wuthering
gloom and cold.”
    “Are you kidding? You should have heard the fight I had just to get the old man to put in the furnace system. He said the house would never be the same again. Said he wanted it kept the way it was.”
    “Nice sentiment,” Mac said. “There’s some people who believe that heritage should remain heritage and to alter it forces it to lose its value, its place in time. That’s important to a lot of people, Gran—that one place in time that anchors them. You sure you want to sell it?”
    I moved to pull across