The Lost Salt Gift of Blood by Alistair MacLeod

are talking in a language that I know is Gaelic although I do not understand it, others are sprawled out in their seats, some of them drowsing with their feet stuck out in the aisle. At the far end of the aisle two empty bottles roll endlessly back and forth clinking against themselves and the steel-bottomed seats. The coach creaks and sways.
    The station is small and brown. There is a wooden platform in front of it illuminated by lights which shine down from two tall poles and are bombarded by squads of suicidal moths and June bugs. Beneath the lights there are little clusters of darkly clad men who talk and chew tobacco, and some ragged boys about my own age who lean against battered bicycles waiting for the bundles of newspapers that thud on the platform before their feet.
    Two tall men detach themselves from one of the groups and approach us. I know they are both my uncles although I have only seen the younger one before. He lived at our house during part of the year that was the first grade and used to wrestle with me on the floor and play the violin records when no one was in. Then one day he was gone forever to survive only in my mother’s neutral “It was the year your brother was here,” or the more pointed “It was the year your drunken brother was here.”
    Now both men are very polite. They shake hands with my father and say “Hello Angie” and then, taking off their caps, “How do you do” to my mother. Then each of them lifts me up in the air. The younger one asks me if I remember him and I say “Yes” and he laughs, and puts me down. They carry our suitcases to a taxi and then we all bounce along a very rough street and up a hill, bump, bump, and stop before a large dark house which we enter.
    In the kitchen of the house there are a great manypeople sitting around a big coal-burning stove even though it is summer. They all get up when we come in and shake hands and the women put their arms around my mother. Then I am introduced to the grandparents I have never seen. My grandmother is very tall with hair almost as white as the afternoon’s gulls and eyes like the sea over which they flew. She wears a long black dress with a blue checkered apron over it and lifts me off my feet in powerful hands so that I can kiss her and look into her eyes. She smells of soap and water and hot rolls and asks me how I like living in Montreal. I have never lived anywhere else so I say I guess it is all right.
    My grandfather is short and stocky with heavy arms and very big hands. He has brown eyes and his once red hair is almost all white now except for his eyebrows and the hair of his nostrils. He has a white moustache which reminds me of the walrus picture at school and the bottom of it is stained brown by the tobacco that he is chewing even now and spitting the juice into a coal scuttle which he keeps beside his chair. He is wearing a blue plaid shirt and brown trousers supported by heavy suspenders. He too lifts me up although he does not kiss me and he smells of soap and water and tobacco and leather. He asks me if I saw any girls that I liked on the train. I say “No,” and he laughs and lowers me to the floor.
    And now it is later and the conversation has died down and the people have gradually filtered out into the night until there are just the three of us, and my grandparents, and after a while my grandmother and my mother go upstairs to finalize the sleeping arrangements. My grandfather puts rum and hot water and sugar into two glasses and gives one to my father and then allows me to sit on his lap even though I am ten, and gives me sips from his glass. He is very different from Grandpa Gilbert in Montreal who wears white shirts and dark suits with a vest and a gold watch-chain across the front.
    “You have been a long time coming home,” he says to my father. “If you had come through that door as often asI’ve thought of you I’d’ve replaced the hinges a good many times.”
    “I know, I’ve tried,