Great Cape Breton Storytelling by Great Cape Breton Storytelling

Author:Great Cape Breton Storytelling [Storytelling, Great Cape Breton]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Cape Breton, Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia, Short Stories, Warren Gordon, Silver Donald Cameron, Joan Clark, Tessie Gillis, D.R. MacDonald, D.C. Troicuk, Lynn Coady, Sheldon Currie, Clive Doucet, Douglas Arthur Brown, R.J. MacSween, Ellison Robertson, Angus MacDougall, Mike Finigan, Alistair MacLeod, Maureen Hull, Beatrice MacNeil, Claudia Gahlinger, Read Cape Breton, Destination Cape Breton, Visit Cape Breton, Travel Cape Breton, Ronald Caplan, Canadian Fiction, Classics, Canadian literature, Snapshot: The Third Drun, God's Country, The Innocent, Sailing, Overburden, Jesus Christ, Murdeena, Lauchie and Liza and Rory, Philibert Goes to Heaven, The Epistle, The Burnt Forest, Johanna, an tàilleur, An Underlying Reverence, Passion Sunday, The Boat, Marigold, The Family Tree, Harvest, school, classroom, university text
ISBN: 9781926908410
Publisher: Breton Books
Published: 2016-07-15T04:00:00+00:00

R.J. MacSween

The Burnt Forest

James Naddin found the walking very hard. There was a pain in his back, and all along one side of his body was a stiffness that was almost pain. All his life he had wondered what steady pain was like; now he knew. He limped up the stairs like a very old man and went into his apartment. All around him were memories of his wife and child. His senses told him that in a moment Helen would emerge from the kitchen, drying her hands, and pop her eyes in surprise at seeing him there. Or else little Ronnie would spring from behind a chair to grab him around the knees. Many such experiences had made his senses expectant, but they were wrong, for Helen and Ronnie were dead. They had been killed in the same crash that had crippled himself.

For many days lying in his hospital bed, he had gone over his return to the old apartment. There seemed no easy way of facing that dreadful necessity. He had never been brave, and disaster had not improved him. He took off his coat and slumped into a big chair. For a long time he just sat there. The minutes slipped by and he did nothing; there was nothing he wanted to do.

Somebody knocked on the door. He stared at the door and did not speak. There was another knock. Mrs. MacNeil, from the next apartment, came in and looked at him with pity.

“Come with us, Jim. Come with us for dinner. We’ve been watching for you.”

He did not know what to say. She coaxed him again. “It’s not nice to be alone. Come with us.”

Suddenly he decided that he would go. “Wait till I wash up.”

“Sure. Take your time.”

This was only the first of a number of kind acts that made his homecoming bearable and Naddin was grateful. He found himself the focus of attention such as he had never experienced before.

That night in his lonely bed, he thought how wonderful life was. In spite of the loss of his loved ones, he was a very lucky man. When morning came, nothing had changed, and as more days went by, more friends and neighbours came to offer him help and sympathy. A big man, named Henry Jones, who lived on the fifth floor, three floors above, a man who had rarely spoken to him before, offered to drive him anywhere he wanted to go. “Anywhere at all! Just say the word and away we’ll go!” His beefy face was wrinkled with sincerity. He left Naddin in an agony of gratitude. A fluttery lady named Lydia McCabe left a box of pastry at his door and almost fainted with pleasure when he thanked her. He sat in her living room for the first time and indulged himself with an hour of pleasant talk.

A week later he returned to his old job at a desk in the office of a construction company. The staff made a great fuss over his return and then forgot all about him in an hour or so.

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