My October (28 page)

Jean-Louis threw back his head and laughed. “When my stepfather opened the empty trailer, his jaw dropped, I can tell you.” He winked. From that day onward, the route was his. He drove while the old man snored. By the time he was fifteen, he was a seasoned trucker. The following year, when he got his licence, he quit school and started working under his own name.

He turned to Hugo. “You still in school?”

Hugo looked down at his jeans, which were frayed above each knee, the white threads showing through. He couldn't bring himself to talk about Saint-Jean-Baptiste.

Jean-Louis shrugged. “Not that I'm in a position to lecture
you.” He squinted into the sunshine, eyes on the road. “I wish I were, though. I wish I had stuck with it.”

Jean-Louis offered him some coffee from his Thermos, sweet and creamy, just the way Hugo liked it, and they drove in silence for a while. Hugo's hands were trembling, probably because of all the caffeine he'd had. And his thoughts were jumping around like sandflies. He kept picturing his mother's face. She would like Jean-Louis, and she'd absolutely love his truck. She'd been almost as enamoured of the mastodons in his childhood as he had, making a beeline to any truck they spotted parked on the street. The little boy in the stroller had been her excuse. She would push him closer and closer to the gleaming wheels until he could reach out and touch them. One time, a driver had let Hugo climb into his cab and honk the horn.

“I got a boy your age,” Jean-Louis said suddenly. The trucker was facing forward, looking intently through the windshield at the highway, even though the road was as straight and easy as a ruled line.

“Not so old, actually. He's a year younger than you,” Jean-Louis continued, still staring at the road. “He'll be fourteen next year.”

“Does he drive with you?” asked Hugo, envious.

For several seconds, the only noise was the groan of the motor and the sigh of the eighteen tires. Jean-Louis shook his head. He hadn't seen his son in years. In fact, he admitted, he'd only met him once, right after his birth.

The mother had been a waitress at a truck stop in Sudbury. Jean-Louis had been passing through when a snowstorm hit. She'd offered him a bed for the night and he ended up staying the whole week. After that, he drove up to Sudbury a couple of
times and she came down once to Saint-Jérôme. She would have married him, he said. But what did he know about that? He was twenty at the time. “And believe it or not,” he said, “that's young.”

By the time Jean-Louis learned she was pregnant, it was too late to do anything about it. Their child was born on October 3. His name was Dylan, like the folksinger.

“He's English?”

Jean-Louis shrugged. “I hope he knows a little French. His mother's family speaks it, but it's dying in Northern Ontario. Just like it did in Louisiana.” He glanced at Hugo. “You ever been to New Orleans?” he asked. “The Mardi Gras?” He hardened his
r
's to sound like an American. “No French there anymore. No siree.” Jean-Louis turned to him again. “You ever been outside the province?”

Hugo went quiet. He had travelled to Toronto several times. He had vivid memories of his grandfather's house, big as a castle. They'd let him climb a crabapple tree in the huge backyard. His grandmother had been afraid, but his grandfather had cheered him on, confident he wouldn't fall. Hugo gazed out the truck window at the naked trees by the side of the highway.

Jean-Louis kept asking questions. He wanted to know where Hugo had grown up, what school he went to, what had brought him out on the road today. Hugo couldn't answer. He liked Jean-Louis and wanted to be friendly, but he couldn't tell the truth. Not now. Not with so much at stake. He had to reach his grandfather's place. He couldn't risk messing that up.

Eventually, Jean-Louis got the message and began talking instead of all the places he'd travelled to. He was a born
storyteller. Once more, Sudbury slipped into the conversation. He had tried his best to forget about Dylan, he said. The boy's mother wanted nothing to do with him now. She didn't even want child support. She had hooked up with someone else and made a new life for herself. Jean-Louis was firmly behind her.

“I dream about him sometimes,” Jean-Louis confessed. “And when I do, it's the strangest thing. He's still a baby.” He turned in his seat. “What would you do, Hugo? I mean, if you were me? I've only been up there twice in all these years. He has a new life. A stepdad. Maybe some half-brothers and -sisters. Either he's forgotten all about me,” he said, pausing to take a breath, “or else he's mad as hell.”

