The Rest is Silence

Scott Fotheringham

• Publisher: Goose Lane Editions
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN: 9780864926562
• eBook ISBN: 9780864927453
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literature General
• Index: Literature

Finalist

Amazon.ca First Novel Award

Jim Connors Dartmouth Book Award

Ottawa Book Award

"A fascinating and complex plot.... Fotheringham holds the tension to the show-stopping end." — Chronicle Herald

In the backwoods of Nova Scotia, a man has decided to withdraw from the world to simplify his life. He builds a cabin and plants a garden. He befriends the few people he can reach within biking distance — an old man living on the shore and a woman who may be as damaged as he is. In fits and starts, he recounts a story to his new friends, a tale of youthful passions, of idealism and rebellion, of love and of science.

There is a reason for the man's self-enforced exile, one that has implications beyond the confines of the forest. As news reports trickle in of a brewing environmental catastrophe on a global scale — a genetically modified strain of plastic-eating bacteria creating chaos as it devours both waste and material vital for day-to-day life — the unsettling nature of his confession becomes clear. The world will never be the same again.

Bold in themes, sensual in language, and astonishing in its implications, The Rest is Silence is a stunning achievement. Intimate in setting yet grand in scope, Scott Fotheringham has penned a frighteningly realistic portrait of the consequences we may all yet face for believing we had the right to crack open Pandora's box.

1

Lily Lake Road

North Mountain, Nova Scotia

Islands of quiet remain, where we can hear birdsong and the air smells sweet, but they are shrinking. I have found one in the woods where I feel safe.

One way to get here is by the lone highway, curving through spruce forests like a scar, which connects this land to the harried continent at its back. You can trace the scar from New York all the way to Maine, through New Brunswick over marsh and by tidal rivers whose banks are slick red mud when the water is low. You will scream past the trees and the dead porcupines with their streaming guts on the side of the road to get where you think you need to be. And when you get to this point of land, surrounded by the sea assaulting its rocky shores, you have only two choices: stay and make it home or visit a while, then turn around and go back the way you came. For this is Nova Scotia, and Nova Scotia is the edge of the world.

Or else you can fly, over ages of trees and lakes and rock. Flap your wings and look upon the carpet of spruce and balsam fir colouring the land green from shore to shore. Fly until you see the broad valley with the apple orchards, a few vineyards on its slopes, and the river winding through it. Running along the northern edge of that valley, between it and the bay with the high tides, is an ancient mountain range made of volcanic rock. These mountains have been ground down over millennia by the winds off the salt water, by ice sheets advancing and retreating, by the rains from November to May, so that they now stand a mere nine hundred feet above the sea.

Atop this mountain ridge is a small clearing in the forest, low-lying and wet. If it’s winter you’ll see a skating rink, its edges curvy, interrupted by small islands bumping out of the ground on which birch and maple grow. The snow glistens on the spruce boughs in the bright sun. When you see this you can land and stay. Then you are home.

I am living on two hundred and fifty acres of forest on the crest of the North Mountain. I bought it from a local logging company that had taken everything here that was worth a dollar. The trees and stumps they left behind were of no value to anybody but me and the coyotes, deer, and songbirds. I love this place like nowhere else I’ve lived because nobody else wants it, and because of the tranquility of living alone in the woods, a half-mile from my nearest neighbour. A few thousand dollars and a piece of lawyer’s paper say I own this land, but I know it’s not mine and never will be. My tent, which I tucked under some white spruce, is surrounded on three sides by woods. Twenty feet from my tent I built an outdoor kitchen where I make all my meals, even in the rain and snow. I have an apartment-sized propane stove on an oak pallet. Where I hammered nails into the spruce to hold a pot and a frying pan, thick yellow sap creeps down the bark and hardens, not letting me forget the wound. My cutlery sits in a red enamel mug on a beaten-up table my neighbour Martin was throwing away. My drinking water, which comes from his well, is stored in one-gallon glass pickle jars I was lucky to find at a yard sale. From the kitchen there are paths worn to my tent and to the garden, and from the garden to the dirt road. I grow vegetables in no more than a couple feet of soil resting between outcroppings of bedrock. Even when I’m wet and cold there are days I am happier here than I remember being since I was a kid.

When I was twenty-eight I came here seeking anonymity, a cipher lost to the world I’d known as well as to this new one I’ve chosen to inhabit. I am an orphan, determined to leave behind those who are gone — dead and otherwise — from my life. My main purpose here, now that the world seems to be falling apart, is to learn to grow my own food and put down roots in this thin soil.

