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REDEMPTION

A NOVEL

IAN PRATTIS

Copyright © 2014 by IAN PRATTIS.

Library of Congress Control Number: PENDINGISBN: Hardcover 978-1-4990-1232-3 Softcover 978-1-4990-1234-7 eBook 978-1-4990-1230-9

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

This book was printed in the United States of America.

Rev. date: 04/29/2014

To order additional copies of this book, contact:Xlibris LLC1-888-795-4274www.Xlibris.comOrders@Xlibris.com616387

CONTENTS

PRAISE FOR REDEMPTION ............................................................viiPUBLICATIONS BY IAN PRATTIS ....................................................ixCHAPTER ONE ....................................................................................1CHAPTER TWO ...................................................................................8CHAPTER THREE .............................................................................22CHAPTER FOUR ...............................................................................32CHAPTER FIVE ..................................................................................57CHAPTER SIX ....................................................................................72CHAPTER SEVEN ..............................................................................84CHAPTER EIGHT ..............................................................................99EPILOGUE ........................................................................................115GLOSSARY OF TERMS ....................................................................117THE AUTHOR .................................................................................119

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PRAISE FOR REDEMPTION

Lucille Hildesheim, International Harp Artiste

What marks a great work of art is that it touches the heart and soul. Redemption touched mine very deeply. It is so vividly descriptive of both scenery and people, drawing you into the life of Callum Mor, making you cry for him, cheer for him, and wishing you could continue on his journey with him. It is a book to be read over and over again, from which to take away life lessons and inspiration for our own personal journey. This is a book to share with those who touch your life.

Mary Helen Dean, Management Professional, Ottawa, Canada

I loved this book, captivating on so many levels, as the story reinforced my resolve. I have three criteria for a good book . . . I don’t want it to end, I love the end, and I do not wish to speak to anyone for several hours after I finish it. So, this met my criteria on all these levels!

Anita Rizvi, Consultant, Ottawa, Canada

“Redemption” is a riveting novel chronicling one man’s journey through the stages of innocence, darkness, destruction and transformation. The narrative may be applied both individually and universally. Individuals are suffering all over the world from the chaos that life brings, be it violence, abuse of power, cheating, torture or the destruction that comes with war. What is so exquisite about this novel is the tenderness and honesty with which the author deals with the human condition. Callum Mor draws us in as he demonstrates an intuitive understanding and respect for nature. We are intrigued by his innocence and purity which contrast so

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strongly with the tragic failings that surround him. When Callum Mor’s journey moves him even closer to the abyss, the author refuses to “sanitize” his experiences. Rather, they are put out there as graphically and tragically as they occur. The story pulls you in and before you know it, the reader is seduced and becomes Callum Mor. As he is redeemed, so are we. “Redemption” is so beautifully written, exploring the human condition in its entirety, even the darkest elements. The author does this with grace, elegance, compassion and without judgment.

Tina Fedeski, Executive Director of Orkidstra Canada and founder of The Leading Note Foundation.

A magical journey of the struggle towards hope, inspiration and love.

Jo Anne Denis, retired federal public servant from the Government of Canada.

Thank you for the gift of your book, Redemption. It is a lovely read. Elegantly sad. We all have a piece of Callum Mor in us. I certainly identified with many aspects of his journey. So thank you for the enjoyable hours reading about this fine human being.

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PUBLICATIONS BY IAN PRATTIS

• Anthropology at the Edge: Essays on Culture, Symbol, and Consciousness

• The Essential Spiral: Ecology and Consciousness After 9/11• Failsafe: Saving the Earth from Ourselves• Earth My Body, Water My Blood• Trailing Sky Six Feathers: One Man’s Journey with His Muse• Eight e-books 2011–2012 on Amazon Kindle• Two CDs• Two DVDs• Four films• One hundred professional articles/chapters/book reviews

published in world journals• Ten scientific and technical reports• Twenty-six electronic publications of television courses broadcast

at Carleton University and by TVO• Fifty articles in Pine Gate, an online Buddhist journal• One hundred fifty articles in newspapers and community

magazineswww.ianprattis.com

This is a story, a piece of fiction.

