Causeway: A Passage From Innocence by Linden McIntyre Page A

resigned procession. Once hit, the metal bird flops out of sight behind the wall. I watch for a while and am tempted, but the fifty cents in my pocket suddenly feels too vulnerable. I know, when it is gone, there will be no more.
    I arrive at a small cubicle, walls at least six feet high. I see in large letters on the plywood the words FISH POND. People pay money and are handed a fishing rod, flick the line over the wall, pretend to fish, then reel in prizes.
    “Everybody wins!”
    “How much?” I ask.
    “Ten cents.”
    “I’ll try.”
    After a moment I am the owner of a Union Jack.
    The rain is cold. We are wondering what the premier and the man from Ottawa are doing on the other side. What does it take to set off an explosion?
    “I think I’ll go,” says Theresa, who is shivering. Like Jackie Nick, Theresa MacKinnon always seems to have a cold, even in the summer.
    “Suit yourself,” says Angus Neil, her brother.
    In school we learn there are four seasons in the year. But in Cape Breton there are only two—winter and summer. The summer usually lasts a little longer than it did this year. Sometimes it hangs on even up to Halloween. Then the winter comes in November and stays till June.
    Some winter mornings you can’t see through the window because of frost, but by holding your finger against it for a minute you can make a small hole and see outside. On days like that you have to be carefulusing the chamber pot because it often freezes over in the night. We don’t have a bathroom in the house.
    On winter mornings my mother gets up first and lights the stove, and when the fire is rumbling and crackling to life we rush downstairs and dress quickly, huddling close to the only source of heat in the house. I’ve heard them say we will soon have a floor furnace in the back hallway, and that will help. They say we are slowly making progress. When we first moved in, after Harry and Rannie left, there was no electricity. One night my little sister Rosalind tried to blow out a kerosene lamp, but the shade exploded and almost set her and the house on fire. I think it was after that we got the power.
    When there is hot water ready, we wash in a pan in the pantry sink, where there is a hand pump for cold water. Some day, I have been assured, we’ll have water from taps and a bathroom, instead of the outdoor toilet, which is attached to the barn.
    We have a cow. My mother named her Beulah, another name without any apparent reason for it. Around the time we got the cow we also got a little pig, which she named Oriole—also completely out of the blue. Oriole and Beulah became, like Skipper, part of the family, but when the pig grew large and fat and noisy, some men came and killed her, scraped the guts out, and hung her upside down in the barn. My mother explained that that’s what pigs are for. You feed them and fatten them, and then you eat them. Apparently they don’t mind.
    Cows are different, she assured me then. Beulah is for her milk. We would never kill Beulah.
    We’re supposed to be lucky because we live so close to the school and can come home to eat at noon. But I often envy the kids who stay there to eat their lunch at their desks, then run wild in and out of the schoolrooms afterward, shouting and banging on the piano and, when it’s fine, playing ball.
    There are about forty kids in the school. The number varies. Kids seem to start and stop for very little reason. For a while the Fraser kids from out back were coming in a horse and wagon, dropped off by their father, Angus. But then they stopped coming. Older boys just quit. People move away.
    We’re divided between the two rooms—up to grade five in one, six to ten in the other. I’m in grade five and can hardly wait until I move to the next room. I know that Mrs. Gillis can be cross, though she’s not as cross as Miss Euphemia MacKinnon, who would beat the older boys with her own strap, which someone said was made from braided telephone wire.
    I spend