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

a combination of drift ice from the region of the eastern Arctic and “made” ice which resulted from the freezing of the local channel. In extremely cold winters if the ice was smooth, it was possible to move freely from the island to the mainland and back again. One could walk, or skate, or fashion an iceboat which would skim and veer with cutting dangerous speed across the stinging surface. People would venture out on the ice with cars and trucks, and on one or two weekends there would be horse races to the delight of all. The sharpshod horses would pull light sleighs or even summer sulkies as they sped around yet another track staked out by temporary spruce. At the conclusion of their races, their owners would hurry to cover them with blankets as the perspiration on their coats began to turn to frost. They seemed almost, for a few brief moments, to be horses who had prematurely aged before the eyes of those who watched them, their coats of black and brown turning to a fragile white. White horses frozen on a field of ice and snow.
    My parents welcomed the winter ice because it allowed them to do many practical things that were more difficult to accomplish in the summer. They could truck their supplies over the icewithout the difficulty of first hauling everything to the wharf and then trying to load it on the boat which swayed below and then, after transporting it across to the island, having to hoist it up out of the boat to the wharf’s cap and then again having to transport it up the cliff to the promontory where the lighthouse stood. They took coal and wood across in the winter, and walked and traded animals, leading them by their halters across the treacherous and temporary bridge.
    Also in the winter their social life improved, as unexpected visitors crossed to see them, bringing rum and beer and fiddles and accordions. All of them staying up all night, singing songs and dancing and playing cards and telling stories, while out on the ice the seals moaned and cried and the ice itself thundered and snapped and sometimes groaned, forced by the pressures of the tides and currents, running unabated and unseen beneath the cold white surface. Sometimes the men would go outside to urinate and when they would return the others would ask,
“De chuala?
” “What did you hear?” “Nothing,” they would say. “
Cha chuala sion
.” “Nothing, only the sound of the ice.”
    On March 28 there was a lot for my family to do. My older brothers were going to visit their cousins in the country – those who still lived in the old
Calum Ruadh
houses neighbouring the spot which my grandparents had left when they became people of the town. If they could get a ride they were going to spend the weekend there. Even if they could not get a ride, they were planning to walk, saying that ten miles on the inland sheltered roads would not be as cold as a mile and a half straight across the ice. My parents were planning to cash my father’s cheque, which they hoped my grandparents had picked up atthe post office, and my brother Colin was looking forward to his new parka, which my mother had shrewdly ordered from the Eaton’s sale catalogue when such heavy winter garments were reduced by the coming promise of spring. He had been hoping for it since before Christmas. My sister and I were looking forward to the visit with our grandparents, who always made a great to-do about us and always told us how smart we were to make such a great journey from such a far and distant place. And the dog knew where she was going too, picking her way across the ice carefully and sometimes stopping to gnaw off the balls of snow and ice which formed between the delicate pads of her hardened paws.
    Everything went well and the sun shone brightly as we journeyed forth together, walking first upon the ice so we could later walk upon the land.
    In the late afternoon, the sun still shone, and there was no wind but it began to get very cold, the kind of deceptive