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By Root 560 0

—was when he joined the army. He was so pleased he walked backwards in the dirt to see the prints they made, fresh and whole. Later on, after the war, he went to Saint John to look for work. He had been working at home on the farm for a while and he had worn out his army clothes—he had just one pair of decent pants left. In a beer parlor in Saint John a man said to him, “You want to pick up a good pair of pants cheap?” Vincent said yes, and the man said, “Follow me.” So Vincent did. And where did they end up? At the undertaker’s! For the fact was that the family of a dead man usually brings in a suit of clothes to dress him in, and he only needs to be dressed from the waist up, that’s all that shows in the coffin. The undertaker sold the pants. That was true. The army gave Vince his first pair of new boots and a corpse donated the best pair of pants he ever wore, up to that time.

Vincent had no teeth. This was immediately apparent, but it did not make him look unattractive; it simply deepened his look of secrecy and humor. His face was long and his chin tucked in, his glance unchallenging but unfooled. He was a lean man, with useful muscles, and graying black hair. You could see all the years of hard work on him, and some years of it ahead, and the body just equal to it, until he turned into a ropy-armed old man, shrunken, uncomplaining, hanging on to a few jokes.

While they played Skat the talk was boisterous and interrupted all the time by exclamations, joking threats to do with the game, laughter. Afterwards it became more serious and personal. They had been drinking a local beer called Moose, but when the game was over Lawrence went out to the truck and brought in some Ontario beer, thought to be better. They called it “the imported stuff.” The couple who owned the guest-house had long ago gone to bed, but the workmen and Lydia sat on in the kitchen, just as if it belonged to one of them, drinking beer and eating dulse, which Vincent had brought down from his room. Dulse was a kind of seaweed, greenish-brown, salty and fishy-tasting. Vincent said it was what he ate last thing at night and first thing in the morning—nothing could beat it. Now that they had found out it was so good for you, they sold it in the stores, done up in little wee packages at a criminal price.

The next day was Friday, and the men would be leaving the island for the mainland. They talked about trying to get the two-thirty boat instead of the one they usually caught, at five-thirty, because the forecast was for rough weather; the tail end of one of the tropical hurricanes was due to hit the Bay of Fundy before night.

“But the ferries won’t run if it’s too rough, will they?” said Lydia. “They won’t run if it’s dangerous?” She thought that she would not mind being cut off, she wouldn’t mind not having to travel again in the morning.

“Well, there’s a lot of fellows waiting to get off the island on a Friday night,” Vincent said.

“Wanting to get home to their wives,” said Lawrence sardonically. “There’s always crews working over here, always men away from home.” Then he began to talk in an unhurried but insistent way about sex. He talked about what he called the immorality on the island. He said that at one time the authorities had been going to put a quarantine around the whole island, on account of the V. D. Crews came over here to work and stayed at the motel, the Ocean Wave, and there’d be parties there all night every night, with drinking and young girls turning up offering themselves for sale. Girls fourteen and fifteen—oh, thirteen years of age. On the island, he said, it was getting so a woman of twenty-five could practically be a grandmother. The place was famous. Those girls would do anything for a price, sometimes for a beer.

“And sometimes for nothing,” said Lawrence. He luxuriated in the telling.

They heard the front door open.

“Your old boyfriend,” Lawrence said to Lydia.

She was bewildered for a moment, thinking of Duncan.

“The old fellow at the table,” said Vincent.

Mr. Stanley did not come into the kitchen. He crossed the