Washika (17 page)

“Ah no,” Morrow interrupted, “you should have seen its face, Henri. Just like it was screaming. For sure, it burned alive.”

The guys looked away from the fire. No one wanted to be the first to talk about it but, now, that was done. They were feeling badly about the thing and they had a need to say something about it.

“You should have seen it, Henri,” Lavigne began. “It was terrible. And CC found a rabbit.”

“Yeah,” CC said, nodding. “Only the head wasn't burned.”

Henri's face twisted in disgust. How was it that they had not seen these things earlier? At the first place they had gone to, they had seen no signs of wildlife, except mosquitoes. Even around the island. They had walked around it for two days and seen nothing.

“But, how come?” Henri said to no one in particular. “We walked all around here before and saw nothing.”

“Me and François, we found eggs,” André announced.

“Probably partridge,” François added. “They were close together on the ground.”

Alphonse listened to his log drivers speaking as he had never heard them speak before. He tried to recall a time in his life when he might have spoken as they did now. It was a long time ago and he could not remember it well but he knew it had happened and he knew how he had felt about it. As the students spoke, Alphonse glanced at Fred sitting on a fat, grey log. He was eating his sandwich and pretending not to hear what was going on across the fire in front of him. The old man looked up at Alphonse through the flames of the fire. He washed down the rest of his sandwich with two quick gulps of tea and dipped his cup into the pail.

“Who's responsible for this stuff?” he asked, nodding towards the tea pail.

“Me,” François Gauthier spoke up. All heads had turned towards the old man. Was Gauthier going to get a talking to? Things were not going well. Might just as well be Gauthier's turn. “What's the matter, Fred? It's not okay? I made it too strong, maybe?”

“Too strong? Ha!” the old man glared at the students.

“I find it not bad,” Henri said.

“Not bad?” Fred turned to look at Henri. “Not bad you say?”

“Hey Fred,” André Guy stood next to François. “Maybe it's the sandwich left a bad taste in your mouth. Even if it's Gauthier who made it, I think it's pretty good.”

Now, the fellows looked at André, signs of surprised disbelief on their faces.

“
Sacrament
!” Lavigne just could not avoid a comment. “What's happening to you?”

“Well it is,” André argued. “Eh Alphonse? It's not bad, eh?”

“If you say so,” Alphonse smiled.

“Listen here,
calis
!” Fred stood up and jabbed a thin brown finger at his chest. “I'm the expert around here. Not bad…pretty good.
Sacrament
! This here is the best tea I've ever had in all my life. Yes sir. Better than the old fart in Charlevoix ever made. Ha! Ha! Ha!”

Standing by the fire and kicking at the sand with the toe of his boot, François Gauthier felt both pride and embarrassment. Although the boys felt badly about the animals and all that had happened, they could not ignore the opportunity just presented to them.

“Hey Gauthier,” Lavigne snuggled up close to him. “You'd make somebody a good little cook, eh? A bit ugly but still pretty good in the kitchen.”

Lavigne tried to fondle François' hair beneath the rim of his hard hat but François pushed him away.

“I wonder if they make skirts that long?” St-Jean wanted to know. “Hey Françoise, my dear. Pour me another tea, will you.”

André moved in closer. He tapped François' hard hat lightly with his hand. “Well Gauthier,” he said. “Guess you won't be using this where you're going.”

François was quiet during the whole ordeal. He had learned earlier that summer how to handle himself with them. He did not say a word. He just smiled and endured and, when he was convinced that they had had enough fun with him, he dipped his cup into the pail and then, closing his eyes, he savoured what Fred Garneau claimed was the best tea he had ever tasted, better even than his grandfather's who had lived in Charlevoix in Ireland.

