Free The View from Castle Rock by Alice Munro Page B

probably, more curious about Walter’s family than ever. She would not look down on them, except in a way she could not help or know about.

    We came on the fishing banks of Newfoundland on the 12th of July and on the 19th we saw land and it was a joyful sight to us. It was a part of Newfoundland. We sailed between Newfoundland and St. Paul’s Island and having a fair wind both the 18th and the 19th we found ourselves in the river on the morning of the 20th and within sight of the mainland of North America. We were awakened at about 1 o’clock in the morning and I think every passenger was out of bed at 4 o’clock gazing at the land, it being wholly covered with wood and quite a new sight to us. It was a part of Nova Scotia and a beautiful hilly country. We saw several whales this day such creatures as I never saw in my life.

    This is the day of wonders. The land is covered with trees like a head with hair and behind the ship the sun rises tipping the top trees with light. The sky is clear and shining as a china plate and the water just playfully ruffled with wind. Every wisp of fog has gone and the air is full of the resinous smell of the trees. Seabirds are flashing above the sails all golden like creatures of Heaven, but the sailors raise a few shots to keep them from the rigging.
    Mary holds Young James up so that he may always remember this first sight of the continent that will forever be his home. She tells him the name of this land—Nova Scotia.
    “It means New Scotland,” she says.
    Agnes hears her. “Then why doesn’t it say so?”
    Mary says, “It’s Latin, I think.”
    Agnes snorts with impatience. The baby has been waked up early by all the hubbub and celebration, and now she is miserable, wanting to be on the breast all the time, wailing whenever Agnes tries to take her off. Young James, observing all this closely, makes an attempt to get on the other breast, and Agnes bats him off so hard that he staggers.
    “Suckie-laddie,” Agnes calls him. He yelps a bit, then crawls around behind her and pinches the baby’s toes.
    Another whack.
    “You’re a rotten egg, you are,” his mother says. “Somebody’s been spoiling you till you think you’re the Laird’s arse.”
    Agnes’s roused voice always makes Mary feel as if she is about to catch a blow herself.
    Old James is sitting with them on the deck, but pays no attention to this domestic unrest.
    “Will you come and look at the country, Father?” says Mary uncertainly. “You can have a better view from the rail.”
    “I can see it well enough,” Old James says. Nothing in his voice suggests that the revelations around them are pleasing to him.
    “Ettrick was covered with trees in the old days,” he says. “The monks had it first and after that it was the royal forest. It was the King’s forest. Beech trees, oak trees, rowan trees.”
    “As many trees as this?” says Mary, made bolder than usual by the novel splendors of the day.
    “Better trees. Older. It was famous all over Scotland. The Royal Forest of Ettrick.”
    “And Nova Scotia is where our brother James is,” Mary continues.
    “He may be or he may not. It would be easy to die here and nobody know you were dead. Wild animals could have eaten him.”
    “Come near this baby again and I’ll skin you alive,” says Agnes to Young James who is circling her and the baby, pretending that they hold no interest for him.
    Agnes is thinking it would serve him right, the fellow who never even took his leave of her. But she has to hope he will show up sometime and see her married to his brother. So that he will wonder. Also he will understand that in the end he did not get the better of her.
    Mary wonders how her father can talk in that way, about how wild animals could have eaten his own son. Is that how the sorrows of the years take hold on you, to turn your heart of flesh to a heart of stone, as it says in the old song? And if it is so, how carelessly and disdainfully might he talk