No Great Mischief by Alistair MacLeod Read Free Book Online Page A

balls and stars at strategic places on his outstretched limbs. She strung some Christmas icicles across his chest, where they looked vaguely like outworn war medals, and then sprinkled him with some artificial snow. The latter caused him to crinkle his nose, and it seemed for a moment that he might sneeze, but he slept on. And when she was finished her decorating, she took his picture. When Grandpa stirred later in the evening, he was at first almost afraid, seeming somewhat like Gulliver among the Lilliputians, awakening to find himself covered with small strands of silver foil, and for a while not really realizing just where he was nor what had happened to him. He did not move for a bit, allowing only his eyes to move about the room, until they finally came to rest on Grandma, who was sitting quietly in a chair not far from his feet. Then he lifted hisright hand very slowly, looking at the snow and icicles that fell from it and at the green ball fastened to his middle finger.
    “We thought that we would finish decorating you for Christmas,” she said, looking at both my sister and me. And then she began to laugh. Slowly, like someone trying to extricate himself from a wired and potentially explosive bomb, Grandpa sat up, moving carefully and trying not to disturb his strands and streamers. When he stood up and looked down at the place he had vacated, it was almost possible to see his outline on the floor, like a sort of reverse snow angel, with bits of artificial snow and some of the ornaments outlining the former boundaries of his limbs. Later that night, at church, when he turned his head in certain directions, the golden muted lights reflected on the wisps of artificial snow still found within his hair.
    After the picture was developed, he kept it in his wallet for years until it began to crease and fall apart the way such pictures do and then he had Grandma dig out the old negative so that another copy might be made.
    I think of it now as one of those “joke” pictures taken for high-school yearbooks and which, years later, seem to reveal more than was ever realized at the time.

My
twin sister and I were the youngest children in our family, and we were three on March 28 when it was decided that we would spend the night with our grandparents.
    After he returned from naval service in the war, my father had applied for the position of lightkeeper on the island which seemed almost to float in the channel about a mile and half from the town which faced the sea. He had long been familiar with boats and the sea and, after passing the examination, was informed in a very formal letter that the job was his. He and my mother were overjoyed because it meant they would not have to go away, and the job reeked of security, which was what they wanted after the disruption of the years of war. The older generation was highly enthusiastic as well. “That island will stay there for a damn long time,” said Grandpa appreciatively, although he later apparently sniffed, “Any fool can look after a lighthouse. It is not like being responsible for a
whole
hospital.”
    On the morning of March 28, which was the beginning of a weekend, my parents and their six children and their dog walked ashore across the ice. Their older sons, who were sixteen, fifteen, and fourteen, apparently took turns carrying my sister and me upon their shoulders, stopping every so often to take off their mitts and rub our faces so that our cheeks would not become socold as to be frozen without our realizing it. Our father, accompanied by our brother Colin, who was eleven, walked ahead of us, testing the ice from time to time with a long pole, although there did not seem much need to do so for he had “bushed” the ice some two months earlier, meaning he had placed spruce trees upright in the snow and ice to serve as a sort of road guide for winter travellers.
    During the coldest days of winter, the so-called “dog days,” the ice became amazingly solid. It was