Passage to Yarmouth E-Book

Anthony Caine

• Herausgeber: Europa Edizioni
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024

Beschreibung

Set in contemporary northeast USA and Nova Scotia, Canada, Passage to Yarmouth follows the chronicles and tribulations of an affluent family’s reunion trip in honor of the family’s 90 year old matriarch. The family’s incomplete history – an allegorical story of Scottish origins, fearfully suspect and possibly Irish – resonates within family relations. Unforeseen travel events take over the course of this uneasy journey, lending greater importance to the family story and its impact on each member’s self-image. While on the road trip and sea crossing, the diversity of the family members’ lives and characters confront one another. Generational stories, intimate feelings, siblings’ conflicts and personal confessions intertwine with matriarchal memories. Deep rooted beliefs re-surface, haunting most of them, and causing each to face the meaning of family history.

Educated as an architect and engineer, Anthony Caine is an American living in Prague, Czech Republic. From 1979 to 1989 his architectural firm in New York City, Proposition Architecture, PC was an active participant in the development of lower Manhattan’s loft conversions. In 1991 he accepted an invitation from the Chief Architect of Prague to assist in that city’s transformation to a market economy. He has lived in Prague ever since, holding dual citizenship, developing properties, teaching university students, and consulting on matters of urban development. 

Passage to Yarmouth is Anthony’s second book, after the dystopic debut of his award-winning novel Fog Bound. He began writing fiction shortly after moving to the Czech Republic, initially as a way to bring his own personal perspective to the dramatic changes accompanying his new life in Central Europe. Thirty years later, his serious focus on creative writing crystallized with the arrival of the Covid pandemic. Since then, he has authored a number of short stories, twenty of which have been assembled in a sequential anthology entitled Dragonflies. When not working or writing, Anthony enjoys caring for his horses, riding, and sometimes playing a little polo.

Leseprobe

BUILD

UNIVERSES

Anthony Caine

Passage to Yarmouth

© 2024Europe Books | London

www.europebooks.co.uk | [email protected]

ISBN    9791220150439

First edition: June 2024

Passage to Yarmouth

To my children, Andrew and Alexis,

who deserved more from their father than he was able to give

Special Thanks

To Šárka and Marketa Lexová

who provided valuable counsel

when writing Chapter 11

To Murphy Alexis Mowery

for contributing with her poem,

Eruption on Mount Olympus

to Chapter 12.

1 The George Eliot

Epiphany Marner wheels the last of four 100-liter bags of harvested cannabis from the cabin’s storage shed. Using her husband’s electric wheelchair, she moves them to the back of The George Eliot, their handicapped-equipped travel van. With the revenue to be gained today from selling these four bags, she will pay off the bank’s short-term loan and take ownership of both the van and the electrically powered wheel chair.

Closing the van’s rear door, she pauses to watch her husband Silas Seth Marner as he squats along the edge of the cabin’s metal roof, his two lower legs lifelessly dangling over the eave. Holding a caulking gun in one hand and a scraper in the other, Seth (he prefers his middle name) is inspecting the product of his morning’s work.

How her husband’s physical appearance has changed since they married fifteen years ago. Although considerably older than she when they fell in love, Seth nevertheless was full of spirit, of unrestrained youth. He was vibrant, clean shaven, flaunted a full head of blackish-brown hair with only a few wisps of gray. From the time she first met him, Seth has been entrepreneurial -- a self-employed contractor specialized in building houses. Now, he’s bald on top. Thetuffs of hair remaining on the sides of head have grown long, ragged, yellow gray. Tied at the back in a long pony tail, the hair dangling from the sides of his head has recently been reinforced by a darker gray goatee grown from his chin to hide pronounced blemishes.

Seth crawls over his cabin’s metal roof, dragging his lower legs as he moves. For the last three years, his knees, now discolored and calloused, have served as the soles of his feet. Epiphany tells herself that Seth’s physical disabilities are not important. He is still vibrant, bubbling over unabashedly with impertinent, engaging spirit.

“Seth, how is it going up there? The van is loaded and ready. We are scheduled to meet the Consortium in Norton in thirty minutes. You said that you wanted to join me for today’s transaction. You know, it’s your last chance. If all goes as agreed. this sale will be our last. By tonight, The George Eliot’s loan will have been paid off. We can finally rid ourselves of this messy business.”

“Just now finishin’” he reports. “Ep, bring my chair over here, will ya? And hold the ladder steady while I climb down.” He throws the caulking gun and scraper to the ground below, slides himself over to the top of the ladder as he waits for Epiphany to deliver his chair and stabilize his descent.

