After four years away with Uncle Jack. Three of them at Bachelor Lake. Time past but not past at all. November 22, 1963, and my father occupy my life as real and present as all the experience I have since. The day seems like yesterday. And the going away with Uncle Jack. The living in Tilt Cove. Bachelor Lake. Just layers. May 1968. Driving down the long hundred miles of packed dirt from Miquelon to Senneterre, with nothing but trees and low cloud and dirty clods of spring snow to look at. Then pavement to Val-d’Or. Reviewing layers of time. Old people gone. Ma now Mrs. Squint. Effie clinging to me from the distance, me to her. Feeling really good. Thinking: I’ve got the worst over with and I’m only twenty-one going on twenty-two. Jack didn’t get up to say goodbye. Working graveyard, but I still found it disturbing. Us together most of the time since we went to Tilt Cove, April 19, 1964. Uncle Jack was right about my age. The doctor in Tilt Cove told me I had to be eighteen. I said I was but that I didn’t have anything on me.