The old man reached behind him to the pile of driftwood the boys had collected. He pulled out two of the twisted, grey pieces and added them to the fire. It was quiet again. They sipped their tea from the brown melamine cups that came with the lunch boxes and watched the flames curling around the pointed ends of the wood. Around one o'clock Alphonse would call out, “Work!” and they would douse the fire and Henri and Fred would leave in the boat while the others would follow Alphonse back into the bush. That was what they had to do and it was not much different from the day before, and the day before that. But, they were not the same. They felt differently now, about the forest and the fire and what they were supposed to be doing there. They had behaved badly. They knew that now. And they wished that they had been otherwise but what was done was done and there was nothing they could do about it. They could only hope that, someday, they would have the opportunity to go about things in a proper way. But perhaps time would have softened their memories of how they had behaved. They might have forgotten how they felt now, standing by their little fire on the island. Maybe, all those years later, they would behave badly again.

T
he students never returned to the island. On Sunday, their fourth day on the fire, they were sent further north on the Ottawa to a place the men called Sugar Loaf. They were there for thirteen days and worked very hard. On the last day it had rained all morning and the boys hid under the largest spruce trees they could find, rolled cigarettes and waited for the rain to stop.

Henri Morin was alone under his tree. It took him a long time to try to roll a cigarette without the paper getting wet from the water dripping down from the branches. Later that morning, he leaned against the trunk of a large spruce with its branches almost sixteen feet long at the bottom, and fell sound asleep, half listening to the rain.

When Henri awoke, it was still raining. He was damp and hungry. He walked out along the firebreak to the road. The caboose was gone. There was not a truck to be seen. No trucks, no people, nothing but the rain and the sand and the quiet. Henri climbed into the yellow tractor that had been left by the side of the road. He tried to understand why he could not hear the whine of the pump motors or the chainsaws working the trees. The only sound disturbing the quiet was the rain tapping on the roof of the tractor. At that very moment, some thirty miles south, the rest of the guys were finishing up their lemon meringue pie and sipping hot tea in the cookhouse at Camp 15.

After lunch Alphonse was in a hurry to settle up with the camp foreman. They would be going back to Washika. They were finished with the fire and he wanted to make sure that his and the students' time was properly recorded and that it was clear that the cheques should be sent to Washika. He did not like Camp 15 and he hoped that he would never see it again. All he needed now was the little black notebook with the hours. For the past week or so Henri had been in the habit of keeping the little notebook with him. Once he had the book in hand, Alphonse could report the students' and his own hours to the clerk and say good-bye to Georges and never have to look at the place again.

“Gaston,” he said. “Have you seen Henri?”

“No,” Lavigne answered. “I haven't seen him all morning.”

“He wasn't in the caboose when we came in,” François added.

“But there was a second,” Alphonse said. “He must have come back in that one.”

“No, I don't think so,” Lavigne said. “I was in the second. I didn't see him.”

Alphonse looked around the camp yard. Nothing had changed since the morning: trucks arriving, some leaving and men rushing everywhere. He returned to the cookhouse and scanned the rows of tables. Finally he went to the camp office and reported that Henri Morin was missing.

“Can't be,” Georges said. “We always take a count of the fellows for the hours. You know that, Alphonse.”

“Yes, I know that. I also know that in our gang, it's Henri Morin who takes the count.”

“Christ! That's all we needed. I can just hear them at the head office.”

“There'll be a bigger fuss if we don't find him.” Alphonse was suddenly angry. Before, he had been worried. Now, he was worried, and angry with this man with the clean clothes and grey curls and everything so neat in his office and everything arranged just so. “Never mind about the people in town, the head office and all that gang. Get a truck out there right away.”

“Yes, yes. You're right. I'll send someone right away. Where was he anyway?”

“On a pump. The first one on the creek that crosses the break.”

“That was on number nineteen?”

“Yes.”

The man snatched his immaculate white hard hat from the rack and rushed out of the office. Alphonse stood in front of the large oak desk. He stared at the map covering one wall, at the red, and blue, and yellow pins sticking out of the contours. He tried to imagine which pin showed where Henri might be. He walked around the glass-topped desk and sat down in the chair. He heard the spring stretching as he leaned back and placed his feet up on the desk.