Epiphany grabs hold of the ladder, and Seth starts a focused, cautious descent: one knee at a time. “I hope that I have found and sealed all the leaks. Course, we’ll only really know after the next rain …” he mutters, pausing for a moment to look at the sky. “Could come tonight.”

Seth’s knee reaches the ladder’s lowest rung. “Thanks for the help, Babe … As with everything in life, comin’ down’s a lot harder than goin’ up.” He pushes himself out away from the rung and -- as he has done so many times before – lands squarely in the seat of his wheelchair.

“Ep, on second thought, take The George and make the delivery without me, There’s a ton of stuff still to be done here today. The dogs ain’t yet been walked. Still gotta feed the cats and change the litter boxes. Gotta change the gas cannister for the generator. If I don’t change it, there ain’t gonna be any heat or power tonight, plus the water pump ain’t gonna work. I’ve gotta few things to do for my election campaign before the end of the week. If I’m goin’ to Bar Harbor with ya, I need to do the work tonight .... Have you decided yet whether y’are goin’ to Bar Harbor tomorrow? The ferry to Yarmouth heads out at 9 am the next day. If y’are, ya meet the rest of your family at the ferry dock. Babe, please let me know today whether y’are goin’ or not.”

“I haven’t yet decided. One thing is clear though: if I go, we go together.”

“I don’t think that’s very wise. The family’s invitation is addressed to you alone. Your aunt Rowena explicitly wrote that I ain’t invited. It’s an eight-hour drive to Bar Harbor from here, almost all of it on back roads. Don’t make much sense to travel all that way just to find out that we ain’t welcome.”

“Seth, we’ve already discussed this. You are my life partner; wherever I get invited you shall accompany me -- for better or for worse. Family events should be experienced together. When we arrive at the boat dock, my mother and her sisters won’t have the courage to turn us away. Grandmother Maddie won’t tolerate it.”

“Ep, the boat trip and visit to Yarmouth is your family’s gift to your grandmother. It’s in celebration of her 90th birthday. What right do I have to crash it? Our presence -- or to be precise, my presence – is gonna raise bad feelings. I think on such an important day your grandmother should be entitled to enjoy a warm gatherin’ without conflict.”

“Whether we go or not, I doubt that this excursion will prove to be a warm family gathering. There will be conflict. You’ve met my mother and my aunts.”

“Sure did. The encounter wasn’t pretty.”

“Well regardless … Spending a week together, my mother and her four sisters are sure to get under each other’s skin. A lot of cross-accusations will surely pass among them. When I think about it, there are a lot of reasons why the two of us should go. It will be our gift, our charitable contribution. We shall offer ourselves up in sacrifice. Our being there shall give my aunts’ something other than each other to feed on. It will give our trip a noble cause. You know the old saying: Dead fish and family -- after three days they begin to smell ... I will let know you if we are going when I return from Norton.”

***

Epiphany returns, parking The George Eliot on the compacted gravel that serves as the cabin’s front lawn. It starts to rain as she leaves the vehicle. As soon as she walks into the cabin’s small entry vestibule the rain outside turns into a deluge. She is swarmed over by her 5 dogs. They jump over one another to get close to her and lick her face. She pushes them away, but they persist and follow her into the cabin’s main room.

The room’s low ceiling makes it difficult to see her husband even with the room’s two wall mounted incandescent light bulbs blazing. Seth is cooking dinner. Epiphany sits in the corner on a stool so the dogs’ unbridled attention is unable to surround her. “I see that we’ve got gas. Any problems restarting the generator?”

“Nah. No problem. You complain about us livin’ off-grid, but it ain’t a serious inconvenience. Just takes a little bit of technical knowledge and persistent maintenance. Livin’ off grid saves us a lot of money. In a few years when the nation’s economy finally collapses, we will be better off than most others. We will still function … Babe, there’s a letter here for ya. It came by normal post.We don’t get much normal post.The envelope has no return address. It’s addressed to Epple Marner rather than Epiphany – rather interesting, isn’t it?”

“It must be from my Dad. He’s the only one who calls be that. It’s his special term of endearment for me.”

“Shall I open and read it first? You know -- guard the gate, so to speak -- like I used to do for ya whenever anyone from your family called?”

“Not necessary, but, thank you anyway. My relationship with Dad is much better these days. Dad has stopped trying to tell me what I should do. It seems he no longer judges me. I wonder why he didn’t just call or zoom, or send me an email. I’ll read the letter later.”

A few drops of water start to fall from the ceiling. They are absorbed by the compacted gravel floor that still waits to be covered first by a concrete slab, then finished with wood tiles. The drops soon turn into a small stream. Seth picks up his flashlight and directs it to the ceiling. He tracks the water flow back to where the leak begins. “How did today’s transaction go?” he asks.

