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By Root 676 0

his furs. Before he left for the trapline or his cabin on Bear Island, he drove Wayne to Goose Bay for his medical check-ups. They stopped on the way for burgers and root beer at the A&W in Goose Bay, and agreed that a burger was no good without bacon. Treadway never asked how Jacinta fared in the months he was away. They discussed the beaver house at Thevenet’s Bend, thirty miles in; whether the beavers had vacated it or were in there, with steam coming out of the hole. Treadway gave Wayne beaver teeth when he could get them. The co-op paid two dollars a set, for necklaces. They discussed money, and Treadway made sure Wayne remembered how to find the key to his private box in case the family should need the gold while he was gone, or in case Wayne had to consult his checklist of medications, which Treadway kept under his will, which was under the gold.

“You can’t run out,” he warned, “and you can’t let it slide.”

“Fine, Dad.”

“And Wayne, don’t worry about how much the medication costs.”

“I wasn’t worried, Dad.” It had not occurred to Wayne that his parents had to pay for his drugs.

“You’ll have time enough to worry about that when you’re older.”

“How much do they cost?”

“Hundreds of dollars, son. But MCP covers ninety percent of it until you’re eighteen. Then they cover forty percent until you’re twenty-one, unless you’re in university. Then they keep covering the forty percent until you’re twenty-five.”

“Hundreds of dollars?”

“They’re pretty strong drugs, I guess, son. And I guess they don’t have them in great supply for a whole lot of people.”

Wayne took his pills but was always on the lookout for symptoms: swelling abdomen, abdominal pain of any kind, the appearance of breast tissue. Any change in facial or pubic hair. If any of these things happened he was to get Jacinta to drive him to Goose Bay and see Dr. Lioukras right away. Almost every day Wayne imagined such changes had occurred. It was hard to know if he had a real or an imagined ache. He was so relieved that his peeling feet came from the shrimp and not from some new health crisis, he was able to gulp more air.

As his father grew more distant, Wayne cleaned fish and cut staves for Roland and for other men in the cove whose sons had got part-time service jobs or work with the military base in Goose Bay and did not want to do the traditional work of Labrador sons. He sold cod ears, earring bones, and beaver teeth.

Now and then tourists came from Maine or Newfoundland, and Wayne took them hiking or snowshoeing on trails along Beaver River, or he helped them hook half a dozen trout using flies Treadway had left neatly labelled on a strip of sheep’s wool nailed to the shed wall.

“Wayne is a great help to you, isn’t he?” Eliza Goudie asked Jacinta. “Never stops thinking of ways to add to the household. Getting to be a real little man.”real

18

Prom Night

AT SEVENTEEN WAYNE TOOK DOWN the wallpaper border in his bedroom and persuaded his mother to let him buy a gallon of maroon paint. He spent a lot of time alone in there fooling around on a mandolin he had bought from a guy named James Welland, who had hoped to take it in his kayak on a trip he was doing for National Geographic up the old Mina Hubbard route. Outdoors journalists were forever trying to follow in the footsteps of Hubbard and George Elson, and they all had to get rid of half their gear as soon as they realized what Labrador was really about.

“You can paint three walls,” Jacinta told him. “Leave the other one white.”

“Why three? What’s so big a deal about the fourth wall?”

“It’s too dark. And will you put that Spirograph away if you’re not using it?”

“Fine.”

“There’s another wheel in the vacuum cleaner hose. Just clear them up off of your closet carpet. As a matter of fact there’s a whole pile of stuff on the floor of that closet that you never look at anymore. All your drawings, for one thing.”

“Don’t go in my room with the vacuum cleaner.”

“Two saucers of cheese and pickles under the bed. The cheese had fur on it. If I don’t go in there . . .”

“Fine.”

“Do you want that