![]() ![]() One morning, the day before his fifteenth birthday, James awoke with the realization that he could hit his father back. English always felt flat and harsh, like daylight after night-fishing, but his mother made sure he was proficient as a little prince, for they were part of the British Empire and he had his way to make. ![]() It used to make his father angry when James and his mother spoke Gaelic together, for his father spoke only English. James’s father traded his iron last for a tin pan, but no one then or since ever heard of a Cape Breton gold rush. Egypt was a lonely place way on the other side of the island, in Inverness County, and James never even had a brother or sister to play with. He married her and took her to Egypt and that’s where James was born. He promised her father he wouldn’t take her far from home. James’s father fell in love with James’s mother while measuring her feet. James’s father was a penniless shoemaker from Port Hood. James’s mother came from Wreck Cove, the daughter of a prosperous boat builder. And that was what James wanted for his own children. She had taught him to read the classics, to play piano and to expect something finer in spite of everything. ![]() The daddy, James Piper, managed to stay out of the coal mines most of his life, for it had been his mother’s great fear that he would grow up and enter the pit. A long time ago, before you were born, there lived a family called Piper on Cape Breton Island. ![]()
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