Causeway: A Passage From Innocence by Linden McIntyre Page A

that he would prefer to have stayed home. It’s as simple as that. “Away” is a place of loneliness for him, much as, in some strange way, home is frequently a place of loneliness for me.
    I leaned forward, studying the scarf on the head of the woman in front of me, wondering where she got it. It was pulled forward on her head, so I couldn’t see her face from where I sat.
    I remembered that the Syrian had been around a few days earlier. I saw him struggling up the hill, by our place, bent under the heavy load he always carries. Maybe she got the scarf from him. I’m not certain where the Syrian comes from. I’ve heard he has a store somewhere on the mainland, but he carries much of what he sells in the store in a largeleather case slung over his back. It is held shut by a wide leather strap that he grips with both hands as he trudges through the countryside. He goes from door to door, opening the case, holding up his merchandise and praising it in English that is difficult to understand—kitchen things and clothing, pills and colourful cloth, and delicate silk scarves.
    The poor Syrian, I thought. This is what he has to do to eat. Walking the roads, bent double under his heavy load. And I realized there are worse things than being away, working underground by the light of the lamp on your hat.
    One night he came to our house late and asked if he could stay.
    “Please, Missis,” he begged. “I have no place to sleep. Please, Missis, let me come in.”
    My mother was just standing there, looking anxious.
    “I can’t,” she said.
    “Please, Missis.”
    “No,” she said. “There’s no man here.”
    “Please, Missis, I have no place to sleep.”
    “I’m sorry,” she said.
    And then she shut the door. Through the window I saw him plodding up the hill like a tired old horse, until he vanished in the darkness. And I felt angry, the echo of those ugly words ringing in my ears.
    “Please, Missis.”
    “I couldn’t,” she told me afterwards. “I just couldn’t. Where would we put him?”
    “I don’t know,” I said.
    “We’re all alone here,” she said.
    I could tell she thought I was feeling sorry for the Syrian, but it was only the sound of the begging that bothered me. My father says a man should never beg. Once when they were saying go see Clough about a job, he said he’d rather starve than beg. And somehow it seemed right. Praying is not the same as begging.
    I remember the church bus was banging along on the rutted road, past the end of the pavement. Near Embree’s Island, which isn’t an island anymore, curiosity moved my hand to where the tip of the red and green silk scarf draped over the back of the seat in front of me. With one finger I touched it to see what else was written there. Her hair was shiny black and very thick. She must have felt the touch because she turned her head quickly, and I finally saw her face. Her name is Jean Larter and she lives up the hill from us, near the O’Handleys, Johnny and Mary.
    She’s originally from Prince Edward Island. She smiled.
    I said “Excuse me,” which I’m supposed to say whenever I bother an older person. I’m also supposed to tip my cap to an older lady, but I wasn’t wearing one.
    “That’s okay,” she said, believing my touch was accidental.
    Jean Larter turned back, and when she did the folds concealing other letters on her kerchief flattened out and I could see the whole word now— KOREA. And that the design on the kerchief was actually a map of the country—one of the places we’re always reading about in the papers because of the war. And I remembered that her husband, Joe, had been there.
    He didn’t have a job. He joined the army. He wound up in Korea.
    I was thinking: maybe there are worse places than Stirling, where my father was working at the time.
    Besides Korea, the only other name that I could see on Jean Larter’s kerchief map was Seoul, which I know from the papers is a city near the middle of the country.