Hugo didn't even stop to think. It was a no-brainer. “I'd go,” he said. Dylan was waiting. It was obvious. A picture of him began to form in Hugo's mind, a miniature Jean-Louis, built sturdy, with the same bright spark in his eyes.

“Just like that?” asked Jean-Louis. “No warning or anything? You'd pack up and hit the road?”

Hugo nodded. Jean-Louis had an impressive set of wheels. And he obviously still cared about his son.

Jean-Louis kept glancing at Hugo as if he held all the answers. “What if he refuses to see me?” he said, his voice small and anxious. Then he raised his right hand and smacked it down hard on the steering wheel. “He probably hates me, walking out on him like that.”

“He might be angry,” Hugo said, surprising himself with his certainty, “but if he is, it's not because he hates you.” A wave of sadness rose up from his stomach.

WHEN THEY REACHED
the outskirts of Toronto, they discussed where to let Hugo off. By that time, Hugo had told him he was visiting his grandfather and that the house was in North Toronto. He trusted Jean-Louis and didn't want him to worry that he had no place to sleep. Jean-Louis couldn't take the truck into the city proper. He would lose too much road time. “I'm sorry, my friend,” he said. “I would have loved to drive you to the door.”

They pulled off the highway in York Mills, where there was a subway station close to the 401. “It's been a pleasure,” Jean-Louis said, coming to a stop near the red-and-gold subway sign and climbing out of the rig to offer his hand. The stubble on his chin, Hugo noticed, was silver in spots. A sort of growl came out of him as he took Hugo in his arms, scooping him up and crushing him hard, chest to chest, the way Hugo's father used to do in happier times.

Then Jean-Louis climbed back into the cab, and the gleaming mastodon rumbled away, leaving Hugo by himself in the Toronto sunshine.

21

Y
ork Mills, the stop where Hugo got out of the truck, was near the eastern tip of the U that was Toronto's principal subway line. His grandparents lived one stop to the south. Hugo paid the full adult fare so as not to have to show his Montreal student ID to the ticket-taker. Then he darted through the turnstile and into a purring red-seated train that arrived at the platform at the same moment he did, as if ordered personally for him. The subway trains in Toronto were quieter than Montreal's, and grander. They also came out of the ground sometimes and into the open air. Hugo liked these differences. And all around him, people were speaking English. Another change. The passengers looked more or less the same as in Montreal, the same mix of skin colours and styles, but they sure sounded different.

As the train started to roll, a woman pushing a stroller sat down in the seat beside him. Her little girl, who was around two years old and had been crying, quieted instantly and smiled coyly up at him.

Hugo smiled back and wiggled his fingers.

The child arched her body and pressed her face into a corner of the stroller so that one eye was hidden from view but the other could keep sight of him. “She likes you.” The mother laughed—the first words addressed to him since he'd left Jean- Louis's truck. A good omen, if you were into that kind of thing.

At the Lawrence station, he disembarked and followed a crowd of people up the stairs and out onto Yonge Street. The sun was still shining, although it was now starting to sink noticeably toward the horizon. The adrenalin buzz from all the coffee he'd drunk had worn off, leaving him chilled and tired. He wanted to get inside where it was warm, and to eat a decent meal. He had to cross Yonge and walk past a little park to get to his grandparents' place. That much he remembered. And hopefully, once he did that, he'd remember the rest of the route. But even if he got lost, he knew he'd find it eventually. He'd just hitchhiked five hundred and fifty kilometres. This last bit was the easy part.

The houses in this area of Toronto were enormous, with long strips of lawn hemmed in by geometrically carved hedges. It looked like Westmount, only flat. Hugo tried to rehearse what he'd say once he arrived at his grandparents' door. He couldn't exactly tell them about his adventures with Jean-Louis and the eighteen-wheeler, or with Frank. He didn't want to scare them. And he was guessing his mom hadn't phoned to tell them he'd gone missing. She wouldn't have wanted to worry them, and besides, she wasn't even returning his grandmother's calls.

The house was just where he'd pictured it, beyond the little park on a quiet street directly across from a high school. Finding it had been no problem. This trip had gone pretty smoothly, all things considered, as if the universe had been waiting for him to step out of his safe little home and start exploring.

