Washika (18 page)

 

A
s the bus came to a stop between the main sleep camp and the bunkhouse-and-office, the students could hear the clangity, clang of the supper bell. The older men had already gathered around the cookhouse landing. They were waiting for Dumas to finish beating the triangle, calling all to the evening meal.

“Hurry and wash up,” Alphonse called from the front of the bus. “We don't want to keep Dumas waiting, eh?”

They were happy to be back. They pushed and shoved each other stepping out of the bus and, standing at the basin later, there were elbows swung back at ribs and short shoulder jabs and the best name calling they had heard in over two weeks.

The students were late arriving at the cookhouse, not very late, but still late by Dumas' standards. They came in together, single file, with their hands well scrubbed and their hair wetted down, each holding out a ticket. Dumas stood between the four tables with his arms locked across his chest. He smiled at the boys.

“Glad to be back, I'll bet,” he said, loudly. “Well, sit down. There's plenty to eat.”

The older men looked up from their plates. They looked over their shoulders at the cook and they looked at each other across the table.

“He's started drinking,” Percy Dumont whispered to the man beside him.

“You think so?” the man replied.

“For me, yes. You've been here as long as me. Ever see him like that?”

“No. Still, I don't know. A person can change.”

“Dumas Hébert change? Ha! Listen to me. I saw him in the hotel in Ste-Émilie once. He was laughing and talking with everybody. Liquor. That's what did it. For me, he's started again.”

“I don't know,” the man argued. “I saw him go to the infirmary twice this week. Maybe he's very sick. The pills, you know. Sometimes they make you act a little crazy.”

“That could be. Still, he looks drunk to me.”

The students sat down at their usual places at the table and Dumas went back to the kitchen. They could hear him yelling something to the cookee and then both of them laughing loudly. They had never heard Dumas laugh before. No one in the cookhouse except Percy Dumont had ever heard him laugh. The effect was immediate. Within seconds of hearing him, everyone in the cookhouse was smiling and waiting for Dumas to come out of the kitchen. They were curious to see if his face looked the same. Still, a few of the older men were convinced that the cook was drunk and they waited anxiously to see him drop a plate or trip and fall flat on his face.

After supper the students showered and those who had begun to grow hair beneath their noses or on the points of their chins, shaved. They dropped their blackened clothes into plastic garbage bags to be washed in Ste-Émilie but, most probably, never to be worn again. Clean and fresh in white T-shirts and jeans, they played cards in the common room or lay on their bunks, talking and smoking cigarettes. In the bunkhouse-and-office, it was the same except that, there, the guys were worried.

“And today's only Friday,” Lavigne argued. “You know what that means.”

“Tomorrow's Saturday,” Morrow volunteered.

“Of course, it's Saturday. We know that. But it's also a workday around here. We work six days a week here. Remember?”

“You think they'll send us out tomorrow?” Henri said.

“Could be. Why wouldn't they?” Lavigne replied.

“Well, I don't know.” Henri tried to reason the thing out. “I mean, we've worked sixteen days straight and two Sundays on top of that. Seems to me they owe us a couple of days.”

“Yeah,” Morrow interrupted. “And besides, we missed our weekend because of the fire.”

“You don't understand,” Lavigne began. “The fire's the fire and the sweep's the sweep. The way I see it, we'll have to work two more days before we can get two days off. Look, it's simple. We finished on the sweep on a Wednesday of the week we were supposed to go down. There were still two days left to work. So, if we work two days, we can go.”

“You'd like your time off on a Monday and Tuesday?” Maurice St-Jean joined the conversation.

“
Sacrament
! I forgot about that,” Lavigne said.

“You're all wasting your time,” St-Jean continued. “We'll get a weekend off when they decide and not before.”

“He's right, I think,” Henri said.

“Maybe we should speak to Alphonse,” Lavigne tried again.

“No, I don't think so,” Henri said.

“We can make them an offer,” André spoke up suddenly. He had been shuffling cards at the table where he sat alone. He tossed the cards onto the table and joined the others by Henri's bunk.

“What do you mean, a bargain?” Lavigne inquired.

“Sure,” André answered. “It's too late tonight but, tomorrow, when were ready to go out, we can talk about it with Alphonse and Simard-Comtois. We can say to them that if they let us go down this weekend we'll make up the time by working a couple of extra hours a day next week, or maybe go out next Sunday.”

“Whoa!” Lavigne stood up. “Not Sundays. We're not going to start that. Still, I think you have a good idea there.”

“Sure,” Morrow added. “And what's a couple of hours more a day anyway.”

“What do you think, Maurice?” Lavigne said.

“It sounds pretty good to me. But we'll have to speak to the others.”

“Hey, I can't think of anyone who would be against it,” Lavigne said, looking across the room. “You Gaston, you're with us on this?”

Gaston Cyr was sitting reading a picture magazine with the back of his chair leaning against the wall.

“What's that?” he said.

“You'd like to go down this weekend?”

“Don't ask?”

“Be willing to work extra hours next week?”

“No problem.”

“There, you see,” Lavigne turned to the others. “Everybody will be like that.”

That night, lying in his bed, Henri was both happy and unhappy, so much so that he was unable to sleep. He was very happy to be finished with the fire and to be back at Washika. Maybe tomorrow they would be sent down to Ste-Émilie for the weekend. He could hardly wait. There were his parents, and all of his friends, and the stories he had to tell them about his experiences on the fire. With his best friend, David Greer, he would share his experience with Lise Archambault. Lise, that was the sad part. He had not seen her for a very long time it seemed. With the crazy hours they worked on the fire, even dreaming of her did not come easy. Once, hiding beneath a spruce tree out of the rain, he had thought about her and he remembered being aroused instantly. Sitting there under the wet, dripping branches, he had never felt lonelier in his life. And now, if they were to go down to Ste-Émilie for the weekend, he would not see her on Sunday. He would have to wait until the next Sunday before seeing her again, and then, it could rain.

