Causeway: A Passage From Innocence by Linden McIntyre

pride, remembering that, most of the time, I am the man of the house. She places a gentle hand on the top of my head.
    Then she laughs. “No, no,” she says. “It’s by the Inkspots.”
    The Inkspots?
    “The Best Things in Life Are Free,” she says. “The Inkspots are the singers.”
    Singers called inkspots? The best things in life? Free? It makes no sense to me. It is the opposite of what I know. The best things in life cost money. The best things in life require grown-up men tohave jobs, and if they lack connections or an education they have to go away.
    I am about to ask my mother for some further elaboration, but she is gone already. She is already at Dan Rory’s side, whispering and laughing.
    I watch a slight twitch at the corner of my father’s mouth, as it grows into a smile broad as the dawn.
    Later, when the sun is gone and it is dark, there are fireworks. Rockets sail into the night sky, then burst into showers. There is the noise of giant firecrackers exploding. The people in town are greatly impressed and roar out in excitement with every explosion of noise and light. It is a real celebration—for the new Queen and the conquerors of Mount Everest. But the spectacle is unimpressive compared to what we see across the Strait of Canso, almost regularly now, as they tear a mountain down to build the causeway that will bring the world to us.

3
THE MISSION
    Sunday morning, riding the church bus to Mass, I couldn’t take my eyes off a kerchief on the head of the woman sitting alone in front of me. It was made of silk and was bright red and green, and there was something written there in block letters, but I could see only KOR.
    We go to Mass in Port Hawkesbury because there is no Catholic Church in Port Hastings. Most of the people who live here are Protestants and have their own little church down below our house. Sundays, in the summertime, you can hear the singing because they leave the doors open. I often go down there after I get back from Mass to listen and try to hear their sermons. I can hear the singing clearly from over beside the school, where old people from out back tie their horses to the trees. I sometimes sneak in to watch their funerals. The Protestants leave the caskets open during funerals the way we do at wakes. That way you know there’s nothing dangerous about the dead.
    I like the sound of the Protestant Church music and the way everybody sings along. I’ve seen them at the funerals with their books and their mouths wide open, singing loudly, their faces flushed and their eyes closed. The minister just talks, like a teacher. At Mass the priest has his back to us and mumbles privately in Latin. The singing is by a choir, or sometimes by a kid my age from town.His father is Eddie Fougere, who owns the service station near the ferry terminal. The kid’s name is Aloysius, and you often hear him singing by himself, his high voice ringing in the far hollows of the ceiling. He’s been trained to sing by both his mother and the nuns, and he can even play the organ. I appreciate him mostly because he has the misfortune of a name as dubious as mine. Aloysius. Misery loves company, they say.
    For some reason or other, Catholics never seem to want to sing along. We just stand or sit and listen.
    There is a parish bus for Catholics who live in Port Hastings and Point Tupper and don’t have cars. Hardly anybody has a car, it seems, unless he has a job on the railroad or with the Highways Department.
    I don’t know much about the differences between the Protestants and the Catholics, only that they are wrong and we are right. But then I wonder: if they are so wrong, how come they seem to have so much more? Plus their own church, right here in the village.
    When I’d remember my father in my prayers, I was always careful to point out that the request was not for me. I understood why my father had to go away to find work. But I could also tell by the expression on his face when he’d be leaving