Free The Long Stretch by Linden McIntyre Page A

Newfoundland. Sea to sea. Just like John A. Macdonald did with the railway. But before long they’re bulldozing the old houses and Mrs. George’s orchard. Tearing up the fields. The new highway ran smack throughthe middle of Jack’s little sawmill. He could see it coming and packed up before it got to him. Sold the machinery to somebody but managed to be gone before they came for it. “Didn’t want to give them the satisfaction,” he said.
    “He was never cut out for business. Should have settled for an ordinary job like everybody else. But he had to be different.”
    “Don’t see where he had a lot of choice in the matter,” I say.
    “Funny thing,” he says. “One of the last times I talked to him. When was it, ‘69 or ‘70, just before the end. You’d never guess what he was talking about.”
    I heard it a hundred times.
    “Another sawmill. Would you believe it?”
    So I’m looking at the kitbag, when he said: “Well, young fellow…I’m putting you in charge of the women. Expecting you to be dropping in here regular to make sure everything is copasthetic.”
    Aunt Jessie jumped up from the table where they’d been sitting. Headed into the pantry rattling dishes and stuff.
    He was sitting with one forearm across his knee, an elbow on the table. And he reached into his pocket and pulled out a dollar bill and handed it to me.
    “Here’s an advance on your wages,” he said.
    “Thanks,” I said. “Where are you going?”
    He stood up stiffly then, like an old man. And Jessie was suddenly there.
    “We’re just going out for a few minutes, dear,” she said. “I’m driving Jack to the train. You can wait here till I get back.”
    Like she wanted me to.
    As soon as their car was out of sight, I streaked for home.
    Around that time it became clear, at least to me, that one day I’d be going with him. Predictions of prosperity weren’t for the likes of me and Uncle Jack. Something false in all the promises.
    Ma once asked: “What do you think you’ll be when you grow up?”
    My response was quick: “A miner like Uncle Jack.”
    I heard the old man laugh.
    Uncle Jack was gone for the best part of three years after he went away in 1958. Flin Flon, Manitoba. I’m sure it was ‘58. It was after the causeway but before the pulp mill. He went to Tilt Cove late in ‘60. Maybe it was ‘61. That’s where I hooked up with him in ‘64.
    “We got the ‘58 Chev,” Sextus says, “just before he left the last time. For, where was it? Flin Flon? Yeah. I remember by the car. Almost new.”
    Remembering by association with large events. Like buying cars.
    Sextus learned to drive the ‘53 Ford before they got the Chev. For my money, the Ford was the nicest car ever made. Sextus just couldn’t wait to get behind the wheel. “Car crazy,” Uncle Jack said he was. And he seemed to have the car whenever he wanted it. Aunt Jessie was like that.
    “Young people need to get around,” she’d say.
    And there was a lot of territory to get around in unless you wanted to be doing the same thing night after night. The fun could be just about anywhere in a radius of fifty miles. That’s how lots of us got killed. Gas was cheap then, about fifty cents a gallon. If you could scrape together three or four dollars you were good for the evening. And Uncle Jack was sending money home, once he got work in Flin Flon.
    He called Aunt Jessie from somewhere one evening a week after he left. He was still on his way. I could tell by the way she was talking to him that he was drunk. When she got off she said, “That was poor Jack, in Winnipeg.”
    “Wow,” I said. “That’s halfway across the country.”
    “Just about,” she said.
    “What’s he doing there?”
    “Having a few, I think,” she said wryly. “I don’t mind. I know when he’s in there, where he’s going…he’ll have nothing to do but work. He never drinks when he’s working away.”
    I guess they all told the wives that.
    Jack used to joke about