Henri tossed around under his blankets. He lifted himself up on his elbows and tried to look outside. It was dark everywhere. He could not even make out where the windows were. He would think about something else. He was warm and dry in his bed, he was back at Washika, finished with the fire, and maybe in the morning he would be on the bus, going home. He tightened the blankets around him and closed his eyes. He thought about Alphonse and Simard-Comtois and what he would say to them after breakfast. It had been decided by the others that he should be the one to speak to Alphonse and the superintendent. It would be simple enough. They would like to have their weekend off, he would tell them, but since they owed the Company two days before being entitled to a weekend off they would work two extra hours each day the following week to make up the time. And…Henri lifted his head off the pillow. Then, he sat straight up in his bed. It could not be! How could they have been so stupid? And yet, it was simple. They owed two days. That made eighteen hours. At two extra hours per day, they would have to work nine days, almost two weeks putting in extra hours each day.

Henri drew back the blankets and slid his feet across and onto the floor. He sat on the edge of the bed and looked into the darkness. Perhaps Maurice would be angry. Henri felt the need to talk this over with someone but Maurice did not like being awakened before the bell, whatever the reason. What could they do? Two weeks working extra hours and coming home late for supper every night. Dumas would be furious. Dumas! They had not thought of Dumas. That was it then, the end of their plan. Dumas would certainly not change the hours of his cookhouse just for them and, of course, he would not serve them two hours late for supper either.

Henri laid his head on the pillow, still happy and unhappy. He was disappointed now that they would not be going down to Ste-Émilie for the weekend. He wrapped the blankets around himself. He closed his eyes and was warm and happy again, lying on the hot sand, looking up into her green eyes and feeling the roundness of her breasts against his chest. Later, they would do a little fishing or, maybe, just lie there in the sun and wait for the day to pass.

A
fter the first bell, when all of the students were up and searching for their clothes, Henri broke the news to them.

“How's that,
calis
?” André was not happy.

“Mathematics,” Lavigne snarled. “Two into eighteen gives nine. Nine days.
Sacrament
!”

“And then there's Dumas,” Henri continued. “You know how he is about us being late.”'

“I've got it!” Morrow was excited. “I've got it!”

“Well?” Lavigne stood with his palms up. “Come on, out with it.”

Morrow walked around to where Henri and Lavigne stood by the table. “It's so simple,” he said. “I don't see why you didn't think of it, Henri.”

Lavigne grabbed Morrow by the shirt and started to lift him.

“Listen you,” Lavigne hissed. “You're the one who'll be simple if you don't stop screwing around.”

“Leave him alone,” Henri said. “It's no use. Forget it.”

“Wait,” Morrow said. “Listen Henri. What if we were to talk Dumas into making two lunches in the morning? What do you think, eh?”

Henri stared at Morrow. Then both he and Lavigne walked out of the bunkhouse-and-office without saying a word. As they crossed the yard to the main sleep camp, they could hear Morrow explaining his plan to the others.

“What an asshole,” Lavigne mumbled.

“He's all right,” Henri said. “He just wants to be part of it. That's all.”

In the main sleep camp, the students went to the washroom and washed up at the basin. They looked at each other and smiled as Télesphore Aumont coughed his way to the washroom. They were happy to be back.

Walking across the yard to the main sleep camp, Henri had seen the bus parked behind the cookhouse. Lavigne also noticed it as they made their way to the cookhouse.

“What do you think, Henri?” he said. “Not another fire,
sacrament
?”

“No, I don't think so. Probably just the driver was tired.”

“Did you ever notice his eyes?”

“From driving at night,” Henri replied. He did not know this for certain but he had read it somewhere.

“Yes, I suppose. You know, every trade has its eyes. Ever notice an undertaker? Their eyes are always sunk back in their head, especially the old ones. It's the chemicals, a guy told me once.”

“Yes, I suppose,” Henri said. He believed Lavigne's theory about undertakers' eyes as much as he was certain about truck drivers' eyes. It was all beer talk, and the wrong time of day. In Ste-Émilie, after two or three beer they would talk like that. But now it was six o'clock in the morning and Dumas was waiting for them on the cookhouse landing.

Henri and Lavigne joined the others in line. No one was speaking and Henri could hear the breeze whistling through the screened windows of the kitchen. Out in the bay small whitecaps were forming.

It wasn't long before everyone had noticed the change. It seemed impossible. A few of the older men sniffed quietly going by the cook. As each person handed him his ticket, Dumas would smile and say the person's name.

“Ah, Morin,” he said, as Henri held out his ticket. “Henri Morin, the chocolate pudding man. Come in! Come in!”

Henri did not know what to say. He handed Dumas the ticket and tripped on the doorsill going in. It was like that all during breakfast. Dumas rushed in and out of the kitchen, carrying fresh platters full of eggs and fried bacon and mountains of toast, humming as he worked, and smiling at each individual who caught his eye.

After breakfast everyone was talking about it. He had started to drink was the theory held by most of the older men. There were some, more charitable, who suggested that maybe he was, in fact, very ill and that the medication was affecting his brain. Of all the older workers at Washika, only Alphonse claimed that it was all very normal and that the poor man was probably in love. In the bunkhouse-and-office the boys were much too concerned with their own problems to be worried about the erratic behaviour of the cook. They had only one thing on their minds and that was the possibility of returning to Ste-Émilie for the weekend. Someone suggested a petition. Gaston Cyr stood up on a chair and with one fist in the air called for a strike. The others looked at him in silence. Gaston felt a fool then and stepped down off the chair.