I woke this morning to another sunny day. It hasn’t rained once this hot August. After lunch I go for a tramp in the woods. The woods are thick behind my tent, even if the loggers have taken the big trees, and I want to visit the grove of white pine they missed. A light breeze blows along the mountain ridge. Cattle low to the east. It’s an eerie sound, disembodied, like ghosts floating between the trees, reaching me as I leave the clearing. I start on the rough road, walking in the ruts the skidders left behind. It’s a moss-covered logging road that has fir seedlings a foot tall growing out of it, one of which would make a lovely Christmas tree if I had a room to put it in. There are mushrooms dotting the route and carpets of crackerberry with white dogwood flowers. I see the occasional delicate balloon of a moccasin flower rising plump and pink above the forest floor. When I come to the marsh with its abundance of bulrushes and wild rhododendron, a pileated woodpecker raps on the tallest spruce for insects. A white-throated sparrow sings nearby and a trio of crows pass overhead. I spend days when birds are my only companions, and I am grateful for it.

When I first moved to New York I was mesmerized by things like the stream of red taillights heading up First Avenue, the surge of pedestrians everywhere I went, and the constant hum of voices, traffic, and construction. This contrast to the natural beauty I’d seen with my dad on our annual camping trips might have repelled me if I hadn’t been twenty-four. I was in awe for the first year, but the feeling wore off and the sirens and honking cabs grated instead of thrilled. After that I was a rat in a cage.

I find the pine grove and lie on the needles laid out for me like a russet mattress in the tree shadows. Soon I fall asleep. When I wake it is early evening. I start for home, but within a few minutes I have no idea where I am. Nothing is recognizable. The light between the trees darkens and there is no moon to light the way. I crash through the underbrush like a rutting bull moose, rushing from tree to tree until I can no longer see their trunks. I find one with my hand, fall to my knees, and rest my back against it, panting. It makes no difference whether I close my eyes, it is that dark.

Coyotes sound more real when you’re in their home than they do when you’re inside your own. There must be a dozen of them yipping in the blackness. It doesn’t calm me when they stop because I think they are sneaking up on me. I search on my hands and knees for a large stick, but all I find are branches that snap or crumble when I bend them.

I open my eyes at the crunch of boots snapping dry twigs. The shadowy light of false dawn brings tree branches into relief against the sky. Coming toward me is a man in a plaid hunting jacket, an orange cap, and leather work boots. I crouch behind the tree. The barrel of his rifle is aimed at the ground. I have yet to confront the hunters I know use this land each fall. Martin told me that the “No Hunting” signs I have painted and nailed to trees by the road might dissuade polite hunters, but already the signs have been shot up or torn down, and deer season doesn’t begin until October. Once the hunter is close enough for me to see, I recognize a man I met once but don’t much like. I stand up. He remembers me.

“You’re up early.”

“I slept out here.”

He looks at me, then smiles.

“You got lost, eh?”

He points into the forest. His hand is big like my father’s were, and all of a sudden I am small, standing at Dad’s side. A robin has hit our kitchen window so hard that it leaves feathers on the glass and we are sure it has broken its neck. We rush outside to find the bird lying on the patio beneath the window. Dad picks it up and confines it in his cupped hands, slowing its racing heart and keeping it warm. After a couple of minutes Dad opens his hands. The robin stands, shits onto his palm, and, with a jump, flies into the branch of a tree, where it regales us with a song I am certain is of thanks as much as of freedom.

“Your place is through there.”

Art starts walking and I follow him. We are at my tent site in less than five minutes. I offer to make him a cup of tea.

“You buy this place from Ernie Bent?”

I nod, then change the subject. “Did you shoot anything?”

“I forgot my shells. No matter. I like to walk these woods as much as hunt in them these days.”

“You’ve hunted here before?”

He laughs. “Son, my pop showed me how to shoot a .22 back here when I was this high.” He puts his hand by his hip. “I had a trapline running through these woods. Rabbits mostly. The occasional squirrel. It went from my place over this mountain and down into the valley.”

“You don’t trap anymore?”

“I had my fill of rabbit meat. I did it then ’cause I was young enough to enjoy it. That and I had to help out some way at home. I sold the rabbits Mother didn’t cook to folks for a quarter the pair. Some years there wasn’t much meat besides what I trapped.”

