Free Cape Breton Road by D.R. MacDonald

And don’t call me Uncle.” He gave Claire a wave and closed the door. Innis sighed but didn’t move while the Lada revved and revved and clattered off up the driveway. Then he sat at the table, pulling his parka open. “Hot,” he said. He smiled at Claire who was lighting a cigarette. She blew smoke at the ceiling, revealing a pretty throat, elegant and muscular.
    “The hair thing’s a big deal with him, is it?” she said. “Lord, when I was your age I’d have given a lot for long straight hair.”
    “Why?” Innis said. “Your hair is beautiful.” It reminded him of crows’ black, the way light caught their wings.
    She smiled. “Listen, I’m not moving in. Just lying low for a week or two.”
    “I’ll be out of here by maybe September myself. At the latest.”
    “You don’t like it here?”
    She had seen most of her thirties, and places beyond Starr, beyond Cape Breton, Innis guessed. She didn’t look like any woman he had seen here, not up close, not on the street, in The Mines or Sydney either. She knew she was attractive, he could tell, but it wasn’t an issue with her.
    “What I like about here I can’t explain,” Innis said. “Anyway, it isn’t enough.”
    “A young man like you, he wants to get away, sure. I cameout from Ontario with my boyfriend, the one Starr is not going to meet up with, I hope. He bought a hundred acres to raise trotters on.”
    “Where?”
    “Here on St. Aubin, down at Black Rock.”
    “Never been there.”
    “Cliffs at the back of his place, the ocean’s right there. I almost said our place. It was his project, but it took a lot of my money.”
    “Money in horses.”
    “Not for him, not for Russ. It was a dream of his.”
    “Is that bad?”
    “Not if your feet are on the ground. His money is gone too, along with some other things.”
    “Bummer.”
    “He didn’t take it too well. I wouldn’t mind a little of that rum?”
    “Hey. Sorry.” He had the rum out fast and a glass, sighting it at the light to see if he’d washed it. “Anything with it?”
    “Water and ice. Is it decent rum?”
    “Captain Morgan.”
    “Jesus.”
    “Starr’s not fussy. If it gets him toasted …”
    “I’m raising his tastes. He’ll take a good bottle of wine now, if you can find one.”
    “I suppose it must be the boonies here, compared to Ontario. Toronto?”
    “Close. I was an air hostess. But no, Cape Breton is beautiful. You’d be surprised what you can find here, if good wine isn’t one of them. Sydney’s not Boston, of course, is it.”
    “Not what I’ve seen of it, and that isn’t much. I don’t tool around a lot.”
    “Why?”
    “No wheels.”
    “That must be a real handicap, living out here. Starr won’t lend you his?”
    “That rattletrap? I’d rather hitch. Hot in here, isn’t it?” Innis flung off his parka and checked the stove damper. “Starr tell you anything about me?” he said, his back to her.
    “A little. You’re his nephew, after all. But I don’t know why you came up here from Boston. You can tell me about yourself. I’ll listen.”
    “I’ve led a boring life. The good stuff’s all ahead of me, is the way I look at it. Come on, I’ll show you around.”
    She was taller than he thought, tall as Starr anyway, her long black sweater cinched at the waist in a wide lavender belt. Innis directed her into the hall, flipping on the light so he could point out the old photographs, making up names if he couldn’t recall what Starr had told him, “But that’s my mother’s father with one of his pals, out on the town, I guess, see the bowler hat in his hand? My mother’s dad, he was a bricklayer, in the steel mill in Sydney mostly, bricking the furnaces.” “He’s handsome,” Claire said, and Innis wanted to tell her, People think I look like him. “This is the parlor,” he said, “the furniture’s old as hell, most of it. I guess my great-uncle made the tables, the beds and dressers upstairs, a good carpenter, like my