Washika (20 page)

When the last student had left and the bus was easing its way back onto the highway, the woman began to clear away the dishes from the tables where they had been. A man and a woman and a teenage girl were sitting at a table by the window.

“Quite a gang, eh?” the man said.

“Oh, they're not so bad. It's only when they come out of the bush they get like that.”

A
lmost everyone in the bus was smoking a cigar, raising their lips and showing their white teeth as they bit into the plastic tip. They spoke with the cigars still in their mouths.

“Well,” Lavigne began. “One more stop and then…a good bath, couple of beers at the tavern, pick up my old lady and…”

Lavigne did not finish. He sat back in the seat with his legs outstretched, passed one hand between his legs and massaged his groin.

Henri was silent. He took long drags on the cigar Lavigne had given him and inhaled the smoke. After smoking only half of it, he was beginning to feel dizzy.

“Wish I had a beer,” he said to Lavigne.

“Yeah, me too.”

“Do you ever drink at home, Gaston?”

“Me? Sure. But mostly just at Christmas and Easter. Anyway, there's hardly ever any around. You?”

“No. Once, at a wedding party held at our house.”

“Ah yeah!
Calis
, do I ever get into the beer then! And it's free and everybody's in such a good mood and they don't get on your back if you're pissed.”

The tires hummed and the boys smoked their cigars and looked out at the green forest and the rock cliffs that had been sliced to run the highway through. They read the words, “
Joe aime Marie
”, “
Elmo était ici
”, and “
Sarah suce
” written in red and orange on the rock face walls. One hour exactly after leaving the Café D'or, the bus slowed and left the highway, turning onto a semicircular driveway covered with white crushed stone. Within the boundary of the crushed stone driveway was a well-kept lawn with a small rose bush at one end and a flagpole in the centre with a Union Jack flapping in the wind.

The bus stopped in front of the two-storey frame house. The house had been freshly painted, white with green trim around the windows and the railing of the verandah on the second floor. There was a verandah on the main floor as well, with a very wide oak door and a varnished pine board inscribed with the words “Pay Office” in solid black letters. The students had been given strict instructions regarding their behaviour in the pay office.
Monsieur
Lafrance, who was the chief and only clerk there, was a very serious man who had a reputation for near genius when it came to figures. But he would not tolerate noise, shouting, laughing, swearing or any other shenanigans from the students of the Collège de Ste-Émilie.

The twenty students stepped quietly into the office and, those who could, sat down on the chairs by the wall. The others stood along the opposite wall, waiting for their names to be called, or for a chair to be liberated. It was quiet in the office, like a bank or a post office. It was clean and smelled of pencils and paper. The students could see their reflections on the varnished floor. Most of the students spent much of their time staring at the floor. It was the only way they knew how to avoid the usual chain of events that led to nothing but trouble in the end. And here, they did not want any of that.

“Henri Morin,”
Monsieur
Lafrance said loudly and clearly.

Henri moved up to the counter. The clerk punched the keys on the machine and pulled on the handle several times. He ripped off the slip of white paper that had a column of figures in black ink. Some of the numbers were in red ink. He stapled the slip to a long form that was green, like the jack pine, with a black trim around its edge.

“Sign here,” he said, making an X with his pencil at the beginning of a dotted line. He pointed to a row of figures. That is for unemployment and this one is tax deductions. And that one, under 'other,' is for the van.”

The whole transaction had taken no more than thirty seconds. In less than one minute,
Monsieur
Lafrance handed Henri a cheque with the Company's name in large green letters at the top. “That's for three weeks less two days,” the clerk said as he handed him the cheque. “The fire cheques will arrive at Washika in four days.”

Henri looked at the man's well manicured fingers, large like his hands, and the glistening grey hairs combed just so over the tanned, balding head.
Monsieur
Lafrance did not smile but, when he spoke, Henri noticed that he was as serious with them as he would have been with the older, permanent employees. Money was serious business with the clerk and he treated the students as he would the other men. It was the only place where they felt as if they were being treated as adults and they treasured this fact so greatly that all of students were constantly vigilant of each other's behaviour.

Above the large desk where
Monsieur
Lafrance worked the adding machine, there was a shelf with many books, mostly thick books with leather bindings. Beside the books, on the same shelf, was a radio the likes of which Henri had never seen. The radio itself was enclosed in a polished wooden cabinet and a loudspeaker in a similar wooden cabinet sat on top of it. The knobs were of polished wood, like the cabinet, and the dial was a vertical red line that moved horizontally across a rectangle of yellow parallel lines. Along these parallel lines were numbers, written in kilocycles and megacycles, and, in gold letters, the names of countries, Sweden, France, England, Germany, and so on. Henri had never seen such a beautiful radio. He promised himself that when he had finished school and was working he would get himself a radio like that. He would sit in the dark in his room at night and listen to the peoples of the world.

When all the students had received their cheques and folded them four times and placed them neatly within the folds of their wallets, they went outside and boarded the bus. In the yard behind the house, they saw
Madame
Lafrance. She was wearing a large straw hat and tending to the vegetables in her garden. She was a plump, elderly person like her husband, and she displayed the same degree of efficiency in her garden as he did in his office. They waved to
Madame
Lafrance as the bus followed the driveway out onto the highway. The woman nodded slightly and returned to her work.

The students were quiet, speeding along the highway with only the tires humming and the wind rushing in through the open windows. They had crossed the line, the one that divided the wild and crazy
étudiants
working in the bush for the summer from the wild and crazy beer drinking, girl-chasing
étudiants
just come down from working in the bush. The line,
Monsieur
Lafrance's pay office, was neutral territory and it always had a sobering effect on them. They were, after all, not such a bad bunch. It was only when they came out of the bush that they got like that, as
Madame
Laviolette at the Café D'or had mentioned earlier.