“I thought deer season doesn’t open till late October.”

“There’s more’n enough deer in these woods to go around. Besides, there’s no good meat in town.”

The shortage of plastic means that less food is being shipped. The food we do get is all packaged in glass or tin. I wonder if Art would teach me to hunt. I can only stomach so much creamed corn and applesauce. A bit of deer meat would taste good.

“Do me a favour? Let me know when you’re coming up here to hunt. I’m not big on surprises.”

He nods. I relax a bit.

“Ever see any water in these woods? A stream or a spring?”

“Nope. Dry as a preacher’s bone back here in the summer. In winter there’s all the water a fella could want, and then some.”

“Tell me about it.”

He looks me up and down. “You want some work?”

“Maybe.” I do, though. I’m not getting much food off my land this first year, and as much as I am growing to hate it, creamed corn in a can still requires cash. I have little money left.

“I need some digging done at my place. I’d get a backhoe, but it’s a fiddly situation. I bet I could still dig better than a lanky guy like you, but my body’s just not what it used to be.”

“I know what you mean.”

He glares at me from under his bushy eyebrows, long hairs sprouting in all directions.

“Come by my place Saturday morning. Early. I’m in Margaretsville, third driveway after the restaurant on the shore side.”

2

Lily Lake Road

I moved here because this was far from the rest of civilization — from Boston, New York, Toronto — and I had grown weary of a world that didn’t make sense. We compliment ourselves on being a rational species and an advanced civilization, denigrating dumb animals and primitive cultures, but everything I saw in that difficult world suggested that our self-congratulation is misplaced. By the end of my time in the city I just wanted to go for a long walk. I wound up here because my dad was born in Middleton and had brought me here as a kid. If I was going to escape, I figured this might feel like coming home.

I spent the first winter in Halifax washing bacon and sausage grease off dishes in a diner downtown. I rented an apartment in a creaky wooden building. The rent was cheap, and my bedroom window, with its flaking white paint, looked out on the restaurant I worked in halfway down Grafton Street. Mixed blessing, that. I had a short walk to work, but when someone called in sick I was the go-to guy. I did some prep there too. I got along with the kitchen staff but didn’t make any friends. I think of one thing when I remember that restaurant. I pulled a head of romaine, wrapped in plastic, out of the cold room. As I cleaned it I found a white moth between two leaves, fluttering as the warm kitchen air hit it. Its wings pressed uselessly against its body, vibrating back and forth rapidly in an attempt to escape. As a larva it had led a secure life, munching voraciously, slumbering as a pupa, then hatching as a winged chrysalis into an enclosed plastic world. Cold, damp, dark, with no freedom to fly, that moth waited until I ripped open the bag and peeled back a leaf. The rush of warm air, light, and room to stretch its wings were a rapid reversal of its fortune. It flew to the window above my dish pit, where it stayed for a few days, then disappeared.

There were bars on every downtown street. When they closed, crowds converged at Pizza Corner. Three of its corners housed pizza shops and my room was above one of them. On the fourth corner was a large stone church, into and out of which I never saw a person venture. In the wee hours when I was awake, often because of the noise on the street, I sat in a chair in front of the window overlooking that church and wished all sorts of nastiness on the drunks below.

On the coldest nights the walls of my room came alive, winter winds pushing through fissures and, one February morning, frosting the sill by my pillow. I was by myself except at work and even then I was lonely. On my days off I’d go to the public library a block away and look at New Yorker cartoons or old issues of Harrowsmith to dream about the gardening and building I longed to do far from the city. When the library was closed on Mondays I went to the medical library at Dalhousie to look stuff up.

The following spring I left the city and worked on organic farms around the province. The best place I stayed was Martin and Jen’s ten-acre homestead next door. For a year before I bought my land I lived with them, working in their organic gardens and on construction projects with Martin. In return for my work I was given a bed in a nook off the kitchen and all the lettuce, carrots, potatoes, tomatoes, beans, raspberries, and garlic I could eat. It was the best food I’d ever tasted, and I liked living with Martin and Jen because they didn’t ask a lot of personal questions. They had four cats patrolling the gardens and woods around the...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Epigraph
• This Is What I Lost
• Chapter 1
• Chapter 6
• Chapter 11
• Chapter 16
• Chapter 21
• Chapter 26
• Chapter 31
• Chapter 36
• Chapter 41
• The End
• Back Cover