It springs from the imagination and thoughts of its author. It’s unfolding is not a portrayal of people living or dead. It is a song, an essay, a hymn to

the human spirit.

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CHAPTER ONE

“LOBSTER.” “NO LOBSTER.” “No Lobster.” “Crabs.” “Lobster.” “Crabs.” “No Lobster.” Like a medieval

incantation, old Angus sang out the greeting as the lobster creels came over the gunwale one by one. “Lobster.” “No Lobster.” “Crab.” Uttered with the exact same pitch and feeling, he intoned a greeting to the creature trapped within. His huge hands deftly unlaced the latticed side of the creel, and with a slow rhythm, he methodically passed the lobsters to a boy standing on the deck of the boat. The youngster watched in silence while the lobsters transferred from the gnarled hands of Angus to a large wooden box covered with a wet sack. He watched in fascination as Angus tore claws, shells, and legs from the living crab to place the breast meat in the creel as bait along with half a salt mackerel.

When the whole fleet of twenty creels were stacked on the deck, the skipper of the boat, Michael Martin, shouted above the noise of the engine to Angus that they were moving. If the old man heard, he did not acknowledge, but peered bemusedly at the sea as the Atlantic swell rocked the boat in its turning. He looked at the sky noticing the flight of gulls, then to the Atlantic sweeping unremittingly from Labrador to break on his own Hebridean shores. A vast oceanic journey with its own rhythms, dangers, and joys. Angus was well attuned to the many moods of the Atlantic Ocean. He looked to the water for signs that would tell him if the currents would be stronger or weaker than he anticipated. With a short slow movement of his hand, he bade the skipper move closer to a reef, white spumed from the breakers. Then once the spot was chosen, he again motioned to Michael to describe a large semicircle as he cast the baited creels one by one back into the sea.

This was the fourth fleet of twenty creels to be serviced that September morning. Michael took the boat out to sea then cut the engine. The craft moved up and down with the swell of the ocean. The remaining fleets of lobster creels could wait while their leisurely lunch was consumed. Michael glanced fondly at the boy, his nephew, Callum Mor.

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The boy’s day had started early, just after dawn. He had risen while his parents slept, drawn by something intangible about the quietness of the morning. Leaving his snoring brother whose bed he shared, he tiptoed past the back room where his elder sister muttered and turned in her sleep. He shivered as he pulled on his sweater and trousers in the cold kitchen. He took a cup of milk from the pitcher by the scullery and left the cup on the table. His mother would notice and know that he had gone. He made up the fire and put a match to it to take the chill from the kitchen for the rest of his family. Then he was drawn to the day.

Closing the croft house door behind him, he stood and marveled at the beauty of the morning spread out for him to see. The slow aftermath of dawn could be traced in a sky streaked with reds and grays as though a child had smeared pastels on the horizon. He walked from his father’s croft house, skirting the bay and climbing the hill that led to a sight of the pier. Here and there a light showed from a croft house but no one was about. This hour of the morning belonged to him and to the sheep—sheep sleeping in the middle of the road, belching and coughing in the sparse pasture opposite the post office. Their dominance uninterrupted by merchants opening up shop, too early for children to run to school shouting and laughing, too early for the first drunk to take up his station by the lifeboat shed. The sheep commanded this hour of the day and stared diffidently while the boy walked among them.

Two ringnetter boats with their crew asleep below lay at anchor in the lee of the breakwater. The clamor of gulls around them gave vocal testimony to the remains of last night’s catch. The boy counted the small boats clustered by the slipway then made his way to the pier. The sea here was calm and flat as glass, scarcely responding to the whisper of breeze that brushed it. The boy spat into the water and watched the ever-increasing number of rings on the calm surface. He spat again, this time to the left so the two sets of rings would collide, fuse, and break on the pier’s pilings. Small patches of oil drifted past like multicolored jellyfish. In his waiting, he scanned the pier and took in the fishing nets hung on rails and piled in disarray among discarded warp lines and fuel drums. Large red containers with “MacAlpines Shipping” as their scutcheon, sat dully amidst the reminders of the island’s fishing fleet.