“The deal is done, Seth. The money has been deposited at the bank. The loan is fully repaid. The remaining funds are resting peacefully in our account.”

“Great stuff, Babe … What about the sales price? Did we get what had been agreed?”

“Yes, we did. The Consortium lived up to its commitment, even though the market price for cannabis has been dropping ever since the stuff started to be sold legally. You and I have agreed that we are now finished with this farming business, right?”

“Yep, that’s right. The people of Norton will not look fondly if their town’s soon to be newly elected mayor is harvestin’ weed for profit. What have ya decided about tomorrow? Are we travelin’ to Bar Harbor?”

“Yes, we’re going. No matter what resistance we may encounter from the family, we need to show our respect for Grandmother Maddie. She’s the matriarch -- the family’s nucleus. The glue that keeps the clan together. If she were to melt down, the Kenyon family would experience its own version of Chernobyl. You and I may be on the periphery, but we are still part of the family. We have to go.”

“Ok. Did you RSVP to tell your aunt that we’re comin’?”

Epiphany picks up from the table the letter from her father and absently runs it through her fingers.

“Not yet. Not sure that I will. It may be better if we just show up at the dock. What do you think?”

“It might be better if they don’t learn in advance about my comin’ … If I go, we’ll have to take the hounds, though. A week is too long to leave them home by themselves. I asked if the neighbors can check in on the cats. They agree to do that, but refuse to be responsible for the dogs. They claim our Furies are unmanageable.”

She sighs, accepting the inevitable, reconciled to the fact that she will not get a well-deserved break from animal care.

“Dinner’s here on the stove for ya, Ep. Tonight, sautéed turkey hearts with onions.” Seth says as he moves his chair toward the cabin door.

“Where are you going?”

“Back out to fix the roof. I now know exactly where the damn thing is leakin’.”

Having opened the letter, Epiphany reads:

Dear Epple,

Fifteen years ago, you wrote a letter to me seeking comfort and reinforcement as you worked through a series of personal problems. Rather than supporting you, my responding letter was insensitive, didactic and judgmental. You reacted by canceling for 12 years all further communication between us, shutting me out of your life.

Looking back at that event after such a long time, I want to say that you had every reason to do so. For a long time, I have wanted to tell you how sorry I am for having written such an insensitive letter to you. I also want to thank you for restarting our communication three years ago. I believe that we are making progress rebuilding our relationship. I hope that you do, too.

I want you to know that I am here for you whenever you find you need and are looking for support. I will not judge. Just care and concern shall be forthcoming from my side. You still are -- and have always been – “The Epple of my eye.”

Your loving father.

***

This morning, the sun is shining. Standing water from last night’s rain has disappeared. The ground is already dry enough for Seth’s wheelchair to move freely. He drives his wheeler to the kennel. The five unleashed dogs follow him as he motors back to The George Eliot. Epiphany opens the vehicle’s rear door; the dogs readily jump up and into their cage. Seth motors himself around to the passenger side and activates the sliding door.

The vehicle’s hydraulic, handicapped lift appears from below the chassis. He wheels his chair onto its metal platform and rises. He locks his chair between the driver and passenger seats, slides himself into the driver’s seat, starts the engine, and tests his full set of hand operated controls. The sliding door closes automatically; the lift returns to its place under the chassis. Epi settles herself into the passenger seat. The George Eliot is ready to depart.

When Seth drives, the van’s name is shortened to The George. A year ago, when the couple acquired the vehicle, Epiphany was adamant that it be named The George Eliot in recognition of her favorite female author. Seth proved just as strong in his objections. To his mind, Ep’s suggestion wreaked of overt intellectualism. Pedantic and unwelcoming for normal people like him. The vehicle’s name should be friendlier, more down to earth. After a few days, the couple finally agreed that when Seth drives the van, it will be referred to as The George. When Epiphany drives it, it shall be referred to as The George Eliot. The name written on the passenger side next to its automatic sliding door shall nevertheless read: The George Eliot.

The George pulls away from the cabin and out onto Route 26 heading eastward from Norton toward Vermont’s border with New Hampshire.

“Buckle up young woman. Destiny awaits us. No turning back now, we’re off.” Seth declares. “While we’re travelin’, Babe, you might explain why it is that everyone’s headed to Nova Scotia. Nobody’s Canadian.”

“Because of Maddie’s family history. You never met Maddie’s husband, my grandfather, Rolan Kenyon. He died a number of years ago. He was a history teacher. After retiring, he spent time researching Maddie’s family heritage. Maddie’s full name is Magdalyn Dowager Kenyon. Dowager is her maiden name. Via the internet, Grandfather Rolan was able to trace the Dowager name back to Nova Scotia in the second half of the 1800’s.