Category: Story
In keeping with the spirit of Halloween I would like to share a memory which has haunted me throughout my life. It is a memory which for me, is both sad and beautiful. It is the memory of my Uncle Archie.
Over thirty years ago, when I was only eight years old, I lived with my parents, my six brothers and a dog named Peewee in a two bedroom house located in a little community known simply as Center Street. Center Street was intersected by three other streets. These were unimaginatively named First, Second and Third Street.
In the late fall of that year, three of my brothers and I came down with a contagious disease. I don't remember for sure what it was we got, but whatever it was, it was enough for my mother to farm out the rest of the kids while she looked after us. We were all born roughly one year apart and we were all too young to look after ourselves. At the time the oldest was only twelve. Those lucky enough to have escaped getting sick were sent to stay with a good (very good) neighbor friend of my parents.
Although my brothers were only a few houses away they may have gone to the moon. The house had never been this quiet.
I was in bed for what seemed like an eternity, although it had really been only one day, when I heard a strange voice in the living room. I put down 'Tintin', which up until then had held my undivided attention, and tried to will my hearing up a few notches. Later that evening my mother told me that the voice I had heard was aunt Clara's, my mother's sister.
Clara and my Uncle Archie lived in North Bay. This was a rare visit. We had traveled once to see my aunt and uncle and I knew that they lived somewhere at the end of the world.
I stayed in my room, my fever getting progressively worse, until two days later when I woke up in a cold sweat, the fever apparently gone. As I lay in bed trying to gauge how late it was, I heard faint sounds coming from the basement. The whole house was quiet except for those sounds. My brother Denis, lying in the other bed, slept soundly. Normally Denis and I shared the same bed but a roll‑away bed was brought in when we got sick.
Although my mother had told me to stay in bed I decided to try my legs and take a peek outside. When I looked down the hall, I realized that it must be later than I thought. I could see no one up in the living room or in the kitchen. Slowly so as to not make a sound, I tiptoed across the newly waxed kitchen floor to the basement door.
"That's it!" I thought, my dad was downstairs in the basement working on something. My dad wasn't as strict as my mom, and usually only handed down punishment on orders from my mom (wait till your dad comes home!) so I decided to venture into the basement to see what he was doing.
When I got to the far corner of the basement I saw my Uncle Archie hunched over the workbench. He was holding the caboose of an old Lionel train set in one hand and a screwdriver in the other. I knew that my uncle was fond of trains because he had been a mechanical engineer working on the railroad until he was forced to retire. So I wasn't surprised to see him working on the set which had fallen in disuse after my older brother had shorted out the transformer. In those days, whenever something electrical broke down, it was because of a short.
There was no sign of my dad in the basement. I found this kind of strange. My dad would never let us kids use his tools. Presumably the rules did not extend to other adults. I debated approaching my uncle, because over the last few years his memory had gotten really bad and it was at the point now, where he couldn't remember five minutes from now what he had said to you.
I guess we didn't know it at the time but he had Alzheimer's. I don't think that was a well known affliction at the time. People like my uncle were just said to be going senile. As I contemplated what to do, he turned around and saw me standing there in my pajamas. He smiled at me to come over. I approached the workbench and he said "Hi Johnny". John was the name of his own son but frequently Uncle Archie would call one of his nephews "Johnny". I didn't try to correct him. He sort of scanned the basement just then as if looking for something. He had a lost look in his eyes.
It occurred to me as I watched him, that he was dressed in a suit instead of work clothes. The suit was old and shiny from years of use. Slowly he turned to me, still looking around, "Do you know how to get back home?" he asked. I wasn't quite sure what he meant, but then it dawned on me that he must have forgotten how he got down here. Suddenly I found myself being the adult and he, the child. I took his hand and led him to the basement stairs which led into the kitchen.
