The Scotchman

Chapter One : The Rocky Shore

The blackness melted away and she opened her eyes. She seemed to be lying in tall grass. Rocks pressed into her back through her thin shirt and dug into her throbbing skull. Above her, the wind whipped the grasses, and little bushes laden with wild blueberries tossed their branches. She felt confused and disoriented. Where was she, what day was it? But this sometimes happened after midday naps. She struggled up on one elbow in an attempt to sit up, but immediately clutched her hand to her head. "Steady..." she cautioned herself. She felt hung-over, or jet-lagged. Definitely exhausted. Where was she?

She struggled to her feet so that her view was at last clear across the grasses and bushes. As she took it the scene, her heart leapt. She was about 5 metres from the edge of a rocky cliff and before her, and far below — Dear Lord — the ocean waves were tossing, the shoreline curled away from her southward and into the distance. To her left, in the distance, was Cape Smokey, one of the highest points along the Cabot Trail on Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia.

It was baffling and unsettling to admit this, but she could not remember coming out here, wherever 'here' was. As though she were emerging from anaesthetic, she could vaguely recognize the place but was unsure as to how she had come to be lying there. The last thing she remembered was reclining lazily on the sofa in Paul's house, a drink in hand, listening to one of his vintage fiddle tapes. What had they been talking about? She must have drifted off. But how did she get out here, and where exactly was she — on a neighbour's land? Had she wandered out in a haze? Summers were so exhausting in Cape Breton, with their nightly dances and music sessions and long drives home.

Funny, but she couldn't hear any cars. Usually the tourists buzzed by, wending their way along the coast, even at this time of the evening. Perhaps it was later than she thought? The sun was sinking behind the inland hills, and the moose would be moving in soon to nibble on the berries and tender branches. She should get back to the house, if she could orient herself on this still-unfamiliar patch of land.

Two figures were approaching her now, from inland where the road was: Paul and someone who's dropped in for a visit, perhaps? She started towards them, stumbling over the rocky ground, and squinted, hand shielding her eyes from the slanting evening sun. As she got nearer to them, she saw that the man on the left was tall and burly, and wore a plaid shirt, suspenders, and a peaked cap. He had something in his right hand... an axe, she thought? The man on the right was more slender and shorter, dressed in a dark suit that seemed oddly formal for a late summer afternoon in the country. They stopped, turned to face each other, and their conversation became more agitated.

She had no idea who they were.

***

"With what sweat and toil
did the Scotchman hew these beams?
What time did he battle to set them into place,
What hunger did he mock
to raise these walls, to clear this land
So that we, enchanted,
could sip from steaming mugs,
Whose warmth wisps out
into the first blush of dawn."

She puts her pen down, satisfied for now with her poem. It is late morning, and she is comforted by the sound of Paul clattering the mugs and the espresso maker burbling. She likes the way he can paint a picture of the man who had built this house, "the old Scotchman" as he called him. He loved to marvel at the determination and brute force that had propelled him to clear he land of rocks to farm it, to chop the trees, and to build this house, against what must have been incredible odds.

"Imagine what it must have been like," he says. "The winters were brutal, compared to what he was used to back in Scotland. There weren't very many neighbours or anything to help him. Money was tight. And he was a Gael, an islander, so he probably came from another difficult situation back in the Old Country. But here, he had a chance to start over! He could be a landowner, and farm his own patch, even if it was just for sustenance. It was a whole new start. So... maybe he didn't mind the hard work."

There were a million stories like this in Cape Breton, especially in the less desirable farming areas such as this one down the North Shore. She was not even sure how grounded in facts the story was but still it lent a sense of history to the place. For sure the house was old, dating back to the 19th century. But time, weather and fading community had a way of eroding places on this island. There was also a sense of connection with The Old Country an those who had come from there. Things felt more ancient than they actually were.

He handed her the mug of coffee. "Thanks! It's just like Italy," she teased him. He was not her boyfriend but an old friend. They sometimes joke that Paul had saved her life three times, and she saved his at least once. Their visits over the ten years they had known each other largely consisted of long sunny afternoons spent debating musical points on the porch but also, countless hours inside the dark house hunched over reel-to-reel machines. His dining room is filled with piles of tapes in their boxes, and one is always spinning on the machine. Their shared passion is listening to these old recordings, many of which date back to the 1950s, deciphering the performers and speakers, and imagining who was there and what the parties were like. She is sometimes amazed by what he plays for her: house parties in a nearby community that has long since vanished; Gaelic songs sung sweetly by an old lady who no longer 'has a voice'. The past breathes around us, here.