The Long Stretch by Linden McIntyre Page B

common memory. All night crossing Cabot Strait. All next day on the train. Struggling back to Tilt Cove. Looking for a chance, as the slow miles of snow and mournful spruce and silent rock crept by. But Jack was pretty sick all the way back. Wouldn’t talk.
    Ignorance cultivates nightmares.
    Grandpa used to talk about the cailleach oidhche, the old woman of the night. She’ll creep into your dreams, he’d say. Climb on top of you and try to crush the breath out of your lungs. Never let you see her face. Only way to get rid of her is call for the help of the Lord. Scream Iosa Chriosd for all you’re worth. That’ll get rid of her, he’d say. Faith.
    “The cailleach oidhche? ” Effie just laughed the first time I mentioned her. The cailleach oidhche is an owl,” she said. “Grandpa was just pulling your leg.”
    But I know it’s real.
    Back in the bunkhouse, sometimes I’d wake up in the middle of the night and imagine a cigarette glowing in the dark. The sensation that I knew she felt. The steam whispering and clicking in the heat pipes.
    Eventually it would be morning, the bunkhouse door slamming. Guys clumping down the front steps, heading through the frosts to the cookhouse. Or the headframe. Me still fagged out from lack of sleep.
    It was then I started hanging around Itchy’s on my own. Drinking with the hardcore. Sheltering in their rough company and their stories about worse.
    One night I realized I was smelling real cigarette smoke. Sat up quickly. Snapped on the overhead light. He was by the door. Standing there in his underwear with his trousers in his hand.
    “What are you doing?” I asked, too sharply.
    He looked at me curiously for a moment, the cigarette between his lips.
    “Hitting the sack,” he said. “Stayed at Itchy’s a little longer than I should…”
    The end of the sentence lost in coughing.
    I collapsed back on the bed.
    “Something wrong with that?”
    I didn’t answer. Got up and went for a leak.
    He was sitting on the side of his bed winding his watch when I got back. I sat facing him.
    “Bunch heading for Grande Cache next week,” he said. “Want me to go with them. I said I’d rather dig shit with a spoon than mine coal. But I’m going somewhere, that’s for sure.” Yawned. “So what’s your problem?”
    “Nothing worth talking about,” I said.
    “Maybe you’re having a bit of feeemale trouble.”
    I pretended to laugh.
    “I’ll be noticing the mail coming in,” he said.
    “Nothing to worry about there,” I said. The urge to seek his confidence suddenly diminished.
    He looked at me, eyes a bit narrower than I was accustomed to.
    “Anything you want to know, just ask me,” I said. “You’re the one told me never mind listening to the bullshit around home.”
    He flipped over on his back, finishing his smoke. Then said: “You should be careful before that one gets her hooks in you.”
    Her letters after that were cautious.
    Things are pretty well the same, she’d say. But it’s under control.
    Then something like: Had my visitor again the other night. But now that you know I don’t feel so spooked. Actually, I’m getting sick of it. I don’t think it’s sick or perverted. But you never know. Duncan doesn’t know everything but I’ll tell him if I have to.
    She was handling it.
    The next night over beer, Jack told me he was quitting at Easter. Take a week off. Go see MacIsaac in Sudbury. Am I interested? Better money in Sudbury. Big bonus money in the shaft if you’re any good.
    Guys got rich in Elliot Lake. Kirkland Lake. Timmins before that. Now it’s Sudbury. I could maybe work there a few months, save everything. Go home, start something there. Maybe get serious with Effie. Start a life. You could work forever in a place like Tilt Cove and still have nothing. A scab mine, no union, no bonus, minimal pay, no benefits.
    And, of course, at twenty-one, I’d have insurance coming. From the old man. Legion life insurance.
    “They’ve got a union