The basement had a dirt floor and the ceiling couldn't have been more that five foot high. Even my dad had to hunch down to get around and he was a short man. By comparison my uncle was very tall and I made sure he didn't bump his head on the way to the stairs. Once we got to the stairs I let him go ahead and I went back to the bench, to get a closer look at what my uncle had been doing.
Some of the train cars were lying on the bench along with the screwdriver and a little copper oil can. I guessed that my uncle had come down here to get something and forgot all about it when he spotted the train set in a box by the wall.
In time I went back upstairs and headed for my room. Foolishly I’d been walking bare foot on the cold basement floor and now I felt chills coming back. As I walked down the hall to my room the bathroom door opened and my mom came out. Although she was surprised to see me out of bed she did not scold me. She put a hand to my forehead and, feeling how warm I was, marched me to my room. After she closed the door, I lay wondering about my poor Uncle Archie for a long time until I fell asleep.
The next morning I decided that I was well enough to join the world and boldly ventured into the kitchen. I got there just in time to see my mother at the door, saying good-bye to my Aunt Clara. I didn't see my Uncle, so I figured he must be waiting in the car outside.
I sat down at the table nonchalantly and poured myself a bowl of corn flakes. My mother looked preoccupied this morning and didn't seem to mind the fact that I wasn't in bed. She snapped out of it slowly when I asked her how come Aunt Clara looked so much older than the last time we had seen my Aunt and Uncle. My mother fought for words for a second until she finally said, "Ton oncle Archie est décedé la semaine passée.”
“Your uncle Archie passed away last week."
My mind was reeling. After a minute she continued, "That's why your dad wasn't here last weekend." I was barely hearing her words. "He had to go to the funeral in North Bay because I had to stay home to look after you and your brothers." When I saw the tears forming in the corner of her eyes I quickly forgot about last night. My mother rarely displayed emotion. The sight of her about to cry clenched my heart. "Your aunt misses Uncle Archie very much" she said and turned away.
I don't know if I was able to finish my Corn Flakes that morning. After a while the memory of what I had seen (thought I had seen) in the basement came back to the surface. I never said anything about it to anyone. With the passage of time I convinced myself that I must have imagined it. Luckily I had the sickness to blame it on. So, for many years I tried to pretend that it never happened. It was seven or eight years later before I found out what happened to my uncle. By then we had moved into Hull in a subdivision called 'Le Parc de la Montagne'.
My mom and dad started talking about Uncle Archie one night while watching an episode of Casey Jones. Apparently my aunt and uncle were visiting my aunt Clara's sister in Sudbury, when Archie wandered away from the house. He somehow found his way to an abandoned mine, which was about five miles from Clara's sister's house. There were muddy tracks leading into the entrance of the mine.
The story goes that my uncle had entered the mine, possibly looking for a train engine in need of repair. Once in there, he had lost his way and died of hypothermia. A search was conducted in the woods adjacent to my aunt’s sister's place. It was only the next day, after it was too late, that Uncle Archie was found in the mine.
In his condition, before he died, Uncle Archie had been fond of retelling how he had aced the locomotive of a passenger train earlier on, in his career. The locomotive had broken down in a tunnel which ran through a section of the Rogers Pass in the Canadian Rockies.
I had a chills running up my spine the night my father told us that story. I never dared to this day tell anyone about seeing Uncle Archie in the basement.
I've often gone back to visit the place where I grew up during the early years of my childhood. The small house where a family of seven boys grew up is long gone. Even amidst modern housing going up all over the neighborhood, only weeds and rubble rise above the ground where a row of tall poplars, standing like sentinels along Center Street, once grew. There is very little hint that a house was there at one time.
Sometimes I sit in the car, looking from an open window at this tiny piece of land, letting memories of the past fill my thoughts. I sit and stare, looking for the ghost of Uncle Archie. Small eddies spread bits of dust and paper over the yard, but there is no ghost there now. I roll up the window against the November chill and drive off slowly, remembering that night, so long ago.
I wonder what happened to the old Lionel train set?
