Read Online Lauchlin of the Bad Heart by D. R. Macdonald - Free Book Online Page A

insects. Whichever can hammer the loudest, the highest up, wins the woman.”
    “There are men like that. Are you a bird expert?”
    “I was a teacher once. In a classroom, expertise on anything is useful.”
    “You didn’t stay with it, the teaching?”
    “I’d had enough.” That wasn’t really true, even though at times he’d been an indifferent teacher, days when just dealing with himself would have been plenty, he didn’t need the attentive inattention of students. It was his body that had had enough. He’d had to quit, every blessed day something or someone stressed his heart, and keeping his cool, which he was proud of and had served him well in the ring, stressed it more than fighting had. He had thanked God that when the heart attack hit he was here in the front field, not in a boxing bout or in class, dropping to his knees, clawing his chest as if he’d been shot. Only Johanna saw him fall and knew instantly because of the way his body curled into pain, like his father’s had. The ambulance took a long time to arrive from The Mines, the damage was already done, the scarring, he just lay there in the high grass waiting, shading his eyes from the sun, hoping it wouldn’t strike him againbefore he got to the hospital. For months afterward, when he walked up the hill to the house any twinge or skipped beat made him freeze and wait, he didn’t want to crumple there again. He stopped that after a while, being afraid of his own body, of its desertion. He had his father’s heart. What could you do? His mother’s beat clean as a clock. “You can identify birds more readily, you know, through their songs than their feathers. You don’t need to see them.”
    She didn’t reply at first and he was afraid he’d offended her.
    “I’d like to learn about that sometime,” she said. “I do listen for them, their different songs. I hear jays and crows, them I know. I heard a hummingbird yesterday right outside the window, its hum seemed to sparkle, I could see it hovering, iridescent green. It was vivid, you know? There in my mind, at that moment.”

FOUR
    L AUCHLIN was searching the shelves for any overlooked packet of brown sugar, wondering what Tena was baking, how she mixed the right ingredients, when his mother came into the store, yanking a scarf dramatically from her white hair. “Morag called,” she said. “She’s home.”
    “Is she? Well.”
    When his mother declared Morag home, as she had for many summers, he had to take it in slowly because it carried so much history in his life, and his mother never intended it as just a statement of fact but as an announcement, a challenge, a prologue, a grievance. Morag’s home—but don’t you get excited about it, we’ve been through this before. Morag’s home—but somehow shouldn’t be home, she’s really a Boston woman now, and not the woman for you, and the first thing you’re going to do is be gone with her overnight, aren’t you. And don’t get any ideas about marrying her, she’s just as Catholic as she always was. You’re bored and you want something to happen.
    But none of these things she said to him anymore, and he had long ago made it clear that his marriage, to anyone, was a closed subject. She seemed to concede that Morag had been a woman as closeto a wife as he was ever likely to have, and that he had loved her, and so Johanna wouldn’t interfere with what they had with each other, which was beyond her understanding in any case. But just hearing Morag’s name sent his mind off in her direction. She, her very self, was not far away.
    “Peg she goes by now,” Lauchlin reminded her. He stroked his cheek absently. Stubble, getting careless. Morag liked a smooth chin.
    “Peg, yes. Ashamed of her given name, was she?”
    “I’d guess it’s more complicated than that, Ma. You knew Nell MacSween died, her auntie?”
    “Nell Roderick Angus? No, but I don’t see people from up there often anymore. Did she? Poor soul. She knew you