S
te-Émilie was not a very large town. The sign at the entrance to the city said “Population 6921,” but the sign was not new. The paint on its frame had already blistered and was peeling off in long, orange fingers.

“Well, now it's six thousand nine hundred and twenty one again,” Lavigne smiled as they went by the sign, down the hill and onto Boulevard Carrion.

“You think there are that many?” Henri said.

“You saw the sign.”

“Yes, but it's old. Older than both of us maybe.”

“Some come, some go,” Lavigne held up an index finger meaning to imitate Brother André at the high school. “But the numbers remain the same.”

“I don't think so,” Henri argued. “We are after the war. There are many old people dying.”

“So?”

“Don't you see? Most of the population here is young people, like us. When we finish at the
collège
, and the girls finish at Ste-Véronique's, we leave for university, or to work in the Capital.”

“There'll be more young ones, Henri. What's the matter with you?”

“Yes. And where will they come from, these young ones? From us, Gaston, and where will we be, eh?”

Lavigne twisted his face as he was in the habit of doing when he saw or heard anything strange. He lit up a cigar and handed one to Henri.

What you doing tonight?” he said.

“Oh, I don't know.” Henri slipped the cigar into his shirt pocket. “You?”

“I'll call my girlfriend, of course. But after, probably La Tanière. Maybe we'll go there. Supposed to be a good band. Helène wrote me about it last time.”

“They'll still be there?”

“Three weeks, she said in her letter.”

“Oh, for sure then,” Henri said. “I don't know what time. Late, maybe.”

“Aha!” Lavigne smiled. “You have someone special in mind?”

“No, no.”

“How come, Henri, we never see you with a girl?”

Henri shrugged his shoulders. It was too complicated to explain to Lavigne, or anyone else. It was all he could do just trying to understand it himself. It had taken some time before he was convinced that, for the moment, it was the only choice he had.

“It's not good for a guy, you know,” Lavigne went on. “Me, I have to have a girlfriend. To me it's only natural. You better be careful, Henri. You'll finish like André in the washroom on Sundays.”

Lavigne laughed and he looked down the row of seats to see if André Guy had heard him.

“Don't worry,” Henri said. He wished, then, that he could describe how it had been in the room that smelled like her hair. How, after he had closed the door that day, Lise had come towards him in the dim light, and how the nipples of her breasts had rubbed against his chest when she moved in closer to slide his shirt down off his back; and when she kissed him, how her tongue worked, and he thought she would swallow his, and all the time her fingers moving like waves below where his hair fell on his neck and, after, how surprised he had been to find her hand there. He had not felt the button loosen and his blue jeans falling to the floor and then they were together on the bed. It had all been too much for him, and Lise had laughed and caressed him and told him not to worry about it. They were lying side by side on the bed when it happened: Henri kissing her breasts, and her sliding her legs between his and running her fingers along the spine of his back. He tried hard to think of something else but he could not, and then his forehead, covered in sweat, rested on her breasts and he looked down at her abdomen, round and deeply tanned, and he saw his wetness all over it. But she had been so wonderful about it that he had not felt badly for long. Soon, she was touching him again and they made love the only way Henri knew how and, after, Lise showed him more ways and they made love again, each time finishing like after a long, hard run, and Lise making soft crying sounds in her throat.

He wanted to say all of these things to Lavigne, to show him that he was just like everybody else and that he had no need, at least not more than anyone else, to stay a long time in the washroom at Washika on Sundays. He wanted to tell Lavigne how wonderful Lise was, and how he was free, and how his life had not become complicated by a “steady.” But, he had promised and, although neither he nor Lise had made any sort of commitment, Henri felt that he owed her that at least. He would not share what they had with anyone. Not with Lavigne, anyway.

The bus slowed at the sign with the Company name and drove into the paved parking lot next to the sprawling white building with three floors of Company administration. The students pulled their packs from the racks and left the bus. They said, “
Salut
,” to the driver who nodded to each of them.

The students left then, shouldering their packs and walking down the streets in as many directions. Some left in groups of four or more while others walked alone. Henri walked alone, down Rue Leblanc, and when he reached the Hotel Chamberlain he opened the door to the main lobby and went inside.

A
fter walking through ashes and burned, fallen trees for sixteen days, Henri strode across the sky blue carpet in the lobby of the hotel as if he were wearing no boots at all. He was light of foot, and tanned, and he had never felt better in his life.

“Sign the back,” the woman said. The woman behind the counter scanned the cheque quickly, turning it over once. “And put your address and telephone number too.”

Henri scribbled his signature above the line and below it he wrote his address and telephone number. He liked the sound the pen made on the counter top.

“Could I have it all in ones?” he asked.

“Let me see,” the woman examined the cheque again. “You want all ones?”

“Yes.”

“Hold on then.”

The woman opened a set of cupboard doors at knee level and opposite the counter. Inside was a black metal door and Henri watched her turn the bright metal dial: clockwise twice, counter clockwise once, and clockwise again. She pulled up on the handle and opened the thick, black door. When she stooped down to reach into the safe, Henri could not see inside. All he saw was the tightening of the skirt around her large hips and her white skin showing above the skirt where her blouse had slipped out.

The woman removed the elastic band and counted out the bills.

“There,” she said, tapping the bills on the counter top and squaring out the edges. “Count it.”

“No, that's okay,” Henri trusted the woman.

“No, no,” she said. “Count it. I could make a mistake. Sometimes they stick.”

Henri counted out each bill and placed it on top of the previous bill, making a neat stack as he had seen the woman do. When he had finished, he placed the bills in the fold of his wallet and stuffed the rounded wallet into the back pocket of his jeans.