I used to be kind of sorry for father. You see he worked the bones through his hide, furring all winter and fishing summers, and what he earned he'd get in truck from the company; All us Liveyeres owed to the Hudson Bay, but father worked hardest, and he owed most, hundreds and hundreds of skins. The company trusted him. There wasn't a man on the coast more trusted than he was, with mother to feed, and six kids, besides seven huskies, and father's aunt, Thessalonika, a widow with four children and a tumor, living down to Last Hope beyond the Rocks. Father's always in the wrong, and chews black plug baccy to keep his mouth from defending his errors. "B'y," he said once, when mother went out to say a few words to the huskies; "I'd a kettle once as couldn't let out steam—went off and broke my arm. If yore mother ever gets silent, run, b'y, run!"
I whispered to him, "You don't mind?"
He grinned. "It's sort of comforting outside. We don't know what the winds and the waves is saying. If they talked English, I'd—I'd turn pitman and hew coal, b'y, as they does down Nova Scotia way—where yore mother come from."
There was secrets about father, and if she ever found out! You see, he looked like a white man, curly yaller hair same as me, and he was fearful strong. But in his inside—don't ever tell!—he was partly small boy same's me, and the other half of him—don't ever let on!—was mountaineer injun. I seen his three brothers, the finest fellers you ever—yes, Scotch half-breeds—and mother never knew. "Jesse," he'd whisper, "swear you'll never tell?"
"S'elp me Bob."
"It would be hell, b'y."
"What's hell like?"
"Prayers and bein' scrubbed, forever an' ever."
"But mother won't be there?"
"Why, no. It hain't so bad as all that. She'll be in Heaven, making them angels respectable, and cleaning apostles. They was fishermen, too. They'll catch it!"