He picked up the noise of a diesel engine and stared out to sea, straining his attention to catch the shape of the boat. He knew the sound of the boat, yet still peered anxiously until the familiar outlines of his uncle’s fishing boat could be picked out to the south. His uncle lived on

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a neighboring island, yet came to this pier for fuel and stores. The boy willed the boat to come faster, before the village stirred, before his sister, Moira, with her quiet insistence took him along with herself to school. He had been promised a trip on the boat, and today, he wanted to go. He looked anxiously to the village, at the first stirrings of life there, at the church clock that showed that he would not be spared Moira’s insistence.

The wash at the bow of the boat grew bigger as his figure stood on the pier drawing it closer to him. Then the postmaster, idling by the railings, filling his pipe before his day of commerce began, saw him and waved. The boy reluctantly acknowledged the salute. The merchant’s children in a rush descended the pier road and took the shortcut to the school. They laughed and waved good-naturedly at the boy’s strange figure on the pier. His own brother shouted from the hill to get along to school, and still the boat was far off. Then Moira was before him, an amused quietness in her eyes, and he allowed himself to be pulled into the way of things and reluctantly followed her to school.

He felt his uncle’s gaze on him and turned to him with an uncertain smile. Michael looked bemusedly at the boy and then laughed “You’re a wee bugger, Callum Mor, jumping school the day. What will your teacher do when she gets hold of you, eh?”

“Why but she saw me, and she smiled at me as I took the shortcut to the pier.” His teacher had smiled. Callum Mor’s attention had been riveted on his uncle’s boat at the pier, which he could see from the schoolroom window. He had moved cautiously from desk to desk until he was close to the schoolroom door, an advancement that Ms. MacDougall had not been unaware of. Then she gave him his chance by turning to the blackboard, and out of the class slipped Callum Mor, down the brae, through the cut to the pier where Michael and Angus were standing smoking. His classmates giggled quietly, stifling their mirth behind fists over their mouths until silenced by a frown from Ms. MacDougall. She walked to the back of the class and looked out of the window that commanded the bay and the pier. The morning sun cast a sheen on the water that was scarcely rippled by the wind coming from the west. Several trawlers had tied up at the pier, and their crews were busy taking on ice and sorting their catch for the market on the mainland.

Ms. MacDougall smiled to herself. It was a day for freedom if anyone would take it. Callum Mor’s slight figure had paused at the school gate and as he cast a glance back at the school he caught Miss MacDougall’s smile on him. He stood stock still, unsure of retreat or flight. He was no

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stranger to her ruler across his knuckles and switch on his backside, yet she was there looking at him and smiling. She turned from the window tugging at the chignon at the back of her hair, an unnecessary severity to her features. She was happy for Callum Mor, just as Michael and Angus were happy for him once he presented himself to them at the pier.

Callum Mor did not understand his teacher. He exulted in his release, knowing of the punishment awaiting him the next day at school. He did not know of the happiness he gave to others, could never know. He lived an extraordinary life yet thought nothing of it. His gifts were apparent to everyone he touched, but not to him. That came much later in the grand, often tragic, cycle of his life journey. For now, he was a little boy taking a day off from school. Michael and Angus stopped in their smoking at the pier and looked at the boy as he shyly stood by them. A small slip of nothing, elflike and ephemeral, with eyes that were too knowing and too vulnerable. There was too much in that small frame, and everyone who knew him sensed it and rejoiced in it, yet feared for him. This was why he was called “Callum Mor.” Callum, the Large One. While Michael wondered, old Angus nodded to the boy to get aboard. This was his first time on the boat and as it pulled away from the pier he felt like a bird soaring with wings wide open.