His grandfather's lawn was like the others on his block, huge and almost too green to be true this time of year, with a walkway of shiny flagstones leading to the front door. Hugo paused on the sidewalk and took it all in.

Though the sun was still fairly high in the sky, the blinds in his grandparents' living room were shut, giving the place a closed-off, unwelcoming look. Hugo took another deep breath. The exhilaration and almost giddy happiness he'd felt in the truck were gone. Cold was seeping in through the bottoms of his sneakers. His feet were numb.

He'd been so caught up with actually getting here that he hadn't stopped to think about how his grandfather might react. He had been here four times in his life. He'd always pictured the old man being happy to see him, but maybe this was optimistic. There didn't seem to be any lights on. He wasn't even sure anyone was home.

He went up the walk to the front door, took the solid brass knocker, and rapped, a little tentatively. What, in the end, did he know about his grandfather? The crabapple tree was, by far, his strongest memory, the reason behind this trip. The incident had left him with an impression of a man who might understand him, who might have faith in him when others, quite plainly, did not. Hugo could picture the chair in the living room where his grandfather liked to sit, listening to Mozart and reading his newspaper. He smoked a pipe. Usually out of doors, because his wife couldn't stand the smell.

To deal with that smell, Alfred Stern chewed Doublemint gum. That was another thing Hugo remembered. He always had a pack on him and would give Hugo sugar-dusted sticks of it, wrapped in tinfoil. His other memories of Alfred Stern were not
so positive. He did his own snow shovelling in winter, creating a precise, geometrical path from street to door. One day, when Hugo was small, he'd tried to help. His grandfather had let him, but then he'd done the job all over again because Hugo's lines weren't straight enough.

The door opened suddenly and his grandmother's face looked out. At first, her expression was blank. When she took in his shaved head and grimy clothes, it turned suspicious. He had to say his name before she recognized him.

She clasped him to her chest, and then pushed him away again so she could look at him. “My God,” she said, gazing at him with intense blue eyes. “You've lost all your baby fat.” She ran a hand over his scalp. “And this? When did this happen?”

She'd transformed too. She looked smaller. The whole house did, in fact, now that they were inside. It had loomed so large in his mind that he must have inflated things a bit. He could actually look Connie in the eye now.

She led him into the hallway and stopped beside the living room door, which was closed. “Your grandfather's new bedroom. He's in there now with the nurse.” She squinted at him. “He just arrived home yesterday, so we're still getting used to it. When she's through with him, you can go in there and see him, if you want.”

She led him to the kitchen. Something was simmering on the stove. It smelled like his mother's cooking back in Montreal, or at least like the things she used to cook before his dad left. Connie put on an oven mitt and lifted the pot lid, releasing a cloud of steam. “Soup,” she said. “You hungry?”

Minutes later, he was seated in his grandparents' breakfast room with a big bowl of the stuff. It was full of carrots and
turnips, just like the soups his mom made. And Connie put out a plate of bread—whole grain, with butter. He ate it all.

“My goodness,” she said. “It's nice to see someone with an appetite for a change.”

By the time they cleaned up the dishes and she'd ushered him back to the living room door, he was feeling almost like someone his grandfather might wish to see.

“Your mum told you, I suppose,” she said in a low voice before they entered, “that he's not the same since the stroke.”

Hugo nodded. “He can't speak. I heard.”

“He can't do a whole lot of things, I'm afraid.” She made an effort to smile. “But it's still early in the game, Hugo. And strokes are unpredictable. You never know what will come back.”

She knocked lightly and opened the door a crack. “Alfred, my love. We have a visitor.”

She turned to check on Hugo, then opened the door wider and moved aside so he could enter.

A bed had been set up in the middle of the room. It had a metal frame and a row of command buttons, like a hospital bed. Because of the drawn blinds, there wasn't much light, but Hugo could see that the back of the bed had been raised. Propped on the mattress was a very small, wizened person who was watching him intently. Hugo blinked. The person looked nothing like his grandfather. If his hair hadn't been white, he would have mistaken him for a child.