Thanksgiving

I just finished Brian Doyle's book "The Low Life:  5 Great Tales from Up and Down the River".  Take a look at my previous blog titled "The Low Life" on August 9, 2012.  Briefly Brian Doyle is a wonderful Canadian writer who spent his life in Ottawa up and down the Gatineaux River near Low.  It follows the life of fictional characters he created in this region from 1895 to about 1995.  I'm going to read the following passage at Monday night poetry...from "Up to Low" (1982).  Some character background...
Young Tommy - the hero
Baby Bridget - his friend with her poor arm
Mean Hughie - a mean and troubled man.  Baby Bridget's pa
The Hummer - a flood victim

Mean Hughie is dying of "the cancer" and has disappeared from his large family.  In this part of the story Young Tommy and Baby Bridget find him...

I won't be able to read this without crying...

     He had made his own coffin and climbed into it.
     He was trying to die.
     His coffin was made of slab wood and barn boards.  The frame
was made of grey two-by-fours from the rack of the old hay wagon.
It was too big for him now.  He made it to fit himself before the
cancer got going faster in him and made him so small and light and
thin.
     I had the feeling that I could have reached down and lifted him out
like a long bony baby.
     And when he spoke his voice was so small it sounded as if he was
talking over a telephone while you were holding the receiver away from
your ear.
     "I shouldn't have hit you that time you lost your poor arm," he said
with his tiny voice.
     His voice was so small that he sounded as if he were away down in
the bottom of a well somewhere.  Away down in the bottom of a mine
shaft somewhere.
     "I shouldn't have hit you that time you lost your poor arm," the voice
said.
     Then, like somebody way inside a cave somewhere or someone on
the other side of the dam, the voice, again.
     "I'm sorry, Baby Bridget."
      Baby Bridget put her ear closer to Mean Hughie's lips to make sure
she heard.
     "I'm sorry, Baby Bridget, I was so mean."
     Baby Bridget looked at me through her hair.  She was asking me with
her eyes if I was listening.  Did I hear what Mean Hughie was saying?  Did
I hear the same thing that she heard?
     I leaned over the side of the coffin a little more.  Mean Hughie was
too weak to hang on to the side with his claw anymore.  He let his head
back down.
     "I'm sorry for what I done to you, Baby Bridget."  His voice was as
thin as paper.  Baby Bridget leaned over and put the stub of her short arm
near her father's hand.  His fingers felt it and they curled around it and
he groaned.  He closed his eyes and stroked her arm, petted her arm with
his fingers.
     Then, Baby Bridget, in the nicest, most gentle, soft voice I ever
heard, the kindest voice, the most forgiving voice I ever heard, answered.
     "It's alright, Pa," she said, she whispered, she breathed the words
close to her father's ear.
     "It's all right, Pa.
     "It's all right, Pa."
     I got up and moved over to a stump quite a ways away so they could
be alone.  It was getting to be a beautiful morning.  The sun was shining
right through the cracks between the logs of Ramsay's old house.  A cou-
ple of chipmunks were chasing each other somewhere in the bush.
     Old Hummer had said there was healing here.  Old Hummer said
Baby Bridget's friend was strong.  I was the friend.
     Strong?
     What could I do?  I knew her arm wouldn't come back.  I knew she
would be disappointed.  I knew she would get up off her knees after a
while and turn around and her arm would be exactly the same.
     Strong?
     There was nothing strong I could do.  All I could do was sit there and
watch.  A big crow called out from the top of one of the knotty pines.  I
looked up and spotted him.  He called again.  How lucky he is, I thought.
Up there, away from everything, fly away whenever he wants.
     "I know, old crow," I said up to the crow, "that there'll be no heal-
ing going on here."  I must have been pretty exhausted, talking to
crows.
     I looked down again and saw Baby Bridget standing up beside Mean
Hughie's coffin.  Everything was quite hazy because my eyes were full of
the bright blue sky behind the crow.
     She was walking towards me.
     I could tell that Mean Hughie was dead.
     I was trying to focus my eyes to see if her arm had grown back.  I
knew it was a stupid hope to have, but I couldn't help having it.  I was
feelng more sorry for her than I ever felt about anything before.
     Her arm came into focus.
     It was the same as before.
     I was trying to think of something smart to say.  Something that
would make her feel good.  Tell her a Frank story maybe.  No.  Sing a lit-
tle bit to her maybe.  No.  Throw a rock at the crow.  No.
     "He said he was sorry he was so mean to me," she said to me, looking right
at me, her eyes full of water.
     "He said he loved me and he was sorry."  Her eyes were big with
water, but she looked good.  She had a nice look on her.  It wasn't a happy
look.  But it was a kind of nice look.
     Then all of a sudden I knew.  I knew what that crazy old Hummer
meant.  Healing.
     Healing.  There was healing.  But it wasn't her arm that got the heal-
ing.  No.  Not the arm.
     It was the heart.
     The heart got healed.
     Baby Bridget's heart!

pages 390-2, The Low Life:  5 Great Tale from Up and Down the River, from "Up to Low"
by Brian Doyle.

When I look at Thanksgiving, I am thankful for this deeply resonant writing.