Michael’s gaze on the boy was fond. Lunch over, Angus and Michael talked about their catch and where the remaining fleets of creels would be placed. Callum Mor sat quietly looking at them. He had shared their sandwiches, supped from Angus’s large mug, and listened to their talk of the sea. They did not explain anything to him. He learned by listening and watching and then doing. His left hand was ugly and red with two large welts suffered from lobster nips. He had borne the pain in silence, but his tears had been noticed by the two men. They had said nothing, but at their lunch made room for him and treated him with a gentle courtesy that he did not understand, but which he shyly treasured. Angus sat on a fish box filling his pipe, his pale blue eyes rarely away from the sea that sustained him. His weathered features and great broad shoulders and hands a contrast to the slight eager-faced boy beside him. Michael started the engine, and the boat swung south to the islands at the tip of the Hebridean tail. He slowed the vessel as they approached an inlet close to Mieray Island. In the shadow of the soaring cliffs, Angus’s incantations, sung softly under his breath, seemed almost a prayer. A prayer and a thanks. A thanks and a prayer.

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He had fished these waters for forty years and still was awed by nature’s stark edifice. Stretching sheer from the sea for nine hundred feet or so, the cliffs drew their eyes. It was as if to redefine their apartness, their humanity, that a fleet of creels was set in and around a channel that cut through the soaring grandeur of the cliffs. An act of impudence almost, to snatch a morsel from the feet of the gods. The boat slowly picked its way through the dark channel, almost totally closed in from the sun. Angus deposited the baited creels into the sea, taking bearings from rocks he had brushed against countless times. All three blinked as they emerged from the grotto and the September sunlight brought them back to life. As Michael piloted the boat northward, their eyes would frequently travel back to the darkness they had with impunity dared, until the cliffs were lost from sight.

Angus and Callum Mor busied themselves with securing the catch in wooden boxes that would be floated at a mooring in the bay. The boy’s arms and back ached from the lifting of heavy creels, and his hand throbbed painfully. Angus put him in the wheelhouse with Michael. The noise of the engine made conversation impossible, yet Michael shouted volubly above the roar, and Callum Mor could not hear.

His replies were similarly incomprehensible. Words strung together had no meaning above the noise, but the osmosis of the sea and the beauty of the day united them in a way that did not require words. They enjoyed their mutually unintelligible conversation all the way back to the pier. Callum Mor was dispatched home with a large bag of crab claws. Michael and Angus took on some fuel drums, and the boy walked along the pier road and up the brae that eventually led round to his father’s croft. He moved the bag of crab claws from arm to arm as its weight told on his small, tired muscles. His sister met him at the rise of the brae, her bright red skirt a counterpoint to the green sweater of Callum Mor. With his sister now helping in the carrying of the bag, the two colors were soon lost to sight, and Michael and Angus returned to their own island.

It was now dark and Callum Mor told the story of his day to his family while the crab claws cooked and split in the embers of the fire. He sat at the large kitchen table with small flecks of crabmeat on his chin. His sister, Moira, demanded repeated telling of his escape from Ms. MacDougall’s eyes, and at each repetition, she became even more convulsed with laughter. At one point, she seized her brother and waltzed him around the kitchen until they collided with their mother and

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tumbled to the floor, all legs, arms, and merriment. Annie laughed with her son and her daughter and delighted at Callum Mor’s adventure.

“If you’re for dancing the pair o’ ye, we’ll have it done differently. Donald, fetch your accordion.” Donald had watched his brother and sister whirl round the kitchen floor with admiration and not a little envy. He was not given easily to joy, too stolid for one on the verge of adulthood, but his transformation lay in music. With delicate rhythms and chords, his fingers brought forth music that directed the energetic scramble of his kin to slow strathspeys and vigorous reels. And when at last the two were intoxicated by their steps, they danced solo opposite one another, fiercely competitive now, turning and twisting with the grace of gulls, in a strict determined order. Callum Mor was almost as light of step as his sister Moira, but her grace was something not of this world. Then at last, Donald released them from his music. He was now part of them and could join in their animation.