Out at number nineteen, it was still raining. Henri sat high up on the seat of the tractor with his mackinaw buttoned up to his neck, his collar up and his arms folded, trying to keep warm. He was cold and hungry and there was a strong, stale taste of tobacco in his mouth. He was tired and could easily have fallen asleep again but the shivering kept him awake. He was not worried. Eventually someone would notice that he was not there. They would send someone. It was just that it had to happen to him. And on the last day! Finally, he got bored thinking about it and fell asleep.

It was two o'clock in the afternoon when Jacques, the caboose driver, pulled up beside the tractor. He got out of the truck but did not close the door. He took soft, careful steps going towards the tractor. Once close enough, he grabbed Henri's foot and shook it violently.

“Hey, hey!” he screamed.

Henri opened his eyes. He turned his head slowly to glance down at the man. He felt good seeing that the driver looked disappointed.

“What time is it?” he said.

“After two.”

“Well, it sure took them long enough.”

“Shouldn't have been hiding in the first place.”

“Hiding? Who was hiding? If they had honked the horn when it was time, I wouldn't be here now.”

“We did,” the driver smiled. “Three sets of short ones. I know. It was me on the last run.”

“Anyway, I wasn't hiding.”

“Well, let's go,” the driver said. He looked around him. To Henri, he seemed to be checking for any other stragglers. “Everybody's waiting for you.”

Henri had only been cold and damp and hungry before. Now, the driver was making him think that all this was his fault, and that he should feel guilty. He knew that he was being stupid but he was beginning to feel guilty anyway. He looked across at the driver with his brown curly hair and clean boots and gold-capped teeth and, slowly, he began to hate the man and the smug look on his clean, shaven face.

When they arrived at Camp 15, Henri could see Alphonse and the driver standing by the open door of the bus. The caboose pulled up alongside the bus. Henri opened the door and stepped out of the truck. He did not speak to the driver.

“You okay?” Alphonse said.

“Yes.”

“Go on in to the cookhouse, Henri. Maybe there's something left.”

“No, that's okay. I'll eat at Washika.”

“You have the book, Henri?”

Henri handed over the notebook and pencil. He had filled in the entry for the last day on his way in to Camp 15. The driver had made a joke about it, about not forgetting to put in two extra hours alongside his own name. Henri had not even looked up from the notebook and the driver did not speak to him after that.

Finally, Henri decided to see what he might find to eat at the cookhouse. He returned shortly afterwards with a paper sack and a jam jar full of tea. He sat up front, to the right of the driver, ate the sandwiches and biscuits and drank tea from the jar with his glove on. He had missed the old man. He was sorry about that. After their last day on the island, Fred Garneau had been assigned tasks at the camp. He must not have liked that. That afternoon, while Henri sat in the tractor waiting for a ride back to Camp 15, the old man had taken the Company bus back to Ste-Émilie. The fellows had lined up single file to say good-bye and to shake his firm brown hand. As he boarded the bus, Fred waved to them with his pipe and smiled his famous toothless smile.

Henri had just finished eating when he saw Alphonse and Georges coming across the yard from the camp office. The two men stood a short while in the rain alongside the bus. The zipper on Georges' jacket was done up tight to his neck and he kept his hands in his trouser pockets. Finally he jerked one hand out of his pocket, shook hands with Alphonse and turned to leave. As he did so, he looked back towards the windows of the bus and gave a short wave. He waved a second time and smiled up at the raindrop-covered windows. The man turned then and walked back to the camp office. He did not look back again.

As the bus turned in the yard, Alphonse was feeling sorry about Georges. It must not be easy to do his job well and not be hated by some of the men. It must not be easy being hated. He must not forget to tell Georges that the next time they met in Ste-Émilie, which was not very likely. But anyway, if ever they should meet, he would invite him to join him at the tavern for a beer. No man that Alphonse was aware of, regardless of his position, could let a short stay over a tavern table with a tall cold beer pass him by. While they shared this neutral territory, Alphonse would tell him how all of the students had waved back to him that last day, and how they had said very nice things about him. The last part was not true of course but Alphonse believed that the man would feel good about that. A man like Georges must not feel good often. And anyway, it was not a very big lie.