Read Online The Lost Salt Gift of Blood by Alistair MacLeod - Free Book Online
Authors: Alistair MacLeod
Tags: Fiction, Literary, General, Short Stories, Short Stories (Single Author), Cape Breton Island (N. S.), Cape Breton Island (N.S.)
Ads: Link
with others and myself. And perhaps this man has left footprints on a soul I did not even know that I possessed.
It is dark now on the outskirts of Springhill when the car’s headlights pick me up in their advancing beams. It pulls over to the side and I get into its back seat. I have trouble closing the door behind me because there is no handle so I pull on the crank that is used for the window. I am afraid that even it may come off in my hand. There are two men in the front seat and I can see only the outlines of the backs of their heads and I cannot tell very much about them. The man in the back seat beside me is not awfully visible either. He is tall and lean but from what I see of his face it is difficult to tell whether he is thirty or fifty. There are two sacks of miner’s gear on the floor at his feet and I put my sack there too because there isn’t any other place.
“Where are you from?” he asks as the car moves forward. “From Cape Breton,” I say and tell him the name of my home.
“We are too,” he says, “but we’re from the Island’s other side. I guess the mines are pretty well finished whereyou’re from. They’re the old ones. They’re playing out where we’re from too. Where are you going now?”
“I don’t know,” I say, “I don’t know.”
“We’re going to Blind River,” he says. “If it doesn’t work there we hear they’ve found uranium in Colorado and are getting ready to start sinking shafts. We might try that, but this is an old car and we don’t think it’ll make it to Colorado. You’re welcome to come along with us though if you want. We’ll carry you for a while.”
“I don’t know,” I say, “I don’t know. I’ll have to think about it. I’ll have to make up my mind.”
The car moves forward into the night. Its headlights seek out and follow the beckoning white line which seems to lift and draw us forward, upward and inward, forever into the vastness of the dark.
“I guess your people have been on the coal over there for a long time?” asks the voice beside me.
“Yes,” I say, “since 1873.”
“Son of a bitch,” he says, after a pause, “it seems to bust your balls and it’s bound to break your heart.”
THREE
The Lost Salt Gift of Blood
N OW IN the early evening the sun is flashing everything in gold. It bathes the blunt grey rocks that loom yearningly out toward Europe and it touches upon the stunted spruce and the low-lying lichens and the delicate hardy ferns and the ganglia-rooted moss and the tiny tough rock cranberries. The grey and slanting rain squalls have swept in from the sea and then departed with all the suddenness of surprise marauders. Everything before them and beneath them has been rapidly, briefly, and thoroughly drenched and now the clear droplets catch and hold the sun’s infusion in a myriad of rainbow colours. Far beyond the harbour’s mouth more tiny squalls seem to be forming, moving rapidly across the surface of the sea out there beyond land’s end where the blue ocean turns to grey in rain and distance and the strain of eyes. Even farther out, somewhere beyond Cape Spear lies Dublin and the Irish coast; far away but still the nearest land and closer now than is Toronto or Detroit to say nothing of North America’s more western cities; seeming almost hazily visible now in imagination’s mist.
Overhead the ivory white gulls wheel and cry, flashing also in the purity of the sun and the clean, freshly washed air. Sometimes they glide to the blue-green surface of the harbour, squawking and garbling; at times almost standing on their pink webbed feet as if they would walk on water, flapping their wings pompously against their breastslike over-conditioned he-men who have successfully passed their body-building courses. At other times they gather in lazy groups on the rocks above the harbour’s entrance murmuring softly to themselves or looking also quietly out toward what must be Ireland and the vastness of the
It is dark now on the outskirts of Springhill when the car’s headlights pick me up in their advancing beams. It pulls over to the side and I get into its back seat. I have trouble closing the door behind me because there is no handle so I pull on the crank that is used for the window. I am afraid that even it may come off in my hand. There are two men in the front seat and I can see only the outlines of the backs of their heads and I cannot tell very much about them. The man in the back seat beside me is not awfully visible either. He is tall and lean but from what I see of his face it is difficult to tell whether he is thirty or fifty. There are two sacks of miner’s gear on the floor at his feet and I put my sack there too because there isn’t any other place.
“Where are you from?” he asks as the car moves forward. “From Cape Breton,” I say and tell him the name of my home.
“We are too,” he says, “but we’re from the Island’s other side. I guess the mines are pretty well finished whereyou’re from. They’re the old ones. They’re playing out where we’re from too. Where are you going now?”
“I don’t know,” I say, “I don’t know.”
“We’re going to Blind River,” he says. “If it doesn’t work there we hear they’ve found uranium in Colorado and are getting ready to start sinking shafts. We might try that, but this is an old car and we don’t think it’ll make it to Colorado. You’re welcome to come along with us though if you want. We’ll carry you for a while.”
“I don’t know,” I say, “I don’t know. I’ll have to think about it. I’ll have to make up my mind.”
The car moves forward into the night. Its headlights seek out and follow the beckoning white line which seems to lift and draw us forward, upward and inward, forever into the vastness of the dark.
“I guess your people have been on the coal over there for a long time?” asks the voice beside me.
“Yes,” I say, “since 1873.”
“Son of a bitch,” he says, after a pause, “it seems to bust your balls and it’s bound to break your heart.”
THREE
The Lost Salt Gift of Blood
N OW IN the early evening the sun is flashing everything in gold. It bathes the blunt grey rocks that loom yearningly out toward Europe and it touches upon the stunted spruce and the low-lying lichens and the delicate hardy ferns and the ganglia-rooted moss and the tiny tough rock cranberries. The grey and slanting rain squalls have swept in from the sea and then departed with all the suddenness of surprise marauders. Everything before them and beneath them has been rapidly, briefly, and thoroughly drenched and now the clear droplets catch and hold the sun’s infusion in a myriad of rainbow colours. Far beyond the harbour’s mouth more tiny squalls seem to be forming, moving rapidly across the surface of the sea out there beyond land’s end where the blue ocean turns to grey in rain and distance and the strain of eyes. Even farther out, somewhere beyond Cape Spear lies Dublin and the Irish coast; far away but still the nearest land and closer now than is Toronto or Detroit to say nothing of North America’s more western cities; seeming almost hazily visible now in imagination’s mist.
Overhead the ivory white gulls wheel and cry, flashing also in the purity of the sun and the clean, freshly washed air. Sometimes they glide to the blue-green surface of the harbour, squawking and garbling; at times almost standing on their pink webbed feet as if they would walk on water, flapping their wings pompously against their breastslike over-conditioned he-men who have successfully passed their body-building courses. At other times they gather in lazy groups on the rocks above the harbour’s entrance murmuring softly to themselves or looking also quietly out toward what must be Ireland and the vastness of the
Similar Books