Annie wove the web of riddles and conversation that tied her offspring to her, feeding them, humoring them, and forcing them to grow. The door opened to admit Colin, the old widower from the next croft, who called nightly to fetch a jug of milk. He came with news that Andrew, father of the children and husband to Annie, was negotiating to borrow a bull from the north end of the island and would not return until morning. He knew of Callum Mor’s adventures and stumped into the kitchen with a mock fierceness, demanding that Callum Mor give an account of himself. With a grin, the boy started on the retelling, and soon, the old man was chuckling and slapping his thigh. The retelling was done several times more that evening as other neighbors, drawn by the music and spirit that enveloped the croft house, called in, listened to the boy, feasted on crabs, and drank from the bottle of whiskey that had appeared. The large kitchen table was pushed back to make room for the company to wend its way through a reel. Moira was called to dance, and Donald’s music drew forth delicate and poignant steps from her.

Colin, the widower, cleared his throat and began to recite a poem. It was received with murmurs of approval as he gave the story of the transportation of Highlanders from their hills and crofts across oceans and ice-laden waters to Canada, where a living was carved out of wilderness. He told of their heartbreak at being torn from their nurturing. His epic was received in a silence that was too eloquent. After a long pull at the bottle of whiskey, old Colin struck up a ribald song about the adventures of a cockerel, and the company learned to laugh

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again. Soon, however, the songs and Donald’s music were lost to Callum Mor. He lay fast asleep by the hearth, his small body curled up to catch the warmth of the fire’s dying embers. Around him, conversation had turned to crops, the sea, the latest catches by the island fishermen, but he was oblivious to it all. Donald gently picked his sleeping brother up and carried him to his bed, unlacing the boy’s shoes, and drawing off his trousers.

“Good night to you, Callum Mor, my brave wee lad.” Then he returned to the company, the conversation and gossip that were a prelude to the evening’s end, and Callum Mor slept.

This story has no beginning or middle or end. It simply has its own cycle. It is the story of Callum Mor, a being of rare beauty. The observers of his story can laugh, rejoice, and suffer with him, but can do naught to change or alter the tragedy that overtakes him. They can merely witness the ultimate triumph of the human spirit.

This is Callum Mor’s story.

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CHAPTER TWO

ANDREW MARTIN RETURNED to his croft house early the next day before the household was awake. In the quiet and cold,

he noticed the remains of the crab claws and the table and chairs pushed to the wall. He was quietly pleased. He sat in the large shabby armchair by the fireplace and sighed. He was a tall, spare man, with lines around his mouth and eyes that could have been laughter lines, but for the grimness and tightness of his expression. He was glad for his family that there had been a ceilidh the previous evening, for there had been little fun and laughter since he had returned from the sea five years ago.

There had been nothing else for him in his life but the sea, but he had never liked it. He missed the land and the rocks and the mist and, once married to Annie, he had missed her and their bairns, first Donald, then Moira, and finally Callum Mor. He would see them for three months in twelve, and the ports, bars, whores, and wonders of the world were naught to him as long as he was denied his family. His children grew up, and he knew them not. A stranger that arrived unexpectedly with gifts and shouts and roars and then who left and was almost forgotten until he arrived home once more with gifts and roars. Only Annie knew of his deep sense of loss. She watched the wonder as he looked on his small children, awake, running, and sleeping, and she felt his loss that he knew them not.

He loved his wife and his children with a fierce intensity yet was a stranger to his children, except, that is, to his youngest. It was the child, Callum Mor, who breached the wall of strangeness and kept him from the pubs and drink that he needed to salve the pointless round of his life. As the boy grew, so did the father respond to his naive beauty and through him could be more of a father to the others. When Callum Mor was five years old, Andrew took him to the hills that backed the common grazings to teach his youngest son the ways of sheep and dogs. The child studiously took in every gesture, strategy and word as Andrew and his collie, Bess, gathered, cornered, and herded the sheep toward the fank.